Franco Cookson has made the first ascent of a stunning highball line at Stoupe Brow in North Yorkshire. The route / boulder problem is now called MYXOMOP (E9 7a) and the UKC logbook description is:
Ultra- highball up barry's face, following the intricate groove. A sustained climb, with a lot of hard moves, some of which are out of the reach of pads.
Commenting on the route, Franco told UKC: "It is really good. Great day out with Luke, Si, Dave and Anna. That boulder has so many fantastic climbs on it now. Still one or two left go. I'm not proposing any grade for it. It is what it is. I'm crap at bouldering and most things I think are hard turn out to be easy."
He may be crap at bouldering, but this problem is mooted to be around Font 8A.
Franco is no stranger to new routing in North Yorkshire, and some of his unrepeated and often very bold climbs have seen some attention recently from Tom Randall.
Tom also tried this exact line at Stoupe Brow and commented on Facebook:
"Amazing effort from Franco Cookson. One of the best lines I've tried and some very beefy climbing on it.... I spent a few sessions on it and was absolutely sure of it being around E9 7a or you could bracket it in that "highball but really don't fall off at the top!" category. If I'd done this, I would rank it in the top 5 things I'd have ever done on grit/sandstone."
On the same day as Franco climbed MYXOMOP, he and friends went to Malyon Spout for another nice looking first ascent.
Franco commented: "We did this later in the day at a cool little boulder crag called Malyon Spout. It's circa font 7b+ [and there has been] a lot of effort from Dave Warburton on developing that place."
- You can read more about these ascents on Franco's Blog.
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