Was it tried ground up? 'I remembered it from the abseil and it had looked pathetic.' Jerry is also on the record somewhere as watching JR abbing down and practising moves.
Also, the text says 1980, but we have it as 1982
Hmm good question, I'll have a look at Nick Dixon's cloggy guide when I get home, the history section at the back is great for this kind of stuff.
I think you're right about the ab inspection, his quote definitely backs that up. I have a memory of JR being a bit sniffy about the style Johnny and others tried it, but perhaps that was top roping vs. ab inspection rather than top roping v. ground up.
In Revelations Jerry says ‘the year before I had watched Redhead prepare his route on abseil’. Also All the holds above him in that photo are chalked.
I have probably told this story on ukb but I bumped into JR coming down from Cloggy in 1994. It was very early one midsummer morning and I had thought we'd be first at the crag. He had a massive static on his back so I gathered he'd been inspecting something or other. We did Great Wall and, judging by the chalk, someone had been practicing a link from West Indian Face into Face Mecca (still do be done, ~7c+ with no gear as you don't start from the GW belay, looked wild). I concluded that JR was less averse to some crafty rehearsing than his public pronouncements suggested, at least by 1994.
wow