UKC

Greg Boswell has just added a hard new drytooling route to the Lake District dry tooling venue, the Works. Greg named the route Powerdab, grading it D13, making it only the second route of its grade in the country. 

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=68469

In reply to UKC News:

Good not-dropping-axe-off-shoulder skills.

In reply to UKC News: Great Video!

In reply to UKC News: I have to say, what's hard about that? It's a series of one arm pull ups and crossovers with a bomb proof bolt every three feet. Any fall will be less than eight feet (if that) including rope stretch given a competent belayer. What's the point of crampons too? They never touch with front points anyway. Rock slippers would be better.

This is rock climbing for those who can't actually climb moves, or winter climbing in safe summer conditions for those who don't like fear, cold or effort. In forty years of climbing I have never seen such a dismal video or such a pointless exercise.

I could lead that tomorrow and I haven't climbed for years. At least they are not occupying or defacing a decent crag.

Discuss.

In reply to UKC News: well that doesn't look at all sustained.... good effort

In reply to unclesamsauntibess: Discuss which side of the bed you got out of this morning?

In reply to UKC News: some of the worst music I have heard in my life, and that includes Finnish Death Metal. What was james Dunn visuals thinking of?!

hope Greg transfers that strength on to some good routes this winter

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:

Well aren't you super positive!

In reply to unclesamsauntibess: In reply to unclesamsauntibess: cool man. Bring your rock slippers and I'll hold your ropes.

You'll have to wait a bit though, I'm in Canada ATM, learning to actually climb those moves your talking about, and definitely not doing anything too scary or cold!

I'm glad some people liked the route/vid, we can't please everyone.

Cheers
Greg

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Discuss which side of the bridge he prefers to be under, I think.

In reply to unclesamsauntibess: Good climbers do tend to make things look very easy don't they. Well done Greg!

In reply to Greg Boswell:

I think he's a little envious Greg.

In reply to unclesamsauntibess: Ive also heard that Greg is a wee bit of a punter on rock :p

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:

What's he ever done on hoared-up andesite?

In reply to UKC News:

dont know mutch about drytooling. Are thay just normal axes beeing placed onto rock edges

thanks

Well done! Look forward to seeing what you achieve this winter Greg.

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:


Uhh

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:

We'll done Greg top effort.

Unclesamsauntibess yeah it's a shame Greg never does anything in a cold and dangerous environment isn't it

In reply to UKC News: May have to have a visit to the docs to see about these bite marks on my tongue can't understand where they could have come from as a all is did was read this thread !!!

In reply to UKC News: Wheres Andy F to tell us all it couldn't possibly be that grade because Greg hasn't climbed anyone elses D13s?

Surely we need a reknowned sheep rescuer to go and confirm/challenge the grade?




(Only teasing, well done Greg.)

In reply to UKC News: Impressive stuff. Were most of the axe placements natural edges/pockets, or were some drilled as well? Couldn't see too much detail in the video. Amazing first time placements though on such long reaches!

In reply to UKC News: Fantastic, somebody with talent putting in work to do things I'll only ever dream of. Amazing to watch, seems almost superhuman.

Tom

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:

I think you might have missed something, unless you are immensely strong, (which you may be as despite '40 yrs of climbing', which I guess puts you in your 50s, you could 'lead that tomorrow',) as you appear to have answered your own question:

Question - 'What's so hard about that?'

Followed by answer - 'Series of one arm pull ups and crossovers.'

In reply to NottsRich:

Agreed, very accurate placements.

Well done, Greg!

In reply to UKC News:

An impressive show of power and endurance. Having read various threads about dry tooling trashing the rock, I didn't see a single badly placed pick or foot, and anyhow, it doesn't look possible to climb that piece of rock without axes??

Having said that, what is the ethic behind the crampons? it looks like rock shoes would be more suitable. I'm guessing that it's training for when these kinds of moves crop up on mixed routes.

In reply to UKC News:
Surely this is just another term for aid climbing?

In reply to tim carruthers:

Anyone who thinks that drytooling is aid climbing has clearly done neither activity.

In reply to UKC News:

Ice axes and no top doesn't seem right somehow!

In reply to unclesamsauntibess:

Agree, that looks piss. Fancy meeting up tomorrow to lap it a couple of times? After that warm up we can head to Stanage and try a couple of HVS projects i've been working on.

In reply to UKC News: After all this talk about dry-tooling (largely negative talk at that) it's kinda interesting to actually see it done. I'd be lying if I said it made me want to have a go myself though, I'm quite happy free climbing.

