Hard gritstone repeats

At Stanage John Welford makes a rare fifth ascent of Careless Torque Fb 8a+ while Tyler Landman repeats The Ace Fb 8b. Ryan Pasquill makes an impressive flash of Curbar's End of the Affair E8 6c.

PlanetMountain.com

March 2006

Traduci in

Cold conditions in Britain have resulted in a series of hard classic gritstone repeats over the last couple of weeks. As ukclimbing reports, John Welford set the ball rolling by clogging in a rare fifth ascent of Careless Torque, the Fb 8a+ boulder problem at Stanage first climbed by Ron Fawcett way back in 1987.

Tyler Landman, a mere 15 years of age, has made what is believed to be the third repeat of another Stanage classic, The Ace Fb 8b. This sit-down start to the Joker was put up by another force to be reckoned with, Jerry Moffat, in 2000 and has been repeated by Malcolm Smith and Ben Moon only.

And to prove that the yesterday's cutting edge remains at the forefront of current activity, just a couple of days ago 18 year old Ryan Pasquill made an impressive flash of Curbar's End of the Affair E8 6c. As many will remember, this 14m gritstone edge was first ascended by Johnny Dawes in 1986 and although it has seen numerous ascents throughout the years (including the first female E8 at the hands of Lisa Rands), it has nevertheless lost little of it's original aura in its twenty year (!) history.

Ryan's ascent came about after having watched Paul Smitton head-point the route a few minutes earlier. Other E8 flashes include Ben Bransby's ascent of Carmen Picasso E8 6c at Gorple in 2000 and Ryan's flash of Countdown to Disaster at Ilkley in 2002. A pure E8 onsight is on the cards!