[Duncan campbell]

I put in 7a+ for PGMG but think that’s mainly because I onsighted it. In the Llanberis guide it gets 7b and I was going well that year, so could well be. I might have put well protected but it’s got a bit of a wiggy bit at the start.

For Lord I put 7a and a bit runout. But that’s probably not fair as there is that bit low down that’s protected by hooks…

[petejh]

So here is a question for you people: How to do you differentiate between objective and subjective danger? I rather climb a 6b without any protection at all then a 6b with OK protection but with large sections on really loose rock. I would find the former pretty safe and the latter really dangerous.

OK, but what I meant by danger being subjective (until it suddenly becomes very objective), was that 'true' danger is hard to quantify until it's too late. So we rely on using subjective judgements to try to work out how dangerous we think something is.
Your term 'danger' can be called 'risk'. Risk is often formally calculated using a risk matrix, by estimating a likelihood of a bad event happening, say on a scale 1-to-5 from least likely to most likely. Then multiplying likelihood by the consequences should the bad event happen, on a scale 1-to-5 with '1' being fuck-all and '5' being death. You can formalise risk this way but it does still come down to a certain level of subjectivity in making the estimates, due to not knowing the exact likelihoods and consequences in advance due to a lack of crash-test people repeatedly spannering themselves in the exact circumstances of whatever it is you might be stood in front of contemplating.

With loose rock - not that I'm a loose rock specialist or actively seek it out - the cliff is still standing, therefore the whole cliff isn't about to fall down with you on it, just small bits of it! So as long as you identify as you're climbing which small bits will likely rip out if you pull on them or step on them, and use the bits that aren't those bits, then in theory you 'should' get up ok. And there's often lots of available protection in cliffs with loose rock, because they have lots of cracks! So if you fall off a climb with loose rock you might have tons of gear, some of which will likely hold, stopping you hitting the ground.

It might work out as: 'likely consequence of a fall (due to loose rock) = '3'. Where '3' = potential for a broken limb.
Likelihood of a fall (due to loose rock) for a typical climber on that route = '3'. Where 3 = 'possible but not probable'.

Meanwhile if you fall off your unprotected 6b example, then nothing's stopping you hitting the ground. So the breakdown might be: consequence of a fall =  '5', death. Likelihood of a fall for a typical climber on that route =  '2', unlikely but possible'.

Loose 6b route = risk rating of 3x3 = 9.
Solid but unprotected 6b route =  risk rating of 5x2 = 10

Which is more 'dangerous' really? You'd need to run an experiment with countless soloists and loose rock climbers - maybe at the next Olympics - to see which version of climbing damaged the most people.

In your example of avalanche, not a great deal of personal climbing skill can change the outcome if it happens, but knowing how often an avalanche releases over a particular route gives you a likelihood to work with, to start to determine approx risk level.

Anyway, as it applies to eGoader I think they've over-done the number of risk ratings. Better to have kept it to 5 or 6 levels of 'danger' imo.

[andy moles]

I put in 7a+ for PGMG but think that’s mainly because I onsighted it. In the Llanberis guide it gets 7b and I was going well that year, so could well be. I might have put well protected but it’s got a bit of a wiggy bit at the start.

For Lord I put 7a and a bit runout. But that’s probably not fair as there is that bit low down that’s protected by hooks…

Yeah sounds like you were being too conservative for those. A bit runout = basically safe, no one regards Lord as a chill route to fall off! It wouldn't take a whole lot to go wrong for it to be dangerous. F even hurt herself taking a 'safe' but awkward fall from the very last move, that alone is 'a bit runout'.

[mrjonathanr]

Honestly, I can’t even see why this is a matter for serious debate. It’s obviously not going to be hard-and-fast correct in all/most/many cases. Apparently Black Magic is E7 or E8,  E1 6a is ‘easy E1’ and Count’s Buttress is E3. I’ll stop there.

[andy moles]

Honestly, I can’t even see why this is a matter for serious debate.