In reply to Epsilon:


Oi! That's my line!

In reply to Daniel Wicks:
amazin vid. makes me want to get into drytooling! : )

In reply to Steve nevers:

Even though you were joking, and there's no reason to doubt the grade, it would be interesting to see how the Works/White Goods/Newtyle grades compare to some of the established testpieces in North America (The Game M13, Musashi M12, Jedi Mind Tricks M13-14, etc.) and continental Europe (Game Over M13, Mission Impossible M11, etc.) that have seen a good number of ascents.

In reply to Epsilon:

Scott Muir has done Musashi, Jedi Mind Tricks, Game Over and Mission Impossible and assorted other gnarly hard things, as well as all the older Newtyle routes (no idea if he's done Greg's Frankenstein), so it might be reasonable to assume there's a degree of consistency.

Dry tooling is really taking off....

http://jeffmercier.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dry-tooling-nouveau-spot-en-haute...

In reply to UKC News:

Showing my ignorance of dry-tooling (just had the one day's playing about in the Llanberis quarries)...just wondering if all the placements are manufactured, like the majority in Llanberis, or are they natural placements? Either way they look pretty solid.

Anyway I'm keen to try more!

In reply to Greg Boswell:
Completed with aplomb. All the best for your forthcoming winter endeavours

In reply to UKC News: Superb effort, having had a couple of goes on this.. Greg you are a machine!

In reply to UKC News:

What's Greg done with his hair........!

Agree with Erik about the music, it's all a bit Scott Muir

Stuart

In reply to Exile:
'Series of one arm pull ups"

Not sure I spotted any one arm pull ups; the technique seems to be to match on one tool and do two arm pull ups.

Not really my cup of tea, but you've got to love climbing's diversity.

And I quite liked the music (which is clearly the most important thing about any climbing vid).

In reply to Epsilon:

I was.

In reply to unclesamsauntibess: Knob head

In reply to Sl@te Head:



My thoughts as well, especially as for a lot of the time he isn't that far off the ground by the looks of things?

Seems like a great venue for it though.

cheers
mark

In reply to Mark Westerman: I thought the bolts had been chopped there by hacked off locals?

In reply to UKC News: This video showed me a) Greg Boswell is very strong, b) His axe placements are very precise. But otherwise, the route really has no aesthetic appeal: If you bolted a ladder with missing rungs to the underside of that roof you'd essentially get the same effect.

BTW if decking was such a threat (it looks like it was) I'd probably wear a helmet.

In reply to dannyboy83:

Drilled pockets I would have thought. Maybe Greg or Paddy or whoever could explain how the route was created. No mention in the news report or the blog.

In reply to Erik B:

The bolts were replaced.

In reply to UKC News:

I'm fairly certain they're all drilled pockets. If that is the case, it would make sense as to why they're so far apart. If you drilled those pockets closer together, surely you would be climb without axes.

Oh, but i suppose that would be unethical...

In reply to El3ctroFuzz:

Now, if he had climbed it on drilled one-finger pockets, I would have been impressed - it looks like it would have been 9a+ or 9b sport. It would have been quite an achievement. Using icetools to me looks like having a "portable jug" you can place on holds you are too weak to use otherwise. And a series of "cut-loose to two-hands pull-ups" on bomber jugs is well... boring and not all that impressive is you ask me.

In reply to Michael Ryan - UKC and UKH:

That doesn't exactly look like choss!

In reply to UKC News:

Well weird.

The music on the vid is disgracefully awful.

In reply to shermit:
Weak is not what I was thinking when I watched that.
Shame that you don't seem to grasp how hard that is.
Bruce

In reply to Hay:

Are most of those placements as manufactured as they look? - there seems to be no need to place the picks carefully at all and every placement seemed to be bomber for a downward pull. I must admit to being pretty ignorant of dry tooling norms but the video left me thinking it looked like a manufactured pull-up competition with long reaches, although undoubtedly a fine feat of gymnastics.
I get a similar feeling of baffling pointlessness when I get on a sport route and find very obviously drilled pockets that seem to have no reason to be there. Each to their own I suppose but the artificiality of it all seems to be getting stretched to levels that leave me scratching my head in puzzlement as to whether it's climbing at all or a man-made gymnastics routine in the air.
Apologies if the route hasn't been manufactured for the purpose, in which case I take all the above back and I'm genuinely impressed!

In reply to UKC News: looks like a great way to train for some mind blowing routes this winter. looking good. shirts next time, confused boner.

