Finally, after thirty years of waiting, numerous attempts from the best of British trad climbing, and a few foreign onsights, Steve McClure has made the first British onsight ascent of Strawberries, E7 6b.
Strawberries was first climbed by Ron Fawcett in 1980, and waited for seven years before it had its' first onsight ascent from Stefan Glowacz.
In this article, we bring you a bit of the history behind Strawberries and an interview with Steve on his ascent...
" Conditions were way worse despite it looking the same 'weather' on paper, but humidity was through the roof."
Sounds bloody hard. When you think UK climbers are usually content to find a route dry, not just worry about atmospheric humidity. Further consider it as 7c - how many people onsight 7c while hanging around to sort out awkward pro ?
"Ron spent three days on it, climbing in yo-yo style, and eventually pre-placed his equipment from abseil and pre-clipped in his ropes before the actual ascent"
sorry to be a bit silly, but what does this last bit about pre-clipping his ropes actually mean? it sounds like an esoteric form of top-roping!
So at the risk of opening the other can of worms...
AIUI, British adjectival grades are given for a (possibly hypothetical) onsight ascent.
So when people say Strawberries is E7 and "difficult to onsight", do they mean it's E7 because it's difficult to onsight, or that it's harder to onsight than other E7s ie it's harder than E7?
They mean it's E7. If it was harder than E7 to onsight it wouldn't be E7.
John Dunne19 Jun 2014
In reply to Ramblin dave: I did it in late 1985 and it was harder than the E6s around at the time and more physical.
I still think of it as 7c+ as i think it would of had more onsights if it was only 7c.
Interesting that he doesn't even mention (perhaps doesn't even know about) the bit 'everyone else' seems to mention where the obvious hold in the LH crack turns out to be useless and the better hold is not at all obvious. I thought that was supposed to be why it was so hard to make a true onsight of. Or did I make all that up?
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