Robbie Phillips has made the second free ascent of The Great Arch (E8 6c), on the Isle of Pabbay, in the Outer Hebrides.

The route, which comprises ninety metres of climbing across six pitches, was first climbed by Dave 'Cubby' Cuthbertson and Lynn Hill in 1997, using a single point of aid. They named the route To Be Continued - a name which failed to catch on, as the route has continued to be known as 'The Great Arch' - and gave it a grade of E7 7a.

The route was then left unclimbed until 2010, when Steve McClure and Lucy Creamer put in an attempt on the penultimate day of a trip to Pabbay. With just a description of the route to go by, both McClure and Creamer managed to onsight their way up to the final crux pitch, which McClure had abbed down to inspect earlier. McClure then fell on the roof section, before pulling back on and topping out, as described in his account of the final pitch, available on UKC here:

'...here I was at the back of the arch, good gear greedily thrown into solid cracks. Then out over the roof, more flakes the size of tables creak under my weight, good gear maybe, but not behind them! Easy climbing at least. Then at last another solid runner and the start of the hard climbing'.

'I can see the lip, only a span away, a relatively easy move to the sanctuary of hard moves on bad holds, familiar though, I'll be happy there. Then I'm rushing it, feet all over the place, wanting this all to be over, and suddenly I'm in the air'.

'The gear holds. I'm cursing. No fear now, just utter disappointment. I pull up the rope, and back onto the big flakes and this time straight out to the lip with ease and through the hard lip moves and so to the top. Lucy follows with a combination of climbing, prusiking and fear. There is no time for another go as I'm already watching the sun set over the sea ... So the Great Arch still awaits a no falls ascent'.

And it continued to await a no falls ascent for a further three years, until, in 2013, Dave MacLeod made his way to Pabbay with the sole focus of making the first free ascent of The Great Arch. He found success, describing the ascent as follows:

'Pitches one and two flew by in minutes. The big third pitch was a grunt with still wet holds... The infamous offwidth slot of pitch four was only a few metres, but gave my first experience of "scapular walking". I have no idea if that is a climbing technique, but it worked. Pitch five was the most gloriously exposed and finely positioned 5a pitch I have ever climbed'.

'Unsurprisingly, the transition to completely horizontal roof climbing felt a bit of a shock to the system, and I fumbled with two cams, and then decided to not even bother with the third. I was getting too pumped. I got really excited about the next seconds as I'd find out whether I had enough power to do the crux, or fling myself into the huge space below and test the cams and wires in the creaky roof flake... What followed was a classic climbing moment of a blur of slapping hands, quickly made up sequences on the hop when I did it all wrong, and a bit of aggression. In no time I found myself stood above the lip, panting to catch my breath'.

'The projected grade I'd heard for the free ascent was E9 7a, but in the end E8 6c was more like it'.

In an email sent to UKC last week, Robbie described The Great Arch as 'the focal point of the island. It's also just improbable as a climb - that there's just enough holds to grab hold of and that the easiest way up is directly through the roof of the arch. When you climb through it, you're upside down looking out at the Atlantic towards North America'.

Robbie initially planned his trip to Pabbay in June this year, but was delayed due to bad weather.

'You need the long days in the height of summer to give you the biggest window of daylight to attempt the climb. Due to its location, the rock suffers from poor conditions from condensation and sea spray, so you need the warm weather and sun to burn off any moisture on the rock. Due to the timing of our trip, we weren't able to start climbing until 2pm when the sun came round, leaving us only six hours to climb the entire wall before we lost the light'.

'We [Robbie and belay partner Jamie Lowther] climbed fast through the bottom pitches to make up for lost time. I don't think I've ever climbed an E6 onsight (pitch three) so fast, just placing gear and moving. Occasionally I'd be slowed down by bands of wet overhanging rock, or chossier sections, but ultimately we made up the time and arrived at the crux pitch with a short window of light left'.

Robbie had checked the final section of the roof on a static rope the day before, as both Steve McClure and Dave MacLeod did, saying 'I was glad I checked out the roof as it was tricky complex climbing with blind holds that I would never have known were there otherwise. I figured out a sequence that really worked for me, including a cheeky kneebar that unlocked the crux of the roof'.

However, Robbie's first attempt ended at a slightly lower crux which he hadn't previously worked, a 'tough sequence on burly undercuts and a tiny crimp, with a shouldery pull up into the back of the roof'.

'I knew this would be tough, but I didn't expect it to be that tough', Robbie said, 'Cubby had described the move to me as he had remembered it, but when I arrived there, the undercuts were wet and the foothold he used, which I could see, was too close to my body… in short, I was too tall! But I figured out a different way of doing the move using a foothold far out right and an intermediate. Incredible to think that Cubby onsighted this section during his and Lynn's 1996 attempt!'

With the light now dying, Robbie went for a 'hail mary' attempt.

'I dug deep and screamed my way through the first crux, arriving tired beneath the enormous roof. The holds were actually a bit damp but I pressed on regardless. I campused out onto the enormous hollow flake, stuck a cam behind it, clipped a rusty peg, and stuck a small nut behind a crack'.

'Hanging there, thoughts of uncertainty bubbled through my mind, but I knew I had this one shot, so when I was rested enough I committed. My forearms screamed as the pump built up… I somehow managed to pull through the hardest moves, but the lip was still a really challenging section and could easily spit me off. I threw my heel up to rock over, but it slipped and for a moment I was dangling footless with just my hands gripped onto the sloping edge of the roof'.

'I screamed and threw it back on, engaging autopilot as I committed everything to the moves I'd rehearsed the days prior. Then I was standing on the lip of the roof, a jug in my left hand and completely bewildered at how I'd somehow managed to pull it out of the bag!'