[tomtom]

There was a pair like that in the bushes by the lay by at the Tor today...

[abarro81]

Girl's gotta make her dollar somewhere!

[gme]

Not wanting to disparage those people mentioned above but Before everyone gets over excited about the state of uk climbing I would like to point out that, off the top of my head, at least 5 people climbed 8c+ in 1995. Some of them did two so a total of 9 8c+s climbed.

Jerry - evolution and progress
Malc - ditto
Nic - ditto
John welford - the bastard. (8c?)
Ben - Bronx and super plafond (96)

Also not sure what year gaskins or dunning did Hubble. Must have been around then.
Nearly 20 years ago.

[Fiend]

Yeah but they were properly strong climbers back then...

[Duma]

Thought evolution was 8c? And the bastard. And Ben's were abroad. So three then.

[Paul B]

Nearly 20 years ago.

...and everyone followed Ben and Jerry into bouldering, that's why 8Bs are common as muck these days and 8c+ (in the UK) is not. Sport climbing went out of fashion, like the tights and dreadlocks associated with them.

There's also that 

[abarro81]

Evo is not 8c in any grading system that makes any sense whatsoever.

[monkey boy]

And neither is the Bastard!

[bendavison]

So we all need to pull our finger out then.

Back to significant repeats - Mar Alvarez (has anyone heard of her?) has done Era Vella making her the 5th female to climb 9a according to 8a.nu.

[Ru]

Thought evolution was 8c? And the bastard. And Ben's were abroad. So three then.

Evo is 8c+. One ascent in the last 10 years (excluding Ste Mac's repeats) by Ryan.

Bastard is at least 8c+ and I wouldn't be surprised if its a hard one at that. Having tried both, I think I'd be more likely to get up Hubble.

Progress might have been 8c back then as several holds have broken between then and now.

[Duma]

Sorry, think I'd got confused and meant progress (isn't this the one jerry initially gave 8c+ and then immediately downgraded?).
Tbh my post was more a responce to gav who seemed to be belittling this year's achievements by comparing to the best year of the nineties, when three of the best climbers in the world were brits, and many of the hardest routes to try were in the UK. Neither of these things are currently true, which makes this year more impressive to me, esp if you take progress to be 8c at the time.

[Ru]

Evo was also given 8c+ and almost immediately downgraded too, about the same time as Progress, so perhaps Progress was 8c+ all along too.

[Doylo]

Well at least we haven't got backwards....  It may be the case Gav but it's still an improvement on the last fifteen years. More people are breaking through now to proper hard routes.

[Ally Smith]

Mawson pointed out to me that 4 different British 8c+'s have been done this year by 4 different climbers (and no McClure). That's pretty good going really!

British Sport climbing is looking healthy!

Diamond Dogs - Pasquil
The Pink Star - Robins (FA)
Kaa'bah - SuperTed
Progress - Tim Palmer
Something steep in Flatanger - Ben Davidson
Something steep in Flatanger - Alan Cassidy (Inferred from tweets/blogs)
Staminaboys - lanky Barrows
Seleccio Natural (9a) - Tom Bolger

[Doylo]

And Jordan doing Rainshadow last year was the big one.

[gme]

Duma- I was not in anyway trying to belittle the achievements of those who have climbed 8c+ this year, that's really not in my nature as I genuinely want them all to climb hard. I was commenting on the fact that its was being suggested it was a vintage year in UK sports climbing because 4 British 8c+s have been climbed yet this was bettered 20 years ago.

I am actually pretty excited to see that there is a bunch of younger climbers starting to climb hard in the UK, its definitely heading in the right direction again. Plus if you speak to any of them there ambitions lie with 9a+-bs and beyond as  they look at world standards and dont think 8c+ is hard any more (is 9a really its been onsighted a few times now)and see it as a stepping stone to bigger things. But until this bunch is starting to regularly repeat Steve's routes we cant say its been a vintage year.

I am however pretty confident that will happen within a couple of years and then I will be impressed.

Re the grades of the routes you are right that evo, bastard and progress were given 8c as were LA and sea of tranquillity. I was under the impression that all are thought of as 8c+ now despite most of them not changing.

As an aside i am sure jerry only downgraded progress because Nic downgraded Evo. Nic had spent multiple days (20+) on progress up until Jerry did it (pinched it) and it was by far the hardest thing he had climbed at the time, if he had done it first I am sure he would have given it the +.

[bendavison]

I think it's an exciting time for British climbing. 9a may not be big news internationally any more but it's still significant in most countries, and I think we'll have a handful more people operating in the 9's in the next couple years.

[Duma]

Sorry gav, probably phrased poorly by me. All I meant to say really is 2014 (6-8 routes by 6-8 people) seems like a vintage year, even if it (arguably) isn't the best year ever, and that should be celebrated.

[abarro81]

Seleccio Natural (9a) - Tom Bolger

Plus Era Vella. Probably the first time a Brit has done 2 9as in the space of about a month?

I suspect Gav is right that we're only really just catching up with the 90s heyday in terms of volume of route at/above 8c+ being done by Brits, probably partly - as someone else mentioned - because of the increased popularity of bouldering. We are, however, doing significantly better than a few years ago: I remember when I moved to Sheffield 5-6 years ago, I barely saw anyone on anything above 8b at the tor or malham, whereas now you can expect to queue on the classic 8b+s and 8cs at the main crags. Maybe it's just my imagination though - do others think the same?
Hopefully this will feed through to more climbing 9s over the next few years, we'll just have to wait and see...

9a may not be big news internationally any more but it's still significant in most countries

Would agree with that. 9a+ is still just about internationally significant, 9b very much so (only Ondra, Sharma, Fernandez(?) done it on a genuine route that's not a boulder link?)

[Doylo]

I didn't say it was a vintage year anyway I said it was 'not bad'.

[gme]

I think the bouldering thing did affect sports climbing and not just in the UK, it went pretty stagnant for 10 years. However the rest of the world seemed to get back into it when we were obsessing about grit routes and now have a good way to catch back up again.

However I think that one very important thing that has been missing in the UK is that grades get pushed easier as a group rather than as individuals. In the 90s there was a lot of people, especially in Sheffield who climbed hard and the top guys kind of drag the rest along with them. Everyone feeds off each other and i feel this is starting to happen again as we have a volume of people coming through not just one. It happened on the grit with routes that everyone feared to try then suddenly joe bloggs does it and everyone else thinks fuck if he can do it so can i and a string of ascents follow. I think this will happen with 9as here as there is a bunch of younger climbers .

As an aside it makes the achievements of steve, operating as a lone ranger, even more impressive.

[cowboyhat]

As an aside it makes the achievements of steve, operating as a lone ranger, even more impressive.

Hear Hear

[miso soup]

Something steep in Flatanger - Alan Cassidy (Inferred from tweets/blogs)

Nordic Flower 8c+, although Joe Kinder also just did it and is calling it 8c/+.

[a dense loner]

The flatanger routes are mostly going to get downgraded over the next couple of yrs as it becomes a destination. It happens all the time

[gme]

It's already happened dense. A lot of the routes are downgraded in the new guide. Muy verdes, Nordic flower and Nordic Plummer were all 8c+ but are down to 8c.
However as ondra was involved in the grading a lot of people find them tough. Alan feels Nordic is 8c+ and I guess joe kinder does as well.