[Fiend]

8a climbing with the risk of a 15m fall climbing the belay ledge, hard 8b to climb up, place the crucial nest of marginal  RP 0s, skyhooks and peckers and downclimb to the ledge, etc etc.

[ali k]

Looks like benchmark E9 6c to me. What’s with all this foreign grading malarkey?!

[Alex-the-Alex]

Oooo that's an amazing bit of wall.  Nice work Dave. That must have been eyed up and tried by a few folks?

[Kingy]

I'll second that, great work by Dave keeping it together in that remote location. According to the vid, the line was discovered by Ste Mac relatively recently so the chances of it having been tried before Dave and Iain Small are quite low I would say. Also, seems like f*ck all ppl are even trying that kind of thing on TR up on the Ben, never mind actually leading it.

The downclimbing seems a bit contrived but I think I can get my head around it. Seems fair game if the lead has to be done the same session as the downclimb. So if you sleep inbetween the downclimb and the lead then you have to do it again. Mad that you have to do an 8b downclimb to tick an 8a route! I wonder how much 'bounce testing' of the gear they did from the safety of the ground to really jam those microwires in or maybe the screamers precluded this?

I guess other than toproping there is realistically no other way these blank walls will ever be climbed without bolts and it is environmentally friendly to boot as no rusting ironmongery is left behind in the rock.

[dunnyg]

Cheers for th link Fiend, cool looking climb. Doing your own camera work, changing camera angles mid climb, dedicated to making a good viddy! Enjoyed the film a lot though, so fair play!
Got me psyched to try and climb on the Ben in summer yet again  (one day!), probably not that particular route though....

[Alex-the-Alex]

According to the vid, the line was discovered by Ste Mac relatively recently so the chances of it having been tried before Dave and Iain Small are quite low I would say.

Yeah that surprised me. It's the line you ab down for all the climbs on that wall. And a good belay to set up a line (even if you have to rope solo titans wall...). Maybe the redpointing approach for these big mountain walls is more recent than I'm thinking. It has to be one of the walls in the country though, and with great history already. Dave must be feeling chuffed with this one.

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Yes, great vid.

And another silly name 

Splendid piece of climbing. Looks really enticing.

Down climbing after placing your top runners isn't unusual, and the debate about "sleeping between sessions" has gone on for decades.

There's an interesting trend here, with different people fighting over content/bandwidth etc on social media - it's the climbing equivalent of the plethora of videos of people resto-ing old Porsches/Ferraris.

Would be great to have some footage of Gresham's route too 

Edit: personal preference would be an E grade, maybe with the sport in brackets.

[andy popp]

Yep, really enjoyed. I liked just his whole attitude to the thing.

[User deactivated.]

There's an interesting trend here, with different people fighting over content/bandwidth etc on social media - it's the climbing equivalent of the plethora of videos of people resto-ing old Porsches/Ferraris.

This is happening in literally every sport, hobby or pastime you can think of. Fortunately Dave Mac doesn't go too far down the path of clickbaity shite and his 'content' is generally quality.

[teestub]

And another silly name 

Had to look it up due to my lack of classical education, but choosing the name of a titaness for your route on Titan Wall seems appropriate?

[SA Chris]

It's not a word in my lexicon though!

[Fiend]

This is happening in literally every sport, hobby or pastime you can think of. Fortunately Dave Mac doesn't go too far down the path of a video thumbnail with an E9 grade so large you can see it from orbit and his 'content' is generally quality.

Looks like benchmark E9 6c to me. What’s with all this foreign grading malarkey?!

well it's fundamentally important to British climbing to firstly reinforce just how rubbish our climbers/climbing is that we dare to think that the lowly grade of F8a/b - which is barely a passmark in French primary school outdoor education, and wouldn't even be a solo warm-up for Team America - is remotely newsworthy, and secondly provide exact and correct grading information for all the hordes of foreign sport climbers who will be ebiking up to the Ben for a swift repeat after a 5 minute lesson in how to place skyhooks.

[Bonjoy]

The downclimbing seems a bit contrived but I think I can get my head around it. Seems fair game if the lead has to be done the same session as the downclimb. So if you sleep inbetween the downclimb and the lead then you have to do it again.

