Niall Grimes takes a look at on-sighting. Just what is state of the art, and who has done what?

About 10 years ago, the film Hard Grit made headpointing a common practice for many climbers, and soon ascents of routes at grades E6, E7 and even E8 became common. However, through all this time, the standard of on-sight climbing seemed to advance very little. Several years ago I did an article about what I knew had been done in terms of style improvements on grit routes, and came up with a list of good ascents that I knew about.

As part of work on guidebooks, it seems a good idea to record these style improvements, to acknowledge the great achievements of people who climb in this style, and to let the wider publec know about what the standards actually are.

Here is a link to this list. It is very out of date, hopefully. What would be great is if you have, or know of anyone, who has done good ascents on grit, be it The Peak, Lancahsire or Yorkshire, please let me know about it, and soon I will update this record with all the new information.

One note. Due to the nature, a lot of the information might be wrong. Please try to be constructive with any feedback.

Another note. As to the terms - on-sight, ground-up, flash etc., don't get too wound up by them. I believe on-sight is a bit useless now, as on these crags, a most people will know something about most routes, so the chances of a real on-sight ascent is minimal.

View the list here.

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