Roundup of the last month on Gritstone

First ascents, onsights, flashes and hard repeats; it’s all been happening in the cold conditions that we’ve had over the last month.

Ryan Pasquill kicked of the hard new climbing at the beginning of January when he made the first ascent of the wall left of the New Statesman at Ilkley. The wall had thwarted approaches from many top climbers and had been hanging onto it’s ‘last great problem’ tag for a while. The route apparently weighs in at a highball Font 8A.

After the first ascents came some hard onsight and flashed climbing. Dave Barrans repeated Little Women at Stanage at E7 7A onsight. James Pearson and Pete Robins both climbed End of The Affair, Pete with the flash and James with an actual onsight. As if that wasn’t enough Pete also climbed Renegade Master (E8 6c) ground up and Slingshot (Font 8A) on the same day. Ryan Pasquill was back flashing Gaia at Black rocks (E8 6c) bringing his haul of E8 flashes up to three.

Elsewhere there was some excellent headpointing with Jordan Buys picking up the second ascent of Widdop Wall (E9 7A) and Katie Whittaker climbing Braille Trail (E7 6c). Alastair Robertson also made the possible second ascent of Judge Jules (E8 7A) at The Roaches before moving onto Knocking On Heavens Door (E9 6c) at Curber.

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