Approaching No. 4 Gully

Well my final day on the hill with PYB, and I was heading up No. 4 Gully with a team of Mountaineers. The weather started off good and got better. Hopefully the photos will convey just how good it got. The wind which you can’t se was little to non exsistent.

So I saw loads of action as I wandered about, firstly I spent the day with the Dave Macleod, so I can now say along with 12 people from Cotswolds that I have soloed a route with Dave Mac on the Ben. Sadly, well thankfully it was only grade one. It was interesting to note that he took his mixed climbing axe with him. It has been noted that a growing number of grade 1 gully climbers are taking to using Nomics Axes, which has resulted in a national shortage, however I believe that they are living up to the name, as these highly technical axes are now in the hands of climbers who do No Mixed (No-mic) climbing.

We saw that youth greg boswell (sic?) tearing up Apache Wall, as well as Inis and her partner trying to repeat one of Greg new hard first ascents. Rumour has it that there was some air taken by the team. Although Inis was overheard saying that “Das conditions are Uber!”

Anyway here are some piccies f our awesome day, suffice to say that the clients were over the moon with the day that Plas Y Brenin provided.

Greg Boswell on Apache Wall

Exiting No. 4 Gully up the slot of thinness

The final head wall

Not your typical Punter running up a gully with a state of the art mix tool! Dave Macleod what a punter. Not!

Inis climbing partner goes for the top of Greg Boswell's recent new route, just as the whole world above him starts thawing.

Plodding to the summit

Snow Bunting on teh Summit Trig point

Summit and Glory

Not a day for Pink wellies! Nice to see they have total tools in Scotland as well!

I was knocked back recently for some comments that I made about James ability to grade. However despite never having seen the route other than in pictures I find it quite interesting that many of my ‘guesses’ were reasonably right. With The Indian Face as a benchmark for E9 where you’re gonna die, it seemed ludicrous that a slab can get E12.

I have seen The Very Big and The Very Small a F8b+ slab being attempted and there simply aren’t many holds larger than two matchsticks thick. It is extremely easy to fall off even after lots of practice. Interestingly if grade tables are anything to go by would make it necessary for an E12 to be F8b+ or harder, and be bold.

Now given that Dave MacLeod didn’t wish to grade his route on Ben Nevis, Echo Wall which for a few weeks was dubbed the hardest trad route in the UK, until James ascended and affixed the E12 tag to his route. Rather than idly gossip online about it Dave got in his car drove the length of the country and set about repeating ‘The Walk…’ downgrading it to E9!

Despite downgrading the route Dave concludes his blog, “A huge thanks and congratulations to James Pearson for his brilliant effort of climbing The Walk of Life…I enjoyed doing the walk tremendously, and I wouldn’t have had that were it not for James’ effort.”

However having seen a string of down grades for Jame’s routes in the past few months The Groove, The Promise and now The Walk… I can only guess as to the answer behind this. James will talk of not using pads, however some of the routes have been judged to be 2 or even three grades out. So whether its is a genuine mistake or a method to attract media attention and sponsorship who knows. I jokingly looked at some research into personality and climbing a few weeks back that could be interpreted to give a comment on over-grading.

I also found it interesting that when Dave was talking about some modern desperate test-pieces he said… “it’s my opinion some of them have been overhyped when they are not as hard as others hard routes that have been there for a good while such as ‘if 6 was 9′ or ‘Widdop Wall.”