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Are slash grades proper grades these days? (Read 17993 times)

shark

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Are slash grades proper grades these days?
October 10, 2021, 06:50:19 pm
I’d assumed that slash grades were just assigned to routes till repeaters/consensus decide to nudge it up or down. Or am I wrong and they are considered bona fide grades?

Bradders

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One could make an argument that slash grades are the only true grades, given the effect morphology can have on climbing difficulty; one climber's 7C is another's 7C+...or, 7C/+.

Fiend

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Proper, obligatory, and spiritually enriching.

Wood FT

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Wanky fence sitting. I hate them.

remus

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I listened to an interesting interview with the guy who builds thecrag.com where he explained that he resisted adding slash grades for a long time but finally implemented them as apparently they are 'real' grades in some areas.

Maybe it makes sense in some grading systems (where the grades are wide), but I think they're overly specific in all the systems in use in the UK. It's hard enough telling the difference between a soft 7c and a hard 7b+, let alone a hard 7b+/c.

Fair enough if you're using it to mean "I think it could be 7b+ or 7c, I don't know for sure though so needs more options to confirm".

36chambers

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Don't give in to the ego. Accept the lower grade and move on.

Liamhutch89

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I'm glad I don't have to grade things because even + grades feel like too much fidelity to me!

There are several climbs that i've done with a well established grade that I thought were easier than other climbs a whole letter grade lower (also well established).


Duma

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Grades are for ascents, not climbs

SA Chris

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Yes/No.

Or just introduce a minus like Alpine grades.

Wellsy

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It seems fair for them to exist when maybe a FA has been done but the ascensionist is unsure and there's not enough consensus yet. Like "it feels about 6C/+ to me but hard to say" and then when some more people do it then it can settle.

Also at higher grades I think it's reasonable because the margins are so hard for the climber to train past. Ghisolfi saying Erebor is 9b/+ is him saying you get something more significant than a 9b tick for it even if it isn't 9b+ quite.

Bonjoy

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Wanky fence sitting. I hate them.
Yes, I think the same.
Lazy, cowardly bullshit. They exist mostly because people are scare of being wrong. They imply grading is or can be more accurate than is the case and they make routes less appealing.

cheque

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They imply grading is or can be more accurate than is the case

Don't give in to the ego. Accept the lower grade and move on.

 :agree: Thinking that grades can be anything but a rough guide to difficulty based on a rough  consensus is the path to madness.

Steve Crowe

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I always think of the slash grade as a broader range because the route hasn’t had enough ascents for a consensus. Okay for reporting new routes but shouldn’t be used in guidebooks, in my opinion.

yetix

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 Or maybe grading can't be more accurate because it's so subjective, maybe it just more makes sense to the male, average height/build morphologies? As bradders said maybe it's a good way to account for grades varying amongst morphologies etc. People of different shapes and sizes at the ends of the morphological extreme always seem to think grades make less sense.


Bradders

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I always think of the slash grade as a broader range because the route hasn’t had enough ascents for a consensus. Okay for reporting new routes but shouldn’t be used in guidebooks, in my opinion.

I'd say the opposite, linking to my point about morphology. If a climb has had lots of ascents, with half of the climbers saying 7A and the other half 7A+, surely the only option is for the guidebook to say it will feel 7A/+?

Notwithstanding the inherent tendency towards downgrading that the consensus system leads to anyway; grades being suggested only by those who have successfully done the climb, i.e. excluding those who have tried and failed, is the same as any system of voter disenfranchisement throughout history. A true consensus for all can never be reached when only a small segment of the population are making the decisions.

Will Hunt

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I always think of the slash grade as a broader range because the route hasn’t had enough ascents for a consensus. Okay for reporting new routes but shouldn’t be used in guidebooks, in my opinion.

I'd say the opposite, linking to my point about morphology. If a climb has had lots of ascents, with half of the climbers saying 7A and the other half 7A+, surely the only option is for the guidebook to say it will feel 7A/+?

Notwithstanding the inherent tendency towards downgrading that the consensus system leads to anyway; grades being suggested only by those who have successfully done the climb, i.e. excluding those who have tried and failed, is the same as any system of voter disenfranchisement throughout history. A true consensus for all can never be reached when only a small segment of the population are making the decisions.

You've got to account for the fact that a lot of those people voting 7A+ are those for whom another 7A+ in the logbook is a big deal...

