Another thing. You often here shit about various climbers, but it stands out thatI have never heard anyone ever, saying anything that ever took anything away from Joe Brown, John Allen and Johnny. I bet that says something about climbers like them.
but he abseiled the line four times that day
Is that a challenge?! I'm sure the UKB inquisition squad can sniff something out.
Easy on Simon, I'm not talking about rubber gloves, baby oil and a gritstone phallus. I mean in climbing terms.
How about Fawcett not really climbing Zoolook? At least not in the conventional/modern sense of a one push/no falls ascent. The word at the crag when I was a frequent habitue of the Malham-Kilnsey-Gordale axis of steep whiteness was that (allegedly) big Ron had fallen off on the upper section, then lowered back to the big undercuts, and then pulled on and climbed from there to the top. It seems that in 1985 the redpoint ethic was not set in concrete. This could of course just have been malicious gossip, but I'd be curious to know if any of you old gits heard something similar on your travels.
one day somebody will have to spill it all in the ultimate expose: The 1980s uncovered!!!
...but one day, that 'other' book will get published (and whoever writes it will have to leave the country sharpish for fear of reprisals from a gaggle of aging rock stars)