In reply to john arran:

I was a bit surprised too, I guess I'd sort of assumed that at that level the hooks would be very tenuous and far apart, whereas most of them seemed easily able to accommodate the range of angles that cutting loose on them put them through.

In reply to john arran:

I guess its the ultimate act of 'controlled' climbing. Climbing where all factors are defined. Protection where you want it, holds where you want them, lower off at the top.

In reply to AJM:

There's the bit at the end with the natural looking thin edge that you can actually see - is that a big placement? I don't know enough about dry tooling or mixed to say...

I guess that compared to a video of someone on a cutting-edge trad route this does sort of feel like watching a video of someone training. On the other hand, it is bloody impressive and if the numbers are anything to go by then it's Greg being right at the top of the game, so fair play on that front.

In reply to Arran: Fully created by design from a blank canvas. Unlike unnecessary drilled pockets on sport routes, without 1 of the manufactured pockets on this route would render it near un-climbable (I'm not using the word impossible!)..... and that's with it being one of the exisitng 2 hardest routes of its style in the UK already! Few tooling routes at Newtyle or the Works are not heavily manufactured, it is the norm, although white goods sounds slightly different.

It has mentioned to me that certainly Newtyle grades match up with continental mixed grades (if not harder because of the powerful style), and Newtyle grades match up fairly well with Works grades (from my limited experience of the place). Separately, I thought Haffner Creek (Canada) grades were on the soft side compared to UK tooling grades...

Scott Muir hasn't done Frankenstein, it hasn't been repeated. Interestingly when he did Too Fast Too Furious at Newtyle (in spurs) at gave it D12, but now with spurs being considered a thing of the past and no one using them (changing the style and difficulty of the mid section of the route), it is considered D11+. Take of that what you will. Still world class level when first done.

Andy

In reply to andyinglis:

I know I am only fueling the trollmobile, but why? whyyyyyyy? Is it considered a newsworthy achievement to climb 8c indoors? It is certainly quite impressive to me but what is the point? It is in the end only an arbitrary sportive challenge... Climbing is a lot more than just that (relation to the outdoors, relation to history, ethics, esthetics) and it is probably why we get news on new rock routes, and not on designed indoor routes.

I don't question the ethics of dry-tooling themselves, they are what they are. I don't like them , fair enough I don't have to practice DT, I guess there is enough space for everyone. But are the ethics and mindset in DT really so different from what they are in "climbing" that a completely artificial route makes the news on UKC?

In reply to drolex: I think routes like this are quite different to indoor routes in that they'll remain unchanged for a lot longer.

If you do something hard indoors no ones going to be able to repeat it because it'll be stripped and reset in a months time. This has associated problems, like being really hard to know if indoor stuff is graded consistently and thus having no idea quite how hard an indoor route is most of the time.

At training facilities where problems aren't reset you do see problems gaining a bit of a reputation in a similar way to outdoor routes. The school room for example, when rich simpson repeated lots of the hard problems there (with a weight belt?) it was news to those who cared. Similarly daniel woods doing the bubble wrap project at CATS was interesting to people who care about that sort of thing.

In that dry tooling routes are similar to an indoor wall where the problems aren't reset i think ascents of dry tooling routes can be considered noteworthy.

In reply to Troll: Why is it any different to a fully manufactured sport route? One of my favour sport routes (Sun City, Cambus O May, 7a+) is fully manufactured and provides excellent climbing. No one is going to change the route anytime soon(!) and I haven't heard of anyone suggesting it is less than a 3 star route.

Andy

In reply to andyinglis: Paul Pritchard, John Readhead, Nick harms to mention just a few have created excellent sports routes on slate, long before dry tooling came in. So in my opinion just because a route can't be climbed in it's current state doesn't mean that Dry Toolers should have first shout at these venues, as someone mentioned the said route would maybe be a 9b.

In reply to Ian LI J: I would love to have seen Ondra on this before Greg got on it (I'm being ironic)! I just can't believe this 70 degree roof could have been rock climbed..... 70 dgerees overhanging and smooth sheet/roof of slate.... (I have stood under the route and was there during the filming, so its not video based opinion). Ah the sport vs tooling debate.... I thought it was just who got there first!

Andy

In reply to Sl@te Head:

"First shout" is an interesting way of putting it!

In reply to andyinglis: Thanks for the original nickname.

For some people a fully manufactured sport route is also a shame, so thanks for asking. Cesare Maestri, hero or bastard? This is certainly not a new debate and that was not my point.

My point was that if you want to show dry tooling under a good light, maybe it would be better to show achievements on natural venues? Drilling, chopping, hammering is not very popular for a certain part of the readership around here.

