[Wellsy]

Should have just pulled on and campused to that good edge I suppose

[teestub]

I'm not sure it's such a rare view as you say but I've no real idea.

Of the hundreds of years of collective bouldering experience in here, I don't think you’ll find a single person who would support this view. If you think it’s not rare then I’d suggest it must be in a subset of folk you climb with. 

[Dingdong]

If anything to me it feels like with grit technique is 90% of the difficulty, a lot of stuff is tekkers and then feels piss when you refine it so much you flow on the send go.

[Wellsy]

I'm not sure it's such a rare view as you say but I've no real idea.

Of the hundreds of years of collective bouldering experience in here, I don't think you’ll find a single person who would support this view. If you think it’s not rare then I’d suggest it must be in a subset of folk you climb with.

Again, it's out there, i dunno how common a view it is. But I don't think there's much point carrying on the discussion tbh as its not like anyone here is it disagreement on it

[Tom de Gay]

This sounds like a myth perpetuated by strong folk who have had a hard time on slabs with supposedly moderate grades.

In their defence, I have a hard time differentiating the difficulty of most Font slabs. Forêt Noire (7A+) feels as hard to me as Super Prestat (7B+).

Some problems in Font do seem have a bit of danger money attached to the grade, but it's not entirely clear how much, and doesn't seem to apply to old school terrifiers like Le Pilier Légendaire at Éléphant, which is E5 6b but was 6C back in the day.

[Wellsy]

Is that E6 6b on the "West Side Story is E4" grading scale or the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale

[Tom de Gay]

Is that E6 6b on the "West Side Story is E4" grading scale or the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale

Since the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale was invented last week, I was referring the decades-old established scale, which conveniently allows comparison across climbs of a similar type: a bit harder than White Wand, not as hard as Ulysses.

[Johnny Brown]

If anything to me it feels like with grit technique is 90% of the difficulty, a lot of stuff is tekkers and then feels piss when you refine it so much you flow on the send go.

I used to think that, but I was using power more than I thought. Since passing 40 my technique genuinely seems to be still improving, but my power is waning distressingly fast, as evidenced by problems like Brad Pit slipping from my repertoire. Sad times.

I do remember a series of training articles in OTE in the mid-nineties, in which the jist was that by the secret to all climbing was getting stronger. Not only would the moves get easier, you'd also gain stamina as who gets pumped on easy moves? At the time I assumed 'stronger' was a synonym for 'better', but in hindsight I realised they just meant stronger.

Since the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale was invented last week, I was referring the decades-old established scale

   

[abarro81]

a bit harder than White Wand.

WSS is a lot harder than White Wand though innit 

[ToxicBilberry]

If anything to me it feels like with grit technique is 90% of the difficulty, a lot of stuff is tekkers and then feels piss when you refine it so much you flow on the send go.

I used to think that, but I was using power more than I thought. Since passing 40 my technique genuinely seems to be still improving, but my power is waning distressingly fast, as evidenced by problems like Brad Pit slipping from my repertoire. Sad times.

I do remember a series of training articles in OTE in the mid-nineties, in which the jist was that by the secret to all climbing was getting stronger. Not only would the moves get easier, you'd also gain stamina as who gets pumped on easy moves? At the time I assumed 'stronger' was a synonym for 'better', but in hindsight I realised they just meant stronger.

Since the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale was invented last week, I was referring the decades-old established scale

   

Your powers are weak old man

[Johnny Brown]

And yes, I really do think that if you took the crux “move” off the headwall on Positron or the crux of Right Wall and transferred it to a bouldering wall that it might be pushing 4b if you were being optimistic.

Whilst clearly this is flat out BONKERS, I think the kernel of truth you are alluding to here is that some Welsh Extremes are easy. But some are not. I'm pretty confident the crux of Vulcan, for example, would still be 6a at ground level, and of course many routes exist outside Wales. If you'd done all the E5s at Chee Tor I'm confident you'd have a different view. Or even just warmed up on Queer Street.

