[Doylo]

Well there's only wrinkles to age you when the hairs gone

[SA Chris]

Who's next?

Scott Blunk.

[andy popp]

Who's next?

Scott Blunk.

Brilliant idea.

[tomtom]

Who's next?

Scott Blunk.

Brilliant idea.

Lovely fella - had the pleasure of meeting him earlier in the year..

[Greg C]

Nigel, r-man. Greg C. The fact that none of that makes sense or adds up still doesn't make you think anything other than that you need to abb the line to work it out.

Amazing. I'm truly bemused.

Well if I'm going to have an opinion (and lets face it that's all it will ever be) one way or the other then I would like it to have some grounding. That's all. With these things if you have a preconceived opinion you can fit the facts to suit your story e.g. left / right mix up = liar! vs left / right mix-up = getting names of Last Temptation and Shipman's Surgery the wrong way round (thanks for pointing out Tom, this could well be the case). Pointing out the glaringly obvious if people are going to call out John's claim on this Thorn Crag thing then they are definitely in the realms of circumstantial evidence, as I know of absolutely no-one who has abbed it. Most haven't even been to Thorn Crag. Yes there is an air of mystery to it and John's description is certainly erroneous in some way, but I would say that's cause to have a look rather than shout him down.

I have abbed it but it was a while ago. My current view is than John climbed a hard line right of Last Temptation, but I'm of the view it wasn't what most people would call the prow. With his description relating to falling onto the higher ground below LT this is the only rational conclusion you can come too. I have asked him three or four times for details and each time he states what is written here and what he says in the interview. It would be nice to iron it out as its an incredible climb but I'm not sure what else can be done to ascertain the exact line - even re-abbing is only going to lead to more guess work.

[shark]

I have abbed it but it was a while ago. My current view is than John climbed a hard line right of Last Temptation, but I'm of the view it wasn't what most people would call the prow. With his description relating to falling onto the higher ground below LT this is the only rational conclusion you can come too. I have asked him three or four times for details and each time he states what is written here and what he says in the interview. It would be nice to iron it out as its an incredible climb but I'm not sure what else can be done to ascertain the exact line - even re-abbing is only going to lead to more guess work.

Would it help if I asked whether he climbed the Prow direct ? along with the other questions

[Johnny Brown]

Maybe just print the photo out and get him to draw a line on it?

Someone should do the sitter and call it 'Decade of obfuscation'.

[Greg C]

I have abbed it but it was a while ago. My current view is than John climbed a hard line right of Last Temptation, but I'm of the view it wasn't what most people would call the prow. With his description relating to falling onto the higher ground below LT this is the only rational conclusion you can come too. I have asked him three or four times for details and each time he states what is written here and what he says in the interview. It would be nice to iron it out as its an incredible climb but I'm not sure what else can be done to ascertain the exact line - even re-abbing is only going to lead to more guess work.

Would it help if I asked whether he climbed the Prow direct ? along with the other questions

What Johnny said sounds like a good idea. Other than that I can't think of any other questions I haven't already asked him.

[tomtom]

Maybe just print the photo out and get him to draw a line on it?

Someone should do the sitter and call it 'Decade of obfuscation'.

or Sitting on the fence...

[Probes]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/1511362_704018609638554_1388559518_n.jpg

There's not a great deal of rock to the right of last temptation to get confused about if you ask me... And the jug on the arete at the same height of my mates head is where eases of..

[Stubbs]

It seems crazy that no wads have been and checked this out, it looks like there's grips and everything!

[Probes]

pretty sure jordans been up on it. everythings as well as grips, dunno what theyre waiting for..

[SEDur]

A blessing.

[tomtom]

a funicular railway to avoid the 45min walk in?

[petejh]

One of the stand-out passages for me in that interview was this:

Simon: There must have been a lot that happened to go from climbing french 7c to repeating Hubble (9a)?

Gaskins: Well there was 4 or 5 years between the two. I used the walls down at Ambleside, and augmented that with doing footless circuits on some holds I'd put up on the beam on the ceiling of my parent's garage..... Then I did stuff like Magnetic Fields, Gigantic at Wilton, Austrian Oak...

