[Jaspersharpe]

The more things become clear to me the more I feel I'm swimming against a tide of idiocy.

Is this what's called old age or just "A Moment of Clarity"? Either way I'm obviously onto a loser.

Bring on senility!

[Jaspersharpe]

This route looks fucking amazing by the way.

Top effort.

[IS2]

Superb effort, consistent " County " grading by the look of it, but only you have led it so yours is really the only valid opinion. Well done Adam.

[a dense loner]

Nice, how much has he overgraded it by then?

[Bonjoy]

The way trad grades work at the top end in particular on grit definitely diverts interest away from relatively hard things onto relatively bold things. Don't think anyone could argue with that. Good to see another genuinely hard thing getting done.

[r-man]

It does seem a bit of a shame that routes like this take second fiddle to some of the bolder challenges, when clearly they are physically miles harder. Hubble is either 8c+ or 9a...if this is the same difficulty, how on earth is it not E11? The amount of talent and dedication that must go into climbing a route like Purgatory is well impressive. It's cutting edge trad, yet it gets a grade that has been old for decades. Judging by the response here and elsewhere, this seems to be an accepted method of grading for boulder-routes...

Yours, confused boulderer.

[Nemo]

I’ve said this before, but it was a while ago and I don’t think it was on here.  So for what it’s worth…

E grades work perfectly well as long as people use them how they are supposed to be used - ie: as the overall difficulty.  Just pick a style - say flash - and ask how big a deal is it to climb this compared to other routes.  In this case, it looks like it's pretty safe and the hard climbing is short, but around Font 8A+/8B ish (says 8A+ on other channel?).  It’s clearly gonna be a bigger deal than flashing End Of the Affair or Gaia (borderline E7/8), but probably not as big a deal as flashing E9s like Indian Face, Big Issue, Gerty Berwick etc.  So it's either E8 or E9.  Which is it?  Well is it a bigger deal than flashing borderline E8/9's like New Statesman or Meshuga?  I don't know cos I ain't done it, but I suspect it's fairly similar (maybe slightly less of a big deal - perhaps similar to something like Superbloc?).  So at a guess hard E8 seems reasonable (although it could easily be soft E9).

On 99.9% of routes, you're likely to come to the same conclusions about the grade, whichever style you choose to compare with.  Occasionally, for routes with obscure beta / gear comparing via onsights is gonna give you silly answers, in which case you have to grade for the flash / headpoint, and just point out that onsighting it would be ridiculously hard.
 
IMO, that's how E grades should work.  In fact, I’d argue that it’s the only way in which they can work.  If everyone thought about it in that way, they would work fine.

"It's cutting edge trad, yet it gets a grade that has been old for decades. Judging by the response here and elsewhere, this seems to be an accepted method of grading for boulder-routes..." - rman

Short routes are what has caused most of the arguments.  It started at low grades with people giving short routes daft grades like HVS 6b and E2 6c etc etc.  The problem is that people aren't comparing like with like when they use grades like that.  They compare onsighting a long E2, with climbing a short boulder problem over many tries - then equate the two difficulties.  In other words, they compare long routes as onsights and boulders as headpoints.  When compared with like for like styles, the E2 6c, should typically be E5 and the HVS 6b should typically be E3. 

This clusterf*** has migrated to harder routes, with some people continuing to grade in that way and some people grading like for like as should happen if people thought about it a bit.  In other words, West Side Story should be E6, not E4.  Careless Torque should be E8, not E6.  etc etc.

Does this make sense when you compare to other routes.  Sure - flashing Careless is probably a similarly big deal (or maybe slightly bigger deal) than flashing End Of The Affair / Gaia.  So bottom end E8 makes sense.  Flashing West Side is a pretty rare event - certainly as big a deal as flashing Lord / The Cad etc etc.  The idea that onsighting West Side is only as big a deal as onsighting Resurrection is hilarious - but that is the implication of the way lots of people (unfortunately) use E grades - and it's what causes all the fuss when migrated to harder routes.

