UKC

IIRC is was Ian Vickers route Broughton Power (?) and a Dave Birkett one.
With all these E9s and the like being done, what is the hardest FA onsight now?

Broughton Power wasn't an On Sight. 

Was not, thought it was. Just shows how wrong I can be. What is the hardest FA onsight.

Dave Cuthbertson did a E6 6c(?) FA solo on one of the west country sea cliffs.

Bloody Nora that sounds bold. Onsight soloing a hard sea cliff of unknown difficulty / choss levels. That takes some courage that does! 

Courage is one word you could use... 

Possibly some of John Arran's FAs ?

I think E8 has been on sighted but not as an FA.

I can't believe I literally have no idea this! I guess a lot of first ascent stuff isn't going to be proper onsight if a lot of cleaning on top-rope was done first.

What about the routes on the shelterstone slabs?

Still not sure if anyone has achieved this above E7 (which in itself is obviously bloody amazing!). Some very hard things have been done after minimal inspection (no trying of moves), such as Quetzalcoatl at E9 6b (Neil Dickson), and the third pitch of Icon of Lust (Jules Lines), a pitch which in itself is E8.

Didn't Dawes do something on-sight (with Pritchard) on Gogarth? E7? Promptly fell down  which might discount it  

If its the same route I'm thinking of, he fell off and ripped some gear, so not OS

I wondered about Pritchard. His first book is excellent but it prefers to focus on the story (for the better) rather than bog itself down with the finer technicalities on style. Thus I'm not really sure what was genuine onsight. Eg many of his sea cliff routes had an abseil inspection first. He certainly seemed to do a lot of hard ground ups at least.

X/10

http://gregboswell.co.uk/index.php/2015/01/20/the-greatest-show-on-earth/

X/10

http://gregboswell.co.uk/index.php/2015/01/20/the-greatest-show-on-earth/

Hardback Thesaurus?
How about 'Professor Whitaker'?  Another Dawes route, not entirely sure if it was On Sight though.
If so, that's E7.  I'm taking an educated guess that the likes of McHaffie and possibly Redhead have also On Sighted E7.
Any E8 contenders? 

You'd think Caff, though I'm struggling to recall any of his new lines done in this style. Certainly new E7 onsights are well established, with Jules Lines and John Arran being just two examples.

Velvet Silence (E6 6c), E6

Or White Water (E6 6c)

Depending on your criteria, should Breakaway at HXS be considered?

"Come to mother"....

It's an interesting question. Doing FA.s ground up seems to have gone out of vogue some time ago. Pat Littlejohn did all (or most) of his FA's ground up though I'm not sure the harder ones were onsighted.

One of the problems with harder trad routes is that often the protection is very limited and can be very difficult to spot from below. This can result in ground up ascents being way, way harder than abbed or practised ascents. Added to that in many areas the routes will need cleaning first and sometimes the line is not obvious from below so that needs to be checked out first too.

I read somewhere a while back that it was Bloody Slab but can't remember where sorry. This info is also seemingly out of date given the other replies but thought I'd post for completeness.

I'd love for the answer to be Pat Littlejohn.  He must surely win  Most Onsighted New route E-point-stars, but perhaps the prolific Pembroke crew have warn him down?

I thought the hardest onsight FA used to be thought to be this thing by Ian Vickers:  Indian Rope Trick (E8 6c)  The big cliff in the middle is a stupendous crag that I'm proud to have failed to climb.

Me too. But, leaving numbers aside, it seems to me that Pat Littlejohn's contribution to British climbing is unparalleled.

To go pretty much ground-up on FAs, on mostly sea-cliffs, to a high standard for the time, year in, year out, with grass, mud, loose rock, not even knowing if stuff is a goer, well... that's something else.

That he's never chased fame (or even recognition) underlines something remarkable.

Mick

I've just lost count of the number of briliant cliffs I've been to the bottom of, and looked at the  most ridiculous part and gone, holy smoke, Pat did that.  And I really liked Pat's campaign to clean up Lundy of its bolts - surely this involved an E7?

Anyway, John Read made a noble effort to catalogue onsights here back in the day:  http://www.oocities.org/readza1/climbing/onsights/onsights.html

More about Broughton Power and Indian rope Trick here.  http://www.climbers-club.co.uk/downloads/Range-West-Web-1-10.pdf  I don't actually know Indian Rope Trick was onsight, I just can't for the life of me imagine anyone shunting a line at Mount Sion Central, let alone top roping.  And it was widely accepted at the time that the Range West ethic was onsight.  That was one of the points of bothering to go there.

Strength, fitness, experience, ability, judgement and knowledge are a few others that you could use. 

Depends how high it is and much water's below you.  Check out what Mike Robertson, Julian Lines et al have been up to.  Some of the stuff they nonchalantly gave S3 is still legitimately scary as, even as a trad route.

Both the article and the guidebook seem to suggest that 'Broughton Power' was climbed On Sight. 
Not sure about 'Indian Rope Trick' in Range West, but 'Broughton Power' definitely wasn't climbed in such a fashion. 

Terra Cotta (E6 6b)

This was big news at the time. 

Yeah the links might be wrong.  Guidebook's aren't infallible like the Grit List.

Why wasn't Broughton Power onsight?

Nik Jennings did the FA of Responsible Parenting on sight (E7).  http://gritlist.wikifoundry.com/page/E7+Lancashire

It was ground up.

So when are we going to get the Biography of Pat?

Wow!  Good question. I'd love to read it.

Mick

I was lucky to see the eventual ascent of 'Broughton Power', but as it a long time ago, I can't remember the exact details of how it was achieved. 
What I do remember, was turning up at the crag when Vickers was working the route - so definitely not On Sight.  I believe he had climbed a route just to the right prior to trying 'BP' and there's a possibility that he had a quick look at the prospective line on abseil/being lowered off, etc. from that route.  
That's as much as I remember.  I do know that Vickers initially graded it E9 and that he thought the name was a little bit rubbish... 

According to this interview Adam Ondra did onsight FA of an 8a+ trad route in Flatanger some years ago.
I guess with so many impressive things that must have slipped under the radar!

E9 onsight first ascent?

In Flatanger, I opened one 8a+ route onsighting it on trad gear, but the first 5 metres were in common with another route which was already bolted so I'm not really sure it counts! I just started climbing those first few metres (which I already knew) on bolts and then just simply continued all the way to the spot where I stopped to place the anchor I had in mind. That was quite satisfying.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2014/10/adam_ondra_on_and_about_czech_sands...

How much longer past the bolted line did you climb on gear?
In total, the route was probably 40 metres. I reckon the line was really easy to protect. There were big run-outs, but even I could see that the placements were bulletproof.

 Sounds like solid E8 at least so good candidate to answer the original question - not likely to get many repeats to confirm the grade though, don't think Flatanger is a destination for trad climbing.

Eroica and Darkingbad we’re both abseil inspected and had preplaced aid pegs.