The alternatives to this would be that you'd have to place the gear on abseil on subsequent visits, or leave it in situ between visits.
The former would clearly be cheating in an instance like this as the fiddly marginal gear would likely to be less well placed on lead than it would be on abseil.
The latter would be problematic up in the mountains, where another conditions window might not arise in a season. Not to mention the dubious precedent of leaving gear insitu on trad routes.

[Kingy]

Thumbs up for the informative comments from Dave in the vid, it was so incredibly detailed, I think it would pass over the heads of all bar the most geeky trad heads. 

I thought the myth of Team America had been dispelled in the Lexicon thread? 

I agree with Bonjoy's assessment of the practicalities of leaving in situ gear. Playing devils advocate for a moment, would it be acceptable to come back the next day if the forecast was mint and you were camping at the CIC hut, simply to leave the toprope and runners in overnight, come back the next morning and yo yo back up to the high point? Is the 'no sleep between attempts' a hard and fast rule?

[andy popp]

Is the 'no sleep between attempts' a hard and fast rule?

Surely you can take a nap between goes on the same day? More seriously, I thought it was well established long ago that you should begin again from scratch each day - even if that is sometimes more honoured in the breach.

[andy moles]

Enjoyable vid, as Dave's always are, and impressive effort doing all his own camerawork.

However a route where most of the difficulty comes from fiddling in marginal gear and downclimbing doesn't seem very attractive...it's a kind of ad absurdum of the rule of leading being the only style of legitimate ascent. Be much better on a toppy wouldn't it? 

[Kingy]

Is the 'no sleep between attempts' a hard and fast rule?

Surely you can take a nap between goes on the same day? More seriously, I thought it was well established long ago that you should begin again from scratch each day - even if that is sometimes more honoured in the breach.

Yes I agree, it is established for me. If you came back the next day, you'd have to begin all over again. The only reason I ask is that Dave seemed to suggest that a debate has been going on. If so then what are the arguments?

[Bonjoy]

It seems an arbitrary rule to me. Leaving the gear in for an attempt the next day doesn't violate any of the logical principles of a ground up ascent. But then again trad gets increasingly arbitrary the harder it gets. What's one more line in the sand? Are we allowed to leave the gear in if we stay awake until the next attempt? Or is it defined by the sun setting? How does this hold up in northern latitudes where the sun doesn't set in summer? You'd be gutted it there was a total eclipse between your attempts!

[Fiend]

https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,31380.0.html etc

Generally with these things it's better to consider the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, and the overall quality and feel of the experience.

[36chambers]

What's the craic if you fall off on the down climb?

Do you leave the rope in, "top rope" back to the gear, take it out, count to 3, replace it, and then attempt to down climb to the ground again?

[Bonjoy]

https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,31380.0.html etc

Generally with these things it's better to consider the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, and the overall quality and feel of the experience.

Depends. Better for who/what? Sounds like making things nice and neat for the spectators (us) at the expense of the ascensionists.
On the 'spirit of the law', leaving gear in overnight, say after being rained off during an attempt, to return the next day, seems well within it to me.

[Will Hunt]

So. That's what a one-star E9 looks like, huh?

[Bonjoy]

What's the craic if you fall off on the down climb?

Do you leave the rope in, "top rope" back to the gear, take it out, count to 3, replace it, and then attempt to down climb to the ground again?

Strip on abseil and reclimb with it on your harness, otherwise you haven't carried the gear up as part of the ascent (or set of attempts included in the downclimb-ascent combo).

[andy moles]

So. That's what a one-star E9 looks like, huh?

Don't be silly. Everything above E7 gets *** by default.

[Franco]

It seems an arbitrary rule to me. Leaving the gear in for an attempt the next day doesn't violate any of the logical principles of a ground up ascent. But then again trad gets increasingly arbitrary the harder it gets. What's one more line in the sand? Are we allowed to leave the gear in if we stay awake until the next attempt? Or is it defined by the sun setting? How does this hold up in northern latitudes where the sun doesn't set in summer? You'd be gutted it there was a total eclipse between your attempts!

Exactly this. Surely the most black and white 'rule' is you place your gear on lead and don't weight the rope? Then you can go up and down, take as long as you like. I'd have thought when people start looking at things like Rhapsody ground up, there'll be some huge down climbs on that, gradually 'banking' the top gear, ready for endless burns for the top. Much better to do that than leave gear in place after falling each time and lowering to the ground imo

Edit: and good effort Dave obviously.  Looks hard and scary!