UKC

Well done Pete

Some forearms on this lad!!! (see first pic)

Think it's two arms that look like one at a casual glance.
Then again, maybe you need such Popeye type appendages to climb 9a.
Top effort though no matter what size his arms actually are! 

Thank god for that I was blown away :') 

Good effort, now looking at Mutation?

Has this had a second ascent?

No. Alex Megos tried it and thought it was 9a+.

Great to witness a few sessions of the process from Pete's initial forays to the last session pre-send hitting the final hold of the crux in horrible conditions. A superb effort! 

Mutation hasn't yet had a second ascent. 

It's great that Pete has done it. He was close a few weeks back and you could tell it was a matter of time before he did it. Fantastic effort.

Andy F

Video here. Looks so steady! 

vimeo.com/352458505 

Ace!

Awesome!  

Thanks!  Makes it look easy (other than the match underclings which is clearly horrific)...

Bit run out at the end isn't it?

Is there a real world benefit to belaying with this much slack in the system? I see it all the time, but don't understand it. I manage to avoid short roping people, and give a soft catch whilst having a lot less rope than that out all the time. It's fairly well the whole route, but at the 1:40 mark stands out the most. Am i missing something?

Amazing climbing though!

He'd just clipped there and so I think it looks like more than it actually is. That said I'd say from personal experience on a hard redpoint that I'd much rather fall an extra metre or two than be short roped when I'm on the crux or a tenuous move. 

In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong with the belaying in the video. In my experience having a bit extra out helps to avoid the grigri jamming if the climber pulls up slack suddenly to clip. I don't know how much projecting/sieging/time wasting on sport routes you do, but I would be absolutely filthy if I was anywhere close to being short roped when high on a route I'd been trying for ages. As long as its safe and high enough from the ground, theres no problem.

Agreed with others above, I think it's a decent amount of slack. Also, it looks worse than it is, as the belayer is much closer to the camera than the bolt. So whilst it looks like he's stood below the  bolt with a lot of slack out. He's actually stood quite far from the bolt with a very reasonable amount of slack. 

Great bit of climbing! We were on one of the routes to the left, and hadn't realised what he'd ticked. Nice not to have over the top victory cries! 

To be fair considering the route I'd have let him off for a bit of victory yodelling! 

"However, it later became apparent that the route was far harder than originally thought and it is now considered to be the world's first 9a."

Easy now!!!

Good ol UKC. An impressive ascent from a UK climber and the main point of conversation is how much slack is out.

Why not? A much better topic than "is it really 9a"!

Approximately how many ascents has it had now...?

8 I believe? The others were:

Moon, Smith, Gaskins, Dunning, McClure, Megos, Bosi

Rich Simpson's claimed ascent has been debunked I take it?