Jutified & Ancient

The first 3 months of this year left me feeling out of shape and with reduced confidence in my ability to send hard routes but thankfully I seem to have turned things back around more quickly than I thought I might. 2 weekends ago I had my first trip to Malham in about 2 years and decided to test myself on the UKs most popular 8c, Unjustified. I had tried this route 1 day several years ago and couldn't make head nor tail of the crux move. Thankfully I am a bit stronger these days and after a bit of huffing and puffing it came together quite quickly. But feeling fat and weak compared to where I was in December, psychologically I wasn't ready to put a big effort in for a redpoint that weekend and was happy to come away with an overlapping-in-2-sections link.


On the hottest weekend of the year so far, 2 weeks later, it was back to Malham and a severe test of patience, sitting out a whole day, awaiting the evening's shade, while the rest of the squad were getting stuff done. Luckily being patient paid off this time and I got the route ticked on my 3rd redpoint. Happy days!

Unjustified is a, justifiably popular route and, the UK being the UK, is subject to a lot of controversy regarding grades, down climbs and a whole host of other crap. And that's before we talk about its earlier format as Justified & Ancient.  So here is my take on it....

Regarding style of the ascent, I climbed the route clipping every clip (apart from the one I skipped) from the first to the chain inclusive.  Many people start with a pre-clip of the chain of the 7b, which Unjustified extends, having down climbed from there. For me this is an old-school and out-dated practice out of keeping with world sport-climbing ethics and completely unnecessary - surely clipping the clips on a 7b isn't that exhausting if you climb 8c. The real issue for me is that doing so amounts to top-roping half the length of the whole route and doesn't equate to a "lead" at all in my mind.  I can sense certain people now getting rubbed up the wrong way!  I don't want to piss people off in saying this and I have huge respect for everyone I know to have climbed this route, they are all great climbers AND have, as far as I can tell, been honest about their ascents.  At the end of a day we climb for ourselves, there is no pay day for climbing this route, just personal satisfaction and we all get that in different ways.

However, it is interesting to take a look at what constitutes a "valid" ascent. I find it unusual that such a practice is even really considered as appropriate here. For me a 1st bolt pre-clip is fair but rarely necessary unless it involves a dangerous start or an impossible clip. It is reasonable to extend these criteria to 2 or possibly 3 clips depending on the bolting etc. Beyond that, for me just isn't cricket... but we all make our own choices.

Another controversy, the chain clip... I would always choose to clip the chains from a hold but many people don't and again this comes down to honesty and your own personal choices. A lot of the time it makes no difference, but sometimes it does. For the record, yes, I grabbed the chain on Raindogs.

Finally the grade...

Because a route is popular does not necessarily mean it is over graded. It is a real shame that people's hard work and achievements are stripped of them because they are not perceived of as being among the "strong". It is this very attitude of giving hard routes too much respect that holds the general level back in this country. I think that on the continent people are more inclined to try harder routes, whether they are a "somebody" or a "nobody" and this drags the whole community along.

On a different note, I tire of hearing how "soft" European routes are compared to here in the UK. There like here there are certain routes that are hard for the grade and certain routes that are easy for the grade. Being my first UK 8c (I have yet to do an 8b+ on UK limestone for that matter) and I can't say where it fits in relative to the rest of the UK's hard routes but comparing with what I have done abroad, Unjustified would be in the bottom end of my personal list of 8c's thus far ticked.  I'll reserve any further judgement for now.

The main thing is... it's a great route, justifiably popular and worth a go. Good luck to everyone trying it in 2011 in whatever style they wish.