"you start with the premise that the French grade is generally felt to have established a ‘linear progression’" - Shark
The eGraders have said that. I didn't.
I merely pointed out that E grades from around E5 up have largely covered the ground of 2 French grades (with a few wobbles for various historical reasons).
Certainly, the difference between French grades in the 5s and 6s, vs French grades in the 7s and 8s is way narrower.
I don't know the history of French grades that well, but I'm sure the first few times I went to French crags grades like 6a+, 6b+, 6c+ didn't even exist.
The difference between 6a, 6b and 6c feels similar (in a completely intuitive, non scientific way) to the difference between 7b+, 7c, and 7c+ to me.
And certainly noone really uses 5a+, 5b+, 5c+. It's just 5 and 5+, and there's no way that's the same kind of width (however you choose to define width) as the 7th or 8th grades.
So no, I don't think it's linear. I don't even really know how you'd define "linear" in the context of grades other than, as Pete suggests, the number of people that are capable of climbing x grade (which is certainly not linear in any way).
That said, in an intuitive way, I do think that above 7b+, French grades do sort of "feel" like they have a reasonably consistent width (and I think keeping that feel at the high end is something that the likes of Ondra have talked about trying to maintain). And presumably, that's what the eGraders are talking about.
"with a limit of 3 E grades" - Shark
Again, I didn't actually say that. I said that it was very rare for there to be a jump of 3 E grades, not that it was impossible for there to be a bigger jump.
"the bands of physical difficulty are that wide for safe routes (and always have been) in each E grade which is another shortcoming of them. - Shark"
And maybe I'm misunderstanding them, but reading between the lines, I
think that this is perhaps what at least some of the eGraders were getting at.
ie: the essential beef that perhaps some of them have is that E9 has been around since 1986, but we've still only got a couple of E11s.
If having narrower E grades is what they are advocating, then this has all been a pretty odd way of arguing for it.
I think a case
could be made for narrower E grades, but I'm not going to make it, as I think it's problematic for various reasons.
For one, you'd have to figure out where to start making them narrower. If it wasn't right at the highest levels, it would inevitably mean changing the grade of lots of existing routes. Guidebooks wouldn't make that change any time soon and not in sync, so the whole thing would turn into a confused shambles.
"soloing at Stanage for example the grades go out the window where an HVS might be harder than an E2 - Shark"
Soloing's a different thing altogether - as you suggest, I can think of various E4's I'd be way happier soloing than various HVS's. Not the same thing at all as onsight vs headpoint.
Sure though - as various people have pointed out, some routes are harder relative to other routes to onsight, vs headpoint. And of course, there's plenty of sport routes where the same is true, as Alex has said. Ondra and Megos have onsighted 9a, but can't see short bouldery 9a's getting onsighted any time soon.
The question is what you do about it in terms of the grading system as a trad guidebook writer. Maybe I underplayed the problem a little in the posts above. But, as said previously, E grades do have significant width - and I think that's generally a good thing, for this reason amongst other reasons. For the onsight vs headpointing relative differences to make enough of a difference to deserve a different E grade I do think isn't really that common. But sure, it happens.
What to do about it? Well you can go Franco's route and use E grades for the onsight grade and H grades for the headpoint grade (and you could go further if you wanted the grade to look like a maths equation, as there's a fair few routes where the Flash grade isn't exactly in line with the other styles too). But the vast majority of routes will get exactly the same E and H grades. Sure though, for those that don't, you've got some extra, useful information. In principle, I don't have any problem with this. The main issue is just the practicality of it - most guidebook writers struggle to get their heads around what's going on for hard routes in the first place - trying to get this widely adopted in guidebooks seems pretty unrealistic to me. And I just don't think you gain that much, and it makes a system which clearly lots of people don't understand currently, even more complex.
To me, it's just way way simpler and more practical to do what in practice actually happens anyway - you grade for something resembling the best sequence and best use of gear. If the route has never been onsighted, or is considered to be way harder to onsight, then it's a good idea to point that out in the guide. Along with possibly giving some crucial beta.
Of course, none of this stuff is ever going to be perfect. Climbing is way too complex to pin everything down in a couple of numbers. But I do think that those numbers if used consistently are extremely useful for the vast majority of routes.
Another cut and paste job from an old rant on this subject:
Take an exaggerated hypothetical example, which sheds some light:
Person X climbs a new route, and having a rather high opinion of how hard it is, gives it the astonishing grade of E58 64c. Clearly in the present climate, that is utterly meaningless, so in an attempt to work out whether the route is genuinely impressive or not, people ask the usual question which follows being told a grade for a trad route at present which is: How hard is it? To which X gives a perfectly simple reply: “Its about E2 for 60 feet and then there is a Font 8C+ with the prospect of decking if you fall off”. Fairy fluff then – E58 it is… Headlines are written, and person X is heralded as the greatest climber the world has ever seen.
The next day, person Y goes along to have a look at the route. From the deck it does look like the living end. The sequence which person X used is the obvious one to try if you were to go for the onsight. Sadly Y can’t climb Font 8C+, so he nearly sacks it off and goes home. However, at the last moment he decides to abseil down and have a look. And after a bit of messing around, susses out that if you use a completely unobvious toe hook round the corner, the Font 8C+ morphs into a 5c sequence. Oh yeah, and Y also works out that if you put a hex 6 into the weird pocket just by the crux where X couldn’t get in any gear, then turn it by 270 degrees, pull it forward 3 millimetres and then shunt it to the right a centimetre, it turns out to be completely bomb proof…
Person Y quickly leads the route and considers it to be a rather excellent E2 5c. The following day, the route gets 350 ascents from people who’ve never climbed harder than E2 before.
This is essentially the subject which people have been endlessly arguing about – and there are four possible options for describing such routes in guidebooks:
1. Grade the route for a “real” onsight and don’t give any beta in the guide. Thus the above route would be given E58 64c.
2. Grade the route for the “best” sequence and “best” use of gear. (Thus the route would get E2 5c). Don’t include any beta in the guide.
3. Grade the route for the “best” sequence and “best” use of gear. (Thus the route would get E2 5c). Include the obscure beta in the guide.
4. Grade the route for the “best” sequence and “best” use of gear. (Thus the route would get E2 5c). Instead of giving out the obscure beta, simply warn in the guide that the route would be much, much harder than the given grade to truly onsight.
Clearly option 2 is extremely dangerous and thus can’t be used – you would have people setting off expecting an E2 and being confronted with a Font 8C+ sequence with no gear. Option 1 is also a bad idea – this is how you would grade the route if you were “grading for the onsight” (as it would be virtually impossible to suss out either the toe hook or the gear on the onsight). But should the media really be hailing the 352 ascentionists of the route as the 352 best climbers in the world who’ve climbed the hardest route in existence? Or is it better to use options 3 or 4 for grading the route and say that they’ve all climbed a rather good E2, which would be very hard to onsight? The answer to my mind is rather obvious.
So, the only sensible options are 3 and 4. Which of those is best depends on your view as to how much information a guidebook should give away.
This of course is exactly the same as what happens in sport climbing and bouldering. If someone does a new sport route and grades it 8c, and then the next day someone finds an easier sequence which makes it 7c, the grade of the route is 7c – even if it would be very hard to find that sequence on the onsight.
"we should all feel empowered to exercise our new computational rights to make that sort of call - Shark"
Isn't that what's been going on since E grades were invented.
