UKH

For me it has to be yarding on two finger pockets on a mildly overhanging line. You don’t have to be that good to be able to do it - 6b+/6c sport routes can feature this. But there is something immensely satisfying about pulling hard on just two fingers, feeling in control, and knowing that it’s something you can only do because you’ve put a few years of effort in*, executing what are just frankly cool moves as a result.

what’s yours? Heel hooks are ace, but I’m too bad at them to really love them. 
 

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* naturally gifted annoying people excluded 

Fig 9 in second position on a reverse stein

Ice axes are aid climbing 

The rose?!

Pulling round the edge of a roof onto the wall above it with a big drop under you.

Given your recent pronouncements on bouldering being the most dangerous climbing I take it by “big drop” you mean 70cm?

Good choice in the OP.

I like:

toe hooking trickery in roofs.

Sticking a burly slap to a sloper (especially if it's the top) 

A strange masochistic enjoyment of horrific grit top outs / mantles

The rose IS cool, but I’ve never done one in the wild, only at the wall, so can’t say it’s a fave for me

Latching a big move or a dyno that you don't think you'll stick, and cutting loose wildly, but somehow staying on? Or... working out intricate static beta for said move?

Or... pretty much anything improbable or unduly intricate!

Got to say, this I right up there for me. You never quite know if it will work out until it does (or doesn’t!). Great stuff.

However, nothing like a huge rockover on a tiny (slate) edge. Your foots on a matchstick and basically waist height, and all you have to do is stand up and press off two equally tiny holds that were at chest height but get increasingly useless the further you stand up. Then you get to do it al again, and probably need to use your hand to get your foot in situ before you can. Just beautiful.

Being in the niche, resting but still breathing heavily from the exertions below. You know now is the time. Reach up, slippery finger jams, committed. Got it! The Corner. History, right there. Wow.

Gotta be Cenotaph Corner you're on.  My palms are sweating just thinking about it.  Still haven't tried it after thirty years of waiting.  Can only hope there's some perfect jams on it. Heaven 8-}

Jamming. Preferably hands, though fingers, fist, arm, body, foot... all good. The joy of moving on a secure jam gives a sense (not always realistic) of confidence and success. Jamming's great! 

Really deep drop knees, in particular on steep ground, where you can take much of the weight off your arms. Theres nothing quite as satisfying. 

I think number one it has to be jamming a crack. It just looks like total magic when you have not done it. Then you think okay, maybe I can do it, but it will surely have to hurt like crazy - just like some guy towing a car with his scrotum? And it doesn't really hurt! Iincredible to think the body can do this bizarre thing - probably as close to 'hacking' your body to do things it wasn't supposed to, as you can get in climbing?

Next I'll have to say flagging. Very satisfying to be able to swish your spare leg around and feel the weight just come off your hands.

 

Moving off your first tenuous smear to weight and stand up on the next. No way back and the last piece of gear a memory. The bold and beautiful loneliness of the slab. 

Knee bars. Or, frankly; any hands-off rest that you only found through trickery.

Dynos on routes, not above mats 

Those moves on slabs/off beers that start as ludicrously high, burly rockovers then at some point you have to a thin, sketchy mantle - piano playing your fingers up to whatever you can find them all of a sudden you realise you need to snatch your lower foot onto the starting hand and find balance before you peel. A full blown emotional rollercoaster in a matter of seconds.

Splitter hand cracks, feet and hands all in line. Nothing like that feeling, in particular the feet, I just love how bomber a good foot jam feels. 

May bank holiday last year I was due head down to N.Wales for another go at a long term project. My grandad had recently taken a fall and was in hospital, so on the way down on a Friday, I popped in to see him. On arrival I was told by the nurses he passed away 10mins earlier. I made the calls to family then in a daze drove home, calling an urgent whisky meeting in the pub with close friends. I eventually decided to go down to N Wales the next day but arrived to find the project wet. 

