[hongkongstuey]

Full clip is on the patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/aidans-close-go-83500270

cheers guys (hadn't realised i could scan through all the older uploads on the Patreon to see what was uploaded before i'd signed up... that's a good afternoon at 'work' k.o'd for me  )

[T_B]

I don’t really get all this agonising over grades.

Sharma had a long period when he didn’t grade anything.

If you’re right at the top of the game then you can do what you like. Aidan is there and his attitude to place/process and all that is refreshing. He maybe doesn’t realise it but he has the potential to really influence how we perceive climbing.

I personally am pretty inspired by his approach and the way he articulates his experiences. I cannot say that about many other top/current climbers, including Ondra. Maybe I’m a bit biased being from the Lakes myself but the bit in the pod about local projects really resonated with me.

He’s a gifted communicator and these recent climbs deserve something long form both written and visual. I thought the Wedge film Mastery was absolutely top notch. Hopefully they can put something else together similar with the help of Patagonia.

[teestub]

Great post Tom, I agree with all of that, so nice to have such a good climber who can give a bit more context to their experience and process on these things.

[Bradders]

Agreed. Have to say it's a bit of a shame there's been so much cynicism around this. I think we're incredibly lucky Aidan is so happy to delve into such detail on his experiences; very rare for someone operating at the absolute top of the game. The podcast is a brilliant resource for anyone interested in these top end performances.

I'm not even sure anyone's said well done to him yet! Just in case; bloody well done Aidan! Properly psyched for you 

Particularly amazing to have done the Midnight problem from the lower start too, given just the higher start seemed like it'd be right up with the hardest things around.

[monkoffunk]

I don’t really get all this agonising over grades.

Sharma had a long period when he didn’t grade anything.

If you’re right at the top of the game then you can do what you like. Aidan is there and his attitude to place/process and all that is refreshing. He maybe doesn’t realise it but he has the potential to really influence how we perceive climbing.

I personally am pretty inspired by his approach and the way he articulates his experiences. I cannot say that about many other top/current climbers, including Ondra. Maybe I’m a bit biased being from the Lakes myself but the bit in the pod about local projects really resonated with me.

He’s a gifted communicator and these recent climbs deserve something long form both written and visual. I thought the Wedge film Mastery was absolutely top notch. Hopefully they can put something else together similar with the help of Patagonia.

Yeah, I think he’s right that at this point the grades are detracting from the climbs themselves. Certainly the conversation is get skewed. And as I’ve mentioned before the conversation in forums like insta is really vitriolic.

It’s interesting that UKC hasn’t even picked this up as news yet. Maybe they are waiting for comment or words from Aidan, but you’d expect if he had graded them that this would have been instant news flashes. It’s almost like without the grade it doesn’t count.

[owensum]

If it's left ungraded then the media will just make up a grade, say if Aidan says its the hardest thing he's done, media will just say it must be 9A then and call it that. I think they're just incapable of abandoning the grade narrative.

[andy moles]

But, playing devil's advocate a wee bit - people are only interested because it's very hard. And the grade is just a quantification of how hard. It could be a stunning problem, it could be a shit problem - in any case it's too hard for 99.99% of people who follow climbing media to even attempt, so what's the angle of interest if not how hard it is? 'Climber has really profound experience'? That could happen on a VS and it wouldn't be 'news'.

I'm trying to imagine UKC publishing a News Flash titled 'Aidan Roberts Climbs Hard Project'. Guaranteed almost instantly there would be speculation and chat about the grade. So it's not just the media publishers, it's the consumers too.

All this said, I think it's cool to stick two fingers up to the shallowness of the media and do things on your own terms.

[IanP]

If it's left ungraded then the media will just make up a grade, say if Aidan says its the hardest thing he's done, media will just say it must be 9A then and call it that. I think they're just incapable of abandoning the grade narrative.

I don't think he really left them completely ungraded, more didnt want to commit to an exact number. 

In the podcast he said if he was to put a grade range on Spots of Time it would be 8c+ to 9a and hinted that if forced he probably say 9a but he wasn't sure how much the style suited him (also said he found it took more effort for him than Alphane).  Must be one of the very hardest problems in the UK.

On the Midnight project he said it suited him much better and Sam got him to admit that it he thought it would be the harder of the 2 for most climbers.  Also seems like quite a few other strong climbers have tried it with him.  Sounds proper hard and almost certainly in the 9a range.

Really impressive first ascents by a UK boulderer who's operating right at the top of world standards, exciting stuff.  Thought the podcast was well worth a listen, sometimes I find them a little unfocused (though often interesting) but this episode gave a really insight into the climbing of these problems.

[Duncan campbell]

Climbing media has definitely published news about ungraded things - Tribe springs to mind most immediately.

We as climbers in general are fairly addicted to grades (myself included) I really like how Aidan thinks about all this and has the courage to not reduce these things to grades.

They are clearly hard and I’m sure he will attach a number eventually.

What I also like about Aidan is that he just does his own thing, at his own pace and is only psyched for other people doing their stuff.

He is a process and soul climber through and through and it shows… because he’s not necessarily trying to get to the top. Definitely something I am trying to be better at.

Very deserving to stand on top of these boulders… long May he continue to have great experiences fettling around on minging crimps

[Duma]

So it's now been out for a week, free in the public domain via the podcast, (and in the case of Spots of Time, for months via the paid podcast), that Aidan has climbed 2 first ascents this winter, both of which look excellent, both of which were harder for him than Alphane, one is likely the hardest in the UK, the other of which is one of the the hardest in the world.


