UKC

Emma Twyford has flashed and consequently made the third ascent of James McHaffie's recent new route Gravity Wave E8 6c at Trearddur Bay - the day after returning from a productive trad trip to South Africa.

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In reply to UKC News:

Amazing - nice one Emma! She's been consistently pushing those standards for a few years... and in not just one style.

One of the things that I personally think is really important with these bits of cutting edge trad climbing is that the information about style of flash is reported really mega transparently. In my experience the style of flashes can be vastly different and if Emma has put herself on the line then you'd want herself to be credited properly with that further down the line when people will inevitably will do it with tick marks, video beta from >1 people, gear pre-placed or somewhat pre-placed, ropes pre-clipped when their mate was doing it ground up etc etc. It's particularly important in the case of Emma as it's right at the limit, in an adventurous setting, with no history of others flashing before her etc.. etc...

In reply to UKC News:

Great stuff. I'm a bit confused with the four ropes in the pic, what's going on there?

In reply to aln:

Probably to pull her in from the overhang

In reply to jsmcfarland:

Yeah I thought something like that but just wondered if someone could be more specific. Just curious.

In reply to aln:
Think she is probably just on two ropes and then when lowering back down, presumably cleaning gear has left a QuickDraw in the one rope that is going back to the first piece of gear making it look like there is 4 ropes.

I agree with Tom regarding the flash thing and the need to clarify the detail. It's good here as it seems to say exactly how Emma did it (which is a great effort by the way) but I have seen flash ascents by other people in the past recorded in magazines with headlines of 'flash ascent' when the word flash has been taken to the limit of its boundaries and in the particular scenarios I can think of a 5 minute head point or abseil inspection by the climber probably would have been more difficult and more of a natural thing to do, yet the climber has almost gone out of their way to achieve what gets perceived as a better style because of the word or way it is reported, when in actual fact it is not necessarily any better than other pre inspected styles.
Ed