UKC

The route, his third at 9a+ in 2024 alone, was first climbed by Alex Megos in 2016, but is best known for its second ascent, when Adam Ondra became the first person ever to flash a route at 9a+.

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Good interview and insights about the process. Total commitment, great achievement, well done.

That photo of the lock off to the mono is awesome, but why has the bolt been photoshopped out?

Good spot!

That's really weird

We need answers.

E

If only we'd found how to remove bolts so invisibly during the bolt wars of the 80s ! 

huh what an odd choice, maybe it had the wrong company of quick draw on it! 😂

Just an artistic choice I would say. At the moment the photo with the mono lock has a nice symmetry to it, the eye of the viewer lands on the climber and is led up the arm with clean grey rock either side to the mono which is a bold contrast and also provides a further representation of the intensity of the climbing. The bolt removes this symmetry and doesn't really add anything. Maybe not the choice everyone would make but I have a good friend who is a climbing photographer and he sometimes makes choices like this with the goal of creating better art. 

I can understand the reasoning, but altering images that "record" an ascent*, my "old man radar" starts blinking and the "thin end of the wedge" alarm is poised to sound.

A slighter thicker portion of the wedge is maybe the recent Patagonia film, "Jirishanca" in which a team on the summit at the same time as the protagonists of the film were removed to create a cleaner narrative, which was ironically about dark horse/under the radar Josh Warton who shunned publicity.

But....... this is all a distraction form the fact Buster Martin appears to be right up there as one of the UKs best sport climbers. 11 routes in the 9s, only bettered by Will Bosi and I assume Steve McClure? Pretty incredible stuff and doesn't seem to get the limelight others do? Is this as he isn't UK based?

*I am aware of the hypocrisy that a plethora of staged photos used to publicise FAs over the years I hold in high esteem, especially the "Hard Grit" era that shaped my climbing ethics! 

I’m more intrigued by him not having all the draws in.

Is that section with the mono so trivial compared to the rest of the route that it didn’t matter? (It doesn’t look easy!)

(Heavy edit, as originally I misread it that he’d flashed it, but the question is even more pertinent given that it wasn’t a flash!)

Maybe just getting a bit of footage of that small section while he was putting the draws in for the day? 

Ah, good point. You’re probably right. I initially assumed the clip was from the successful go (as originally I mistakenly thought he’d flashed it! Which now I think of it would be pretty outrageous!) 

Thanks everyone for the kind words.

The bolt was probably edited out because if not it would have been right in front of my face. So just to make a cleaner photo. Not that relevant but people don’t clip that draw anyway. I don't get any free draws so it wasn't a sponsor clash nor was it to mislead anyone in anyway.

I was pretty impressed with William’s photos. The photo was of a redpoint attempt, not the final ascent and I was probably only on the rock for 80 seconds and in the view of the photographer for 30.

This wasn't that dangerous to skip but some of the clips were probably 7A moves in themselves and being short you couldn't skip them all. You’d be surprised at some of the draw skipping that goes on in this power endurance routes. Climbing on 9th grade territory with good chances of hitting the floor. I've seen Spanish climber Jorge bringing pads to the crag and I regularly hit the ground whilst trying my first 9a+. 

Edit: just noticed diffent bolts edited out in different frames. I did clip the draw from the mono but not the one below.

This is the biggest scandal here!