Northumberland's Andy Earl has made a fine repeat of the High Fidelity at Caley in West Yorkshire. This plum line gets a confirmed grade of highball V13/Font 8b and was first climbed by Steve Dunning (author of the forthcoming Yorkshire bouldering guidebook) with its second ascent coming from the evergreen Ben Moon. Andy had worked the problem previously and on the day of his ascent pre-inspected this powerful line by abseil, or bloc as Andy insists on calling boulder problems, and after warming up fired the line first try. It lies right of the classic Great Flake an E5/6 6b that is now soloed with pads and spotters. Andy was spotted by his loyal companion, Springer. Click on the play button below to see Andy's ascent of High Fidelity.
If Will and I hadn't been dicking around at roadside, we might have seen him do that. I was round the corner slipping off Bob's Bastard. How embarrassing :P
I think that ease in which Andy Earl appears to despatch High Fidelity in the video hides the problems difficulty. This is a major line, at a popular area and it has only had three ascents. Pre-inspection? A brief look on abseil at the holds in this case I think, well according to Andy's blog. Mick
He got it 1st go - from Chris Grahams Scarpa blog - "Anyway so we get to Caley, Andy brushes the holds and sets off, not expecting to get too far on his first go. Undoubtedly inspired by my awesome spotting ability he waltzed straight past the crux to top it out first try. Good effort from the sparrow legs! You can watch the full video on the scarpa youtube pages but here's what I thought of his ascent..."
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