UKC

The route, which James began preparing for back in 2021, shares the same start as his 2017 route Le Voyage (8b+) (E10), before moving left across an imposing blank face via a series of shallow pockets, before finishing up a technical are?te.

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Futuristic stuff from James. You've got to wonder if this route is the culmination of the combination of his modern sport fitness and early grit apprenticeship.

James Pearson’s 37!!!?? Great looking route. 

Nice. If its harder than Lexicon, will he dare give it E12?!

God please

Shall we crowdfund a ticket for MacLeod to fly out and downgrade it? 😉

Here’s an idea: James grades it 9c+ then leaves France to hide out in the Peak District, thus finally closing the loop. Roll credits. Turns out we were living in a simulation all along. 

And in other news the E12 that was apparently a walk in the park rather than the walk of life is still important enough to have a news item about 2 headpoint ascents 15 years later! Wonder what grade it would get if a well established current hard man did it now as a first ascent, E10, E11?

Well done James, keep the hard trad flag a-flying! 

E9 is still hard enough to be news.

Just offer unlimited patties 🤣

E9 probably. Worth remembering ascents of India Face, FAd in 86, still make the news.

James does get some stick, but my god is he impressive. We played on 'The Groove' at Cratcliffe last year. Unsurprising it's never had a repeat. Utterly nails. 

Yes, the tone of much of this thread is predictably mean, tired and unfunny.

Clearly a very, very impressive ascent.

You only have to s**g one sheep and you are forever known as the sheep s**gger.  

Say what? Didn’t at least one of the visiting Americans a few years ago do at least the hard bit of it?

jcm

Always struck me as odd that they never finished the route if it really was that easy ?  Just climbing bits of a route of that length, even if the crux is in that bit, is definitely not repeating the route.

What it all boils down to is that 

1) when he was young and brash, James went too far and thanks to the spirit of youthful self-assurance, pissed some people off in the process. 

2) people on the internet love to hate

The crucial question now is

3) can most of us be decent human beings and say "he made some mistakes when he was young (haven't we all?), but it was ages ago, and he's a flipping good climber, and for goodness sake let's all just concentrate on his wonderful hard climbing over the last two decades, which 99.9999% of us can't hold a candle to"

I vote that we can.

They did the lower crux (which is meant to be the hard bit) but were not able to do the top bit (possibly because it was morpho?). The line which James climbed has not been repeated in its entirety.  

Edit: and worth noting that KJ was one of the best boulderers in the world at the time.

Funny how others subsequently could do the hard bit but not the top as well.

I really think Jon Ronson should have interviewed James when writing his book 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed?' on cancel culture. James' pile-on was around 2008 if I remember correctly, which pre-dates most of the examples in the book. A pioneer both of trad climbing and of the modern age!

Allthough I have absolutely no wish to be mean about James and think that his ascents speak for themselves in terms of him being a total trad hero, but if we are talking about historical context it's worth mentioning that a lot of the pile on was due to him very publicly slagging off other climbers at the time. 

There is a film about him somewhere and he talks about why he gave the big grades he did at the time. He had good logic but I suppose a lack of experience in doing FAs so not realising they feel harder than repeats.

In the end though who cares if he over graded some routes. Personally it doesn't detract from anything he's doing now. 

Redemption. Trailer here:  youtube.com/watch?v=14Y-Amigci0&

Quite, I'm pretty glad no one made a film of all the stupid stuff I did when I was in my late teens/early 20s. James has no case to answer for now. Neither was he a saint back in the day. I'm sort of surprised it's even come up as it's not really relevant.

True, but in this case it reflects more badly on the name-callers than the sheep shagger.

The pile-on on here that ensued when Dave Mac downgraded Walk of Life was disgraceful, and I'd wager 99% of those putting the boot in couldn't get off the ground on an E1 never mind an E9.

What gets forgotten in these pile-ons is that those few climbers operating at a level unimaginable to the rest of us are still human, I doubt any of us would relish being on the receiving end of a trial-by-ukc lynching. I was one of a disappointingly small number of posters who defended JP during this and he was good enough to PM me a note of thanks (we don't know each other) which shows the slagging was deeply felt.  Stevie Haston, (whom I very vaguely know) was another who was candid about how hurtful and disappointing the ill-thought out slanging he got on here was. Not everyone is Nick Bullock who gave back what he got and then some on here, and even then I'll bet he had a bitter aftertaste.

Nothing wrong with criticism and argument, as has been seen on the recent Scottish winter threads, but FFS does "E12 awaits downgrade" have to be called every time JP does a route that probably a small handful of people have the skills and, particularly, the cojones to repeat?

Whether it's funny or not is probably personal interpretation, but I'm not sure it was mean-spirited, more just gentle ribbing.

What is doubly sad (to me) about that pile on is that it totally overlooked the step forward in style at the crag - basically he totally de-pegged that bit of the wall before doing the route.  To me that makes it a far purer ascent than Dave Birketts route with new peg at the same crag.  But no - personalities and E grades were more important. 

Us included. The top is at least as hard as the bottom. KJ traversed out below it.

That's not really the point. A prerequisite for criticism of any activity is not that you can duplicate it or that you operate at the same level of difficulty, only that the criticism is founded on an understanding of the activity.

Pearson received plenty of criticism that in retrospect probably amounted to what we would now call a pile on. But he also received a lot that was well founded, and that the grading he'd given his routes was built, in his own words, on "a house of cards".

I don't have to have written a best selling novel to know that The da Vinci Code is wank.

Well done, looks mega!

Let’s crowdfund Franco! Sandstone mono run out off vert technical 9a ish. Got Francos name  all over it. 

he’d probably do it if we paid him in satsumas or something equally random.

Then we'd know for certain what H grade it would get! 😉

£50 and a turbot and I'm there! More to the point, when's he going to come try some NE sandstone?

I don't think anyone seriously criticises James anymore (or at least no one sensible would). I don't know the guy at all, but I've been on some of his routes and they're very good. The bottom bit of the groove is just fantastic and one of the only proper hard things I've ever seen on an established trad route. It's pretty much totally safe as well, so there's no excuses for more people not trying it.  

This thing looks totally brilliant. I'm sure it won't be long till people are on it. 

I’ll catch you a turbot. Someone else is going to have to sub the 50 though 

John Dunne got much the same kicking one imagines, wheras Dawes just kept his head down…

I don’t think the young Johnny kept his head down, anything but...

The internet wasn't really a thing when they were stirring things up. 

Ok point taken but the issue was Dunne got far more sideyed and negative press even though his standard was way up there. 

Looking back, it's curious the way some of the grades have worked out. Divided Years and Breathless were both given E10 but now E8, while New Statesman if anything has become more respected with time. All top quality of course.

Dunne always gave as good as he got mind!

Oh, I don't recall seen this here...

But what has he done on grit?