In reply to Simon Panton:
Hi thanks for your reply. And thanks to the other climbers who responded.
Like most winter climbers who have been active on the scene for a reasonable length of time at a reasonable grade, I have done a fair number of winter ascents of classic summer lines, the likes of Bowfell Buttress and Central Buttress on Beinn Eighe come to mind, and there is also a photo of me in your new guide on the crux of Central Gully on Craig y Ysfa (a climb that I suspect see more summer than winter ascents), on a pitch that I doubt ever has much in the way of ice, or even snow, on it. I have also done my own share of new routes over the years.
So, whilst I feel rather uneasy about the development of routes like D Route, Asterisk and Gimmer Crack as winter routes, I can empathise with the climbers concerned in that I know both the excitement of finding new routes and of finding a long sought after winter line finally in nick on the day.
However, I also can see there is a problem of long term irrevocable damage being caused to classic rock routes by winter climbers, especially when those routes are just covered in snow or hoar frost which does little or nothing to prevent the damage.
It also seems to me that such routes which only a few years ago were the preserve of the elite (and thus saw very few ascents), are now likely to be the objective of any Tom, Dick or Harriett inspired by a few photos on UK Climbing and armed with a new set of monopoints and a pair of Nomics – which means the damage is likely to become greater quite rapidly. Moreover, as standards rise, the damage is likely to be more significant. A small flake of rock broken off off a VD like Bowfell Buttress is not likely to make much difference to the grade, but the same amount of damage to an E3 like Snicker Snack could be considerably more significant.
As editor of the FRCC Guidebooks I was interested to see a guidebook that addressed this issue and I suppose that I am trying to get more of a handle on just what is and isn’t acceptable among the rapidly expanding group of winter climbers operating at grade VI and above, though I appreciate that in a sport with no written rules and loads of rather fluid unwritten ones, precision in this matter is tricky. We are currently working on a new winter guide to the Lakes and I feel that we definitely need to take a stance on the issue, which I am trying to understand more fully.
As such, some of the points outlined in your new guide are a great help, as is the point made by petejh above.
I want to be sure as far as possible that, when the new guide appears, there is no ambiguity in our message – however, what that message is, is still open to debate.