Redpoint Climbing Centre
77 Cecil Street
Birmingham B19 3ST
0121 359 1777

First Ascent of the 5.13a Thin Crack!

Regular visitors to Redpoint will know that as well as the thousands of bolt-ons, volumes and tufas that make up the routes here, we have a couple of crack-lines.

Before

One of them is the esoteric curvy jamming nonsense that we affectionately graded 'Yorkshire VS'. The other is the heinous jamming testpeice that we figure warranted a Yosemite grade of 5.13a. A slightly easier variation utilises a few additional strategic screw-on footholds and has had a handful of ascents so far at a 'mere' 5.12c (!)

After

The challenge of the thin crack on its own finally fell this weekend to Redpoint regular Rich Cole.

Rock On provided the masses of fingertape and taping expertise, and Rich made several painful and determined efforts before finally succeeding. Anyone who has even tried to get off the ground on this one will agree thats a damn good effort!

For those of you with a less masochistic disposition we have lots of routes with friendly holds too!

[ Published by Phil Minal in News | Comments are ON | Subscribe | Email this article ]

7 Comments...

Comment #1, posted by Davey 08/04/2008 14:35:31

Good on ya, Rich!

Comment #2, posted by rich 08/04/2008 18:35:08

Anyone know of a good second hand shop, i seem to have broken mine ;-)

Comment #3, posted by Phil 08/04/2008 19:17:29

(In reply to Comment #2 by rich, 08/04/2008 18:35:08)

You'll be needing one of those Fist Aid courses we mentioned on UK Climbing then...

Comment #4, posted by bruce 09/04/2008 14:28:02

(In reply to Comment #2 by rich, 08/04/2008 18:35:08)

I wondered if anyone was daft enough to have done that yet, nice one fella. Any plans on doing any yorkshire VS jamming cracks now you have had a warm up! Or is the next plan to Dawes it (No handed)...

Comment #5, posted by Lawrence Kissoon 10/04/2008 14:01:10

So which variant did Doug Sleigh onsight on the first friday that the wall was open?

Comment #6, posted by Phil 10/04/2008 21:34:36

(In reply to Comment #5 by Lawrence Kissoon, 10/04/2008 14:01:10)

I believe that Doug did the 5:12c version, (including the screw-ons) although we had it down as 5:12b at the time. Also a damn fine effort with few repeats!

Comment #7, posted by Lawrence Kissoon 11/04/2008 00:04:14

As luck would have it I saw Doug tonight and he said he'd done the 12c version. You'd have thought I'd have remembered seeing as I was belaying him at the time. LOL

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