"clearly this is flat out BONKERS" - JB
Wouldn't be the first time.
"you get to appear on youtube in a lab coat" - JB
I think I'll pass.
"As Tom has so neatly illustrated, it's not my version, it's THE version" - JB
Noone's denying that's how micro routes have been graded up till now. But I think it's for a whole variety of different reasons, typically what Tom was saying - ie: things were graded just by comparing to nearby similar things, and not worrying about whether that made sense in a larger context.
What I meant by
your version of E grades, is that you're the only person I've ever heard try and actually rationalise it - by suggesting that you discount the physical difficulty of boulder problems except by how it affects how tired you are for the stuff higher up. I've genuinely never heard anyone else ever express that view. And as I said above, I don't think it stands up to any real scrutiny. If everyone wants to keep different grading systems for micro routes, then so be it. But in that case I don't think attempting to rationalise it with any kind of definition that works across the board is ever going to work.
Also, THE version is subject to change right? There's various shorter things that have been upgraded in recent times. e.g: things like China Syndrome.
I guess I've always thought that flashing something like WSS would be really impressive - as much as any normal E6's (outside of grit micro routes) elsewhere I can think of.
And all this really started with the headpoint of an E8 being reported in the significant repeats thread. It's the same issue right? It's not 1999, so you wouldn't expect headpointing an E8 to be particularly noteworthy. It was news as that route is Font 8A+, massive, amazing, and clearly nails. ie: If things were consistent, then it should be more than E8, just by virtue of the physical difficulty alone.
I guess in my fantasy more logical world, I would just like to see E grades be used consistently across the board, and the highball type, micro route world has always seemed to me to use them completely differently to everywhere else. Might be self consistent, but makes any kind of news along the lines of someone has flashed E8 essentially meaningless, without knowing the actual details of the route. And makes any attempt to come up with some rational way of grading new hard routes doomed, as it's different in different places and you can only grade things relative to the stuff in the immediate vicinity. I guess that's the context bit that JB and others like and I don't.
"eGrader 2.0!!! This time we get it right!" - JB
Haha. I did think that whole episode was a bit of a shame, as that group of people had (and still have) the chance to really reset things a bit. There's clearly bunfights to be had about how wide grades are at the top end and all the normal kind of stuff you'd expect. But if trad climbing news is ever going to mean anything, then I understand why they were at least trying to make things a bit more consistent and rational. To me, that just really wasn't a good way of going about it.
Where do I think it went wrong?
- They tried to apply it to routes under E6 which to me was a terrible idea (unless website hits was actually the aim obviously). Why? Because French grades are not well established for those routes, and typically are disagreed about by a very large margin. ie: When people are onsighting trad routes, something that's Fr5+ can easily feel Fr7a if you get the fear and hang on too hard, or cock up the sequence, or whatever. French grades are really only well established on routes that are regularly headpointed, which is typically upwards of E6.
- They got the basic conversions from French grades to safe trad E grades out. By a bit low down. By a lot high up.
- They over egged the danger element.
- There's a whole pile of factors other than danger that can add to the E grade for any particular level of physical difficulty.
The combination of the above meant that as soon as people looked at it, it was out by miles for pretty much any route anyone threw at it.
That said, I do think some of the criticism they got was a little unfair. They seemed to be attacked from all sides for suggesting they wanted a linear scale. Clearly to anyone with a maths background, the idea that any grading system is ever going to be "linear", or even how you would attempt to define linear in that context, is a non starter.
But I assume that what they actually meant was a linear mapping to French grades, which was essentially the heart of what they were trying to do.
ie: What the whole eGrader amounted to was this. Their conversion was, for safe routes:
7b - 7b+ routes would be E5
7c - 7c+ routes would be E6
8a - 8a+ routes would be E7
8b - 8b+ routes would be E8
8c - 8c+ routes would be E9
9a - 9a+ routes would be E10
9b - 9b+ routes would be E11
Think of some safe cracks - Cave Route Right 7b+ E6, Requiem - 8a+ E8. Out, but not too far out I suppose.
But it gets worse higher up, where I'd really have expected them to get it right.
ie: they didn't seem to notice, that in practice, E grades have got narrower relative to French grades towards the top end.
That everything, no matter how safe, that's ever been given Fr 8c, has been given E10.
And that giving something E12 with their conversion would be the same as saying it should be overall the same difficulty as climbing a Fr 9c. I'm guessing now that Ondra has climbed an E12 in 3 days, he'd disagree that it's as big a deal as climbing Silence.
And that if you did change things so that E grades mapped to a similar width of French grades as happens between E5 and E8. Then it would have the opposite effect to what they seemed to actually want - which seemed to be to have narrower E grades above E9.
So it was miles out and got worse the higher up the scale you went. I'm really not claiming any special powers to suggest that it shouldn't be that hard to get that conversion roughly right - it just amounts to writing a decent graded list of hard routes and then actually looking at it. But having had a quick look at doing that, it isn't going to be a clean 2 Fr grades per E grade (ie: the linear rebooting I think they were hoping for), unless you want to downgrade pretty much everything over E9 significantly (which again, seemed to be the opposite of their actual intentions).
But...
It really didn't need to be like that right. To me all it needed was:
- An attempt at a graded list of of things over E9. Which they are clearly in a much better position to do than we are. And is by far the best way of seeing how grades are currently applied for hard routes and how it could be improved. And whether or not E grades actually map to a particular width of Fr grades, and whether or not changing it to do so would or wouldn't be a good idea.
- An attempt at a clear, simple definition for E grades (which is where they would always run up against the discussion we've had on this thread).
I've said earlier how I think you
could have a clear, simple definition for E grades. I don't think it's terribly revolutionary, as it's the exact definition that's in the vast majority of guidebooks - ie: the overall grade of the route. But applying it consistently, would certainly involve upsetting some people by upgrading various micro routes and adjusting some other inconsistencies in local areas. Is that worth doing? Well to me, yes. To others by the sounds of things, no.
On the other side of it, if someone else doesn't do it, then I will at some point try and produce a much more thorough list of hard routes, largely out of curiosity. But ultimately, doing that properly requires people way more in the loop than I am these days.
"I've not really been able to work out what is actually at stake in this thread" - Andy Popp
In terms of this thread, probably just whether we're keeping Fiend entertained or not.
I suppose, with the debate more generally, it's perhaps whether the younger generation of climbers think this is all insane and ditch E grades. Or whether people are still going to be having endless debates in 100 years time because of the inherent inconsistencies in the system.
