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the climber interview<br />
Not afraid of turning his hand<br />
The gear is too specific, placements<br />
lines without difficult access there are<br />
secondly, on-sighting into the harder<br />
to hard trad routes, Steve<br />
blind, sequences complex. The difference<br />
not many left. Especially the type of<br />
grades is much more serious.<br />
McClure quickly repeated<br />
between headpoint and on-sight<br />
becomes vast. The difference between<br />
an E5 on-sight and an E9 is considerably<br />
greater that the actual difficulty of the<br />
climbing.<br />
With the headpoint style my approach<br />
is to turn a trad route into a sport route.<br />
In terms of how you move it has to be<br />
route that would motivate me, so that<br />
rules out the few death routes on grit like<br />
Wizard Ridge. And if it’s going to be really<br />
hard you’ll need it to have some level of<br />
convenience, as otherwise the time<br />
investment will be overwhelming. For<br />
example there are two projects at<br />
Dumbarton. But with a five to six-hour<br />
So, let’s turn to Rainman next,<br />
Steve’s, and the UK’s, first F9b.<br />
Steve bolted ‘the line’ and started<br />
working moves back in 2010. Was it<br />
immediately apparent, I asked, that<br />
it was going to be the next level?<br />
Actually my very first thoughts as I<br />
Rhapsody (E11 7a) at<br />
Dumbarton in Scotland in 2008.<br />
Photo: David Simmonite<br />
like a sport redpoint. I have to be going<br />
drive each way, and my current life, there<br />
placed a few bolts were that it was going<br />
for it, moving in attack mode. There is no<br />
is just no way. They are way too hard to<br />
to be okay. There seemed to be a fair few<br />
space for thinking and so I assess the<br />
climb fast but I’m always open to ideas.<br />
holds. That part of the wall is quite<br />
protection and potential fall. Many hard<br />
trad routes have decent gear I think and<br />
I’ve been drawn to them. The falls may<br />
be big, but they aren’t death. I guess my<br />
Did trad satisfy him in the same<br />
way that sport climbing does?<br />
So, I’d love to find something, a F9a on<br />
featured. I could see lots of things I knew<br />
I could pull on. In my diary I’d written<br />
down that ‘It looks like it will be at least<br />
F9a, perhaps F9a+’.<br />
fundamental approach is primarily to<br />
assess difficulty against risk, but erring<br />
on the cautious side,<br />
Steve’s hardest trad routes have<br />
all been repeats. Does he have<br />
any desire to do a super hard<br />
first ascent?<br />
Absolutely. The problem is in finding<br />
the routes. It sounds crazy, but we are<br />
running out. In terms of obvious quality<br />
trad gear would be fantastic. But in the<br />
end, for my level of bravery, it would<br />
effectively be a sport route. What would<br />
set it apart is the fact that it accepts the<br />
full challenge of the cliff. I like this idea<br />
but trad climbing for me is on-sight and<br />
this certainly does satisfy me as much as<br />
sport climbing. It’s my background. I love<br />
it just as much. I just do less, for two<br />
reasons I guess, firstly I’ve done most of<br />
the stuff I can do, certainly locally, and<br />
Steve nicknamed it the ‘Easy Easy’<br />
Project. Where did that come from?<br />
Purely from La Dura Dura, which means<br />
The Hard Hard, which was THE big<br />
project being attempted at the time.<br />
My project was obviously a path<br />
compared to that. But I’m looking<br />
forward to getting a real comparison<br />
at some point, though it won’t come<br />
from me trying La Dura Dura. 6<br />
www.climber.co.uk Sep–Oct <strong>2017</strong> 35
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