We all know that grades are subjective to one degree or another - best just to plump for something and let people figure out for themselves which are the desperates and which are the softies.

yetix

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Also got to account for those people with a reputation for downgrading everything to maintain...  :whistle:

Teaboy

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I'd say the opposite, linking to my point about morphology. If a climb has had lots of ascents, with half of the climbers saying 7A and the other half 7A+, surely the only option is for the guidebook to say it will feel 7A/+?

What you have described there isn't really a slash grade, it's 7A for people of one type and 7A+ for people of another type (two distinct grades for the same route dependant on morpho). What we are increasingly seeing is a slash grade to notify something that people are uncertain about, which is fine for one or two ascents but by the third ascent its time to shit or get off the pot.

Bonjoy

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I always think of the slash grade as a broader range because the route hasn’t had enough ascents for a consensus. Okay for reporting new routes but shouldn’t be used in guidebooks, in my opinion.

I'd say the opposite, linking to my point about morphology.
I think it's a really bad idea to try to capture grade variability due to morphology in the grade. Much better to grade for the notional average height of an adult climber and use something else to communicate the reach dependency of the difficulty, be that descriptive text, or a reachy symbol.

PS - I know this idea falls down when something has had no height average ascents. For instance something with a massive full stretch move off big footholds to tiny edges, put up by a giant, which might actually be impossible for the notional average. In my utopia such anomalies would be graded for the outsized ascensionist but carry a dagger symbol until climbed and regraded by a non giant.

abarro81

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+1 to Bonjoy's post (as always)

IMO... The weirdness with slash grades is that they add precision in an attempt to avoid precision. Which only works if they don't become accepted as "real" grades. It might be easy to tell that something is upper-end 9a/lower-end 9a+, but very difficult to put you finger on whether it's "9a.9" or "9a+.0". So long as they're considered fudge grades and "not real" the slash is a nice solution. Of course as soon as they become real you just made more boundaries and now the question is whether that "9a.7" is actually "9a.75" and therefore deserving of 9a/+... so for the sake of the reason behind their use, they should remain something that people strive to avoid as far as possible

Doylo

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Lily livered first ascentionist's who are terrified of having something downgraded (the ultimate humiliation) but want to dangle a carrot to the next person as an incentive to say it's the higher number.

andy popp

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to dangle a carrot to the next person as an incentive to say it's the higher number.

Presumably, it would be possible (if you were bored enough) to work whether slash grades are more likely see a grade revision than non-slash grades, and - if so - are they more likely to go up or down?

Johnny Brown

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I think it's a really bad idea to try to capture grade variability due to morphology in the grade. Much better to grade for the notional average height of an adult climber and use something else to communicate the reach dependency of the difficulty, be that descriptive text, or a reachy symbol.

PS - I know this idea falls down when something has had no height average ascents.

I can see this might precipitate a rash of slash grade, but I disagree. Some problems are not only much harder for the very short they are also much easier for the very tall, so you can reliably add/lose a grade for every 2" extra reach you have/ haven't. For those a 7A-7C type grade would seem more appropriate. Otherwise you just get the very tall taking the grade with comments about how soft it is. Probably worse with routes tbh (Kaluza, On the Rocks etc), as folk assume the E grade isn't so affected.

Bonjoy

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I'm not a massive fan of hyphenated grades, once you let a foot in the door for personal grading who knows where it ends. But they're infinitely preferable to slash grades, and a reasonable fudge for dynos. At least they're unambiguously vague, rather than something that can be read as either fence sitting or hyper specificity.

Bradders

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I think it's a really bad idea to try to capture grade variability due to morphology in the grade. Much better to grade for the notional average height of an adult climber and use something else to communicate the reach dependency of the difficulty, be that descriptive text, or a reachy symbol.

That's great, except that's not how rock climbs are graded. It might be how you grade your FAs, but beyond that we grade by consensus, and people give their view of how it felt for them, not for the mystical average person.

I'm not a massive fan of hyphenated grades, once you let a foot in the door for personal grading who knows where it ends. But they're infinitely preferable to slash grades, and a reasonable fudge for dynos. At least they're unambiguously vague, rather than something that can be read as either fence sitting or hyper specificity.


Agreed, although I actually think of slash and hyphenated as the same thing for grades. It's an estimation rather than trying to be precise.

 

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