[El Mocho]

Managed to pull a hold off monumental today, don't think it will effect to many peeps - it was on the short mans sequence at the top. It is/was the crimp up and right of the top undercut/kneebar and which the likes off caff used with his right hand to lock up the the normal crimp with his left (this is the way I was doing it) and I think other people (Dan V?) may have used it is an intermediate when reaching the top crimp with the right.

I managed to do it right after by reaching as per the big guys but I it does mean you are committed to this reach and for people shorter than me could be a real issue (I am 5'5'') For people of my height there is no real difference in grade - pos slightly harder now - and it feels top end 8a+ via either sequence.

I left the hold propped up below the start of the route so if there is a short person trying this they may want to get it glued back on? Or we could just chuck it in the river rather than adding more glued holds to the crag?

ps as of this morning the crag was still completely dry after the rain we have had.

[Johnny Brown]

Seriously word, who is shorter than you?

You want to drop it in if you did it too, casual like.

[T_B]

Seriously word, who is shorter than you?

My thoughts exactly. I say chuck it in the river if it's the same grade w/o.

[El Mocho]

Seriously word, who is shorter than you?

You want to drop it in if you did it too, casual like.

I turned up at the wifes work the other day and at least half the people in the room were shorter than me.

My belayer today (when rp'd Monumental) was also shorter than me. (you see what I did there)

My thoughts exactly. I say chuck it in the river if it's the same grade w/o.

depends on what you mean by same grade/harder or easier - obviously it is much harder for us smaller climbers, as is all climbing Tom, you wouldn't understand the sort of shit we have to do just to reach the holds people (ie tall cheating bastards) like you just start on 

[robertostallioni]

I turned up at the wifes work the other day and at least half the people in the room were shorter than me.

She work as a housekeeper for a residential mining co-operative?



Nice tick by the way.

[uptown]

and it feels top end 8a+ via either sequence.

Chuck the hold in the river, but FGS sort out that grading system down there.

[Paul B]

(as of tonight the tops of some of the easier routes around clarion call were getting wet from runoff)

[Percy B]

it feels top end 8a+ via either sequence.

Well, don't forget that this route was 8b until somebody from Lancashire (blond, glasses, resemblance to the Milky Bar Kid) went and on-sighted it, thus unleashing the wrath of many Peak sport climbers and leading to the downgrade to a mere 8a+.... (Hmmpf - it must only be 8a+ if HE'S done it!)
However, they had all forgotten one crucial factor - this being that the Weasel had just won (or was about to win) the European championships, and was our best sport climber by far at this point. 8a+ or 8b, its still an amazing route to be capable of on-sighting even now (let alone well over a decade ago)

[carlisle slapper]

Effort on the dispatch Ben, i'd vote for keeping it off, as one of the few wholly natural routes at the crag it'd be nice to keep it sika free. I don't think it'd make any difference on my sequence as I only needed it after forgetting where to put my left foot, I normally skip it. It does give a good excuse to bump it into bottom end 8b though, I can see it being 8a+ if it is ever totally clean and bone dry, but this is pretty unlikely these days.

Worth mentioning that Caff did it 2nd go after a decent flash attempt, when it was still a bit goppy and licheny. His flash go supposedly ended whilst staring for too long at the halfway pod wondering whether stacked jams and a friend 6 would make the route feel more like soft E6

[El Mocho]

I turned up at the wifes work the other day and at least half the people in the room were shorter than me.

She work as a housekeeper for a residential mining co-operative?



Nice tick by the way.

close - she runs a pre school.

Now that Dan mentions it is all natural (i can hardly believe it but it is true) then I agree we should keep it that way.

On a grading note I did nemisis this morning which is def a grade easier for me (and also used to get 8b until some lanky crimp machine flashed it)

I was reading an old ote at my mums this aft and it had an article by Jon Barton about the cornice (and jean-min tearing it up) and the 2 routes which survived the downgrade spree of that article were K3 and monumental (both at 8b) but it seems we have moved even harsher since then (it seemed the only reason Nemisis was downgraded in the article was to piss Sharples off)

grades tra la la

[Bonjoy]

It feels harder than just about any other 8a+ I've done/been on in the peak and easily a grade harder than the ones I've done at the Cornice, K3 and R'n'P. What's so unthinkable about having this super classic as a low end 8b rather than an undergraded 8a+? From what I've heard Myles gave it 8b at a time when he was going well, having just pissed up Magnetic commenting that it was only 8a. Apparently Vicars reckoned 8b after his onsight. The only people I've met so far who say 8a+ are britain's best sport climber and britain's tallest sport climber.
It's even more 8b than Revelations.