Typically what the UK tech grade really is is how hard the hardest move feels in the context of the route.

Which is fine, not because it's a sort of french grade (and only rarely is it like Positron) - it's because in the context of the route is the only place that move exists.

the grade of "the hardest move" being a ridiculous nonsense.  Which move?  A hand movement?  A foot movement?  A sequence of movement? – Oh wait – that’s what we use Font grades for…  (And yes, that's the bit that JB was mocking previously, but it doesn't remove the absurdity of pretending you're grading the hardest move).

You are literally the only person who I've heard express this opinion. No one has a problem with defining a move, because it doesn't need a definition. We all know what we mean. Sometimes it's a slap, or a short pull on a hold, sometimes a tricky sequence, but we all know what a hard move is, and that the UK tech grade broadly tells us how hard it will feel.

Which is my beef with JB's version of grading things like WSS,

As Tom has so neatly illustrated, it's not my version, it's THE version. The discussion of whether the tech grade was for the hardest section of additive over the pitch was had right back at its inception. Remember Ron on Supersonic - "could this be Britain's first 6c?". Well no, it's 6a, but at the time some people were adding lots of 6a up to make 6c. But why do that when that's what the E5 bit represents?

It is too late in the day to change the entire grading system for all grades to an E grade and a French or Font grade, and it’s unnecessary

It certainly is. However, all your thinking need not be wasted...

what I'm trying to do, is persuade a few people that it actually is possible to do what the eGraders tried to do but didn't get right.

But which people? It's been staring us all in the face! They've got the budget, and the reach. You've got the vision. And, I believe, some programming expertise?

eGrader 2.0!!! This time we get it right!

You pitch, they pay!

If it works, you get to change the climbing world. If it doesn't, they get loads of clicks and you get rich anyway. AND you get to appear on youtube in a lab coat while the wideboyz 'gently' mock your opinion of 4b.

[Fultonius]

I'm not sure it's such a rare view as you say but I've no real idea.

Of the hundreds of years of collective bouldering experience in here, I don't think you’ll find a single person who would support this view. If you think it’s not rare then I’d suggest it must be in a subset of folk you climb with.

I suspect the subset that Wellsy climbs with is both larger and more active than the knowledgeable old grumblies might expect. I and I would suspect there's perhaps less intermixing too...

Different Venn's, innit.?

[teestub]

Without making a political analogy, being larger and more active doesn’t make something any more right 😆

[Wellsy]

I'm not sure it's such a rare view as you say but I've no real idea.

Of the hundreds of years of collective bouldering experience in here, I don't think you’ll find a single person who would support this view. If you think it’s not rare then I’d suggest it must be in a subset of folk you climb with.

I suspect the subset that Wellsy climbs with is both larger and more active than the knowledgeable old grumblies might expect. I and I would suspect there's perhaps less intermixing too...

Different Venn's, innit.?

I climb with a lot of people of different levels and experiences and it appears to be a random strain that pops up in various people. I don't really climb with people who overlap with your UKB types, although some people I climb with are mega psyched lifers (just of a very different strain)

Many people I know find bouldering grades very frustrating, as an observation, for various reasons. I don't necessarily agree with that mind you.

[Fultonius]

Without making a political analogy, being larger and more active doesn’t make something any more right 😆

Agreed! I guess what I was meaning was that even though folks in here might not come across it much, doesn't mean it's just a tiny subgroup - it might be 80% of the recent indoor to outdoor crowd? (not saying that's you Wellsy, just an example).

And the point being, it's maybe significant enough that it could start to sway the general opinion. (move the overton window, to use another political analogy).

These people will still be voting on grades on UKC etc....

[Wellsy]

I reckon recently indoor to outdoors would be accurate yeah

I'll say that it's a sufficiently prevalent view that for a while that's what I thought it was because that's what people told me it was

("That's stupid" yes I know)

[crimpinainteasy]

If anything to me it feels like with grit technique is 90% of the difficulty, a lot of stuff is tekkers and then feels piss when you refine it so much you flow on the send go.