Only because it's endorsed or semi-endorsed by a bunch of famous climbers and is therefore at risk of becoming more influential than it should be.

[kingholmesy]

Apparently Black Magic is E7 or E8

What did you put in for Black Magic?  I put 6c and very runout which gives hard E5 which is spot on. Entering 6c+ and dangerous gives easy E6 which isn’t miles off.

I wonder if the problem isn’t that the egrader gives too high an E grade, but rather people are overestimating the French grade and/or danger that they are entering for routes?

[andy moles]

Apparently Black Magic is E7 or E8

What did you put in for Black Magic?  I put 6c and very runout which gives hard E5 which is spot on. Entering 6c+ and dangerous gives easy E6 which isn’t miles off.

I wonder if the problem isn’t that the egrader gives too high an E grade, but rather people are overestimating the French grade and/or danger that they are entering for routes?

Is it possible you're at cross purposes between Pentire and Pex Hill?

[Will Hunt]

The eLookatmeLookatme doesn't work. People are absolutely hopeless at translating the grade of trad routes (maybe with the exception of Pembroke/mountain routes) into French grades or boulder grades, thus the whole thing crumbles. I spoke to someone the other day who thought the HVS 5b they tried at Stanage was a Font 5 into a bad rest into Font 6A. Can you fucking imagine that? Crescent Arete into La Marie Rose, putting in gear as you go, is HVS 5b   

I really want to slag it off but I'm reluctant to bump the relevant threads. I just want to wake up in a world where it never existed, where we're not all talking about Tom Randall's vanity project. I expected this sort of thing of Gresh but I'm disappointed in Steve McClure.

Absolute cringefest. If you wanted to give Lexicon (which would be a shoe-in for shittest hard route name ever were the competition not so strong. GreatNess Wall, Hard Cheese for fucks fucking sake) E12 then just fucking give it E12 and save us the pathetic publicity stunt.

[kingholmesy]

Is it possible you're at cross purposes between Pentire and Pex Hill?

Ah yes - could well be. I was talking about Pentire.

I would still be interested to know though what grades mrjonathar input for the Black Magic at Pex.  It’s been over a decade since I climbed there, but remember looking up at that wall and thinking they were all proper solos - whereas a lot of the other stuff at Pex given route grades felt like extended highballs.

[mrjonathanr]

I gave it 7a+ and 2.5 danger. You could argue for 7b I think. Not sure about the French grade tbh. You can protect the top moves (about 5b) with cams in the break, but it doesn’t make much difference imo. I soloed it, no pads (not invented then), I think most people would.

I bouldered up the start on a visit last summer and found the high step move unexpectedly hard to do. Obviously the crux is up from there, but I wouldn’t want to fall off any of that.

My personal grade would be E6 6b/c (in ‘normal’ ie non Pex grades). I am sure others will beg to differ.

[mrjonathanr]

Interested to know what you think, kingholmesy.

[kingholmesy]

Dunno - sounds hard and scary, but not E7/8 (not that I’m really qualified to comment).  I guess it partly depends how high the crux is.

The only thing vaguely comparable I’ve done is Toltec Twostep which gets E6, 6b/c - the crux is at highball boulder height (I thought english 6c or font 7a-ish). After that there is probably nothing harder than 6a, but you’d be fucked if you fell off higher up.

I think these sorts of routes are better graded in trad grades - the tech grade and an E grade is more helpful IMO than a French grade, and I wonder if they don’t work as well in the egrader as the longer sort of routes where a French grade is more transferable. For example stuff like Right Wall, Resurrection etc seem to come out about right.

[mrjonathanr]

Dunno - sounds hard and scary, but not E7/8 (not that I’m really qualified to comment).

Nor me 

 

I guess it partly depends how high the crux is.

From about 5m up to 7m. Doesn’t sound much but you would not be in control falling off. FWIW a mate fell off the low traverse under it at 0.5m and broke his foot.

