[tc]

I understand that Mr Haston has just onsighted "Greenspit" (8b+/5.14a) in the Valle del Orco. A very fine achievement. Is this the hardest trad onsight yet?

[account_inactive]

 

[chillax]

Fair fucks if he did! Man is an inspiration.

My understanding was the hardest trad onsights have been E8's, and the list of people who have done that is extremely small. Off hand I can think of:
Birkett
Neil Dickson
Belgian Sean
Geldard and McHaffie (if that Bam Bam thing is E8)

Don't know about any comparable yank achievements.

I don't know if any of the routes they onsighted are of the same physical difficulty as Greenspit. All idle speculation on my part though, as a complete punter. Whatever. If Haston did do that he's even more of a legend than he was already!

[Will Hunt]

Confirmed by 8a's grade table. 8b+ safe climbing is exactly equivalent to E9 7a 

[Jim]

bransby, pasqual

[SA Chris]

Confirmed by 8a's grade table.

Can you confirm anything using 8a.nu??

But yes, fucking nails regardless. Good work the man.

[nik at work]

  with Dylan. Wowzers.

[Tommy]

Confirmed by 8a's grade table. 8b+ safe climbing is exactly equivalent to E9 7a 

In my opinion greenspit is 8b and would only be equivalent to e8 and not e9. Much that I'd love it..... ;-)

[Johnny Brown]

Wow, the man's on fire this year. I hope I can still be having best years ever at that age.

[Steve R]

Impressive! Successfully applying his 9a Grotte de Sabart endurance to trad routes?  What a wide skills set - I wonder how many 9a and beyond sport climbers would be able to get up green spit?  never mind onsight it?

[Doylo]

I wonder how many 9a and beyond sport climbers would be able to get up green spit? 

Probably quite a few

[Steve R]

I wonder how many 9a and beyond sport climbers would be able to get up green spit? 

Probably quite a few

yeah, the way I wrote that comes across differently than intended - it was more of a genuine question rather than trying to make some point that  elite sport climbers are only good at pulling on bolted limestone or whatever.  Thinking about it, a lot of the climbers at that level, or at least the ones you hear about, are fairly non-specialist, multi-talents to be fair.

[Fiend]

Very good but turns out it's a flash with some gear in. Still hugely impressive and shows the breadth of the old man's talents...

[tc]

All the more impressive when you consider how fast Haston climbed it ("a few minutes!") and the fact that, according to the reports, the 2nd ascent took 2 days and the 3rd ascent 6 days.

[andy popp]

Jens is getting his knickers in a right twist over this. He does seem to really, really hate us. I wonder why. Do you think he had some traumatic childhood experience at the hands of an Englishman? Perhaps someone with an 8a.nu account should ask him?

[jwi]

Fantastic achivement! Greenspit got to be one of the hardest, if not the hardest, crack ever o/s?  I know of a few 13b/c cracks that have been o/s, but nothing harder.

@andy> I can tell you for free: Jens doesn't hate you in particular, he is just stupid.  As in dense.  As in will not understand subtext.  If you are writing to him in Swedish, using sentences slightly too complicated for an 8 year old, he wont get it.  How little he understands of a paragraph written in a foreign language I cannot begin to phantom.

[chillax]

Jens is getting his knickers in a right twist over this. He does seem to really, really hate us. I wonder why. Do you think he had some traumatic childhood experience at the hands of an Englishman? Perhaps someone with an 8a.nu account should ask him?

Cheers for pointing that out. Funniest thing I've seen all day! 

[SA Chris]

Where can  be amused by Jens getting wound up?

See Caedmon's post in the forum "How should media report greenspit". I hope he still has a profile here so I can wad him.

[Palomides]

Crikey, that was an entertaining few minutes reading the ranting at 8a.nu.

I don't think that jens hates us (well, no more than the usual slight distaste that all mainland euros seem to harbour for the Engleesh). I just think that he has a completely binary brain. All his stuff about trying to reduce climbing to numbers, trying to put everything in a precisely labelled box under onsight/flash/etc, refusing to use split grades, deciding grades based on maths, etc etc.

I don't think he can handle shades of grey or any kind of subtlety in his worldview. The fact that Stevie placed some gear, downclimbed and then did the route after Laurance seems to add too many variables - I notice that he hasn't tried to propose a label for this style, he just keeps repeating "it is not a flash" in various ways.

God help him if he ever realises that grades are abstract constructions form the mind of man, rather than immutable constants. His head will probably explode.

BTW, I cannot fathom how hard 8b crack climbing must be. I'm familiar with having to struggle hard on HVSs, and being unable to move on harder cracks, but 8b crack climbing is too far from any scope of reference I have. Awesome effort from Papy Haston.

[ding dong]

you'll have to avoid the wrath of stevie to manage that adam! i hear the doris style comments didnt go down too well!!

Wow, the man's on fire this year. I hope I can still be having best years ever at that age.

[a dense loner]

thats the problem with writing on the internet, most people seem to think they can write what they want about who they want with no comeback whatsoever just because they see something as being right. this is just a general view.

anyone who doesn't think stevie is a beast obviously has no eyes or ears

[Jaspersharpe]

Or at least wont have for much longer.

[Fiend]

thats the problem with writing on the internet, most people seem to think they can write what they want about who they want with no comeback whatsoever just because they see something as being right. this is just a general view.

The problem is, you don't keep them in line dense