UKC

Bam Bam Repeat for McHaffie

© PyB / Individual Photographers
It used be the case that E8's in North Wales could go for years without being repeated. But Stevie Haston's recent tour de force, Bam Bam on the Lleyn Peninsula, has now seen two onsight repeats within three weeks of being established.

Purposefully taking full advantage of the route's chalked-up condition after Stevie's ascent and Jack Geldard's swift repeat, James McHaffie was 'steady away' to the top of Craig Dorys with no drama. Reaching a rest ledge at about half-way, James pulled up near enough a second rack before continuing.

As James pulled over the crag edge to finish, he commented in his usual understated manner: "Good climbing. Obviously a bit loose."

Considering the route while belaying Nick Bullock up, James said: "It was a brilliant effort by Stevie. Him and Leigh may have pulled off a skip load of loose stuff cleaning it but it just leaves another skip load behind. When it's all chalked like that though I'd give it E7 6b. It helped massively, along with pulling up another rack."

James continued: "Physically it felt like 7a+ but because it is serious it feels harder - like lots of the corner lines on this buttress - if this route was solid it'd probably be E4 5c. The starting groove was technically the crux for me. I didn't really feel I had a stopper bit of gear in until I got the good cams in the break after the rest. It was E5 from there."

Report with photo at the DMM website

 


James is sponsored by Wild Country and Red Chili and works at Plas y Brenin mountain centre.


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28 Sep, 2009
Good effort. Good to see people are getting on it and giving the OS a go. Interesting comment regarding the grade. Will the route ever 'firm up' in terms of looseness or is it the nature of the crag that theyll always be this way?
28 Sep, 2009
- Physically speaking the route is reckoned to be about F7c From the James Macaffie report :- James continued: Physically it felt like 7a+ Is this the full hour argument or just the five minutes ... Always here to pour petrol on troubled inferno's ;-)
28 Sep, 2009
I wonder if there'll be a Walk of Life level of comment retracting.
28 Sep, 2009
"if it were solid it would get E4 5c" as well...! Mind you that hardly ties up with 7a+ that well either does it, that should be more than E4 most of the time?
28 Sep, 2009
was this also Jack's first E8, onsight or otherwise? i do think also that most of us will take grades on such loose cliffs as being more open to interpretation than on your average solid crag.
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