I used to think that, but I was using power more than I thought. Since passing 40 my technique genuinely seems to be still improving, but my power is waning distressingly fast, as evidenced by problems like Brad Pit slipping from my repertoire. Sad times.

I do remember a series of training articles in OTE in the mid-nineties, in which the jist was that by the secret to all climbing was getting stronger. Not only would the moves get easier, you'd also gain stamina as who gets pumped on easy moves? At the time I assumed 'stronger' was a synonym for 'better', but in hindsight I realised they just meant stronger.

Since the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale was invented last week, I was referring the decades-old established scale

   

I guess as someone else itt already said technique and strength are deeply intertwined. Being able to keep maximal weight on your feet requires a strong posterial chain, in addition to good balance and spacial awareness. Equally, even climbing on a steep board requires good technique and maintaining maximum body tension in order to reach the highest grades.

[Nemo]

"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.

[Nemo]

Edit:
Too late to modify the eGrader bit in the above.  I really shouldn't post when I'm tired.
Actually, the eGrader conversions above are for bolted routes, not trad routes where even for safe cracks they were adding a bit. So my examples were rubbish - it actually works fine for things like Cave Route Right and Requiem.

So actually, their conversion for well protected trad routes, is:
7a+ - 7b routes would be E5
7b+ - 7c  routes would be E6
7c+ - 8a routes would be E7
8a+ - 8b routes would be E8
8b+ - 8c routes would be E9
8c+ - 9a routes would be E10
9a+ - 9b routes would be E11

Which is pretty accurate in terms of safe stuff up to a certain point.
 

[ToxicBilberry]

That has been the opinion given to me by lots of experienced boulderers. I personally think it should and it's stupid if it doesn't, and worse than that it would appear to apply in some cases and not in others, but it's definitely not unusual to hear. In fact the first people who took me outside said, the grade is about physical difficulty, not technical demand.

I like the sound of this, it could be known as the 'Simpson System', in which 'doing' a problem involves pulling on and cranking out a crux power move then stepping off and declaring the problem piss without ever doing it.

[andy moles]

Many people I know find bouldering grades very frustrating, as an observation, for various reasons.

Bouldering grades are all over the place (except at the higher end maybe, where they are forensically and painstakingly analysed), but I think to some extent this is because something that has only a few moves inevitably highlights differences in physique and relative strengths more than on longer routes, which unless they are quite niche in style or cruxy tend to iron out to a more even consensus. Also sometimes they're just wrong, obvs.

[ToxicBilberry]

This thread links to some reading I’ve been doing about inductive and deductive reasoning. French sport climbing grades lend themselves to a predominantly inductive process as opposed to the British traditional grading system which, as Andy alluded to, tell you something more about the climb when taken in context. To try and deconstruct then reduce the grading system to a purely utilitarian ‘can I climb X’ is in keeping with the spirit of the age, but a sorry state of affairs.

[Nemo]

Having dug a bit further, there's already some pretty comprehensive lists of hard UK trad climbing on remus's site:
https://climbing-history.org/list/28/the-hardest-trad-routes-in-the-world
https://climbing-history.org/list/12/timeline-of-hard-trad-ascents-by-british-people
So not much point in reinventing the wheel.

