Earlier this month, we reported that James Pearson had made the long-awaited second ascent of Echo Wall on the north face of Ben Nevis, Scotland and interviewed him about the experience. His ascent came 16 years after the route was first established by Dave MacLeod in 2008, who described it as potentially one of the hardest traditional climbs in the world and the most difficult in the UK, but did not suggest a grade for the route. 

Following a few weeks of reflection on his experiences on Ben Nevis, James has shared his thoughts on the grade.

He sent UKC the following text:

For a route that was never graded, Echo Wall certainly had a lot of people thinking it was the hardest traditional rock climb in the world. From Dave's original blog posts at the time, he made it clear he felt the route was harder than Rhapsody, and referenced 8c/+ as a top-rope grade, with "the real prospect of death from the redpoint crux".  Although he never proposed an overall E Grade, these facts alone made it a significant step above anything that had been climbed before, and as time passed and nobody repeated the route, it seemed to grow an even bigger reputation, somewhat becoming part of trad climbing folklore. For many years, in conversations with other top trad climbers around the world, we spoke of all the other hard trad-routes out there… and then there was Echo Wall.

It was both exciting and daunting to finally make my way to Scotland and climb the route, and having had a few weeks to let things settle, I finally think I might understand some of what Dave may have been feeling at the time, and why he chose not to offer a grade.  Everything about climbing Echo Wall is complicated!  From the logistics of getting all of your kit up to the route, to being lucky enough to get the actual wall in condition, from figuring out the complex moves from an awkwardly positioned rope, to choosing which type of poor protection might offer the best chance of holding a fall.  All this before you even get on the lead, which is another physical and mental battle entirely.

From the very beginning of the process, all the way up to leading the climb, I felt somehow torn. Whilst the individual movements didn't feel too difficult, I had real trouble linking longer sections, and had the impression I was getting far more pumped than I should have been.  I put this down to generally feeling a little uncomfortable up there in that creepy place, and probably over gripping from fear, but it also probably has something to do with the generally poor conditions you are forced to climb in (I only saw the sky twice in my 6 climbing sessions, there rest of the time I was more or less in the mist). This makes it really difficult to judge the physical difficulty of the route, which is a pretty important piece of information if you want to offer an overall grade.

In addition to this, the protection of Echo Wall is far from bomber, and even where I would say the protection is good, we are talking about very small micro-friends and RP's in shallow, sometimes wet placements. To be a little more specific, the crucial piece that protects the lower crux is the smallest friend that exists, and it is placed in a downwards facing crack in a roof that is constantly dripping with water. I don't know if it was always wet in past years, but it was always wet for me, and unless this piece is placed really carefully, it just slides straight out before it even has a chance to bind. Unfortunately, you place this piece from a really strenuous position, which is essentially halfway through the crux move, meaning it's hard to be as precise as you'd like to be. Should it fail, whilst it's not as runout as the upper section of the route, the ground and ledges below are also a lot closer! Dave said this section felt like E9 to him in isolation, and I can see why.  If you place all the gear perfectly from an ab-rope, it can seem quite safe… but placing it well on lead feels like another thing entirely. 

To improve my chances (of not breaking my legs), I chose to double up most pieces from what Dave had placed.  In the bottom wall crux I placed 2 pieces where Dave placed 1, I also placed 2 RP's just after the roof, where Dave placed only 1, and a total of 7 pieces on the upper wall, where Dave placed 2. Crucially, these 7 pieces were all equalised together to help spread the load of a fall, and they were also all tensioned down to the floor via a third line I'd carried up with me, to ensure they would be loaded in the optimal direction. Whilst all of this definitely made the route feel safer, the paradox is that in doing so it also made the route feel physically harder. That's an interesting thing about Trad climbing; the climber is free to interpret the challenge in their own way, placing more or less protection at the cost of increasing the physical difficulty.

Whilst I'd say that my experience on Echo Wall seemed a little less scary than Dave's (from reading his blog posts and watching the film), I would hate for people to miss-understand me and believe I'm saying I think the route is safe. I'm not! Micro-wires and sky-hooks are in the grand scheme of things pretty unreliable, and although I thought there was a reasonable chance they could hold a fall, I had no desire to test that theory. If the gear on the upper wall ripped, a fall from the upper crux would be very bad!

Finally, the weather and the general conditions you are forced to climb in (tired from the hike, bad warm up etc etc) make it really hard to feel like you are climbing at your best.  To have a reasonable chance of actually leading Echo Wall, you want your top sport climbing level to be at least a few grades higher than the route requires.

All this combined makes it really tricky to assess the overall difficulty of Echo Wall, but I'll try to be as objective as I can.

If I were to offer a grade based on my gut instinct, I'd say it feels a lot harder than routes like Parthian Shot, Lexicon, and Rhapsody, but easier than Bon Voyage. This also lines up pretty well with how much time I spent on each of those routes. Parthian and Lexicon took me a couple of days, Rhapsody just under a week, and Bon Voyage over 20 sessions over a couple of years.

Looking more into specifics, I'd suggest a very similar sport grade breakdown to Dave, with the bottom wall feeling about 8a+, to a good rest at the roof, and the upper wall about 8a+/b.  If it helps you can break the upper wall down even further into 2 boulder problems that I thought were about 7B and 7A split by a good rest, but it's hard to grade boulders so specifically on a route with all the extra faff, and there can be a greater difference in perceived difficulty between climbers due to morphology, than there can be when grading a longer sequence.

If you punch those numbers into Darth Grader, the physical challenge of Echo Wall might be somewhere between hard 8b and 8b+, which matches up with my internal dialogue that it might be 8b/+ to top-rope, and hard 8b+ to lead, placing all the gear.  I'd like to point out that this is based on my feelings from my penultimate day where I led the route on pre-placed gear in really good conditions.  It felt harder on the actual lead, but the conditions that day were, objectively, far worse.

Finally, If I try to assess the potential danger of the route, it's hard to be too precise as nobody has yet fallen off Echo Wall, and even if they had, the result of one fall wouldn't necessarily be the result of every fall for the rest of time.  The reliability of protection is never black or white, but it's also easy to see that a nest of sky-hooks and micro-wires, however good they might seem subjectively, will never be as good as a couple of bomber friends in a deep crack, and if they fail, you are likely toast! We have to try to stay consistent with our assessment of danger, and just because something might hold a fall, doesn't mean they will.

If I look to the descriptions we made for eGrader regarding potential danger and risk, I think Echo Wall can be well summarised by "Dangerous - Ground fall likely from the crux. Injury is likely even if advanced and specialist rope-work / belay techniques are used". The subsequent level is "Very Dangerous - A fall from the crux is extremely likely to cause serious injury or death" which seems too much, and the preceding "Very Runout - Some very long run-outs with potential for injury or ground fall from several moves. Advanced and specialist ropework / belay techniques are essential to minimise injury" seems a little too mild, especially considering the likelihood of a quick rescue from such a hard to access place.

Bringing all of these things together, climbing Echo Wall felt like a hard E11 experience and the numbers seem to back this up. However, that's not what makes this route impressive to me! Echo Wall is by far the most complicated and involved Trad challenge I have ever attempted, and I have nothing but the highest respect for what Dave achieved all those years ago, it really was ahead of its time!  I hope any future ascensionist will have the same full-on Scottish climbing experience as I did… just be careful soloing up Tower ridge with a massive back pack… that bit was a little too full-on! 

Watch a short video of James climbing some of the moves: