UKH

James Pearson is scuttling around Ben Nevis having a look at Echo wall, currently too wet, I hope the weather improves for him as I would like to see this get a repeat.

What other hard mountain Trad would you like to see get some attention? For me it would be Icon of Lust on the Shelterstone. The description in the SMC guide makes my hair stand on end!

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/shelterstone_crag_moray-32/icon_of...

Hard Cheese?

But Icon of Lust definitely, especially as it's 'only' E8. Probably not many (any?) climbers in the UK with the combination of JL's skill on hard friction slabs combined with the willingness and commitment to take on an absolutely huge run-out three pitches up in the middle of the Cairngorms.

I wouldn't be surprised if Moonrise Kingdom got a repeat sooner, though probably wouldn't hold breath for that one either.

Yeah I agree, wonder if its the sort of thing Franko would be interested, but he I get the impression he likes "holds" no matter how small and I don't think Icon will have many of those!

Iain Small can't have much left to do on the slab there I am fairly sure Dave Mac looked at it but never got on the sharp end.

Moonrise Kingdom is a good shout, JM's account of trying to onsite/flash that made the palms sweat (assuming I am not confusing it with a different route)

I doubt it. I bet Jim Pope could do it, if he was interested.

If the Ben is too wet, The Usual Suspects won't be! Would be great to see this get some attention, and without being dangerous, could be on the radar of quite a few wads. 

I suspect this is true of 99.999...% of trad routes in the UK.

To twist a phrase: "There are only two types of routes: Ones you did and ones you didn't". Why you didn't becomes irrelevant.

James has no chance. When I spoke to him not only was it lashing it down but the ubiquitous snow patch had gone. Shoveling snow is part of the route surely.

Wait... Does that mean if I find a patch of snow and do some shovelling on the day he does his ascent, I can claim a "team ascent" of Echo Wall? That would be awesome news for my max headpoint grade!

I can remember going up Tower Ridge a few summers after DM did Echo Wall and thinking "where's the huge snow patch" followed by "he really did pick the wrong year to do that" unless the repeated trog up there and all that shovelling really were some kind of super-training regime 😁

Wouldn't Echo Wall need a grade 1st?

Dave Mac suggested E10 in March this year.

E10, apparently 

youtube.com/watch?v=B-48S7gLP_I&

A route like Ikon of Lust is the kind of route that is easy to top rope (ie low F grade) but really hard to lead, especially ground up. There is one short section of full on smearing on pitch two leading into Missing Link that is bold (the hardest move on the route is just above bomber gear lower on the pitch. From what I've heard there is very bold smearing section leading into Hard Lines on pitch three. Jules has since placed a peg in the groove well below this to encourage repeat ascents.

Jules led the route after just the minimum of top roping. Really a repeat ascent needs to be in at least similar style as a full on headpoint ascent would be a disappointment.

I'd be happy to see the route done in any style! Obviously it's a matter of opinion but to my mind, once you start headpointing something, doing it 'full on' (however much until you're happy going for the lead) is not any worse style, it's just being sensible. 

Thanks Rick, nice to hear your take given your experience on the slabs.

Part of me doesn't want a repeat of the route as it would dispell with the mystery given by the route description!

I remember looking down the line from the crux of missing link and wondering just how it was possible given the lack of holds! But then I am far from a slab climber.

I don't know if I'd say 'worse', but spending multiple sessions on something is unquestionably going to make it easier to lead than having one quick go on a top-rope.

Is style purely a question of which 'category' your ascent fits in? I wouldn't say so. There are definitely shades within that. For example, all ascents of Indian Face to date have been headpoints, but I think it would be fair to say that Caff's was the 'best' - he did it in a session.

The problem with Rick's suggestion is that 'the minimum' is not a clear amount. What are you going to do, ask Jules for the exact amount of time he spent on it and run a stopwatch? It gets a bit arbitrary. So in that sense I agree - if you're going to practise on top-rope, you might as well do the amount of practice you're happy with.

I've recalled that Icon had a couple of likely suitors in the past year or two, though I think the weather crapped out and I don't know if they ended up getting back on it.

Indeed, which is why headpointing caught on as the previous yo-yo style covered such a wide range of tactics you never knew how a route had been done.

Headpointing on a route that is not massively technical where it is bold nor very sustained is very much a lowest common denominator approach in my opinion when Jules I think only practiced the crucial slab on pitch two. Maybe asking him is the answer.

In short, what Andy said. But to add another example, to me James Pearson's ascent of Lexicon (second go after a look on abseil) is extremely impressive and in significantly better style than other ascents to date, even though if you're categorising things you'd say all the ascents so far have been headpoints.

I think someone mentioned this but would be great to see someone trying this, I think Alex Moore has been on it and said it was nails!

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2021/11/first_ascent_of_hard_cheese_e10_7a_...

Franco and James Taylor also been it. 

We could subdivide the headpoint style thus:

Minimal headpoint - abseil only, feeling the holds and maybe pulling the odd move

Quick headpoint - 1 session, or quick dispatch on second session

Standard headpoint - 2-5 sessions

Long headpoint - 5-10 sessions

Siege - 10+ sessions

Quest - multiple sessions over multiple years

Of course you still have other vectors like whether gear is left in place etc.

This is where the O Grade comes into its own. 

I was at the crag just before his successful ascent and met him and cubby, very impressive to watch him up on the wall… it’s such a stunning “non-line” of seeming blankness!

I disagree. Doing something more quickly does not make it any better I'd say (unless of course we were talking about speed ascents of the Nose or something). I can totally see that using minimal practice could be more personally satisfying though.  

Yeah, my impression was that he only abbed the third pitch (rather than working that pitch). So on reflection, I see your point and definitely agree that Jules' ascent will be a very difficult one to match, let alone better.

I totally agree. I think it's quite likely he's climbing at another level to even Caff and MacLeod, in order to have the drive to attempt the route without practice (just!). 

Perhaps we mean different things when we're making the reductive comparison of 'better' or 'best', and like I say I wouldn't choose to put it that way (that's why I said 'best' in scare quotes).

But if you think there is no stylistic distinction between leading after a quick feel of the holds and positions on abseil compared to leading after a multi session siege, i.e. that one is more difficult than the other and therefore 'better' in the sense of having done less to bring the route within your ability, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Repeated by Keen Youth:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-I5sSquqx9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&ig...

What does he think? Soft E9?

Fantastic news. I look forward to hear his take on it. Pearson seems to be unstoppable. Long may this continue. 

Nice, that's a big repeat!

Awesome! Of all Dave's routes, this is the one I thought least likely to see a subsequent ascent. I for one am looking forward to getting the full story! UKC Newsflash...?

7 votes for moderate on here.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/ben_nevis-16877/echo_wall-509906

I'm sure it's at least E8...

I'm with the one voter who thinks it's 'High None'.

'you will die'? surely the protection isn't *that* poor?

Well, we'll see what James says but I would expect Dave to be reasonable at judging gear placements.

And its not like Dave is short of necky repeats either.

iirc Dave soloed an 8c in Spain as mental preparation. There are plenty of routes where falling off the crux would be fatal though maybe not so many at this level of difficulty, which is one of the reasons Echo Wall is so special.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0oWDT5Iv-M/?igsh=MTl4dXYxNDRydHBjeg==

https://www.climber.co.uk/news/james-pearson-talks-in-depth-about-the-secon...

There we are then.

Sounds like JP was better conditioned for this than DMac was in 2008, thus able to make more of the available gear and of the kneebar - not to mention that he's clearly tactically amazingly efficient, to get it done in so few sessions while working out some improvements with tensioning the hooks etc. Fair play to him for getting up there and getting it done in the midst of what's been a crap season for mountain trad.

Probably no real surprise in him saying it's harder than Lexicon but easier than Bon Voyage.

Depends how seriously you take the grades, surely. If you think the grade of Lexicon is reasonable at E11 (and quite a few people have repeated it without raising objections) and you think Dave wasn't just being modest when he proposed E10 for Echo Wall, then it surely should count as a surprise that the E10 is harder than the E11.

When Dave first climbed Echo Wall and chose not to offer a grade, it sounded a lot like part of his reason for avoiding that was because he thought the grade could only be absurdly high (once considering the location and the consequence). So I was surprised when he recently proposed E10. James' comments here seem to line up with that. I wonder whether he'll actually propose an upgrade once he's had time to reflect.

I suspect Andy's comment was more in reference to how long each of the routes took James rather than the grades:

• Lexicon, 2 sessions and ~3 attempts
• Echo Wall, 8 sessions (6 climbing + 2 logistics faff)
• Bon Voyage, 20+ sessions

I expect James will say E11. 

And on the Lexicon grade, didn't Dave say something suggestive in his long grading video? Something like "I might have only climbed E11 once, or maybe not at all". I definitely remember a subtle suggestion of it not being E11. 

Well not really. All that it tells you is that the small number of players involved can't really agree what constitutes an E10, E11 or E12.

I'm sure too that there is an element of not wanting to be the one to p!ss on someone else's parade. I'm sure we don't always get to hear the true grade opinions of the repeaters of these hard climbs.

The good thing is, that ain't going to happen since Dave said E10 (James is certainly not going to say E9). For the armchair observer, and given what James said about relative overall difficulty, Lexicon E10, Echo Wall E11 and Bon Voyage E12 sounds a reasonable possibility, but of course it will be interesting to hear what James' thoughts on the grade are once he's had more time to process things.

So you want to be that guy!

This sort of ground has been covered before on here. Firstly, it may well not be E10, and he may well not say that. He probably won't (given that the main interest is in Echo Wall). Secondly, I honestly don't think most top trad climbers would be that bothered if their route was downgraded by one grade, provided the one offering the downgrade had vast experience and gave clear comparisons with other routes they'd done. And if they were that bothered, they'd just have to get over it. That's surely better than having some routes totally out of kilter with others of the same grade. And of course, the FA only offers a grade suggestion, and repeaters only offer their suggestion(s). You're probably being tongue in cheek, but it's that sort of thing that unfortunately can stop climbers giving honest opinions at the top end.

I'm not sure you need to jump in with grades / regrades. I'm sure we could all name a number of routes that get the same grade but say which ones we found harder or easier. It doesn't mean any of them need a grade change. 

Quite right. That armchair grade display was just one possibility.

An alternative view from the armchair would be that maybe Dave's a harsh grader across the board, at least in the last few years when he's been downplaying Echo Wall (and even Rhapsody to some extent), and that Echo Wall, Rhapsody and Lexicon might all deserve E11 (and perhaps some of Dave's other hardest routes as well).

James says in the interview above that eGrader would put Echo Wall at E12 if the sport grade was as hard as some of Dave's early comments. If it's actually a grade or two easier as a sport grade, does that drop it all the way down to E10? Or just to E11? What if we make some accounting for the remoteness as we traditionally have for more everyday grades?

👍

My memory's not good enough to recall that from the video, but looking back at what Dave was saying after he repeated Lexicon, he does suggest that he's climbed something harder and given it E10:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2022/03/lexicon_e11_7a_repeated_by_dave_mac...

"Other climbs that I've done since I've graded in that fashion include Mind Riot on Binnein Shuas a couple of years ago, and that is significantly harder and more dangerous than Lexicon and I gave it E10."

But that is in the context of a question about whether grades are in line across the UK, and he's very keen to emphasise the subjectivity of those judgements, especially with so few people climbing these routes and offering opinions.

"I gave the first E11 grade to Rhapsody and that was very difficult, my heart was in my mouth applying that huge grade, but I'd repeated a lot of E9s and a couple of E10s and I felt that Rhapsody was significantly harder than those, it could not be the same grade as anything that I'd done before. I either had to downgrade a whole swathe of routes or give E11. Interestingly, many years later, I'm not totally sure if I would give Rhapsody E11. I'm not saying I wouldn't, but I'm not sure, because at that time, I didn't have the confidence to think that a lot of other routes are overgraded. Now I probably would think that, since the two E10s that I'd done at the time, I now would confidently say they weren't E10. So now, perhaps I would grade those routes E9 and Rhapsody E10 — quite a hard one, but still."

