[Yoof]

Oh, and amazing stuff on the route! That jump move looks brutal!

[Nemo]

Pete – if you wanted a less jarring change and to avoid offending the old skool, you could just supplement rather than replace tech grades – especially if you’re going down to E5.  ie:  E6 6b (Fr7b+), E7 6c (Font7C) etc etc.  Then when you don’t know the French / Font grade or if it’s some Gogarth style horrorshow E7 5c, you just don’t bother adding the bracketed bit.  Then, all you’re doing is adding new information for some routes where it's useful, so there’s little for anyone to complain about.  The tech grades for the hard stuff aren’t terribly useful, but they don’t do any harm and it means you’re not “changing system” from low to high grade stuff.  Not sure why grading for the overall difficulty needs to lead to loads of downgrades – I thought we were mainly talking about upgrading some hard safeish stuff…  I suppose some routes may need downgrading a bit when people actually find out how physically hard they are and realise they’re a bit out of line with other things – but that’s surely a good thing and should as you say lead to more consistency.

[SA Chris]

As for who fucked the grading system; I blame head pointers!

[miso soup]

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 

Australian sport grades are only used in Australia as far as I know, ditto South Africa, although it is easy to confuse the two.  We're not the only insular country.  Although they probably should just get over it and switch to French.

[petejh]

New Zealand use them as well - a country which is as large as the UK (although no-one lives there). I'm sure I remember hearing some SE Asian countries also use them.  But yeah, French makes sense - the frogs invented sport-climbing after all, just like we invented hard grit.

[SA Chris]

Australian sport grades are only used in Australia as far as I know, ditto South Africa, although it is easy to confuse the two.  We're not the only insular country.  Although they probably should just get over it and switch to French.

Oz, SA and NZ all use the Ewbank system, with minor variations at the top end. SA has started adopting French grades for sport routes in a few places. The original SA grading system (similar to the 1 to 5 system in the US, but open ended using letters A - I) is almost never used anymore.

[gme]

Come on this is all a bit UKC FFS.

It dose not matter, anyone climbing at all at these levels should be able to understand the UK system and its vagaries, if they don't then that's there tough luck. Do we need spoon feeding everything.

Great route Adam and its about time someone repeated Malcs route again to its left. Totally classic, hard and, similar to Adams, not death.

[mrjonathanr]

Surely looking at that moderate fall it can't be more than E4? 

[Jaspersharpe]

Especially if you use pads. These aren't really proper routes like the ones in the mountains where any number of pads aren't going to help you. Quite frankly, the idea of this being only one E grade lower than Indian Face is outrageous.

[Fiend]

Dear god. All we need now is someone claiming that the UK grading system is irrelevant/unsuitable 

[petejh]

I've never climbed in the UK, in fact I've never actually climbed, but it's my opinion that the UK grading system is irrelevant/unsuitable.

[willackers]

Great route Adam and its about time someone repeated Malcs route again to its left. Totally classic, hard and, similar to Adams, not death.

I thought Robin Barker repeated it and downgraded it?

[bendavison]

Great route Adam and its about time someone repeated Malcs route again to its left. Totally classic, hard and, similar to Adams, not death.

I thought Robin Barker repeated it and downgraded it?

He did. I think gme meant that it's about time it got another repeat. It's been a while after all.

[willackers]

 

[SA Chris]

Which route is that, Transcendence? Or should it only be called "Malc's Route to its left" and not mentioned by name, a bit like "the route named after a Scottish play at that same crag"

[bendavison]

Which route is that, Transcendence? Or should it only be called "Malc's Route to its left" and not mentioned by name, a bit like "the route named after a Scottish play at that same crag"

Yes, sorry, 'Malc's route to it's left' is Transcendence. Maybe it should be referred to as 'the-route-which-must-not-be-named', to carry on the theme from the cave round the corner.