UKC

Robbie Phillips and Neil McGeachy climbed a new E8 6b on the Arbroath sea cliffs earlier this year, named Deil or No Deil. Following their ascent, there was talk of bolting the line - in-keeping with the cliffs' history. We caught up with Robbie and Neil to find out more about the route.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item.php?id=69625

In reply to UKC News:

No reason why you can't have a good trad thing within a pre-dominantly sport area. The main consideration is surely no.3 - whether it makes a better trad or sport route.

In reply to Michael Gordon:
Aye, looks great fun but knowing the nature of Arbroath sandstone I'm all for the bolts.

In reply to Neil Morrison:

Good style not bolting it. Seems you could have made it a bit safer? Cam out by the right arete,3 or 4?
Surely the point of such a route is the bottle aspect.With bolts it would just be a yet another blah tick.
You at least will remember the experience of going for it in trad style.
Bolt placers might want to use Blah Tick as a new route name...

Mitch

In reply to paul mitchell:


Where? It's quite a long way away to that arête. You'd have to climb up another line, place the gear then downclimb, then climb up the left hahaha and it would a horrendous swing I imagine. Maybe I misunderstood?

On that note, Neil has scoped out the right hand arete! Planning on leading possibly, harder than left hand maybe? Psyched!

In reply to paul mitchell:

Cam on the right arête? I'm with Robbie, that would be about as useful as a chocolate fireguard unless I'm missing something. A real shame the rock is so sandy and sometimes friable at Arbroath, particularly if at all damp ( when the pebbles can pop easily). Having said that there are a number of great wee routes there which the bolts make safe and relatively popular. From my perspective, as someone who has climbed there a lot, it is an ideal venue for sport routes and a marginal or downright poor one for trad, but what would I know

In reply to Neil Morrison:

Yeah I agree with all of that. Arbroath definately has some good rock. However much of the cliff is too poor quality for climbing and the bits which are good tend to have too many pebbles / cobbles. The unpredictable nature of climbing on these and general lack of clean cracks doesnt make this a good trad venue!

In reply to paul mitchell:

Hi Paul, im guessing your referring to the big horizontal that leads out to r/h arête near top. Sadly this break doesn't take gear. The other line i'm trying goes straight through middle of it and its just a very shallow wide break that's full of mud/rock. Spent good half hour trying to seek out something. Regards bolting the thing, was emailed a few weeks ago by a local guy that was keen to bolt it and was asking if it was ok to do so. So looks to me like bolting would be more popular option. Just want to finish r/h line before hand

In reply to UKC News:

Kudos for the T-shirt.

In reply to mgeek:

All the best with the trad lead Neil, ca canny

In reply to Col Allott:

CheersCol, best modern day punk band. Guess we should have called the route 'Time-bomb'