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General Climbing Discussion

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Pioneers of Tassie's Best Climbs 20-Sep-2016 At 8:52:30 PM simey

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On 20/09/2016 Andy P wrote:
>Agree with your sentiments above.
>If you have time, check out the UKC thread referring to Grimer's JR podcast
>(John Redhead Interview - the Jamcrack podcast with Glenn Robbins is fantastic
>too). Anyway, one gets a feel for JR's bitterness at JD's multiple top
>ropes of Indian Face that JR was attempting ground up and taking 80' falls
>off - from 82' up!

I have listened to the Glenn Robbins podcast. It was typical Glenn - don't let the truth get in the way of telling a good story! But it was entertaining.

I will have to listen to the Redhead interview to get a better understanding of his exploits. But I get the impression Redhead was far from an angel in his attempts on what later became Indian Face (E9)... placing a bolt (albeit on lead), painting pictures high on the wall. Even if Dawes did top-rope it prior to the first ascent, the route was still there for Redhead to go ground-up for the repeat if he wanted. Has anyone actually repeated Indian Face going ground-up?

The irony of the British grading system is that routes are graded for ground-up ascents, yet the hardest routes rarely get done that way. I imagine when you repeated The Belles The Belles (E7) (Gogarth) in such style (ground up - no falls) that it would have been significant for the day. I bet if you had top-roped the route beforehand it would have been relatively straightforward for you (and you wouldn't have gone the wrong way!) in comparison to the the mind trip it turned out to be. By the way, how did Redhead approach the first ascent of The Belles? Did he establish it ground-up? Or did he rap inspect it first?