The only thing vaguely comparable I’ve done is Toltec Twostep which gets E6, 6b/c - the crux is at highball boulder height (I thought english 6c or font 7a-ish). After that there is probably nothing harder than 6a, but you’d be fucked if you fell off higher up.

Agreed, sounds very similar.

I think these sorts of routes are better graded in trad grades - the tech grade and an E grade is more helpful IMO than a French grade, and I wonder if they don’t work as well in the egrader as the longer sort of routes where a French grade is more transferable. For example stuff like Right Wall, Resurrection etc seem to come out about right.

Agreed.

TLDR; mathematical models for grading are more effective  strategies for marketing than grading.

[kingholmesy]

From about 5m up to 7m. Doesn’t sound much …

Sounds high enough.  Just looked on logbooks on the other channel and it gets a few votes for soft E7.

TLDR; mathematical models for grading are more effective  strategies for marketing than grading.

 

[andy moles]

but I'm disappointed in Steve McClure.

I don't know Steve personally but nothing he puts out suggests a guy whose home game is promoting a grading algorithm. Speculation alert, is this not just a case of, Steve we've got this brilliant clever thing that fixes the E grade, can we put your name to it yes great just sign here? Roping in the likes of Charlie and Hazel, who clearly have reservations but do their mates/clicks a favour by offering some quotes, for the same cred-enhancing reasons?

Anyway, good rant. I was willing to give some benefit of the doubt, but  is more entertaining.

The irony of the thing is, if you enter the data on the egrader and you don't press the Convert Grade button, just giving a French grade and a safety rating, you've got a pretty useful informative grade, at least for non-bouldery routes. Maybe they've solved it by accident.

[duncan]

eGrader takes sport grades, which most people understand, and one other number to give an answer that is ‘clear, simple, and wrong’. Pseudoscience works like this: you can sell it because it looks like science or maths and borrows their credibility. See also Physics Envy.

I like how the physical difficulty is the sport grade and hope this hastens the demise of the almost useless (above 6a) UK tech. grade.

I don’t like almost everything else about it. The E-grade originally came about through chats between Pete Botterill and his mates in Lake District pubs. This has come about because people want to make money. If you think the E-grade is compressed in its upper range - a possibility, I wouldn’t have a clue - then talk it through in the electronic equivalent of a Lake District pub (or even better the real thing, you might get Dave Birkett involved. I think we can guess what he thinks of all this!). Suggest a few benchmark routes and start using the ‘new’ grades. They will be adopted if people adopt them not because of some wanky ‘algorithm’ and clumsy marketing.

Leaving out the old-man stuff above, implying trad. grades from sport grades + a danger factor is the sort of thing 8a Jens thinks you can do. He’s wrong and the utility of the UK adjective grade is that it is more than just physical difficulty plus danger. Otherwise you could just use a sport grade with R and X. Many people might like this but I think the adjective grade offers more and is worth persisting with, augmented with a sport grade.

A major problem is the E-grade assumes this is first go with minimal prior knowledge. Sport grades are based on the most efficient sequence after practice. Some routes are easy to read onsight, others very much are not. The E-grade takes this into consideration, egrader or R/X do not.

On many trad. routes, there is good protection for the hardest bit but easier runout sections. Pull My Daisy has well-protected F6a+ and runout F5b. If you plug 6a+ and runout into egrader you’ll get E3 or E4. It’s not.

Exposure, intimidation and cumulative difficulty are factors on many trad. routes: my palmarès is inflated with climbs like Positron that would get a lower grade if they were chopped-up into roadside single pitches. Egrader does not take this into account.

TL/DR? What mrjonathanr said,

[jwi]

The way I understand US R/X grades is that a runout on an easy part of the route would not matter. I guess that is how most people interpret the risk slider above.

Luckily JiBe already explained some thirty years ago how to spot compression/overgrading in the top grades, at least for french grades. People claiming a new route at 9c after sieging need to show that they either can do a 9b after not much practice or onsight 9a otherwise their claims are unlikely to hold.

