UKC

UKC description of Flimston Crack (VD) is "An impressive pitch on which follows the corner bounding the right-hand side of the slab. Start from the lowest ledge you can reach on the slab. Traverse up and across to reach the base of the corner and follow it to the top."

I've been going to Pembroke for several decades and have climbed at Flimston Slab on many occasions. I've always understood that Flimston Crack follows a network of cracks towards the right hand side of the slab but avoiding the corner on the right. This is how it appears in both the 2009 Rockfax guide and the 2016 CC guide (which repeats the description from the 1995 guide).  Their diagrams differ slightly, but both show lines which keep well away from the corner.

I've always been puzzled that there doesn't appear to be a named route up the big corner. It is such an obvious line, which surely must have been climbed. I've always meant to take a look at it, but never get round to it until my visit last week.

So where exactly does Flimston Crack go? I'm inclined to the view that the printed guides are correct and UKC is wrong, and that the route avoids the corner.  But if that is indeed the case, what is the route which follows the corner itself?

Did it last year and climbed the corner, which to be honest is exactly where the line on the topo goes... although the whole slab is climbable at roughly the same grade

I remember going down the centre of the slab (which I considered to be Flimstone Slab) and then going back up the big corner on the right (Flimtone Crack).

This was pre topo days, but I see what you mean: my old, wordy guide is a bit ambiguous about whether you're climbing cracks of a corner.

Which topo is that? I'm not able to add pictures, but the topos in both the Rockfax and CC guides show the line keeping well away from the corner.

The Rockfax description says:

A curiously-named climb, as it doesn't really follow any single crack. Starting from the ledge, climb diagonally rightwards up a crack. Then make a series of moves upwards crossing several more cracks.

The CC guide says only takes the right-hand side of the slab by the obvious crack. 

Neither makes any mention of the corner. Possibly the CC's "obvious crack" might be interpreted as meaning the corner, but not when compared with the topo, and why not say so if that's what they mean? It's hard to see how the Rockfax description could be interpreted to mean the corner. If anything, the line on their topo keeps even further away from the corner than the CC's, and possibly encroaches onto Fantastic Four (S) near the top.

To me there's a clear difference between a crack in a slab and a corner which contains a crack. On the slab itself you can wander about, and it makes no difference to either the grade or the character if you don't follow an exact line. However the corner, while similar in grade, is a completely different style of climbing and quite different in character from the pure slab routes. Surely it should be a distinct route in its own right and not a variation to Flimston Crack (and certainly not, as UKC has it, the actual line)?

It seems likely you're overthinking this and that previous guide writers have felt that such an obvious feature doesn't require a much more detailed description than they have previously given. That being said the latest Rockfax guide to Pembroke & Gower now offers the below:

"...Traverse up and across to reach the base of the corner and follow it to the top."

I'm reasonably confident in saying that you and probably 99% of people that have done this route have gone this way.

Lots of routes have names that don't really descbribe the feature they climb, I can think of several called Roof Route for example: Roof Route (VS 4c) & Roof Climb (VS 4b) not a roof in sight on either climb.

Some do, but being slabby like a steep roof ( the Burb S one).

And yet the route doesn't climb the slab pitched at the angle of steep roof, it really climbs the wide crack.

Quite possibly. However I don't know how to log the route I did last week, which UKC tells me is Flimston Crack but which was not the route I've climbed on previous occasions and which Rockfax had told me was Flimston Crack.

But previous guide writers haven't mentioned the corner, despite it being such an obvious feature. And whilst I can understand the topos being a bit vague about the cracks on the slab, if they meant the route to go up the corner surely that's how they would have drawn it.

Yes, but that seems to contradict the other guidebooks, including their own earlier guides and the CC definitive guide.  

There I disagree.  My logbook shows I've done this seven times over the last 20 years and until last week I've always followed the Rockfax description ie the slab away from the corner, and so have any other climbers who were there at the same time. I can't recall ever seeing anyone on the crack.  The only photo associated with the UKC entry shows the climber well away from the crack.

With respect to all those who have replied, it seems no one is able to authoritatively say which is the correct line. Reading the earlier descriptions, it seems a stretch to interpret these as referring to the corner, and to say that the topos which both show lines which keep well away from the corner actually mean to go up the corner suggests uncharacteristic carelessness on the part of the designers.

It appears to me that historically Flimston Crack has been regarded as the route up the right hand side of the slab itself, but Rockfax have seen fit to redefine it to mean the corner.  In that case, what have I and others been climbing for the last 20 years? Have we in fact been doing Fantastic Four (although the topo suggests this is further left)?

I think I'll raise it with the crag moderator. 

Perhaps try contacting Colin Mortlock, he has both a Linkedin & Facebook profile.

Not so fast... In Colin Mortlock's original guide of 1974 (so seven years after his first ascent of Flimston Crack) he doesn't mention Flimston Crack at all. He describes Flimston Slab, then goes straight to Bow Shaped.

In the next Pembroke guide, that of Pat Littlejohn in 1981, Flimston Crack makes its first appearance and is credited to Mortlock in 1967. The description: 'Another good pitch taking the crack which bounds the slab on the right. Follow the crack to the top'. Clearly this refers to the corner crack. 

So, did Mortlock really not climb the most obvious line in the bay? Did he simply forget that he'd climbed it? Did Pat assume that Colin MUST have climbed it and included it just in case?

That suggests that it was the earlier editions of Rockfax (which I've largely relied on for my visits) which were wrong. However the CC topo also makes the same mistake (if it is a mistake).

It does seem odd that the most obvious feature does not appear to have a named route. But why describe the obvious corner as an obvious crack? OK, like many corners it contains a crack but surely it is the corner which is the most obvious feature?

Which leaves the question, what is the route which which avoids the corner and which earlier Rockfax and CC call "Flimston Crack"? The CC topo shows this and Fantastic Four as separate lines.

All very confusing!