The following includes a handful of things from outside the UK, but no doubt there's lots of that stuff missing.
With the French / Font grades added in to the above lists, the E10s and above look something like this:


E12
Bon Voyage               9a         Annot (France)      James Pearson (2023), Adam Ondra, Sébastien Berthe   

Hard E11 ?
Echo Wall               8c/8c+        Ben Nevis         Dave Macleod (2008)

E11
Tribe                  9a/9a+      Cadarese (Italy)   Jacopo Larcher (2019), James Pearson
The Best Things...         9a         Gunks (US)          William Moss (2023)
Crown Royale            9a         Norway            Pete Whittaker (2023)

Hard E10 / E11 ?
Rhapsody               8c/8c+        Dumbarton         Dave Macleod (2006), >3 repeats
Meltdown               8c+         Yosemite (US)      Beth Rodden (2008), >3 repeats
The Recovery Drink         8c+         Norway            Nicolas Favresse (2013), Daniel Jung, Pete Whittaker
Power Ranger            8c         Chattanooga, USA   James Pearson (2017)
Immortal               ?         Maidens Bluff      Franco Cookson (2021), James Pearson
Lexicon                  8b+         Pavey Ark         Neil Gresham (2021), >3 repeats

E10                  
El Boulder del Pedal      8c+         La Pedriza (Spain)   Ignacio Mulero (2023)
Blackbeard's Tears         8c+         Promontory (US)      Ethan Pringle (2016), Connor Herson
Into The Sun            8c+       Switzerland         Bernd Zangerl (2017), Jacopo Larcher
Magic Line               8c/8c+      Yosemite         Ron Kauk (1996), Lonnie Kauk, Hazel Findlay, Carlo Traversi
Crown Duel               8c          Norway            Pete Whittaker (2019)
Stranger Than Fiction      8c         US               Mason Earle (2015), Brittany Goris, Lor Sabourin, Pete Whittaker
Mind Riot               8c         Binnein Shuas      Dave MacLeod (2019)
Hard Cheese               8c         Bright Beck Crag   Craig Matheson (2021)
The Sandman               8c         Nesscliffe         Franco Cookson (2022)
GreatNess Wall            8c         Nesscliffe         Steve McClure (2019)
What we do in the Shadows   8c         Duntelchaig         Robbie Phillips   (2021), Dave Macleod                        
Eigerdosis               8c         Norway            Pete Whittaker (2023)
Century Crack            8c         US               Tom Randall (2011), Pete Whittaker, Danny Parker, Fumiya Nakamura
The Pura Pura            8c         Italy            Tom Randall (2014), Pete Whittaker
Cobra Crack               8c         Squamish         Sonnie Trotter (2006), >3 repeats
Choronzon               8b+             Pembroke         Neil Mawson (2014), Steve McClure
Equilibrium               8b+             Burbage            Neil Bentley (2000), Neil Gresham, James Pearson
Doctor Doolittle         8a             Curbar            John Arran (2001)
Sleepy Hollow              ?             The Roaches         Pete Whittaker (2013), Ryan Pasquill
Baron Greenback Direct      8b+             Wimberry         Pete Whittaker
Die By The Drop            ?             GlenFinnan         Dave Macleod, Dave Birkett      
To Hell And Back         7c+             Hell’s Lum         Dave Macleod (2007), Dave Birkett   
Divine Moments Of Truth      ?           North York Moors   Franco Cookson (2015)
Coldfinger               ?         Long Haven         Gordon Lennox (2023)
A Moment of Clarity         Font 8B      Thorn Crag         John Gaskins (2006)
Smart Went Crazy         8b         Eldo Canyon (US)   Matt Segal (2009), William Moss
Too Big to Flail         Font 7C+   Bishop (US)         Alex Honnold (2012), Nina Williams, Lonnie Kauk
The Bull               8b+         Squamish (Canada)   Jeremy Smith (2013), Ben Harnden
The Bigger Baron         8b+         Wimberry         Pete Whittaker (2014)
Nothing Lasts            ?         Sandy Crag         Franco Cookson (2017)
Final Score               8a+         Iron Crag         Neil Gresham (2020)
Magical Thinking         8a+         Pavey Ark         Mathew Wright (2023)
Black Thistle            8b+         Polldubh         Mathew Wright (2023), Dave Macleod
Direquiem               8b+         Dumbarton         Sonnie Trotter (2008)
Le Voyage               8b+         Annot (France)      James Pearson (2017).  >3 repeats, including a flash by Sebastien Berthe.
Viceroy                  8c         US               Matt Wilder (2009), William Moss      
Smart Went Crazy         8b         US               Matt Segal (2009), William Moss               
En Passant               8b+         US                William Moss (2022)
The Human Skewer Direct      ?         Chair Ladder      Mark Edwards (2007), Tom Pearce

