UKC

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

WOW! that sounds, and looks, amazing. It's nice of them (or you) to credit the French team for cleaning and preparing it, and doing the moves.

In reply to Paz: 'Wow!!' was the first thing that came to my mind... but i didn't want to post 'wow' on its own.

In reply to DaveWarb:

Yeah nor did I. It's so great that Caff's finally found a route worthy of his talent.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:


Any plans for a return visit ?

In reply to Paz:

In fact these frogs ( and spanish etc ..) were friendly enough to also realize the true first ascents of most of the pitches (F. Legrand for the "8c+" pitch),to grade them a little less than McHaffie, and to do more as explained in alpinist.com ... but weren't credited for that

In reply to 70's Climber:

Ah right. Well I still shouldn't have thought Caff would lie or exagerate about this sort of thing.

In reply to 70's Climber: Actually - that's not entirely true. As it says in my news report - James down graded some of the pitches he climbed to 8b/8b+. We had a rough translation of the route info and grades with us in Madagascar.

James climbed what we thought was the hardest pitch on the route - it finishes at a double bolt belay that the other team placed. Françoise was trying to link the 8b pitch (that James climbed) into the 8c (that James climbed) - which is a logical thing to do as there is no rest where the belay is. However - James climbed from belay to belay, which is also logical - there isn't a ledge on most of the route and as Françoise didn't tell anyone he had redpointed the 2 pitches individually then we didn't know - hence thinking it was a first ascent:

From the French team on Alpinist: "60 meters is very long, so we eventually thought we could divide it in two shorter pitches just like McHaffie did (estimating 8b and 8c+). François first redpointed these two sections estimating them as 8b+ and 8c. So McHaffie's redpoints are only repeats. But François didn't want to tell about these two redpoints because he didn't consider it as true redpoints for the entire slab is just too beautiful to be cut like this."

The only grades that were suggested as being higher were of the initial pitches that Dave Pickford climbed - one of which he snapped off a crucial hold making it a plus grade harder - hence the upgrade.

We were all extremely impressed with the other teams efforts and I hope that came through in my news report. They did a lot of preparing of the route and climbed it extremely well. There is no concealing of facts - these updates came after our reports were published.

So it seems that no-one has climbed the '8c+ pitch' but both climbers have climbed the 8c 40m section of the 8c+ pitch.

The lower pitch James also thought to be 8c, but we didn't have time to climb it - James worked it on abseil.

This is an amazing route. Good luck to the teams trying it at the moment.

In reply to Paz: He certainly wouldn't and didn't.

In reply to Paz:

Paz, I did not speak about lying because I even didn't think about it. Forget it: I posted because of your "humour" tone and the fact that the french ascent wasn't advertised in UKC even after it was known on alpinist.com . I'm sure that Mac Haffie and friends are totally sincere, and YOU should relax..

In reply to 70's Climber: The Alpinist News report wasn't updated - it is a user comment that you are referring to - just like this thread. The only difference is in the layout - Alpinist have the comments on the same page as the news - we don't.

Our news report wasn't updated because I didn't think it of interest to a wider audience to debate whether the route was 8c or 8c+ or 8c/+ and whether you should or shouldn't split the pitch. Certainly interesting enough to debate in the thread - but not really news. Also the initial news report makes it clear that we [the McHaffie team] didn't finish the route - so when another team (of any nationality) does finish it - if UKC get details - we'll run that news instantly.

You should see these pitches though, totally awesome. I can climb 8a+ on slate and I had absolutely no chance on these - really wild slab climbing. Amazing to watch. The film footage I shot of James is really impressive. Linking those two pitches will be a slab endurance feat from hell! It sounds like Françoise got really close too - watch this news page!

Jack

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

So you say
Our news report wasn't updated because I didn't think it of interest to a wider audience to debate whether the route was 8c or 8c+ or 8c/+ and whether you should or shouldn't split the pitch. Certainly interesting enough to debate in the thread - but not really news.

But that's not the point : What is new is the true author of the first ascent, and that's not a detail.. If you acknowledge somebody for a great exploit, a very difficult first ascent, and you learn somebody else did it before, it seems obvious to me that you have to give the information, or may be the exploit depends on who did it ???
Don't worry anyway

In reply to 70's Climber:


Neither of them have done the first ascent. The route remains unclimbed. The pitch of 8c+ is unclimbed. That's the point. The whole route is unclimbed. That's the point.

News item now updated.

Jack

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

That James is an awesome climber. Bumped into him at pretty much every crag we visited in Pembroke the other week. Watching him onsight E4s and E5s one after the other with apparent ease was well inspiring.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

The news item didn't exactly make this crystal clear.

In reply to Paz:

Last post on this now from me - got to go cook dinner!


That's true, it's because I didn't know about any of these recent developments until they were posted on the Alpinist thread over a week after our news report was posted. James freed what he felt was the hardest pitch (he tried them all). We knew that it had been graded 8c+ and not climbed. We didn't know François was trying to link 2 pitches and the article info we had didn't mention it, it just said François failed on pitch 9 (or whichever pitch it was). François also never reported that he had climbed the two shorter pitches that make up the 8c+ - as stated earlier in the thread.

So James climbed the second ascent of an 8b+ and an 8c pitch and the first ascent of an 8b+/c pitch (after holds came off) and the whole route is yet to be freed still, with 3 more pitches of around 8b+/c to do and the possibility of a mega link-up of the 8b+ and the 8c in to a 60m 8c+.

Crystal?! It's as clear as mud! To summarise:

François climbed some hard stuff. James also climbed some hard stuff, but after François, except one pitch. Both very impressive. James had the advantage of the route being prepared. UKC news report inaccurate due to my errors and the vague reporting of Francois' efforts. Route still to be climbed in total. Good luck to everyone who tries it!

Jack

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Fair attempt

The whole thing is clearest at
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web08s/newswire-madagascar-super-route
news item + following comment

In reply to 70's Climber:

Fair attempt : - )

Quite clear here too:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/older.html?month=05&year=2008#n44258

and this thread.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

OK thanks for clearing it up. I probably shouldn't assume everyone's as bad as me as reading UKC articles closely, and you did say a French team were going back to try it again, but I'd have just explicitly included a phrase like `this awesome project is still awaiting completion by a rock god' to inspire people to get on it.

On a different note, what's the hardest bolted slab route in the world (I'll ignore Grit and boulder problems to keep the list managable)?