UKC

The ascent is the hardest trad flash of all time, and took place with no prior inspection of the holds.

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He needs just needs to flash the hardest route in the lakes now...

GOAT

So impressive! Very cool of Neil to provide Adam with all the gear beta and chalk the line etc

Wow, amazing.

Incredible!

It is not just that Ondra excels in pretty much every area of climbing at a physical level, but also that he embraces the most bonkers parts of its history, traditions & ethics.

Amazing! But he still turned down the offer of a tooling session, too scared of the dark side ??

Abseiled down it but I promise I didn’t look at the holds… We’ve all done those types of ‘flashes’. He’d fit in well with the UKC logbook clientele. 

Abseiled down facing the lake! Love it!

I shook Adam's hand last Tuesday night, and here it was - me thinking that the power transfer had gone my way, and that's why along with a mini power scream (I am British after all) I managed to cling on and not embarrassingly fall off a ridiculously hard for 5a, 5a route at Harpur Hill yesterday. 😆 But could it have been actually some of my multi decade trad experience was flowing the other way, ready for the GOAT to go and goat on Pavey Ark? ;⁠-⁠)

Fantastic effort. Chapeau! Adam comes over as such a normal and nice bloke in person too. What a star. 

That's sounds a bit rude....

He's said before hei doesn't much like aid climbing,  manufactured routes or ice so you've a few hurdles to clear

I can't imagine "cave juices" are high up on his list, either!

Get the man on Hard Cheese!

But rebranded as rock champagne,  that might work 

So you've never abbed in for a route, pointedly looking away from the line, and taken the onsight?

Excellent stuff. Ondra a class act as always.

That's awesome! 

Rhapsody next maybe? 

this guy was the goat before this but now hes the goat 2.0

If you're going to make sarky comments about other people's logbooks, at least make your logbook public.

An incredible achievement. However although it may be one of the hardest trad routes in the world its not the hardest trad route in The Lakes or even the hardest trad route on Pavey !!!

What is the hardest trad route at Pavey?

I can only think he means Jacks Rake

Just been WhatsApp'd the video and he makes it look waaay too easy!

Maybe Craig Mathesons hard cheese, which I think is just over the back of pavey? 

Fantastic effort. Love the camaraderie of the Lakes team helping him out. What is the black box by his right foot in the photo showing the gear nest - I assume a remote camera?

is adam wearing a petzl scirroco with a mammut logo on it?

looks like a kneepad he’s taken off maybe?

Maybe but seems a strange route to have one on? It looks like it is taped on (but could be velcro straps). I also wondered if it could be padding to protect from hitting the small ledge? 

If I abbed down Lexicon, while having  a look at the holds, then climbed it in a oner, I'd take the flash and be really fekn chuffed with myself.

So Pearson was right. What he said makes sense of course.

“At the time, Pearson also said 'I think someone who's really strong could flash it without any sort of pre-inspection. It's still totally possible. If you've got a 9a flash level and you're trying to flash 8b+, you've got tons of margin for taking the holds wrong'.”

Not to diminish Adam's achievement, but this is a bit like someone being able to flash 7a sport and then flashing 6b+ trad (E3). Admittedly I’m guessing here that the relative difficulty of 9a vs 8b+ is about the same as 7a vs 6b+ but the underlying principle is the same in any case - it’s just not that hard. The margin is significant, particularly in the context of a flash where you don’t need as much margin as on an onsight.

It’s a shame there isn’t more gear, otherwise it would be a reasonable onsight or ground up proposition.

I think flashing 7a is probably easier than flashing E3, but that's a whole other debate.

On Dave MacLeod’s video he leaves a knee pad at the same point. I guess there must be a knee bar lower down and you can take the pad off where the gear is.

It’s not a Scirocco, probably an unreleased new Mammut one.

A well protected 6b+ would be E3 as you say but one with a potential 70' ledge fall off the crux would be at least E5. If 9a vs 8b+ is indeed similar to 7a vs 6b+ it's like someone who can occasionally onsight 7a (thousands in the UK) attempting a very runout and potentially dangerous E5 with good beta but without practicing the moves (uncommon I'd suggest).

An extremely impressive ascent.

Thanks- it's obvious in Dave Macs video. I had convinced myself it was more box shaped.

That's a really good analogy from the punter's perspective. The fact that Ondra took so much care in his preparation leading up to it, and his comments afterwards, shows he was treating it as a big deal.

I agree, the better analogy would be a '7a-flash' sport climber flashing a run-out and sketchy E5 with relatively easy moves. Which, as you suggest, would already be a respectable achievement.

Either way, massive kudos to Adam not only for his obvious GOAT status, but also for having the motivation and interest to choose to come and climb scary mountain trad routes in the UK. 

Ondra has been putting some boxes with Leica Cameras in them on routes as part of some collaboration/marketing thing. There was one left on an E1 in the peak last week.

When you mentioned a black box I wondered if he'd done a massive flex and carried one up and put it on an E11 for someone to find!

As someone who thereabouts fits that profile I would agree. I actually nearly attempted onsighting E5 last year but managed to snap my arm in half first whilst practicing sketchy stuff in preperation. Make of that what you will! 

So whilst this perhaps might not be as mind blowing as ,say,  Hamish Mcarthurs recent bouldering in a purely athletic sense (which trad rarely wins any points for) for trad commitment and in a UK historical context of these things it's pretty next level.

Physically and technically it wouldn’t be that hard. Mentally it would be taxing, which is why there aren’t many people doing that. Plus the fact that most sport climbers don’t have trad skills. Clearly Ondra has the rare combination of physical and technical skill, head game and trad skills (or at least sufficient trad skills for that route).

Depends on the E5. A well protected E5 is going to be around 7a or harder, so someone who flashes 7a but also onsights well protected E5 is going to be impressive from a physical and technical point of view. Chances are, they could climb harder sport if they wanted to. This is quite different to Ondra on Lexicon, as he’s nowhere near his physical and technical level.

Well, yes. But that is why the comparison was with a poorly protected E5. I think even Ondra would struggle to flash a well-protected E11.

I wonder if James talked him into giving it a flash go, when they spent some time in france?

Beautiful it happened.

This seems to have had a similar impact to Antoine le Menestrel’s solo of Revelations (8b) back in 1985; maybe not of the same historical importance, and it won’t have the revolutionary effect that that solo did on the British view of climbing ethics, but certainly just as impressive.

Antoine’s diary of his 1985 visit (“raining again!”):

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/antoine_le_menestrels_diary_so...

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2016/08/the_path_514ar_trad_flash_by_alex_m...

I feel like this always gets overlooked. Megos flashed The Path back in 2016 which sounds like a similarly impressive achievement.  

Video of the ascent:
youtube.com/watch?v=SAUyrDLG5xM&

Absolutely cracking video that

Thanks for posting the link. Great video. 

Great little film, thanks for the link