UKC

There have been a couple of threads recently about Chris Sharma & the
First Ascent programmes on the Extreme Sports TV channel. I watched one where he climbed a route on Clark Mountain in Californis that the commentator said was the hardest ever climbed. I thought Dave Macleod's route on Dumbarton rock was the hardest ever? Or are we comparing apples & pears?

In reply to gaffer: Trad vs Sport, completely different

In reply to gaffer: Jumbo Love on Clarke Mountain in a sport route of grade F9b.

Rhapsody at Dumbarton Rock is a trad climb graded E11 with a reported equivalent sport grade of F8c, making it one of the hardest trad climbs in the world. Dave M's route on the Ben, Echo wall is meant to be around F8c+

In reply to gaffer:
the clark mountain route is much harder

In reply to gaffer:

Dont want to get sucked into a silly debate about 'hardest climb in the world' however just to pique your interest into hard trad climbing, cobra crack in squamish canada is graded 8c and meltdown in yosemite 8c+. caldwell graded the nose of el cap free at 8c (lynn hill originally proposed 8a+) although many moves on big walls are bolt protected so it's not a pure trad line!

Sport's a different kettle.. there are probably a hundred routes worldwide at these grades

Well anyway... it's all damn impressive and us mere mortals can only dream...

In reply to owensum: im sure there's well over a 1000 8c routes or above

Where is Angus?

In reply to beastofackworth:

Yeah, but on trad gear?

In reply to The_JT: Obviously not, but he was talking about sport routes.

In reply to @ndyM@rsh@ll:

Oh yeah... I misread owensum's post. That's only the third time I've misread something in the last couple of days :S

In reply to gaffer:

Sharma's route on Clark equates to a F9b or 5.15b. It's almost 100 meters long with 30 meters of 14c climbing up to a 15b crux, then 20 more meters of 13d. I think most climbers in N. America consider it to be the hardest route in the world but there hasn't been a second ascent yet so we don't know for sure. It's a sport route. There are 6 or 7 in the world now and only one has seen a second ascent. Adam Ondra did one of Sharma's 9b's in Spain.

Sharma also did Realization in 2001 which was the worlds first 5.15a/9a+. Es Pontas was his DWS route in Spain that is said to be 9b but no one has repeated that either. Who knows... but Requiem is a traditional route and Sharma's are not. Neither are any of Danny Andrada's routes, who I believe is the only other climber to do a first ascent of F9b.

Beth Rodden did Meltdown a few years ago on natural gear and it was said to be .14c or 8c+. I don't know the UK system that well but was under the impression that .14c is 7b E12. I do remember it being regarded as the hardest trad route in the country... maybe the world. I've also seen the same thing written about Requiem at E11.

It's rather silly to compare Sharma to McLeod though. Sharma wouldn't try Requiem and Mecleod couldn't red-point Jumbo Love.

I personally think Sharma's routes get a lot more press, but will probably be repeated before McLeod's routes are repeated. Wonder why Honnold and crew didn't try Requiem. Or did they?

In reply to gaffer:

Which of them would you rather have a pint with?

In reply to DaveHK

There is great potential for a comedy sketch and one-up manship when the two get together down the local.

I realise that they probably wouldn't. But hey, there's some jokes in there, so makes me smile.

K

In reply to rtwilli4:
When you say Requiem, you of course mean Rhapsody. Requiem is the E8 6b by Dave Cuthbertson which Rhapsody branches left from.

Pete.

In reply to Kevster:

More like a Harry Hill "fight!"

In reply to rtwilli4:

14c is 7b E12. I do remember it being regarded as the hardest trad route in the country... maybe the world.

Don't compare 14c with E12 7b they don't match up.



Oh yes that's exactly why Jumbo love has had 0 repeats and yet Dave Macleods E11 Rhapsody has had 2 repeats already.

and clearly you don't follow the UK climbing scene, Echo wall and Rhapsody where both massive markers in the progression of British climbing and at the time they where big news.

and by the way I think Ondra would tell you that Alex Huber did the worlds first 5.15a in 1996.

In reply to Quarryboy:

if your refering to la rambla it was infact 9a(5.14d) when first ascended but lost a few holds so was upgraded

In reply to Quarryboy:



contradicting yourself a bit there

In reply to beastofackworth: He's referring to Open Air, I suspect.

In reply to beastofackworth:

no he isn't....the second line is a response to the 1st....i think.

In reply to beastofackworth: He's refering to Open Air at Schleier. Originally graded 9a. Now apparently fits in at 9a+ in line with the modern grading of stuff.

In reply to shaggypops: just bad at quoting then

In reply to Robertostallioni: has it changed post first ascent thouygh i.e. got harder?

In reply to beastofackworth: Not that I know of. I expect only Adam Ondra/ (and perhaps quarryboy) know that for sure though.

In reply to Quarryboy:

I did mean Rhapsody, not Requiem. And I didn't know that it had seen two repeats.

