[shark]

Whoops - I seem to have removed the topic by mistake - now reversed

 

There was me thinking Gresh’s Inner Temple legal team had been in touch!

I have been bracing myself for the call

[Tony]

I'm confused about how high this crag is supposed to be.

I think we allow for a fair bit of hyperbole in reporting of lengths of routes and, especially, falls, generally. So I let that sort of thing slide unless it's completely ridiculous.

Firstly is it correct that a fall from ID is 12+ a bit metres?

The wall is about 25m, I think. If you fall from 1.5m below the top of ID (RP crux) with slack, non-tied-down belayer, rope stretch, and belay device slippage, ~10m sounds believable - mainly from the slack/deviations (say 2m) and movement of the belayer (say 3m based on your linked pic!!).

About half the fall is probably slack/belayer movement because you'd have to be really remiss for the climber to hit anything once that top peg is clipped so you may as well give them a soft catch. (Note: Best not to fall off ID before clipping the top peg.)

Rope stretch is approx proportional to the squareroot of the effective fall factor [FF] (for a given [climber's] mass and a given rope) and the (effective) total rope (available to stretch).

In your ID Vs Lexicon example, FF doubles (approxing on both that the fall is off the top) so elongation for the same climber on the same rope would be ~1.4x on Lex as for ID. But NG mentions using a single rope (less stretch). More significantly, though, he mentions a tied down belayer. Perhaps(?) a Grigri was used. There's possibly also slightly less slack/deviations. All these factors will mean the falls are not greatly comparable.

Empirically, in pic of SM after his fall, he 'looks' to be ~5m above ground so maybe ~20m fall so ~65ft.  I'm being "generous" with my estimates here, as SM did not come off the very top and he could well be more than 5m off the ground.

Regardless, 15-20m is still big, especially if, proportionally, less of that is deceleration (since belayer is tied down and it's on a Grigri).

[petejh]

Thanks, good breakdown. So more likely in the region of a 50-65 foot fall which like you say is BIG. Just not 80 feet..

I guess we all just need to 'hang on to our hats and wait for the film from Alistair Lee at this year's Britrock tour.'.

[jwi]

I usually use the following rule-of-thumb: if the climber has time to start to scream the fall is longer 10m.

(I am not sure where I got the rule from, so it is completely hearsay. But it makes sense: it takes a bit more than a second to take a quick deep breath and about one-and-a half to fall ten metre)

[Tony]

Hmmm, entertaining but entirely spurious. I call as evidence the regular "screaming" of profanities at the instant of departure from rock.

[Ged]

Agree. I think the hallmark of a plus 10 metre lob is the profanity, followed by drawing breath again and then screaming. A double scream if you will. The biggest lob I've ever seen was in gorge du tarn, off one of those things with massive runouts high up. That might have even been a triple screamer.

[mrjonathanr]

Good theory. The biggest lob I ever saw was John Dunne at Malham using Zoolook to get fit. He skipped the draw on the run out, got higher then fell off anyway. The rope went from Andy Jack’s plate down to his feet, horizontally across the floor and then up towards John.

They met somewhere by the first bolt. As the theory suggests, there were indeed many profanities uttered.

[duncan]

1. Steve Maclure, who will agree with everything Neil says.

You can read if he did or not in this interview for the BMC.

[Wellsy]

Isn't really the viewpoint for most of us "looks way harder than anything I'll ever do, who fucking knows"

[Tony]

Isn't really the viewpoint for most of us "looks way harder than anything I'll ever do, who fucking knows"

You know this is a discussion board, yeah?

Your response would make for some really dull discussions.

[Fiend]

1. Steve Maclure, who will agree with everything Neil says.

You can read if he did or not in this interview for the BMC.

Spoiler:

NSFW  :

Of course, people will ask my opinion on the E11 grade, like I actually know! I am no expert like MacLeod, though  I'll suggest that it is harder than other E10’s I’ve done. And so it could be E11, or hard E10, but overall, I'm not suggesting it should be downgraded. Of course we may be wrong, it may be E10, but E11 seems a fair place to start.

So that will be a yes then  Lucky I guess Ste Mac's got a scrawny enough butt that he can perch nicely on the fence he's sitting on 

Also updated topo from a different angle, showing the full scruffy insignificance of this 40' wall tucked away in a grotty gully. https://www.instagram.com/p/CUCjto8oZ6K/?utm_source=ig_embed

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Yes, scruffy 

There are many classic routes that boil down to one harder, shorter pitch. Same is true of routes on mountain crags in Wales too.

I took a lob off the top of Total Eclipse. A crew were there getting footage with a thing called "Pole Cam", interviewing Ben and Jerry. They were looking for an idiot to volunteer for a big lob.

I clipped the bolt on the lip, and ran it out from there to the belay (maybe E5 6b IIRC). We had reams of slack out, and the hardest part was just looking straight at the camera while letting go. Ended up somewhere near the start of Obsession.

