Pennine Lines w/c 30 October 2023
|| A wet week || Stick the kettle on ||
Setting up for the crux on Smiling Buttress || Climber: Tyler Landman
|| Curbar ||
Smiling Buttress
This coming Friday, 3rd November, marks ten years since Tyler Landman succeeded on the famous Smiling Buttress project at Curbar. This was a well known ‘last great problem’ made famous in the classic film Hard Grit, where Ben Moon was shown trying the moves on top rope, complete with standard mid-90s issue goatee, bleached hair, and a white S7 beanie (style never goes out of fashion etc). From that point on Smiling Buttress was lodged in the collective imagination for a good 16 years or so before the line finally received its only ascent on one showery and windy November afternoon.
At this point I will offer up an except from Grit Blocs, where this route makes an appearance, in all likelihood the hardest thing in the book:
“There is inevitably a concern that the problems selected to appear in a book like this just become magnets for purile tickers, catnip for the bouldering consumerists, logbook entries to accumulate. Well if Ill Behaviour or Lanny Bassham didn’t stop them in their tracks then this one surely will.
An unashamedly elitist inclusion, and unrepeated at the time of writing, Tyler Landman’s audacious solution to this well known ‘last great problem’ is the crystalisation of everything gritstone can be. A pure line straight up the middle of a beautiful blank wall; brick hard, condition dependent, technical, and high but relatively approachable. At least the necky final move is over quickly, one way or another.
Tyler’s 2013 ascent remains the most magnificent pieces of climbing I’ve ever witnessed. A testament to how well Tyler climbed it, immediately afterwards there were unmistakable psyched glances exchanged among the assembled spotters and photographers, as is often the case when you see someone make a hard problem look steady. As if your mate had just knocked off a nice highball 7b so you might as well have a go. Luckily we all came to our senses before the shoes and chalk came out, and we left with egos intact, happy to have just witnessed a truly special episode in gritstone history.”
Smiling Buttress entourage || November 2013
By including Smiling Buttress in the book I was rather hoping that it would serve as a red rag to the young-strong-and-wreckless community (all together now - “and it IS a community”) and we’d see the floodgates open on potential repeats. But unless someone nips in this week - and having looked at the forecast I’m fairly confident they won’t - then the line will have gone a full decade without a repeat.
And it’s not for want for a few really good climbers trying either. If we assume the line is Font 8b or 8b+ then yeah that’s pretty hard but it that factor alone doesn’t really explain the lack of repeats. We need to understand that standards have moved on a LOT in the last ten years, not just the level of the top end, but the sheer weight of numbers of climbers operating in the mid-Font-8s level, and at the double-digit E-grade level, has snowballed enormously. The peloton is really stacked, the gene pool is overflowing with talent and Font 8b boulderers can’t get arrested in Sheffield these days. There’s also no shortage of bold climbers. So why no repeats?
One factor might be the style of climbing. Dynamic insecure just-off-vertical moves on really terrible slopey holds and a potential unpleasant fall from the crux final move maybe does not make for good repeatin’, and this style remains relatively unfashionable. This isn’t the type of thing you can battle your way up or even train for that specifically. Even all the advances in movement skills in comp-style clowning-for-the-camera type indoor tomfoolery that we’ve been treated to on social media in recent years have failed to spill over onto the crags, and the audacious talent-rich clientele for whom this should be a casual day at the office is still a dream. It could also be that very few people are willing to commit to this now that you’re ‘only’ getting a repeat for your effort, such is the marketability of the first ascent.
Tyler eyeing up Voyager Sit Start, a few days later || November 2013
It could also be that Smiling Buttress occupies a sort of sweet spot on the unrepeatability spectrum. Just hard enough and just bold enough to massively cut down the potential ascentionist guest list, and also guards itself with perfect conditions as a prerequisite. Just a step beyond everything else in terms of difficulty on grit even if it had a perfect landing. But in addition to this I do wonder if the circumstances of the first ascent also adds something of an air of mystique to the route. Despite the photos and video, something about it just seems so improbable, so unreal.
Tyler’s talents and achievements are and were well documented, but as he wasn’t a local fixture on the scene, with a years-long back catalogue of, say, increasingly hard and bold grit highball lines to his name, it’s hard then for peers to contextualise the route. Nobody could look and say “well he’s done X, Y and Z grit routes to prepare for this, I’ve done X and Y too, and I’ve done all the moves on Z on a rope, so maybe I can do this”. Instead the ascent kind of stands in beautiful isolation. It doesn’t really make sense in terms of what we accept as the standard career path for top-end grit. In fact I don’t think Tyler was even living in the UK at the time. To the casual observer it looks like Tyler just parachuted in wearing impossibly skinny jeans and nabbed the hardest thing on grit then evaporated away again. I suspect this factor probably contributes significantly to the aura of the line, its position in our collective consciousness. It doesn’t make sense, it’s otherworldly, so there’s no point trying it.
Or, like some of Myles Gibson’s contributions to grit over the years - Superstition and Fagus Sylvatica spring to mind - it’s only in retrospect that we are really able to reappraise these ascents as being well ahead of their time. Fagus is older than Smiling by many years and still waits for a repeat. Superstition has had repeats but most (if not all?) had the sting taken out by huge snow drifts. Like Smiling you’d not describe either as especially dangerous or bold routes by grit standards, but it’s the combination of fairly bold climbing AND a raw bouldering difficulty level that is way beyond other top end routes that just puts them out of reach. I suspect this is also the case with Smiling Buttress, and combine it with Tyler’s elusive wünderkind status at the time and it makes for a wild cocktail for the imagination.
Voyager Sit Start attempt, but too sunny! || Climber: Tyler Landman
Anyway, we’ll see how much longer the route will hold out before a repeat. Consider this post another gauntlet-throwing event, and I’m happy if by next year all this looks woefully out of date. Someone manhandle Will Bosi on a flight back to the UK please and drive him to Curbar. The Tor is wet so he’s got no excuses. I’ll carry a few pads in - deal.
|| SUPPORTED BY ||
|| Recently Through the lens ||
A trip to a very damp Lake District this week. Not a lot of climbing to show for it but a brief dry window at Carrock Fell - the Lakes' honorary grit crag - was much appreciated.
|| Fresh Prints ||
We've got to go with Curbar this week, one from Grit Blocs of the fist ascent, and another dawn landscape image from close by on a crisp winter morning - both available in the Print Shop.