[The Sausage]

Rich Heap reckons it's hard 8a

[Ru]

It feels harder than just about any other 8a+ I've done/been on in the peak and easily a grade harder than the ones I've done at the Cornice, K3 and R'n'P. What's so unthinkable about having this super classic as a low end 8b rather than an undergraded 8a+? From what I've heard Myles gave it 8b at a time when he was going well, having just pissed up Magnetic commenting that it was only 8a. Apparently Vicars reckoned 8b after his onsight. The only people I've met so far who say 8a+ are britain's best sport climber and britain's tallest sport climber.
It's even more 8b than Revelations.

8b it is then. Who says you can't grade things without going on them. It's already 8b on my massive list of uk sport routes of 8a and above.

[north_country_boy]

It feels harder than just about any other 8a+ I've done/been on in the peak and easily a grade harder than the ones I've done at the Cornice, K3 and R'n'P. What's so unthinkable about having this super classic as a low end 8b rather than an undergraded 8a+? From what I've heard Myles gave it 8b at a time when he was going well, having just pissed up Magnetic commenting that it was only 8a. Apparently Vicars reckoned 8b after his onsight. The only people I've met so far who say 8a+ are britain's best sport climber and britain's tallest sport climber.
It's even more 8b than Revelations.

I had a brief foray up MA a couple of days after Jon C rebolted it, it had been brushed a fair bit but was still slimey and damp in most of the holds near the back of the groove....my first impressions were it felt hard, probably harder than R'n'P, but put i that down to it being horrendous conditions, still damp and very little chalk....

However, and some people may have not noticed since, but I broke (read: exploded mid move) a large (polished, long, perfectly horizontal edge about 2inches long and 20mm deep) fairly significant foothold off it, which I thought was key to getting to, resting in, and leaving the second undercut pod, before the moves right to get the top kneebar.

As all recent ascents have been post this, I suspect it wont have altered anybody's sequence (maybe Jon C remembers it?) but that section certainly seemed significantly harder without it....

This in part may explain why it was apparently thought to be only 8a+ or even 8a (WTF?) back in the day....

[/quote]
8b it is then. Who says you can't grade things without going on them. It's already 8b on my massive list of uk sport routes of 8a and above.
[/quote]

I reckon it felt harder than R'n'P, which I tried again the same evening, surely there isn't enough spectrum within 8a+ for them to be the same grade?!? 

[Bonjoy]

Rich Heap reckons it's hard 8a

Rose tinted retrospectacles/drugs/ a wind up, take your pick. I'd hate to know what grade he thinks K3 is!

[Paul B]

Zippy offered 'hard 8a' for k3 so I think you're safe with Monumental being a touch harder?

[JC]

However, and some people may have not noticed since, but I broke (read: exploded mid move) a large (polished, long, perfectly horizontal edge about 2inches long and 20mm deep) fairly significant foothold off it, which I thought was key to getting to, resting in, and leaving the second undercut pod, before the moves right to get the top kneebar.

As all recent ascents have been post this, I suspect it wont have altered anybody's sequence (maybe Jon C remembers it?) but that section certainly seemed significantly harder without it....

Yeah i did notice that hold was gone when i started trying it. When i first saw it i thought it was gonna be a critical foothold. Fortunately there is another positive one underneath it, so i don't think its made much difference myself. Maybe you could have got a better rest at that hole whilst standing on it though....   

[The Sausage]

Zippy offered 'hard 8a' for k3 so I think you're safe with Monumental being a touch harder?

As you can imagine, this went in one ear, and straight out the other!

I think when Rich did Monumental he was probably climbing 8c, and running laps on Mecca, so can probably not be taken too seriously.

[uptown]

8b it is then, and not sponsored by sika.
I feel my gradar appreciates that callibration.
Now, can someone bump Devonshire back up and I might actually get to climb 'the grade' in the Peak.