If the choice is between downgrading a whole swathe of routes or more readily accepting the push into a new grade, is the downgrading approach the correct response to grade inflation or modesty and small-c conservatism causing grade compression?

Or from another angle, was trad progression stalling or were people just being shy about acknowledging it in grading?

Or James was partially motivated to repeat this and imply it's easier than Dave Mac hyped it up to be given that Dave downgraded Walk of Life to E9 all those years ago.

Regardless of the motivation and grade, it's a great effort and undoubtedly a hard and necky route.

Thanks for posting that, good interview. I thought the bit about needing to be 'several grades better than the route might suggest' given the location and conditions made a lot of sense.

The person who first suggested the sport grade is lower than Dave's original comments implied is Dave himself. If anything, James' comments have implied a higher E-grade for Echo Wall than what Dave recently suggested.

Suggestions that there's some kind of tit for tat going on here seem unfair on both Dave and James and I don't see any credible evidence that's going on.

That's certainly a possibility. All depends on whether a route 'feels' a grade harder or just a bit of a grade.

I would hope/expect that relative difficulty (and therefore grade) is assessed primarily through comparisons with other routes, rather than mathematical calculation.

Personally, at any standard, I don't see why harder logistics makes a harder route. OK it makes it harder work getting there, and harder when it comes to working the line, but the grade surely reflects the final ascent, not whether the walk in has made you out of breath or whether you've had to carry a lot of kit. 

Easy to say, but in practice untangling all these factors is often not so simple. Did it feel hard on the day because it really is hard as a standalone route, or was I knackered from the big walk in and feeling the pressure because the weather window was about to close and I wouldn't be able to get on it for another year? Did that add half a grade? A whole grade?!

The real come back to the Walk of Life would be giving it E13. Dave would be mortified. 

Maybe depends on age/fitness. I'd have thought that after sitting down for a bite to eat/chat, gearing up etc, the walk-in would no longer have an effect. In the UK anyway. 

I broadly agree. I was bringing up eGrader mostly as a point of comparison for us armchair pundits who are clearly never going to touch any of these routes rather than suggesting it should be a primary consideration for those actually climbing them. Though a decent number of prominent high-end climbers seemed to see value in the eGrader approach, and it seemed like part of their argument was trying to avoid grade compression at the top end by giving themselves and their peers some foundations to propose a grade, given the difficulty of going purely on feel and comparison when those are so subjective and so few people are climbing the hardest routes to form a consensus.

I don't think it's really about logistics and the hassle. I think remote routes at mortal grades typically have technically easier climbing for their grade, all other things being equal, so I've always been under the impression that those grades are factoring in: 

• Conditions. Not taking it to extremes by grading for the route being sopping wet and overgrown but perhaps accounting for the fact that finding it pristine is vanishingly unlikely.
• Consequence. Breaking your ankle on a sea cliff or halfway up the Ben is a much bigger deal than doing it at Stanage.
• And yes, maybe getting worn out by the approach where that's relevant. Or the fact that there are 3 pitches before you even get to the crux and then you've got to get to the top.

I don't think it's particularly remarkable, it's surely just a natural consequence of the holistic nature of our grading system.

You're probably right - an accident rather than design thing. Take a lot of brutish grit cracks and stick them on a bigger route in the mountains and they'd well get a couple of overall grades harder. Guess we're going off topic a bit.  

I'll bet that the number of people who can climb physically and technically as hard on a remote mountain climb as they do on an easy access outcrop crag is small and the number who can do that when the (mountain) weather isn't dry and settled is much smaller.

These things affect (most of) us, either physically and/or mentally. The question really is should we include these factors in the grade - I'd vote yes.

As for going off topic - where exactly do you think you are? 😁

I can see what Luke means. Things might feel harder a few pitches up, so they get graded harder. It's not intentional, it's just the grade it feels. That's different to adding a grade just because something is remote and far from rescue e.g. Pabbay/Mingulay.

Well, yes.