Hubble

Hubble is a short bolted sport climb at the limestone Raven Tor crag in Miller's Dale, Dovedale, in the Peak District in Derbyshire, England. When Hubble was first redpointed by English climber Ben Moon on 14 June 1990, it became the first-ever climb in the world to have a consensus climbing grade of ; and the highest grade in the English system at E9 7b. History Hubble was an aid climbing practice route that used skyhooks to pass the first two bolts, which English climbers Ben Moon and Jerry Moffatt started working on in 1989. Moon and Moffatt had returned from a summer in France establishing some of the hardest sport climbing routes in the world on the limestone walls of Buoux, including Agincourt and Maginot Line, both at ; they wanted to set these new grade standards at home. Moon rebuilt the individual moves of Hubble in his basement and practiced them with Moffatt, in particular using a new device called a "Moon Board", which was not dissimilar to Wolfgang Gullich's new campus board training device. Moon spent eight straight days completing the first redpoint of the route, which he did on 14 June 1990, on one of the rare occasions when the route was completely dry. Moon later said, "The year before, I had already redpointed a couple of 8c's in France. I already knew that Hubble was more difficult than all my hardest lines like Agincourt or Maginot Line. That’s why I rated it E9/7b. It was the first route in Great Britain that was given a 7b as technical difficulty". Moon also said that Moffatt had come close to redpointing it earlier, but lost interest when Moon completed it. Hubble is widely regarded as the world's first consensus climbing route. First 9a Climbers have speculated whether Hubble was actually the world's first-ever sport climb at grade , instead of Wolfgang Güllich's 1991 ascent of Action Directe, which is considered the first – and is still the "benchmark" – for the grade.