UKC

Nice article, some team!

Both ridiculously prolific, both great writers IMO... Nice article!

these two are such an inspiration, all that's amazing about climbing

This is brilliant! I think i ended up in exactly the same place and the memories of that run out came flooding back

"What's the most scared you've been when climbing together?

On The Long Reach on the Etive Slabs many years ago we got off route. I mantled a body length overlap and padded upwards some way before I realised I could no longer move up. Nor could I move back down. I completely froze, stranded in a sea of granite. A fall was unthinkable. It was 20 metres to my last piece of gear and that was below the overlap. I could hear Andy laughing with someone down below, oblivious. A guy drew level with me a few metres away. My eyes must have been pleading with him because all he said was "I'm sorry!" The longer I stood there, the more my legs shook and the more my shoe rubber curled from the crystals – you know the feeling! A finger edge and a cam placement taunted me just out of reach. Eventually, I managed to will myself to make the move. It was meant to be my first E2 – turns out we'd wandered onto a pitch of Angel which was probably about E4 in its own right!"

(E5 5c for sure!)

Really great article in an exceptional series. I love reading these.

Never thought of Ferdia as a Galapagos penguin....

Well done Tom (and Ferdia and Andy of course). Best of the series!

Great interview with two of my favourite people. Agreed... best of the series

Excellent article.

Inspiring.

Full of the joys of living.

Enjoyed that! 

And I think the people in the world I am most envious of are those who have found the holy grail of perfect life partner and perfect climbing partner in the same person.

Second that! indeed the holy grail

I really enjoyed that article. The best bit was scrolling down to a picture of my next door neighbours. 

I'm not so wide-eyed about this holy grail you mention - perhaps because I am not a total climbing obsessive - but nevertheless I am all for this climbing partnership. I have noticed 'Andy Moles' and 'Ferdia' in the UKC logbooks (mainly because they seem to have climbed almost everything that I have climbed or want to climb) and I already believed them to be proper* climbers - this article seems to confirm it.

*I think "proper" here means "the sort of climber I'd want to be if only there were world enough and time" - and if I were good enough.

*waves from across the recycling bins* bet you were beginning to wonder what we did with ourselves all day!

I'm a bit wary of the word perfect. It implies things just happen to you with no effort required to make it good.

If there had been a question about the pettiest moments, this series would have looked a bit different...! And I reckon Ben-Pete-Uisdean could give us a run for our money there for a start hehe

I'm not sure about that; the perfect climb requires a lot of effort and is all the more satisfying for it.

Yes the analogy of the 'perfect challenge' works here

Maybe it should be called 'nearly perfect partners'. Although I'd stand by the statement that Pete is a perfect spoon. Laura is very lucky.

Robert - do you feel like you've climbed a perfect climb? I think i've got close, but not quite. I like to think of perfection as something ultimately unattainable, keeps me striving for more. Not sure what I'd do if I actually found it

Well, off the top of my head, Heaven Crack at Stanage and The Screamer at Reiff come close. And I've also had some near perfect climbing "experiences" such as soloing the Innominata.

I've also once found a near perfect woman (her only imperfection being that she clearly, and understandably, found me somewhat less than perfect........... )

Yep, I keep striving on both fronts!

I obviously don't know you but from what I read from you on here I would never have guessed that in a million years. I looked up the route and was surprised to see I've done it

It's so good I once did it three times in about five minutes!

I knew you were always out climbing somewhere. Good on you. Life's for having fun and you're doing it. Si. xx

I would definitely agree that heaven crack comes pretty close. I think the trouble is that every time you get a little bit closer to perfection, the bar is set slightly higher! Its sort of like an experiential brand of infinity. 

Edit: I have also been known to do multiple laps of heaven crack. A good way of getting the most out of it is climbing up and down it repeatedly. I wish it was longer!

Ah, asymptotic perfection. I'd suggest that as a good name for a route but for me it's lacking in sufficient cormorant puns 

I think most of the near perfect routes are really short. A long pitch almost inevitably has a flawed sequence or a long route a slightly forgettable pitch.

That's just going off on a tangent.

All this talk of perfection made me think of this  youtube.com/watch?v=_IDJpB9de3E&

Ha!

The Screamer has one bit where the line is slightly unclear, so Heaven Crack must be the most perfect route. Who'd'a thought? There's a fun feature in that for someone, a complilation of the most flawless midget gems.

Suspension Flake, The Asp, Lorraine...

Really? Which bit?!

Got a vague memory of being unsure whether to go up then across or across then up at about 2/3 height. Maybe that makes it even better though.

Oh yes, I once went straight up from the cam slot off an undercut jam just for fun rather than right then up. It's a route I can climb over and over again it's just so lovely. Maybe the fact that it can be done in more than one way without any feeling of escapability does make it even better!

Great article/enjoyable read. Had the pleasure of meeting/climbing with Andy whilst he was working at glenmore lodge, many moons ago.  To a novice like me, Andy's one handed bowline demonstration still beguiles me.   

One of the things that I really like about the route 'unleashing the wild physique' at the cheedale cornice is that I've never seen two people do it in the same way, it rewards neither being tall nor short, and everyone finds it desperate

Edit: whilst being a strong/ inescapable line

You know, apart from the fact that you've done Heaven Crack, and done it more than once, the thing that surprises me most is that you've climbed on Stanage