Of course, the above does mean that various “E1 climbers" will suddenly find that they’ve climbed E4.  Is this a problem?  No, not at all – it’s as it should be.  They’ve onsighted the long E1 routes, but climbed various short highballs after loads of tries.  In other words, they’ve headpointed the E4’s.  So, using E grades properly comes with the added bonus that some low grade climbers might get their heads around style – and the fact that onsighting E7s is often a bigger deal than headpointing E big grades.  The opposition to the above is of course that various people seem to think that short routes “don’t deserve” big E grades – and so proceed to knock completely arbitrary amounts off accordingly – hence all the ridiculous confusion.




In short, if used properly, E grades are useful - they contain real information - if used sensibly they allow you to compare the overall difficulty of one route with another - which is the whole flippin point.

However, what aren’t useful in any way whatsoever are UK tech grades above 6c.  Pretty much everyone climbing at that level discusses physical difficulty in terms of French grades and Font grades.  They tend to have climbed lots and lots of Fr8as or Font 7Cs, but only a few routes of comparable physical difficulty as trad routes. So when it comes to grading their new trad route, they turn to their experience of French or Font grades to compare the new route to – rather than trying to extend the UK tech grade system, where they would have done very few trad routes of similar physical difficulty to compare with.  People usually just add tech 6c or 7a as an afterthought depending on roughly whether it’s harder than Fr8a+ / Font 7C or maybe 7b if it’s harder than Fr8c / Font 8A+.  But really, what on earth is the point - for hard routes the tech grade is a complete and utter waste of time.

Of course if you really felt the need, you could order hard routes in terms of the hardest move, starting with things like Gerty Berwick, Equilibrium, Echo Wall / Rhapsody / Widdop Wall etc and going down to things like Gaia, Nightmayer and The Indian Face. And then you could split the list into bands and assign new tech grades of 6c, 7a, 7b and 7c to each… And after all that you would have essentially no more information than you had at the start with an E grade, a French / Font grade and a description of the route. It’s not really a worthwhile exercise – which is why no one has ever bothered.



So all that needs to be done to sort the shambles out is:
1.  People start using E grades like they are supposed to be used – as the overall difficulty.
2.  For hard routes (roughly over E6, but doesn’t really matter exactly where), replace (or supplement) tech grades with French / Font grades.

In fact, with combined E grades and French / Font grades, you pretty much have the same information as the US system which Jasper seems to want – just in a different format.  (You can easily infer the R / X bit by comparing the E grade with the physical difficulty if you like).  But IMO it’s actually much better, because it’s way clearer to see which routes overall are the bigger deal - rather than having to guess whether flashing a 7b+ X is or isn’t overall gnarlier than an 8a R.



ie: There’s will probably be a few cock ups in this list (and loads missing obviously) but roughly…

The End Of The Affair               E7/8 Fr7b
Gaia                                         E7/8 Fr7b+

Renegade Master                    E8 Font7C+
Careless Torque                      E8 Font8A
Samson                                   E8 Font8A
Trauma                                    E8 Fr8a
Divided Years                           E8 Fr8a
Chupacabra                             E8 Fr8a
Loaded                                    E8 Fr8a+
Superbloc                                E8 Font8A+         

The New Statesman                E8/9 Fr8a
Meshuga                                  E8/9 Fr7c+

Mission Impossible                   E9 Fr8a+    
The Big Issue                           E9 Fr8a+           
Muy Caliente                            E9 Fr8a+
The Dark Side                           E9 Font8A
Face Mecca                               E9 Fr7c+    
The Indian Face                        E9 Fr7b+
Widdop Wall                             E9 Fr8a+
The Long Hope Route               E9 Fr8b
Welcome To the Cruel World    E9 Fr8b
The Walk Of Life                       E9 Fr8a+
Gerty Berwick                           E9 Font8A

Parthian Shot II                       E9/10 Fr8b
Baron Greenback                     E9/10 Fr8b

To Hell And Back                      E10 Fr8a+
Equilibrium                               E10 Fr8b+

Rhapsody                                 E10/11 Fr8c/8c+

Echo Wall                                 E11 Fr8c/8c+


Various things will clearly need adjusting in there as they get more ascents, but IMO the above is a perfectly sensible grading system.

[nik at work]

Nemo I slightly disagree with you view on UK tech grades, I still like them. But I do agree they need sorting out.