As an alternative I walked in to Comes the dervish. It's probably the only time I can think of where my mind has been completely empty beginning a climb. About a third of the way up, there's a move where the smears run out on the left and for a short section where the crack is too narrow to get your fingers in so you have to make a long move, which for me was the crux. I got a medium height right hand layback, got my right foot really high in the crack then brought through my left to just beneath it. To stop barn dooring, I swung my left palm down and left beneath me, pushing flat against the wall. Instead of making the pull through instantly, I stopped mid-move and looked down at my left hand, the closest part of me to the floor, took in the surroundings, the moment and just smiled, holding it for a few seconds before pulling all the way through, sweeping my left hand all the way through to a good hold. That's the best climbing move I've ever done and probably the best I've ever climbed.

Kneebars are just cheating for the weak don’t @ me

That was beautiful, thanks 

Drop knee high on the (indoor) overhanging wall, then reaching out to clip the rope.

I love heel hooks. Feels like you're got more than two arms. Can use to hold your position, rest or pull over in the direction of your hook or lean out the opposite direction.

For me,

1. pulling over overhangs on massive jugs

2. vertical walls on tiny finger ledges, e.g. The Mal (E3 5c) at Avon and Yellow Wall (E2 5b) in the Pass

LEAST FAVOURITE for me, mantelshelves e.g. the very last move on The Cracks (HS 4c) on Dinas Mot, supposedly HS but I loathe it with a vengeance

Does no one call them Egyptians these days?

I'm sorry for your loss. It's so often the case that we leave the room for a few minutes, or have just left for the day, or it finally happens just before we arrive...

It's so rare to read an account of how the wider contexts of our lives can shape our climbing experience. Congratulations.

Mick

Probably gone the same way as Rolfing.

Slapping for a high sidepull or arete without any opposing feature, thus putting you in a position you can't hold statically, but at the same moment as you begin to barn-door directing momentum upward off the foot to deadpoint a higher hold with the other hand. Basically a two-in-one move that can't be executed individually. Rare but beautiful.

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I couldn't agree more. 2 finger (occasional 3 finger) pockets are as good as it gets. What's your favourite crag for these kind of holds?

Reverse flag + toe-hook around an arete. 

The post was actually inspired by a really good 6c at The Reach yesterday! But outdoors, Margalef is a dream for this, and also last year I discovered that sector Eros Telendos North Face over from Kalymnos is stuffed full of 40m 6b+ to 6c routes which are just pocket after pocket of yarding. 

I seem to recall some good two finger pocket action onLeft Wall (E2 5c) so long as you don’t blindly follow the chalk on the dog-leg. 

End of thread!

(Closely followed by a proper, decent flag)

Upside down perfect hand cracks

Unlikely knee bars

Exploding dynamically to an edge, all points off from a double heel hook. Yum....

When did people start calling an Egyptian a Drop Knee? In fact when did people start using the term Egyptian? And didn't they get called a Back and Foot for a while? (which I always found confusing because I only knew it as a chimney pervrsion).

The first time I ever went to a climbing wall, in about 2008, my mate called them Egyptians. He kept saying “go Egyptian” as i flailed about - it stuck with me. I didn’t climb again until about 2014, and can barely remember anyone ever calling them Egyptians since I seriously got into climbing from about 2016. So, I’d say it was some time between 2008 and 2014 that “Egyptian” went out of usage. 

We would have said "Egypt" as a verb. Totally ubiquitous in the 1990s, I'm sad it seems to have disappeared. 

I savour moves where the body bends laterally and then straightens. So, for example, with a high left hand and a low left foot on an arete, a right hand at intermediate height on the face is matched with the right foot (=body bent laterally). Then, depending on holds/angles, the body must straighten either explosively or slowly and in balance (my preference) as the right hand quests upwards.

Thin finger locks.  Always feel safe (and generally mean the protection is excellent too!).  

First Blood (E2 5c)

Foord's Folly (E2 6a)

Pull My Daisy (E2 5c)

Stiff Little Fingers (E3 5c)

Delilah (E2 5b)

That kind of thing.

Never heard it as a verb!

