By Keith Sharples.

Way back in 1984 Ben Moon started the big Eighth grade ball rolling here in the UK with his celebrated route, Statement of Youth, down on the rocky shoreline of Lower Pen Tryn, North Wales. The second 8a, Revelations at Ravens Tor in the Peaks, came a couple of months later from Jerry Moffatt. Both routes have retained their quality, dignity and status despite having been in the spotlight for nearly twenty years. Statement was on-sighted by Britain's only ever World Champion, Simon Nadin, in 1990 and Revelations suffered a solo ascent by the young and obviously, very talented, Antione de Menstral way back in 1985! A couple of crucial holds have deteriorated on Revelations since those early days and some now think it’s worth 8b. No matter what the grade, Revelations stops plenty and to date it has still had less than 25 ascents.

In those heady days of the mid 80’s when Moon and Moffatt were forging these routes, neither ‘sport climbing’ nor ‘red-pointing’ were practised here in the UK. However both were soon imported from the EU and then the rules changed big-time. Suddenly it was de rigour to dog and/or top-rope routes and many took to it like a fish to water. With this change of ethos came an explosion in the number of new bolt-protected routes, especially in the middle of the country along the North Wales/Pennines axis. The Dales’ lads joined in the activities and the race was on for the biggest, best and hardest. Despite Moon’s early start with Statement of Youth, North Wales lagged the Peaks and the Dales in term of developments. By mid/late 80’s Tony Ryan's Cavier (8a+) at Rubicon, Martin Atkinson's Supercool (8a+) in Gordale were quickly superseded by John Dunne's Magnetic Field (8b) at Malham and Ben Moon's Zeke the Freak (8b) at Rubicon. Ultimately Atkinson finished Mecca (8b+) at Raven Tor at about the same time as Mark Leach released Cry Freedom (8b+) at Malham. It seemed to some that the already steep Malham and Raven Tor had been peppered by so many bolts that they were in danger of keeling over! Elsewhere, hitherto undeveloped crags were also getting plenty of sport action and numerous classics were being done by an ever-increasing number of activists.

By '89/90 the revolution was almost over in the Peaks, Dales and North Wales although the rest of the country was just waking up and smelling the coffee. Slowly sport routes of 8a, or harder, were appearing in the south west, the Lakes and even in that great bastion of traditionalism, Scotland. Meanwhile the boys with power to spare, Moffatt and Moon, were back from Buoux having stuffed the French at their own game. Using their power to great affect they quickly added Liquid Amber (8c) at LPT and Hubble (8c+) at Raven Tor respectively in 1990. Thus ended seven hectic years of cutting edge sport climbing.

It was to take another seven years until eventually Neil Carson crimped the shit out of the un-crimpable crimps on the finishing slab(?) left of Statement of Youth and posted The Big Bang (9a) at LPT. Since then Steve McClure has twice added to the 9a's in the UK with Mutations (1997) at Raven Tor and Northern Lights (2000) at Kilnsey, the latter being, in all probably, the UK's hardest sport route to date.

So what else has been happening away from the so-called cutting edge? The answer is quite a lot really, providing that is, we don't compare our 8a hit list with those of our overseas cousins whose are indefinitely longer, although not really any harder. At the last time of counting, the UK now has 227 sport routes graded 8a or above: that is unless you know different, in which case let CragX.Com know. The lion's share are in the Peak (82) and the Dales (62). North Wales is third (38), the South and South West next (28) and Scotland comes in fifth (12). The Lakes drags well behind (3), although Ireland gets the wooden spoon (1). The reasons for this spread are numerous and complex, but clearly the availability of suitable rock coupled with the climber inclination and skill play a major role, as does the weather.