Personally I feel that British Climbing is kind of overlooked now a days because sport climbing gets a lot of attention. At least that's what I always read about in the US. Maybe once I move to the UK I will feel differently. I don't mean to say in anyway that British climbing should be overlooked, I just don't hear much about it... obvious by my lack of knowledge on the subject. To be honest I'm sick of hearing about sport climbing but that seems to be popular right now.

As for comparing grades, I know that it's kind of a bad idea. I have never climbed a route that was graded with the UK system so maybe you can enlighten me? How many E11's are there? Why do I hear people use the E grade w/o also using the technical grade? Doesn't 7b describe how hard the crux move is? Can you give me an example of a YDS grade that matches up well with a UK Grade?

In reply to rtwilli4:

>Es Pontas was his DWS route in Spain that is said to be 9b but no one has repeated that either. Who knows... but Requiem is a traditional route and Sharma's are not.

Oh, I don't know. Es Pontas was done in pretty traditional style. You certainly couldn't call it a sport route.

To someone (beastofackworth, was it?): I'd certainly be willing to bet that Jumbo Love is repeated before Echo Wall!

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


Was it? I really have no idea but the finishing holds after the second crux were chalked up and ticked when he did it on King Lines. Did he do the route twice or something?

Someone rapped in and marked up the cliff, which means it was not onsite. I do agree that it was done in way more traditional style that bolted stuff.

I don't want to take anything away from the ascent but I always wondered about that chalk at the top.

In reply to rtwilli4:

I have to say I thought he did another route on that arch which climbed specifically past the jug at the end of the huge dyno in order to check the hold out.

In reply to rtwilli4:

I can try, speculatively for high end routes: Johnny Dawes' legendary Indian Face - E9, put up in 1986, three repeats iirc in a quarter of a century - is said to be physically around F7b+. From various sport French-to-YDS conversion tables I've seen, that would appear to be around top end 5.12. But it's sustained, precarious climbing on marginal micro-wires. So 5.12d X? Significantly harder *and* significantly more dangerous than something like the Bachar Yerian (tho' not put up ground-up). Echo Wall? 5.14c X?

Note: this is stuff I have read. I have no personal experience of climbing anything anywhere near those grades. For grades I *have* climbed, Vector for example is definitive middle of the road, well-protected E2 5c and would be about 5.10c. E3 5c might be either runout - 5.10c R - or safe but sustained and/or strenuous. (It often helps to know which)

In reply to rtwilli4: I'm fairly sure Dave MacLeod didn't OS rhapsody either.

In reply to gaffer: I was sort of put off Dave Macleod by his antics over the way he handled James Pearsons route, it came across to me as a bit petty and 'oneupmanshipish' and a cynical ploy to court media attention. With regards to their respective routes Im sure Sharma's hard routes will be repeated first because they are more accesible and their locations mean their far easier to practice on all year round. I can't believe that echo wall is 'harder' than Sharma's routes. Your more likely to die doing it but that doesn't make it harder.

I reckon that Sharma must be somewhere in the top 10.

You know Echo Wall is ungraded and all that. I got dave's book for Christmas and in the biog there it clearly says it's E11.

In reply to The_JT:

By American definitions trad gear does not a trad route make. There was some criticism of the claim that Rhapsody was the hardest trad route in the world because it was prepractised on a top rope and therefore pretty much a sport route.

In reply to tatty112: re: echo wall vs chris Sharma's routes, you'd need to define harder...

Sharma's routes are going to be harder to complete, but you can try jumping on a lead straight away, and you're unlikely to get injured. Something like Echo Wall would be hard to even think about getting on a lead...

Interesting side note - there was an article about women in climbing, which noted that with the development of 'safe' sport routes, there's been an increase in female climbers. Perhaps we males enjoy living dangerously to prove how hard we are...

In reply to tatty112:

Are we talking Walk Of Life here? I sort of know why you might think that, but maybe Macleod was just being honest? Pearson has said since that his concept of how hard it was was probably skewed by the route being unlike anything he'd ever done before, and the two other repeaters (Birkett and Woodburn) have both agreed with Macleod's downgrade.

In reply to tatty112:

So maybe time to read this and note all the praise he heaps on Pearson and his 'world-class' route...
http://davemacleod.blogspot.com/2009/01/therapy.html

In reply to turtlespit: Harder in the case of climbing surely has to be based on technique/difficulty of route rather than on the fear of falling/death

In reply to Peter Walker: It wasn't necessarily the fact that he downgraded it but the manner in which he did it.

In reply to tatty112:

In what other manner can one downgrade a route?

In reply to tatty112:

Why? The mental aspect of trad climbing, with the potential for serious injury or death, surely contributes to the difficulty of the climb. How many lead attempts, even after substantial top rope practice, do you reckon someone like Chris Sharma has before he actually completes one of his hardest sport routes? If you make a mess when going for the lead on Echo Wall chances are you're going to get seriously hurt. Do you not think that that plays on the mind of the climber a bit? Anyone who believes that the fear of what failure on a hard trad route could lead to doesn't contribute to the difficulty of the climb is seriously deluded. It is much easier to push your self in a relatively safe environment to an environment with the high likelihood of severe injury.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

nope not me,i agree that jumbo love will likely be repeated before echo wall