I think I probably first heard the term mid nineties. I still use it. Doesn't anybody else?

Never heard it as a verb!

I think I probably first heard the term mid nineties. I still use it. Doesn't anybody else?

Locking in on a low undercut and powering up to a distant edge. 

Or anything on holds that face the wrong way and require a ton of body tension and technical wizardry to move upwards

I was waiting for someone to suggest this. Another poster mentioned that jamming can look like sorcery; I'd say that a lot of use of undercuts is even more more magic-looking. I don't climb hard enough or often enough to truly be qualified to comment, but when you do a medium-hard move which on an easier route would itself be the crux if it finished with your hand on a lovely jug, but instead you are doing a move up to a relatively thin undercut (or something else "the wrong way round") and just catching and holding it is an art in itself, that's lovely. 

Then you somehow have to move onward from it  

On a rope, nothing beats the feeling of a really high smear that you roll on to with out really any other holds (a crystal or change in texture). And then repeat until really sketched out and no change of reverse, only to clip a nice bolt or place a lovely cam/nut.

Naturally an slightly overhanging hand crack is there as well.

Above pads, my favorite move is again the high step that you roll on to. Albeit in bouldering I prefer slightly overhanging terrain and small edges.

The other above pads things is a dynamic move from a sloper to another for compression, preferably with also a dynamic toe-hook thrown in. I do suck at these, but they are really nice when done properly.

For me it's making a big move to a ledge (or even better, the top), then throwing a heel up and rocking into a burly mantel with a big power scream.

Even better if the first move is from an undercut hand jam in a break.

Ones I can do...

The no going back rockover above gear.

The start and end of the move may only be a couple of metres apart, but after completing the move, one often finds themselves in a whole new world...

Or the next world if you fail to complete it and the gear is less good than you had hoped.

There's a really decent move that'll stick with me for a while (Slate). Feet on matchsticks, fingers crimping and then a slight pop for a right hand mono before hauling right foot to lower rib height and rocking up using the mono.

Or about the friction moves on an arête like Archangel, who described it as Gritstone distilled?

There is objectively no better move than cutting loose on a big throw between jugs.

Maybe, for the aesthetically challenged.

I'm going for the humble 'flag'. Its not the biggest burliest of moves but it totally takes you look and feel like a proper climber. Its the point at which you get the whole idea of footwork and balance. Some extreme flagging moves are also totally photogenic too. Hat off to the humble flag. 

Not a move, but I like when a route weaves an ingenious way through improbable and exposed terrain such as on Eliminate A, Overhanging Bastion and Dream of White Horses. 

Aesthetics? Not all of us climb for the camera buddy

On reflection I think the best climbing move would be from Norwich to Ambleside.

The aesthetics of the move.

I can relate to that! Used to live in Cambridge which is maybe beaten only by Norwich in terms of climbing inconvenience 

Haste Not and Vector are another two good examples at their respective grades.

Aesthetics does not simply refer to visual beauty, but to beauty in general: how something is perceived by all the senses. E.g something can feel beautiful, or sound beautiful, or smell beautiful, or taste beautiful, as well as look beautiful.

Indeed. There is such a thing as musical aesthetics. So far, however, I have failed in my efforts to photograph it. 

I  was thinking about the way a climbing move feels.

I've done haste not, but not vector - cheers, I'll get it! 

Vector on a normal 3-star grading system deserves about 7

I pondered over Cambridge but Norwich has the added pain of the A17.

Anything dynamic and committing more than about 8m above the sea. 

E.g. ejector seat at Cova del Diablo - everyone tries to find another way, but unless you're Chris Sharma in Dosage, you have to step really high and across the centre line into a very vulnerable feeling "seated" position and throw a massive deadpoint to a crossly tufa.

Until you hit it, you don't know where the sweet spot is, but you do know that if you don't hit the sweet spot you will be off and heading for the sea that seems soooo far below. 

And you know that once you've got it, loscot and two smoking barrels is just going to take it up another level 😁

I have photographed musical aesthetics exactly once.