For those who have spent much time at Yorkshire crags over the past ten years, Josh and Jack Ibbertson will already be household names.

Born into a climbing family, the brothers have been quietly working through the grades from a young age. Jack first made UKClimbing news at the age of 9 when he redpointed Raindogs in his school uniform! More recently, both have been operating in the 9s; Josh made the 3rd ascent of Rainman (9b) in 2022, and both have just returned from a successful trip to Flatanger.

The following video gives an insight into the family's relationship with climbing and what motivates them:

Josh and Jack spent the summer in Flatanger. Keen to know more, we fired across a few questions...

Jack

Coming off of my A-Level exams, the Flatanger trip was a great opportunity for me to finally get moving on rock again. I wanted to see where I was at with my climbing at the start of a gap year, and to try to unwind from a stressful exam season.

Because of this, I didn't go into the trip with any particular routes in mind, having done little specific training and not really knowing how I'd feel climbing generally, especially in such a new style. That also meant I was free to try whatever I felt like when I arrived without the pressure of any build-up, which turned out to be a great position to be in.

The Hanshelleren cave is probably the coolest crag I've been to, and I loved spending the first half of the trip ticking off lines like Open shoulders (8a+) and Muy Verdes (8c). With how I was feeling, I got excited about the idea of getting on a 9a.

After a week off from being ill, I wanted to try some really hard moves, and seeing Josh and Leo on The Illusionist (9a) made me really psyched. The moves looked so technical and intricate, while still being intense and powerful. It being so short also suited my complete absence of fitness. Despite the latter sections of the boulder coming together quickly, playing into my span and burly style, the lower half stumped me for a while, before I realised that I just needed my kneepad ridiculously low.  

The difficulties really began to brew in the redpointing stage. Having not completed a long project in a few years, relearning the process was a huge challenge. However, I was very fortunate to be staying in a house with some very supportive friends, who made each day far more manageable, and each of our projects became a team effort, which was a really special experience. 

It was clear, however, that I was having a hard time mentally with the route, and with the trip in general. So after taking a week off to hang out with some mates (and learning to make apple pie), I went through the process of reflecting on my attempts in a healthy way. What I'd learned being around some of the world's best was that the projecting process is actually very similar no matter the level, which in turn made the whole experience less intimidating, despite being surrounded by absolute wads.

Being able to work the route with people I've looked up to like Domen and Stefano was awesome, and super confidence boosting. From conversations with Jorge and Josh I better understood how to focus my thought process into more productive outcomes, and being more confident in my abilities as a climber allowed me to look past any physical limitations that, for the moment, were out of my control, and to concentrate instead on the things I could change, such as how I prepared in the morning, and how I mentally prepared for and on the route. I'm super grateful to Jorge for mentoring me through the final stages of projecting and helping me with my confidence. 

Believing that I could climb the route in bad conditions meant that I could reflect on attempts with more responsibility, but less self-doubt, and so I learned more from each go. These reflective abilities seem to be present in the best of climbers, and I hope that moving forward I'll be able to better utilise them in my own climbing, not just to improve, but also to manage frustration, and more easily enjoy pushing myself. I found reflection easiest by discussing it with others to prevent myself from being highly critical. It can also be beneficial to write down your thoughts as an outlet for critiquing your attempts.

Most of the hard climbing on The Illusionist is condensed in a twenty move sequence at the bottom, or so I thought. Each move was very interesting, it's one of those routes that you can find new details on for the whole time you're on it. You also have to climb everything correctly, it's very easy to fall off, funnily enough. This is what struck me the most about this style of 3D climbing, it's steep and burly, but technical at the same time, which I absolutely loved.

The first part of the lower section is probably a 7A boulder, but even being the slightest bit tired makes the next sequence much harder. How Josh, Leo, and I did it was with a very specific kneebar and heel sequence, and the move I fell off most was coming out of the kneebar in control. The second half of the boulder is more powerful, with a big slap to a lip and some smaller intricate moves to keep tension before matching. It was so much fun to fight on that section, and I thought that after that I would be ok, but I was young and naïve.

You then get a tricky hands-off rest in the corner, and the route from there is around 8b or 8b+. The next crux section is quite unstable when you're tired, and it took me quite a few attempts through the lower crux before I got through it. After falling off it once, my confidence was a bit shook, and it took me a few more tries before I found the right mental state to execute the moves calmly. As Jorge said, at the start I climbed like Ondra, at the end 'un poco más Ibbertson'. The last crux move is a dyno which is always pretty cool, but required a lot of commitment. 

The best moment of the trip for me was the evening after the send, when Kerrin Gale baked Nils and I a cake celebrating our first 9as. It was a lovely feeling that everyone was so invested in each other's projects, and celebrating all the sends was the highlight. As Josh said, we managed 18 9as and above as a house, and I'm proud to have done my bit, even if I wasn't the biggest contributor. 

The trip has gotten me really excited for climbing this year, and after enjoying doing some mileage at Red River Gorge, I'd be keen to get stuck in to Rainshadow (9a) at Malham and Progress (8c+) at Kilnsey, and hopefully pushing my grade further in the future. My confidence has grown massively, and I think that's more to do with my developed mindset as opposed to doing my new hardest grade. It was amazing being part of such a cool scene in Flatanger, and thanks to everyone there for making it a great time. 

