Boulder problems

So far under the radar it's almost antipodean, Walk On By was likely one of the hardest problems in the world when it was first climbed in 1980. The climb is located at Curbar Edge in the heart of the Peak District and features old-school crimping on tiny edges up a vertical quarried wall. In an instructive example of British grading, it was given E3 6c.

The climb was discovered and named by Steve Foster, who climbed it first with one point of aid: manteling a peg at the start. He was mercilessly ribbed for this behaviour, motivating first ascentionist Rob Gawthorpe to show him how to do it properly. Gawthorpe commented:

Walk On By is suited to my climbing style – thin, very technical steep walls, but not crazily overhanging. I think Leeds Wall was a key – Al Manson and I just used to test each other on brick-edge problems on the Leeds Wall – hence how I got good at using very small edges and rock-overs.

It was obviously hard, but I didn't think it was really any harder than some of the other problems we'd been playing on in Yorkshire, particularly with Al Manson at Caley, Almscliff and Hetchell. At that time I thought there were a couple of really hard projects at Caley that seemed much harder.

It took two decades and the steely fingers of Ben Moon to finally give the climb a second ascent.

Walk On By: as the 1991 guidebook quipped, 'Good advice!'

References

[1] On Peak Rock, 2013