The second time, I started tipping over backwards, which wasn't great for my back when I stopped. Twice was enough 

[petejh]

Also updated topo from a different angle, showing the full scruffy insignificance of this 40' wall tucked away in a grotty gully. https://www.instagram.com/p/CUCjto8oZ6K/?utm_source=ig_embed

Am I right to think that the dotted lines on that topo should be the Lexicon start and finish? Most of the line of Lexicon seems to comprise Impact Day, and I.D it was done long before and is considered a pretty significant route in its own right(?). Just seems a bit dismissive, without knowing the wall or the routes. Maybe I.D is an eliminate/variation on the obvious line.

[Fiend]

Pretty sure the focus of the topo lines in this case is on Lexicon, as the topo and associated discussion is about Lexicon. And  God knows there hasn't been enough discussion about Lexicon yet.....

[petejh]

Fairy muff.

[mark20]

I really enjoyed the Lexicon film. It's a good looking line up a vague rib on the leaning headwall. Massive respect to Neil Gresham who clearly put alot of work into getting it done, and comes across brilliantly in the film, very inspiring 

[andy moles]

I thought as a film it was run-of-the-mill. Which is fine, it only happened a few weeks ago and the content is worth watching.

Standout moments were Steve's massive fall, obviously, and Gresh's top-out celebration.

Oh, and "more celebrities than Love Island" 

[Duncan campbell]

I really enjoyed the Lexicon film. It's a good looking line up a vague rib on the leaning headwall. Massive respect to Neil Gresham who clearly put alot of work into getting it done, and comes across brilliantly in the film, very inspiring 

Me too - that headwall looks amazing! Ste macs fall was well worth seeing and gresh came across well too - not trying to sell anything just psyched about the route. The rock up there is fantastic looking

[Ged]

I really enjoyed the Lexicon film. It's a good looking line up a vague rib on the leaning headwall. Massive respect to Neil Gresham who clearly put alot of work into getting it done, and comes across brilliantly in the film, very inspiring 

Where is said film?

[mark20]

Brit Rock film tour. Presumably to be put online when the tour is done

[remus]

Alistair Lee had a good shot of Steve Mcs fall in his Brit Rock film which I thought would offer a good opportunity to try and work out how big the fall actually is. Thankfully he's just posted it on facebook so I whipped out the steve mc ruler, and it works out at about 9.5 x mid-fall steve mcs (from his feet at the top to his feet at the bottom:



Say 1 mid-fall Steve Mc is between 1 m and 1.2 m tall, then the fall is probably about 9.5m to 11.4m. Conclusions: definitely not 20m. Definitely a long way. I definitely wouldn't be psyched to take that ride.

Assumptions: there isn't some crazy lense on the camera that'd be distorting the image. The stitching used to put together the pic hasn't stretched it weirdly. The top of the shot is pretty close to where Steve actually fell off. The bottom of the shot is pretty close to where Steve actually stopped.

[Bradders]

I mean, however far it is, he's pretty flipping close to his belayer when he stops!

[IanP]

Alistair Lee had a good shot of Steve Mcs fall in his Brit Rock film which I thought would offer a good opportunity to try and work out how big the fall actually is. Thankfully he's just posted it on facebook so I whipped out the steve mc ruler, and it works out at about 9.5 x mid-fall steve mcs (from his feet at the top to his feet at the bottom:



Say 1 mid-fall Steve Mc is between 1 m and 1.2 m tall, then the fall is probably about 9.5m to 11.4m. Conclusions: definitely not 20m. Definitely a long way. I definitely wouldn't be psyched to take that ride.

Assumptions: there isn't some crazy lense on the camera that'd be distorting the image. The stitching used to put together the pic hasn't stretched it weirdly. The top of the shot is pretty close to where Steve actually fell off. The bottom of the shot is pretty close to where Steve actually stopped.

Good geeky stuff - just to add to it, 1.2 m sounds a bit low.  Checked my height sitting on standard dining room chair (feels about right for Steve's falling position)  and it came just under 80% of my standing height, applying same calculation to Steve (1.69m) gives 1.34m so fall height of 12.7m , still a way off 20m but as you say a pretty long way

[cheque]

Assumptions: there isn't some crazy lense on the camera that'd be distorting the image. The stitching used to put together the pic hasn't stretched it weirdly.

Assuming the camera’s followed Steve as he’s falling (I haven’t seen the film yet ) and it’s not on some kind of vertical slider then there’ll be some kind of perspective distortion because the camera’s pivoted on one point rather than linearly following the fall. Whether that makes much of a difference to this highly scientific measurement I’m not sure but it’s the reason that architectural etc. photographers who need to stitch photos together with total accuracy use panoramic heads that allow the camera to be moved along one plane only between shots.

[Fiend]

Top anal retentive dweebery there, who says this forum is a bunch of ex-climbers doing book reviews or some bollox like that?!