Josh

This was my first time out in Flatanger. It's a place I've known about for almost as long as I've been climbing, but despite having read so much about the cave over the years I still didn't know exactly what to expect when it came to the climbing. I'd tried to prepare as best I could, but having never climbed on steep granite before I wasn't entirely sure how adapting to the new style would go.

So, instead of setting a specific trip goal I wrote out a list of routes of increasing difficulty from 8a - 9a. My goal was just to work my way up the list to gauge where I was at. I didn't want to set goals only to get out there, find that the style was tough for me and have to reevaluate my objectives!

After getting stuck in, however, I was pleasantly surprised. After a couple of unsettling initial sessions of getting pumped on almost every move something clicked, I was able to relax into the style and Odins Eye (8c+) went down with relative comfort. It seemed that the trip prep had worked well. That was a big confidence boost, and got me motivated to move onto some harder routes.

With Thor's Hammer (9a+) being wet I was drawn instead the hefty extension to Odin's Eye, Valhalla (9a). In terms of line quality this was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip. The route is 65m long, none of it particularly easy, and very steep the whole way. Aside from the difficulty, this route feels like a big undertaking with so many complex sections to work out, remember, and then execute. It also alerted me to my desperate lack of jamming skills, which I had to quickly rectify to pass a crucial section. Though, I did feel a bit pathetic spending multiple sessions to figure out what people assure me was a bog-standard bomber hand jam.

In the process of working on Valhalla conditions deteriorated and some crucial holds got wet. So I opted to turn my attention to The Illusionist (9a). It's the same grade on paper but couldn't be more different in reality. The meat of the hard climbing is 3 metres up and breaks down into two short boulders. This was perfect for keeping recruitment levels high, and ultimately helped me prepare for Change (L1) (9a+), even though that wasn't the intention.

After a battle on this route with conditions and my head (dropping the 'easier' top section led to some ultimately productive self-reflection) I got the send in 95% humidity. Whilst the skin suffered from this, it did help me prove to myself that I was capable of more in that bouldery style - but first I had to finish off the 65 metre enduro fest!

Change wasn't on my radar for this trip, it's - of course - a route with a lot of history and hearing of Adam's ascent of the full line back in 2012 was the first time I became aware of Flatanger. A bit earlier in the trip I'd belayed Jorge on his send of the route. This got me pretty psyched to give it a go. To my suprise I could do all the moves but one fairly quickly.

The move I couldn't figure out initially is the crux of the first pitch, and initially I tried Jorge's method, using a knee to reach a small gaston, then releasing this, and hopping up the left foot, like Adam did. This did feel possible, but making it reliable felt tricky, and on the warmer days the gaston was tough on the skin.

So, Leo and I (we worked on Change (L1) (9a+) together, and sent on consecutive attempts, Leo in the evening and myself the next morning) worked out a beta where we kept the knee in for longer to reach the lip before releasing it. This reduced the reliance on the gaston, but maintaining tension when releasing the knee became the new crux.

It took some time to work out the subtleties of this sequence, when the method is so reliant on body positioning as opposed to just straightforward hand and foot placements, it takes time to commit the position to muscle memory. However, once I had worked out the sequence and had the confidence that it would work, I could commit fully, and with some crisp conditions the send go went perfectly and the boulder felt controlled. Now that I've done the first pitch, I'm looking forward to returning for the full line! 

We were out there with an incredible team of people - this was by far the most memorable part of the experience. For six weeks we shared a house with Jorge Diaz-Rullo, Doug McConnell, Kerrin Gale, Domen Skofic, Leo Bo, Nils and Gonzalo Larrocha. As a household there were eighteen 9a and above sends (including two first 9a's!). Being surrounded by such a calibre of strong climbers (and generally awesome people) presents such a good learning opportunity. Especially when people are invested on others and psyched to share their expertise and experience. 

I learnt a lot from everyone on this trip, particularly with regards to mental approaches to the redpointing process. A good example was from my process on The Illusionist. Conditions hadn't been ideal I'd fallen after the hardest climbing on the penultimate session. I was quick to put the fall down to the 95% humidity, which certainly played it's part, but Jorge insisted that if I'd optimised my mental approach it would have still been possible. So we sat down and wrote out a mental strategy for the route, breaking it down section by section.

The next day we returned to find conditions virtually unchanged, but this time I was purely focused in the objectives we'd written out. This time, unphased by the damp rock and climbing with more confidence, I passed the section I'd fallen on previously. 'Don't leave for tomorrow what you can do today' was one of the many phrases I'll be taking with me in future. Having ticked the first pitch of Change I'm eager to knuckle down with some training and get stuck into the full thing next year. 

This trip as a whole was one of the most memorable and action packed I've had. It wasn't just the cave that blew me away, the region as a whole is beautiful, and so different to anywhere I'd been before. Rest days were often spent exploring the fjords in our friend Elliott's boat, or free diving for fish and seafood, bringing it back to the house and preparing self foraged feasts!