Little Women E7 7a – On Sight

by Jack Geldard – Editor – UKC British Bouldering Team member Dave Barrans has on-sighted Little Women (E7 7a) on the Apparent North buttress of Stanage. This late 90´s test-piece was first climbed by John Welford. The route traverses rightwards to tackle the hanging, blunt nose/arête in the centre of the photograph. Dave commented on his blog: “I can´t comment on the E grade as this was my first E7 and I haven´treally done anything above E5. Bouldering wise it is about 7b+ andprobably one of the best 7b+´s I´ve done.” Jordan Buys first flagged this up on the UKC forums, describing the ascent as: “Pretty amazing considering that most folk were finding the conditions a little too cold for bouldering.” The Apparent North Buttress is a small, but fierce, lump of gritstone and is home to a tightly packed set of hard routes. The routes are short, almost boulder problems, and are mainly steep and often feature “nose-grinding mantels” as top-outs. A recent addition to the buttress was made by Aide Jebb (UKC News Item) taking the wall just left of Little Women with his new route Evil Gazebo. You can follow Dave´s climbing at his blog and his website. Dave Barrans is supported by Beyond Hope, the distributors of Evolv, Prana and Metolius.

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