Last winter the gaston of Leopold Von Buch, at Carrock Fell, broke leaving a gnarly remanent and seemingly making this Lakes classic, and its low starts, defunct.
Roll on to a few weeks back and Dan Varian put some effort into removing the remaining sharp, loose pieces and properly cleaning up the ‘new’ hold to leave a now sold – if considerably smaller/less positive – grip. Dan then went on to reclimb the problem, utilising an almost identical sequence to the original (off the smaller hold), suggesting the grade of 8A.
Great to see this classic line back in the game. Leopold Low and Leopold von Pooch (pictured above) await reascents, the latter of which would potentially end up being another of Britain’s hardest, with the original version (post break) being 8C.