My guess is this property is why the proponents mistakenly call E-grades "linear" when they meant to say "scale invariant" (I think).

[mrjonathanr]

Really good post Duncan. I think E grades have nuance because they are an attempt to be holistic. To a degree that makes them culturally specific - they give an overall feel of difficulty based an assumed (trad) skill set. We have had some watershed moments since they were first adopted - headpointing is more normalised on outcrop crags and the impact of climbing walls, so as a cohort climbers are generally stronger physically but have weaker onsight and protection skills. Plus there are simply more of them, which makes differentiation trickier than when there were just 4, for example.

The result is a lot of people find them more difficult to understand and interpret.

I’m still convinced White Wall is E4, for example 

[Fiend]

This thread is the only thing I've read about the "E-Grader" , and my current conclusion is that it's staying as the only thing I've read about the "E-Grader" 

[Wellsy]

I have no opinion on Egrades but it is brought to you by "Reyt" and can I just say I hate that fucking deliberately faux-spelling of words in a Sheffield accent that you see around these days. Get in the bin on that affront alone.

[andy popp]

This thread is the only thing I've read about the "E-Grader" , and my current conclusion is that it's staying as the only thing I've read about the "E-Grader" 

Despite all the fancy talk of algorithms etc. it's basically just an old fashioned grade conversion chart that probably work just as well (i.e. not very) on paper.

[shark]

There are so many aspects of the E grader that trigger me that I still struggle to disentangle them and still don’t think I’m entirely there yet.

As a starter I think it’s useful to compare with the Darth Grader website on which it surely must owe a debt of gratitude (although this is unacknowledged/uncredited). Darth Grader is an uncommercial site and was launched anonymously, with no calls to higher authority and whilst the name suggested it was a joke it surprisingly turned out to be a useful tool to arrive at an overall sport grade. In stark contrast E Grader was developed and launched by climbing celebrities with testimonials by yet more wads with an implication that SCIENCE is at work yet reports indicate that it doesn’t seem to work very well.

It is also clear that the focus for the Egrader tool was on the top grades because it has been developed by accomplished headpointers predominantly with high E grade routes in mind that have only ever been headpointed. Below this rarefied level the vast majority of E graded routes are done onsight, ground up or flashed and the consensus overall E grade is generally found to be workably useful for route selection. However, is the overall E grade for the hardest routes that are only ever headpointed even useful for route selection? Any headpoint aspirant just needs to have an indication of the French grade to establish whether whether it’s worth their while dropping a top rope on it. All other aspects of gear and fear they will be able to work out from their intimate inspection and practice of the route. Consequently it seems to me the only purpose of the highest E grades is limited to trumpeting and Egrader just a tool to tune your trumpet.

John Arran and Franco have acknowledged that headpointing is such a different style of climbing a route that in their opinion a separate headpoint grading system should apply. Of course there is a middle ground where the same routes are regularly both headpointed and climbed in more traditional style. However, it would be refreshingly honest and humble at the cutting edge of headpointing if ascentionists just give a route a French grande and an indication of risk and just leave it at that. If standards rise such that it is onsighted or done ground up in the future it would then warrant an E grade.

[James Malloch]

As a starter I think it’s useful to compare with the Darth Grader website on which it surely must owe a debt of gratitude (although this is unacknowledged/uncredited).

I know nothing about trad grades so have zero opinion on it, but i did see some credit for Darth Grader on the last image of James Pearsons IG post. But it’s a pretty small acknowledgment…

[remus]

As a starter I think it’s useful to compare with the Darth Grader website on which it surely must owe a debt of gratitude (although this is unacknowledged/uncredited).

Darth grader is credited at the end of this doc which is linked from the home page of egrader.co.uk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nxDxDr3ueFn7NTIUuD0mBgFdz6PNUEVk/view

[shark]

Sorry. Was just going on the long UKC launch article which is the only place I’d read about it and couldn’t see any reference to Darth Grader