In reply to andyinglis:

I don't know those routes, but are they fully manufactured, or just one or two holds? Equally, does Powerdab have any natural sections or is it all manufactured?

Also why were the holds made so far apart for some sections and not others? Was it following natural weakness that were just improved?

Genuinely curius, not trying to be critical as it looks like fun

In reply to Ramblin dave:

I too was expecting something more tenuous/technical looking. Big reach to apparently bomber hook, pull, clip, repeat ... All very strenuous no doubt, but I can watch people doing bigger reaches than I can on a bachar ladder whenever I take a break at my local bouldering wall.

In reply to andyinglis:

I guess that's what's happening now but maybe that's taking a short term view of things, rather than thinking about future generations.

I bet that 70 degree roof could be climbed with correctly drilled / angled pockets and /or the use of bolt on holds as can be seen elsewhere in Europe.

I predict that future conflicts will exist (as we run out of rock to develop) between both parties.

In reply to The Pylon King:


I thought the music was quite appropriate.

I wonder what John Redhead makes of it all.

In reply to UKC News:

To the guy who's complainging about Greg doing easy stuff, here's Nick Bullock's blog of what him and Greg are doing at the moment:

http://nickbullock-climber.co.uk/2013/11/08/the-maul-on-wedge/

Oh and Greg? If that offer is open to other fat punters, tell me the date and I'll meet you up there. I'm open to being videoed to make the point that I bet it's a lot harder than it looks. Great vid and you make it look easy.

In reply to UKC News:

I applaud greg. Not only has he worked a hard route, but by instigating a DT bitch fest hes ushered in the winter climbing season.

Hurrah!!

In reply to mattrm:
Greg's blog:
http://gregboswell.co.uk/index.php/2013/11/08/the-maul/

In reply to IanMcC:
Next on the hit list I believe:
vimeo.com/33005769
*boak*

In reply to Hay:

0.24

argh.

i think i'll have nightmares about that...

In reply to UKC News:
It is awesome footage. Soooo sketchy.

In reply to Hay: Awesome. I love watching climbers when both the things they're relying on slip

In reply to Erik B: I'm with you on the music

It looks boring, It's a bit like watching someone in the gym practising pull ups... on jugs. He is strong and there is skill in it but far less than any other type of climbing I can think of.

A lot of people seem to be asking if it is manufactured and nobody seems to have an answer. I guess it is. I think its badly 'set'. There's no variety.

To me this route is about as important as the latest turd they're throwing up at my local gym. Or a random pebble in the middle of the Gobi that some beetle calls home.

As long as they stay away from traditional climbing routes (which I'm sure they will) its hard to suggest they are doing anything wrong ethically so I don't really care.

In reply to icklejason:


Andy Inglis answered this fairly definitively above.


You cared enough to post, though.

In reply to UKC News: so boring! get thrang quarry re-bolted and stop boring me with shitty dry tooling!

In reply to UKC News:

I feel so much pity for any person who feels the need to discredit another's achievement in this way. It must be so hard to live with the discontentment of their own life, and to deal with the envy when others do well.

Greg and James, I thoroughly enjoyed the video, as did 99.9% of the folk who watched it. i suppose when you excel at something, the assholes come crawling out the woodwork and attempt to bring you down to their level. Pitiful!

In reply to mhairi thorburn:

I completely agree, It's a cool vid and a wicked looking route, I've personally never done any style of climbing involving axes and this, to me, looks completely impossible!

But it's a good watch and an awesome display of physical fitness. Why do so many grumpy people always have to belittle other peoples work.

In reply to UKC News:

That was pretty impressive!

How does it work though? If I wanted to remove pieces of rock that's exactly the technique I'd use, insert a metal lever and pull very hard...

In reply to mhairi thorburn:
Well said Mhairi!
And well done Greg, looking forward to seeing what you do with all that power this winter.

In reply to unclesamauntiebess:



I have to say to you, what the hell are you on about?! Go on then, go and climb it and get a video of you doing it as easy as Greg makes it look and I'll bow down to your ludicrous post. Why do you have to discredit someone for an amazing achievement just because it seems to me that it doesn't 'appeal' to your style of climbing.

Before you go slating someone who's probably 10x stronger than you are, put up a few routes of this grade yourself first and then have the bollocks to have a dig at Greg.

Greg - an amazing route and top effort! I'm in training at the moment and I'm finding it tough to get anywhere near a D7 so I can't imagine how hard a D13 is! Bravo.