Simon: Yes.

(goes on to describe how he built his first board to train specifically for Hubble)

[SA Chris]

Who's next?

Scott Blunk.

Brilliant idea.

John Sherman's favourite spotter. I bet he has some great stories to tell.

[GCW]

I was surprised he even mentioned Austrian Oak, it's a bit of a trade route nowadays.

[SA Chris]

He read up on UKB beforehard, it was a deliberate wind up.

[Eddies]

One of the stand-out passages for me in that interview was this:

Simon: There must have been a lot that happened to go from climbing french 7c to repeating Hubble (9a)?

Gaskins: Well there was 4 or 5 years between the two. I used the walls down at Ambleside, and augmented that with doing footless circuits on some holds I'd put up on the beam on the ceiling of my parent's garage..... Then I did stuff like Magnetic Fields, Gigantic at Wilton, Austrian Oak...

Simon: Yes.

Good one!!

[Nemo]

Shark / John – good effort taking the time to make the interview.

Shadowplay…  I think it’s time someone just said it.  In its current form this clearly hasn't been climbed and isn't going to be climbed.  Most of the "series of layaways and small edges" is pretty clearly no longer attached to the boulder.  Frankly this was obvious donkeys years ago when various very hard boulderers went to check it out and left grumbing about wasting petrol money for a non existent problem.  The rock quality isn't great and holds have fallen off the problems to both sides.  It's not like it's some weird 3D wall with loads of possibilities for obscure sequences.  It's a flat 45 degree overhanging wall.  (If I’m wrong and there really is some ridiculously obscure sequence that everyone’s missed, then fair enough.  But from the interview it didn’t sound like that - and barring further information I think it’s more than reasonable to assume that this problem no longer exists.)

Jasper - The description for the problem at Almscliff donkeys years ago was equally confusing.  At a guess he gave a lot less thought to describing what he'd climbed than doing the actual climbing.  Which is unfortunate (both for him and everyone else.) 

But at the risk of pointing out the obvious – THIS is the kind of thing that’s caused all the fuss.  What we've got is a number of problems where noone has the slightest clue what he actually climbed.  These very confusing descriptions along with the utter ludicrousness of Shadowplay has led to:
1.  ridiculously over the top hero worshipping nonsense assuming the guy has 5 arms, campuses between electrons and levitates up blank overhanging walls. 
2.  a bunch of people who just think he's talking cobblers. 

The truth is almost certainly a combination of the fact that he was a very good climber (but not the best climber the world has ever seen) who spent an awful lot of time on a relatively small number of things of a certain type, hold loss, and a bunch of hopelessly vague descriptions. 

Of his hardest things, Shadowplay is pretty obviously no longer a problem.  I seem to remember reading somewhere on here (can’t find it – maybe I was dreaming?) someone saying that Il Pirata had also shed a hold???  Perhaps that is still climbable, but it sounded like it is no longer in its original state (that was only ever likely to be of much interest to locals anyway for quality reasons).  That leaves Walk Away Sit, which sounds like it is very much climbable and may well even turn out to be fairly doable for 8C – if it was in Boulder (or perhaps even at Ravens Tor) I suspect this would have had a number of ascents.  And VNB – which I don’t think enough people have tried for anyone to have too much of a sensible opinion.  At a guess, VNB will turn out to be his hardest still existing climb.

I completely get it that he doesn’t like blowing his trumpet.  But without being clear about the details of ascents, what you always get in the climbing world is rumours and myths – both positive and negative – that just go on indefinitely.  Providing clarity is precisely the opposite of blowing your trumpet – it stops people yacking on about this stuff for ever,  stops controversies from getting out of hand, and stops other people blowing a thousand trumpets on your behalf.  (I don’t know anything about what happened in Germany, but I rather suspect that some of the rumours and myths in the UK had reached there by that time – and that without them that controversy would probably never have happened).

