Moon Climbs Voyager Sit Start at 8b+!!

The ever young Ben Moon has made excellent use of the cold, windy conditions sweeping across the country by completing the sit start to (his own) Voyager at Burbage North in the Peak District, giving the grade Font 8b+ / V14. A stunning line, and now likely the hardest problem in the country, the sit start adds a number of hard moves that then leads into Voyager (Font 8b / V13). Ben has been at the top of the British climbing scene for 20 years, and with this new problem, he has re-established himself (again) on the world scene. Ben reports on the whole experience on his blog at moonclimbing.com:”Well this is the news I have been waiting to blog about for just over a year! I just climbed the sit start to Voyager. It´s quite amazing really because I climbed Voyager on the 16th November last year so it´s almost a year to the day that I have finally achieved what I set out to do which was always to climb right from the back of the roof. It´s been quite a battle I must say and I´ve lost track of the number of days I have spent on this particular climb. It´s been really hard for me and is certainly the hardest bit of climbing I have done and I am pretty sure it´s 8b+.After many tries last winter and spring I got very close but couldn´t quite link it all together. I felt so unmotivated over the summer and wondered if I would ever get motivated to start the battle again but it´s amazing how a few cold days can totally turn your mood around. It was cold and windy today but after warming up in the sun at Burbage West I got it first try. It was amazing. I almost fell off after the crux in a couple of places and really had to dig deep. My strength was just gone. From the back it´s quite a long problem about 12 moves and over a minute on the rock. I am pysched. Got some video footage but it will be a few days before it´s up” Source: www.moonclimbing.com Related News:Vogager gets 3rd Ascent (06/10/06) Two significant Gritstone repeats (06/03/06) Moon Adds Voyager to Burbage (16/10/05)

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