Otherwise this is possibly the best post I've seen on UKB, certainly the best post in the grade debate. My view would be that the grading should be for the on-sight rather than the flash which (as you say) would throw up a few variations on your listing, and perhaps shunt the short/bouldery desperates even further up the E scale... However I think that view is based purely on the fact that I was told in my formative years that "the grade is for the on-sight". Flash/on-sight it doesn't really matter, as long as all are singing from the same song sheet.

[dave]

Otherwise this is possibly the best post I've seen on UKB, certainly the best post in the grade debate.

+1

[Doylo]

[ianto9]

love watching people climb so well it looks easy,be it 5b or 7b

[Jaspersharpe]

Nemo, not sure where you got the idea that I favour a system similar to the US. I don't, it's far too vague for routes and their bouldering grades are total nonsense.

Completely agree with the rest of your post though. I was the lone voice (nobody listened to Dave Jones) campaigning for French route grades/Font grades on Southern Sandstone 25 years ago because it was the only plan that would have made sense of a broken system (using UK tech grades for two move problems & 50ft routes). I met a brick wall.

It still would/does make sense and applied in the way you suggest actually works perfectly (or as near as a subjective system can) across trad/bouldering/sport on any crag in any country.

But like politics, just because it makes sense (or rather, because it does make sense but is different) it has very little chance of ever being accepted.

Shame really as it's not complicated.

[r-man]

In this case, it looks like it's pretty safe and the hard climbing is short, but around Font 8A+/8B ish (says 8A+ on other channel?)

I interpreted that as being 8A+ for the crux, but 8B for the whole thing. Says on Mark's blog:

Adam told me that if it was a boulder problem it would be 8B.

Anyway, everything you say makes sense Nemo. But what surprises me is the level you (and it seems most other people too) pitch the hard boulder problems. As Nik said, I'd have thought they would come in a bit higher. For example, Muy Caliente and Mission Impossible were nearly flashed (on the latter it sounds like only wet holds prevented success), whereas I've never heard of anyone coming close to flashing Samson or Careless or Superbloc, which you reckon are all a trad grade easier. (Correct me if I'm underestimating people's abilities, that would be interesting to hear!)

French 8a+ and Font 8A are different worlds of difficulty. Flashing one seems possible for some of the top climbers today. Flashing the other, especially when it is vertical + grit + highball/on a rope...is anyone capable?

[AndyR]

...not sure where you got the idea that I favour a system similar to the US. I don't, it's far too vague for routes and their bouldering grades are total nonsense.

How so re bouldering grades?

[tomtom]

What is it in V grades?

[Jaspersharpe]

...not sure where you got the idea that I favour a system similar to the US. I don't, it's far too vague for routes and their bouldering grades are total nonsense.

How so re bouldering grades?

That's a completely different discussion and one that's been done to death.

I was only using my position on that subject (which is pretty well known round here) to point out why I was surprised to be namechecked as an advocate of anything American grade wise.

[AndyR]

What is it in V grades?

Quite!
 

[El Mocho]

Nemo - great post, I know you have a little time on your hands so could you complete the list for all UK routes of E6 and above. Sure the BMC could pay you...

The only issue I have is that Westside, Superbloc, Renegade etc are (nowadays) boulder problems/lowish highballs so it seems a little funny to give them E grades - I would simply give them a font grade. Bit like saying The Ace should be E9 cos it is so hard to flash.

I think one thing which influences people is which type of route you would be more happy to try and flash. I would happily give Purgatory a flash go - mostly as I know I would fall off, and would probably be fine in said fall - but I would not be at all keen to try to flash Meshuga (both E8/9). I am quite good at both styles of climbing and have attempted (and sometimes done) routes of these grades onsight/ground up. It might take trying 200 routes like Purgatory before onsighting one and maybe I would do Meshuga first try as it is so much easier but I can see why people are tempted to give Meshuga a higher grade.

The thing with Meshuga is that as a headpoint it becomes so much easier - a lot of the grade is to do with the doubt about the climbing and outcome when going onsight - whereas Purgatory will still be fing hard.

