UKC

What was the first E1 ever climbed?

In reply to stucknortherner:

Javelin Blade on Idwal Slabs I believe. Check the history section in the red SPA handbook by Libby Peters.

In reply to stucknortherner:

A list of such things that might open a few UK centric eyes.

https://web.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/hard.htm

In reply to spenser:

Javelin Blade is usually quoted, but wasn't Wall End Slab Direct earlier? And something pre-WW I on Laddow iirc?

In any case, as Offwidth mentioned, even a passing acquaintance with the climbing history of the eastern Alps or the Elbesandstein is an eye-opener with regard to what a primitive backwater British rock climbing was before the Rock & Ice era. There were things being done in the Elbesandstein, Dolomites & Kaisergebirge in the 1910s & 20s that were decades ahead of the UK in terms of technical difficulty as well as being much, much bigger.

Otoh the Munich team got their arses kicked by Menlove Edwards on Tryfan, so who knows?

In reply to AlanLittle:


Cave Arête Indirect (E1 5b) (1916)?

Though yes, it seems clear that if we're thinking worldwide, the Elbsandstein climbers got there first.

In reply to stucknortherner:

Suicide Wall in Bosigran for me. Totally epic!

In reply to AlanLittle:

At the time, of course, Menlove Edwards was one of the leading climbers in the country, and had the advantage of operating on home turf. Do we know whether Teufel and Sedlmayr occupied anything like a similar position in the Munich climbing scene - or would there have been plenty around who were much better? In fact, if the latter was indeed the Heini Sedlmayr whose brother Max had died on the Eiger ten months earlier, Heckmair referred to him as a good friend but more of a skier than a climber.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Well, the Herbst Teufel in Oberreintal gets VI- these days, so not absolutely cutting edge by the Dolomites standards of the 30s but not far off. But, as you say, home advantage - steep juggy limestone and slabby technical rhyolite are very different ballgames.

In reply to AlanLittle:

The FA history of Munich Climb has set a couple of traps - this being one of them! On 1st July 1936 Albert Herbst and Hans Teufel were climbing the north face of the Schneehorn, with a bivouac at the top; Teufel was killed during the descent the following day. It was a different Teufel who was busy on Tryfan at the same time.

In reply to Ian Parsons:
Ah. Oops.

Have you seen the great bit in one of Bill Tilman's books, where he's working as liaison officer with partisans in Belluno, and afraid to let slip that he's done a bit of climbing in case Attilio Tissi invites him out for a day's cragging?

In reply to AlanLittle:

An easy mistake - and certainly one that I made! Familiar with the name from an ascent of the Wetterstein route some decades ago I simply assumed that they were one and the same. It was only in the course of some later Eiger research that events on the Schneehorn came to my attention and the penny dropped; he couldn't have been in two places at the same time - and the subsequent activity of a Bavarian Hans Teufel in Chilean Patagonia the year after the accident supported the conclusion that there must have been at least two of them. The 2010 Ogwen guide falls into the other trap of confusing the Munich Climb Sedlmayr with the Death Bivouac one.

I hadn't heard the Tilman story, and I've little idea of how aware British climbers would have been of standards reached at the time in the Dolomites and the limestone ranges of the North Tyrol; but I suspect that anyone who had visited and seen some of the routes - even without actually climbing them - would have been very impressed, and not a little intimidated!