UKC

New Statesman and Ulysses - Visiting Americans

© Laurie Rogerson
Jack Geldard

This has been read 27,378 times
Americans Matt Segal, Alex Honnold and Kevin Jorgeson are stomping their way through several hard Grit test-pieces, including Honnold flashing Ulysses (E6 6b) at Stanage and Jorgeson making a very fast headpoint of The New Statesman (E8 7a) at Ilkley, Yorkshire. They have only been in the UK for a few days, but have had media attention from various internet sites.

Their local guide, Grit master Jason Pickles (who is also Britain's manliest man - see UKC News) commented:

"They're quite shocked by all the internet attention - people know where we've been and what we've done before we've even got back home from the crag! They're just here and psyched to get out climbing and get used to the Grit. It's great to be with some psyched people, it's given me a kick up the arse to get things done myself."

Alex Honnold is known for his super-long solo ascents of routes such as Moonlight Buttress (5.12d) in Zion and Astroman (5.11c) in Yosemite.

Kevin Jorgeson has been making waves in the highball bouldering arena, with ascents of problems such as The Duel in Hueco, a dangerous highball V10 problem, The Beautiful and The Damned (V13) plus other micro routes/boulders. Wills Young, one of the authors of Bishop Bouldering stated: "Kevin has taken things to a new level."

Matt Segal recently made the 4th ascent of the Cobra Crack in Squamish, Canada. He also made the first ascent of Iron Monkey, another 5.14 trad route, this time in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado.

This post has been read 27,378 times

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Comments

Liam Copley
20 Oct, 2008
i would of thought that people dont see E6 onsight as bieng..well.. news worthy nowadays due to E8's bieng onsighted. Anyway.."yeah thats pretty good"
TobyA
20 Oct, 2008
So it was Ulysses?! Excellent. Well done Mr Honnold. He's a crazy bugger but clearly a talented one at that. How often has Ulysses been onsighted or flashed? Do I remember read some Pole did it once? Presumably this is too common an event?
popebenedictus
20 Oct, 2008
I would say that it is an impressive achievement.
Enty
20 Oct, 2008
I'd rather have an E6 grit onsight in my logbook than an E7 headpoint. The Ent
Tyler
20 Oct, 2008
By itself no (this particular route was onsighted by Johnny Dawes in 80's and Neil Foster, once of this parish, has his own tale to tell I think), plus we don't know how many mats were in use. However, its always news when foreign wads come over to the UK, it doesn't happen often enough and it helps to put UK routes on grit into a world context something that is often discussed here. So, the more of this type of news the better I'd say.
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