[rich]

 

ed said at the crag today that my passing comment that  MA was hard 8a was on the forum so i thought i'd try and contextualise it for all those desperate to know. (i'm not really that sure how much i'd stand by that grading, however it is fun to have a go.)

at the time i was trying to red point mecca, that took about 9 days. MA i got third go after a flash attempt and then a red point attempt where i got everything messed up but still nearly got out right to that last rest. just looking at the difference between the time spent on those two accents shows there has got to be more than a grade between them. By then I'd probably done almost all the other 8a+'s down there (over a couple of seasons (it seemd to be a lot drier then)) and felt i could judge the spread of routes reasonably well. MA  has three bonafide rests between sections of climbing that aren't that desperate. you just had to be fit.

and in that last sentence is the crux. back in the day myself and the people i hung around with were more fit than strong. nemesis felt much harder than MA cos we were weak. now it is the other way round, people are strong but not fit.  and that is why MA feels hard. but that is not to say it should suddenly become 8b.

to do MA you need to get to the chains regularly. if you are ticking one or two 8a+'s a week then MA would seem a lot easier. obviously this takes a lot of time and if you're not a full timer is hard to do. you can go down the wall for a night but it is not the same.

when i was climbing with malc in the mid 90's and he was trying to get fit for the summer in which he did evolution, progress etc he spent two or three weeks just doing loads of routes. at malham one day he did 25 pitches including five or six ascents of raindogs and then did a full day the next day. after a rest day it would be the same. i followed in his wake. a typical day at kilnsey would be 2 x directissema, 2 x face value, 50 for 5, comedy, dog up your project (grooved arete for me, progress for malc), four redpoints and then dominatrix and comedy to finish. (rests would be timed - about half and hour to forty minutes). then we'd have a second day on at malham.

cos of the freedom the dole gave it was unbelievable the amount of routes that were being done. nic sellers for a training day would do dalliance twice, grooved arete twice and under the thumb twice with warm ups and warm downs. i think this was before he climbed 8c too. he was training easily on routes at his top level. when do you see this now?

it was completely different to how it is today. it was all focussed around routes. long days at the crags, four days a week. given this perspective it might justify MA even being hard 8a! after all i graded it that in a completely different climbing landscape.



 

[uptown]

Interesting story and thoughts Rich. I've re-set MA to 8a+ as I'm sure I can't actually win this one, and having only been on it once I'm not qualified enough yet to know. Can you recommend any good 8b's Peakward then - I don't have an uptodate guide so any advice is appreciated.

[rich]

monstorosity at the wcj cornice. utterly brilliant.

i was thinking a bit more about my post and the other thing is that i think 8b was thought of a it differently. 8c/8c+ was the top grade and not many people were climbing it, just the likes of ben, jerry, malc and a few others. as a consequence you expected 8b to be bloody hard. most of our gang (seb, neil bentley, gav ellis, pete buko, jon barton, coishy, ian harrison, jasper, neil g, matt smythe, scully) were full time for a couple years, fit as locks and managed only 8b or there abouts. it ain't meant to be easy.

[Jaspersharpe]

All spot on rich except I'd like to point out that in no way was I ever fit. I got by on power and failed miserably on anything requiring fitness. In that way I like to think of myself as a lazy bouldering cunt ahead of my time.

[Bonjoy]

I haven’t been on MA before the loss of the foothold on the crux, but going on what you say it sounds like the route must have changed enough to make a difference. Certainly the crux feels harder than any of the moves on the comparative examples given, Nemesis, Mecca and Monsterosity. This doesn't seem consistent with your recollection of a stamina plod with relatively steady moves.
You can look at it both ways. Does it feel one grade easier than Mecca? Possibly. Does it feel one grade harder than Caviar, K3, The Auctioneer, R’n’P, Four Door, Chimes etc? Definitely. Is it the same route it used to be? Who knows.
As is always the case with grade comparisons, you can argue the point either way depending on the examples you choose, which may in themselves be wrong. To my mind arguing that MA is bog standard 8a+/ hard 8a implies that a good proportion of the peak’s 8a+s must be overgraded. Personally I think upgrading one or two peak 8a+s to 8b would do more to bring the system into parity with other areas, as opposed to downgrading a bunch of 8a+s which would serve to make peak grades less consistent than they already are with the rest of the country and elsewhere.
Given what you said Rich and looking at the peak’s excess of 8a+s and dearth of 8bs, you could argue that prevailing opinions at the time of the FAs served to compress too many routes into 8a+ compared to the spread of difficulty at other grades. In much the same way that attitudes around the same time forced everything into the hugely bloated English tech 6c grade as no one dared give anything the mythical grade of 7a. You see the same thing in bouldering these days causing perpetual reverse grade creep.

[nik at work]

I don't know anything about MA but I think the broader point Bonjoy is making is bob on. Have a wad wise goose.