And nothing on any of the climbing news sites, just because there's no picture and grade on insta? really?

[andy popp]

I was thinking of posting exactly the same.

In the meantime, freshly released video from last year.

[gme]

So it's now been out for a week, free in the public domain via the podcast, (and in the case of Spots of Time, for months via the paid podcast), that Aidan has climbed 2 first ascents this winter, both of which look excellent, both of which were harder for him than Alphane, one is likely the hardest in the UK, the other of which is one of the the hardest in the world.


And nothing on any of the climbing news sites, just because there's no picture and grade on insta? really?

I like how he is controlling his own media, journalism seems so lazy these days and most of the climbing sites just re hash Instagram posts in the guise of news, check UKCs recent ones of Shauna and Dave Mc for classic examples. Until they add something to the story why bother reading it.

Pretty sure there will be a more long form interview, film and comment in time, which i personally prefer.

More importunately we have a likely 9A in the UK (wills not even managed all the moves yet after a few sessions) and a contender for the hardest in the world. Aiden also sounds very close to Burden.

UK boulderers leading the world.

[Duma]

I was thinking of posting exactly the same.

In the meantime, freshly released video from last year.

Lovely, thanks. Swiss Air looks so amazing, wish it was in my pay grade!

[Duma]

I like how he is controlling his own media, journalism seems so lazy these days and most of the climbing sites just re hash Instagram posts in the guise of news, check UKCs recent ones of Shauna and Dave Mc for classic examples. Until they add something to the story why bother reading it.

Fair enough, but do you think he's asked sites not to report these ascents? seems unlikely?

[remus]

I like how he is controlling his own media, journalism seems so lazy these days and most of the climbing sites just re hash Instagram posts in the guise of news, check UKCs recent ones of Shauna and Dave Mc for classic examples. Until they add something to the story why bother reading it.

I've got some sympathy for UKC in particular as they do put out good quality, original content alongside the lower effort stuff like Shauna on Fat Lip recently. It's a tricky balance in the era of instant news because either you put out a quick post with minimal details to get something that's current, or you wait a week for an interview and have a better article, but you're a week too late and nobody cares.

I guess it's not so different to traditional news outlets in a lot of ways. A lot of 'news' these days is articles from a wire agency (reuters etc.) that are lightly re-written for your site of choice.

Having said that I do wish more news sites would lean in to interviews, further research etc. It feels like that's where they can add real value, whereas anyone who wants speedy reporting can just follow people they're interested in on insta.

[jwi]

There is no need to read daily updates on climbing news. It's just a bunch of mostly insignificant datapoints. A monthly update is plenty.

I am of the same opinion on general news. Getting the news once a week is already bordeline pathological. Several times per day is psychotic.

Cf https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

[Duma]

But none of this answers the question of why the news sites (UKC in particular, given the UK angle) haven't picked it up? They're clearly not averse to just tweaking and reposting - ie the Shauna Fat Lip repeat another catch heel I see So why would you ignore these ascents? Doing a newsflash brief piece doesn't stop you putting out something more in depth later. These are 2 of the 3 most significant ascent's this winter for UK readership.

[lukeyboy]

I don't know the economics but climbing is still quite niche, so I can imagine the 'return' on a news story may not be worth someone reasonably competent/paid spending more than quite a limited amount of time on, even if they could or wanted to.

Even within the niche of climbing, there will only be a small subset of nerds like us who follow and particularly care about news stories like this.

Aside from all that I agree with Duma's point that it's odd no-one has published even just a brief 'newsflash' about this, based on the podcast where the ascents are publicly recounted in detail by the person who made them (i.e. the information is available, public and reliable).

[Wellsy]

UKC's news is more of a content aggregator than it is like, there are rumours of X, we contacted to confirm or deny etc

Like, does anyone working at UKC know of Aidans recent climbs?

[T_B]

Duma - there’s been nothing published on UKC about Aidan since August 2022 that hasn’t been lifted off his IG. I suspect you’ll find the same with all the other sites. So difficult for them to publish anything with no photos and just referencing his/Sam’s podcast?

[remus]

Like, does anyone working at UKC know of Aidans recent climbs?

Definitely. At the start of the patreon-only pod about Spots of Time Aidan mentioned that someone from UKC had contacted him about the lakes thing, so guess that would have been around mid-march?

[Bradders]

Duma - there’s been nothing published on UKC about Aidan since August 2022 that hasn’t been lifted off his IG. I suspect you’ll find the same with all the other sites. So difficult for them to publish anything with no photos and just referencing his/Sam’s podcast?

There's a lovely photo of Spots of Time on the Wedge Patreon Discord 

 

[teestub]

So it's now been out for a week, free in the public domain via the podcast, (and in the case of Spots of Time, for months via the paid podcast),

Podcast on Patreon of Spots news was 22nd March, so not quite months yet 😄 Aidan also said on that podcast that UKC had approached him for a story when he’d only told a few people he’d done it. Maybe we will get a nice essay in the next issue of Spotter instead.

[Will Hunt]

Full news story up on UKC now.
https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2024/04/aidan_roberts_climbs_two_top-end_projects-73655

I spoke to Rob about this and they've known for ages. They've wanted to put this up earlier but were waiting for more info from Aidan which took longer than they'd expected.

There's a longer interview on the way.

[Fiend]

That's pretty informative. I'll be looking forward to the video of Spots, unless it's paywalled for devoted acolytes only.