On January 10th 2020, with characteristic modesty, one of our professional guide testing team kindly sent through some pictures of him “on an interesting route in the Alps”. It turns out Dave Sharpe, with fellow mountain guides Paul Swail and Tom Grant had just climbed Beyond Good and Evil.
Referred to variously as having “mythical status in the mixed climbing world” and being a “dream line”, this fourteen pitch ED3 (V 5+ 5c A1/A2 M R, 600m) was first climbed by the legendary Andy Parkin and Mark Twight on 21st-22nd April 1992, and first repeated by François Damilano and François Marsigny in 1995. At the time of writing the UKClimbing logbook entry
"[V 5+ 5c A1/A2 M R, 600m] Fourteen exceptional pitches of severe mixed climbing. Magnificent corner on pitches 5 & 6, epitomizing Chamonix goulotte climbing. Easily visible from starting snow slope."
boasts precisely seven entries. For such a famous (or perhaps infamous) line, this is pretty much all you need to know.
The sweat-inducing photos speak for themselves.
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