If you talk to general HVS climbing person and describe the two types of routes - terrible fall onto sharp boulders, broken legs, back, DEATH etc or really small holds, long way apart, powerful etc they look at Meshuga and think "that is really hard climbing (relative to their grade) and really scary, In no way can I understand climbing that hard and scary" and Purgatory "that is really, really hard climbing but not very scary, I can understand it is harder (physically) than Meshuga but both are too hard for me and one is also really f ing scary"

It is easier to big up death routes, not as easy to big up hard ones.

Like I said I think you are right in what you said, just that it is maybe understandable where the confusion comes from...

ps Purgatory does look good....

[Offwidth]

I’ve said this before, but it was a while ago and I don’t think it was on here.  So for what it’s worth…

E grades work perfectly well as long as people use them how they are supposed to be used - ie: as the overall difficulty.  Just pick a style - say flash - and ask how big a deal is it to climb this compared to other routes.  .......

IMO, that's how E grades should work.  In fact, I’d argue that it’s the only way in which they can work.  If everyone thought about it in that way, they would work fine.

A breath of fresh air in terms of how E grades should be set and what has gone wrong... trouble is back in the real world the difference between different FA's methodologies seems to be expanding slightly if anything.

I'd still favour keeping joint route and bouldering grades on highballs and to use the same proposed system for all routes above UK 6a tech. From the tech grade side the real problem is that 6b upwards UK tech grades are stupidly wide. The irony in this is that the brits took font grades in via southern sandstone to 'invent' our tech grades and then later on fucked them up by making it harder and harder before the next UK tech grade was allowed to be rewarded (the exact opposite of what happened in France). The ideal way to have an independent UK tech grade system system would be to throw away UK tech from mid 6b upwards and start again with narrower grade bands so that the nuance of the tech vs adjectival made sense again at the higher grades, and aligned better with grade changes in other systems. I'm amazed there hasn't been a revolt to form a revised UK tech system already.

[petejh]

But why bother trying to re-invent a UK-specific technical grade when better systems already exist (font) and are being widely used? No-one else in the world cares about having a national technical grade system - or rather, the French and U.S. did and the rest of the world just use one of them because they do the job. There isn't a Spanish technical grade or a Canadian one; neither is there an Italian or Swiss overall grade. True, North American countries uses North American overall grades, as does Oz, as does Europe-sans-UK. But in each case lots of countries in the respective areas use them, not just one very insular country 

<this is the bit where you counter with how Britain's rock types and climbing styles are so globally unique that only a British-designed Rolls-Royce/Morris-Minor/QE2 of a grade system would work/>

What system do the Polish use? Bet it's efficient.

[Fiend]

Great ascent, cool video....really good addition to the crag.

In terms of E grade for a 7b crux, how would it compare to, say, The Devil Is In The Details E7 7a, which has gear at the climber's feet, a longer fall-out zone, and less moves for the crux??  :worms:etcetc

[Nemo]

“using Font or French route grades for difficulty plus things obviously being dangerous or not is the only sane option.” - Jaspersharpe

I was loosely referring to this as “the US system”.  Didn’t mean to cause a V grade argument. 

"I'm amazed there hasn't been a revolt to form a revised UK tech system already." - Offwidth

As I said above, the reason this hasn't happened is that the whole point of grades is to compare routes.  When someone does a Fr8a trad route, then even the very best have done very few trad routes of that physical difficulty.  Whereas they've done shed loads of Fr8a sport routes.  Inventing a tech system with only a tiny number of routes you can compare something with is just completely daft, when everyone climbing at that level already uses a totally simple and straightforward system for describing physical difficulty - French and Font grades.  By contrast, the opposite is true at lower grades - in the UK, most low grade climbers have done very few sport routes, but have loads of experience of other trad routes of similar physical difficulty to compare things with.  Hence why low grade climbers love the UK tech grade and why high grade climbers have pretty much ditched it.

I could go off on a rant about how tech grades are actually a poorly defined pile of nonsense anyway, with a "6a move" on the Positron headwall being a "4b move" on a Stanage boulder problem.  But the truth is it just about hangs together at low / mid grades because tech grades aren't usually used in the way people say they are - they're not really the grade of the "hardest move" (which is a pretty daft concept anyway) - for the most part they're (mainly unconsciously) used as a tech grade for the pitch - ie: a pseudo French grade, somewhat skewed towards the hardest section of climbing.  But that's really only of interest on the low / mid grade stuff - on the high grade stuff the vast majority don’t give a damn, because pretty much everyone talks about things in French / Font grades (except on loose choss fests.)

