Trad Climbing

The Hardest Trad Routes in the World

A list of all the sngle pitch trad routes E10 or harder that have currently been climbed, including details of the first ascent.

Note that the definition of 'single pitch' is a little loose. The idea is to include things like Drifter's Escape where the meat of the climbing is a very hard single pitch, but to exclude big walls like Magic Mushroom where the individual pitches can be very hard but the real difficulty is the effort of climbing all the pitches.

Hard Trad Onsights and Flashes

A non-definitive list of some hard trad onsights and flashes.

Strongest Trad Climbers

This list aims to list any trad climber who has climbed E10 or harder. It only lists ascents at the climbers hardest grade, so each climber has a single entry on the list.

The Grit List V2

This is a refreshed version of The Grit List. In the words the original list's creator Jon Read:

This is a compendium of selected hard grit routes (E5 and above [ed. now E7]) catagorised by difficulty, boldness, tricksomeness and absurdity.

The aim of this list is to provide further information on these routes for the on-sighter (such as crucial or trick gear), and to highlight particularly soft and hard routes within a grade. Also included are relatively new routes that haven't made it into guidebooks yet.

Routes at the top of a catagory listing tend to be a soft touch for the grade, and routes at the bottom of a catagory list outright sandbags! Liberal pinches of salt should be taken daily.

On the harder grades, routes with a recognised toprope French grade have this included, and some have guesstimates just to spice up debate!

This list is a bit more clinical than the original but hopefully it captures some of the same spirit. For practicality this list only includes routes of E7 and up rather the the original list's E5 and up.

Talent, power, stamina, bottle, technique, squeeky clean boots, 'unusual' gear, frontal lobotomy, belay slave, spotting circus, £1000 worth of Metolius mats. These are some of the requirements for potential suitors of Last Great Problems. Choose your line, spend a life-time getting good enough to do it, and then pull the crucial pebble off. All yours...

References

[1] https://www.geocities.ws/readza1/climbing/gritlist/gritlist.html

[2] https://ukbouldering.com/threads/gritlist.10248/