Obviously there is never going to be any “proof” of things that he climbed on his own – so no doubt there will continue to be a small number of sceptics.  But the biggest problem up till now that fuelled the scepticism is that Shadowplay in its current form is – literally – unbelievable.  Now we know he hasn’t seen the thing in over 8 years, so hopefully the fuel for the scepticism will fade.  If that had been taken out of the equation earlier, I suspect that most of the rumours / myths wouldn’t have got started in the first place.


Shark - if you're gonna get back in touch with John I think the obvious things to ask would be:
1.  Ask if he's prepared to go and check out Shadowplay - if he's into going running in the mountains it'd only take a few minutes to go and have a look.  I think clarity on that would put an end to most of the ridiculously overly positive and equally overly negative views.  And if he’s up for it, perhaps confirmation of whether there have been hold changes on Il Pirata too.

2.  Sounds like you’ve already asked for some of the other footage of him climbing – in particular though I think the footage of VNB would be great to see.  Going forward, I think this and Walk on By Sit are the two of his hardest things that people are likely to show most interest in.  The sequence on Walk On By Sit sounds like it's pretty obvious.  But think it would be really useful for people to see exactly what sequence he used on VNB.

3.  If he's prepared to take a look at some pictures of his other unrepeated problems and try and describe them a little more clearly I think it would be very helpful (maybe ask Carlisle or Greg or someone which ones are still unclear?)  I realise it's ages since he's done these things so it might be hard to remember right down to the RH thurrrr, LF thurrr type details.  But with things like MOC it shouldn't be hard to be clear about which side of the flippin arete was climbed!

I know that some people seem to think that all this enigmatic, vague, mythical stuff is very entertaining.  But after a decade, frankly it's wearing thin.  The guy hasn't moved to Antarctica or anything.  And at the moment he's clearly happy to answer questions - it seems to me that this is a good opportunity to actually get this stuff sorted.  It isn’t fair to future guidebook writers to leave this stuff in a ridiculously confused state – with them having to grovel and beg for tidbits of information in order to try to document things.  It would only take him a tiny amount of time to sort this stuff out and all the silly fuss would be over.  And if things were cleared up, I’m quite sure there’d be much more interest from uber wads in things like Walk Away Sit and VNB.

[Fiend]

It isn’t fair to future guidebook writers to leave this stuff in a ridiculously confused state – with them having to grovel and beg for tidbits of information in order to try to document things.

That is a fair point.

[Monolith]

Nemo - I appreciate it's a highly tenuous sentence that I'm about to write but with respect to Walkaway SS, a forum member on here a few years ago mentioned that him and his girlfriend had a session at that sector whilst bumping into John and his wife. He was seen to do both the sit and start moves independent on the day by said person. Again I appreciate the uselessness of what I've just said and a forum search would doubtless lead you to this account.

[r-man]

Of his hardest things, Shadowplay is pretty obviously no longer a problem...That leaves Walk Away Sit, which sounds like it is very much climbable and may well even turn out to be fairly doable for 8C.

I understand where you are coming from, but even if you discount Shadowplay and Il Pirata, the legacy is still an impressive list of ascents, for many of which the line is quite clear. Nevermind the 8C's, repeats of the 8B+'s and trickier 8B's would be a great prize. I'm sure they'll happen sooner or later though.

Traci Lords sit, 8B+
Kaizen, At The Heart Of It All, 8B+ (I know these have been repeated by Sam Davenhall)
Pillbox Wall, 8B/+?
Endless Nameless, 8B - the Stanworth slab

[c3po]

I watched this then did weighted pull ups, now I'm inspired to loose weight.  I note people getting hung up on finer detail of some acents but it's just a peice of rock to mark your level of ability.  If JG is anything like me he cant remember what he did yestgerday let alone a few years ago, These probs may be important to other people but work and kids over take everything else and even seemingly important peices of 'rock' are forgotten to real life!

PS: I think Sam Davenhall pulled a hold off Ill Pirata in the last couple of years, I havent climbed for so long I havent seen it since.  I'v seen SD climb and he was bloody strong/heavy! 

[Probes]

I can confirm that Sam very nearly pulled the starting flake off il pirate, he then glued/reinforced it back on. There are only 3 other holds (vaguely speaking) that make up the main problem these are very much still there and nearly always chalked