Hard Trad Route in England is Repeated
James Pearson has made the second ascent of a technical line called Immortal
James Pearson has made the second ascent of Franco Cookson’s route Immortal, which Cookson graded E11 7b. The route is found at Maiden’s Bluff on the coast of the North York Moors.
The first ascent was documented in a film called Fall Theory by Alastair Lee that premiered as part of the Brit Rock Film tour. Pearson has said that he believes that it’s not an E11, noting, “A lot of my life has been tangled with grades. When I was young, I chased them, and now I’m older I try my best to avoid them. When I decided to try to climb Immortal, it was because of the climbing challenge that Franco had laid down, not the number he gave to it.”
In 2008, Pearson made the first ascent of The Walk of Life and graded it E12, but it was quickly repeated by Dave MacLeod who graded it E9. The criticism levelled at Pearson from the climbing community for over-grading made him move away from the U.K. Pearson went on to become one of the world’s best trad climbers.
About Immortal’s grade, Pearson said, “An E grade is a combination of a lot of elements, and like Franco has already said, Immortal is a tricky one to grade. It’s very short, very morpho, and almost, but not quite a slab. It has very odd, hard to quantify protection, that if good, could make it ‘safe,’ but if bad is almost a solo. All of these variables give eGrader a hard time, but if we go back to my gut feeling (totally trustworthy, right?), I feel like I simply climbed it too quickly, and felt too chilled for it to be E11.”
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