"so could you complete the list for all UK routes of E6 and above" - ElMo

Not at the moment – maybe in a few decades if noone else has got round to it.  Would be fairly straightforward if you live in Shef or Beris to do it down to E8.   But there’s shed loads of E6/7s out there...  And it’s not something you can just “make a list” for - French and Font grades for hard routes are something which would need to be accumulated slowly over time – probably better done at a local level by guidebook writers.  I’m a bit more optimistic than Jasper though – some areas are already starting to do this, and I suspect it will only increase over time – it’s the only sensible way to go for hard routes.

"The only issue I have is that Westside, Superbloc, Renegade etc are (nowadays) boulder problems/lowish highballs so it seems a little funny to give them E grades - I would simply give them a font grade. Bit like saying The Ace should be E9 cos it is so hard to flash." - ElMo

Completely agree that you don't need to bother with E grades on most highballs.  I'm just saying what E grades they should get if you choose to bother.  Which isn't that useful in itself.  But if everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet on those, then when it came to giving E grades to slightly higher, slightly gnarlier things, it would be easy.  Whereas as it is, different people assign a spectrum covering around four E grades to things like West Side (yep I’ve heard E4 to E7 for that…)  Hence when people try to grade slightly higher, slightly gnarlier things, they may as well use a flippin random number generator. 
 

"But what surprises me is the level you (and it seems most other people too) pitch the hard boulder problems" - r-man

I'm a little amazed to find myself on this side of the argument.  Normally I think most people overestimate/overhype the danger/fear factor a fair bit.  But I think that perhaps you're underestimating it.  That said, perhaps Muy Caliente and Mission Impossible will end up at hard E8 (although if so, you'd probably have to downgrade most of the other hard stuff in Pembroke).  I'm not remotely qualified to make that call.  And Mission Impossible probably isn't a great route to have a grade debate about as its E grade is gonna depend on the state of the pegs.  On the other side - I think there’s quite a few people out there, well capable of flashing things like Careless – but most of the relevant people in the UK tried / did it before the sequence was well known / videoed etc.  If some foreign uber wads turned up in decent conditions and got loads of beta, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Careless flashed, and wouldn’t even be utterly shocked with Superbloc…

Finally – forgot to say in previous post…  Purgatory looks well good.

[Fiend]

@ nemo etc, E grade for overall difficulty includes both the chances of success AND the consequences of failure (and a whole host of other factors), which may be very different from route to route (former is zero for Purgatory and the latter is relatively inconsequential - vice versa for Countdown To Disaster or whatever) - but of course having half a brain and being able to read a description of the route sorts out any disparity.

[petejh]

I think the system Nemo describes makes a lot of sense - it's only what already exists in the CC Llanberis and Ogwen guide's graded lists anyway, except brought into the main body of the book. I'd be happy to use it in the NW Lime guidebook starting either at E5 or E6 and upwards; there isn't a great deal of E6 + trad on NW Lime so it wouldn't take long to change. Obviously needs consensus on the physical difficulty of a bunch of routes and any that remained unknown would probably have to keep the usual 'E plus tech grade'... which might look odd/messy/confusing if there are two systems at work for trad (on top of the sport routes).

Imminent Departees E7 F7b+ (except it's not if Purgatory is 'only' E8 font8A+!)
Angel of Destruction E6 F7c (??)
Disillusioned Screw Machine E6 F7b+
Psychic Threshold E5 F7b
For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night E5 F7b
Moonwind Direct E5 F7a+
Chain Gang E5 F7a (but really this could be hard E4 and F6c+)


I think it gives a better indication of a route's relative difficulty. Also think this would lead to a lot of stuff getting readjusted downwards and not much going in the other direction.

[Yoof]

+1 for the Ewhatever Fwhatever/Font whatever system in new guidebooks, above about E5.
I already use it when talking about routes soo...