Eliot Stephens has made the first ascent of a new Font 8C/V15 at Oxwich Bay Quarry, naming it Zircon (f8C).

In 2022, three years after the cliff collapsed in the bay, Eliot spotted the potential problem and quickly climbed it from a stand start. The sit start was another matter altogether and he made little headway that year, coming closer to a sequence in 2023.

The problem's crux involves one short move on 'the worst crimp' Eliot has held on a problem and is part of a four move 8B that makes up the lower section. After this, there's a hard foot transition to reach the stand; a two-move 8A finish.

January this year came with a renewed motivation for the project and after three sessions, Eliot was able to complete the crux move, and despite ruined finger tips, he managed to complete the boulder in a few attempts the following session.

We got in touch with Eliot to ask him a few questions about Zircon:

Congratulations on your ascent of Zircon - or as you've referred to it on our logbooks - The Crystal Project! When, and how, did you first come across the line?

I probably first saw the boulder a few days after its inception, in 2019. Oxwich was previously a sport climbing venue, which suffered a huge rock fall in 2009. This gave us a decade's worth of bouldering, but in 2019 there were two more cliff collapses which brought another dozen house-sized boulders onto the bay. This wrote off a lot of the old stuff, but offered a load of new potential. I started checking out boulders close to the tide line which seemed more stable, and climbed a few that year. I definitely don't remember looking closely enough at Zircon to consider it a thing. But when I went back in 2022 it was clear to me that there was a line going up the middle of the wall. 

How did those early sessions on Zircon go?

I just started out with trying to climb it from a stand start, which I managed pretty quickly. I tried the sit for probably another 2-3 days that year but realistically my fingers and shape just weren't where they needed to be to feel like it was possible. I did the same in 2023 and then didn't even try it last year. For some reason I decided to go and have another look this January off the back of a good Swiss trip. 

Zircon looks like a pure test of crimp strength and pain tolerance - can you break down the moves for us?

The first few moves of my sequence are pretty easy, a bit of a square lock off from a flat 10mm sized edge. That gets you left hand on the hold which I used for the crux. It's a split crimp which is only really good for your front 3 fingers, and probably 5-6mm deep. You have to simply hang under this hold and control your body enough to come into a 3 finger gaston with the right hand. Then you have to do a shouldery move left to a really unique incut quartz gaston. Then I found a really hard transition moving my weight way left in that shouldery position in order to get the right foot on the starting handhold. This felt like a move in itself, as just the time spent on the two gastons is really draining your fingers. 

None of the holds look great, but it looks like one of them consists of nothing more than sharp half-pad crystals! What's it like climbing on those kinds of holds - they somehow look sharp and slippy at the same time! And what are some of the nuances that you came across when working out how best to hold them?

Yeah, the texture of that particular hold is pretty slick, but luckily it's really incut so friction isn't the biggest issue. The nuance for me is really in finding the place to put my thumb, and this goes for many holds actually. Often I'm using the thumb more like a finger, and flexing it into a crystal or bump of rock to take weight off the fingers. I think it's a trick many are missing. 

What was the hardest thing to get right on this boulder?

For me, this thing came down to a few things. Firstly, was just having the skin to hold the crux hold. I was taking a week between sessions and barely having good enough skin for a handful of attempts during each session. As well as this, the conditions at the boulder. It sits in a bit of a pit, so if the tide has been particularly high, there is a lot of humidity under the boulder and it can often stay pretty wet. Having a fan and leaf blower certainly changed the game there and gave me some sessions where I would normally have had to walk away. 

You described the process of working on this boulder as a particularly enjoyable one, what was it that made it so nice for you?

I think just seeing progress from when I originally tried it, and just feeling like it was a little more possible each session. I also spent two sessions at the Boulder with my friend Si, and to have his energy and see his motivation pick up for boulders down there was really great too. It added to my motivation to be there and develop more. 

You climbed a number of classic lines in Switzerland late last year - The Dagger, Dreamtime, Radja - and now you've put the hours in on a hard first ascent, what plans do you have for the rest of the year?

I'm hunting more of those iconic lines. Bugeleisen in Maltatal, Austria, is high on my list of places to return to. Rocklands in South Africa has a few to offer too, so I'll be trying some there this summer. Other than that, I'm still scratching the surface of hard things locally.