Hard E9 / E10?
Hold Fast Hold True         8a/8a+      Glen Nevis         Julian Lines (2013), Iain Small, Franco Cookson
Parthian Shot II         8b           Burbage South      Ben Bransby (2013), >3 repeats, without side runner by James Pearson
Widdop Wall               8b         Widdop            John Dunne (1998), Jordan Buys
Dangermouse                 ?         Wimberry         Miles Gibson (2009)
A Denti Stretti            8b+         Italy            James Pearson (2013)
Prisoners of the Sun      8a+         Rhoscolyn         James Taylor (2021), Jim Pope, James Pearson

[Nemo]

The eGrader bit of my post on Friday was incoherent waffle, some of it was flat out wrong.  Should know by now to not post on forums when not got time to think clearly.  What I should have said on Friday if my head wasn't full of other stuff was this:

"eGrader 2.0!!! This time we get it right!" - JB

Any attempt at an eGrader is never going to work. I'd like to think that's one thing we can agree on.
Aside from physical difficulty, there's just too many factors involved for any algorithm to handle. 

If you really wanted to, you could make the current eGrader slightly better, with a few tweaks:

Firstly, just ditch attempting to deal with anything under E6.  That was a non starter as the opinions on French grades are too all over the place when people are predominantly onsighting.  Secondly, the basic grade conversion for well protected routes needs a bit of tweaking above about E8, to make E grades a bit narrower than 2 Fr grades. 

That would be a bit better.
But it would still be pretty much useless for any not completely safe routes.

Why?
Because it's just way more complicated than physical difficulty plus danger element.
You could change the "danger" element to be an "everything else" rating in an attempt to cover off the "what's it LIKE" bit of what Andy Popp was talking about.  That could take into account loose rock, soft rock, location and atmosphere of crag, how weird the gear is, level of intimidation.  But how would you give a number to that?  All you're really doing then is reverse engineering what E grade you want to pop out.

But even that doesn't actually help a lot for a particular subset of gnarly routes.  Because of the other half of "what's it LIKE?".
More concretely, for example, a really insecure smeary Font 6b sequence miles out from gear, might be what dictates the E grade of a route.  Not the Font 7B+ crux sequence by the gear.  Or even perhaps the Font 7B+ sequence miles out from gear, if it's on positive holds so that if you're strong and you have it dialled you're unlikely to fall off.  So any attempt to simply add overall difficulty plus some other element to reach some kind of answer just is never going to work for at least this kind of route. 

So the whole thing simply isn't doable, and that should have always been obvious to anyone who has climbed a fair bit.

The only way to suggest an E grade for non safe trad routes is to compare it to other routes.  I'd like to think it could be compared to any other trad routes. Given what we've talked about on this thread, currently it only works if you compare it to similar things in the same area.


However...  It wasn't all bad.
To me at least, there was a kernel in the eGrader that is useful.
And that is the basic comparison of E grades to French grades for well protected routes.
That they largely got right (once I was looking at the correct conversion table). 
ie: for well protected trad routes
7a+ - 7b routes would be E5
7b+ - 7c  routes would be E6
7c+ - 8a routes would be E7
8a+ - 8b routes would be E8
8b+ - 8c routes would be E9
8c+ - 9a routes would be E10
9a+ - 9b routes would be E11
9b+ - 9c routes would be E12

This table is pretty much spot on from E5 to E8, but above that it seems to drift off target a bit. So, as said above, if you want a model that actually fits how grades are used in the real world, then from about E8 upwards, E grades need to be a bit narrower than 2 Fr grades.  So that you end up with well protected 8c's being given E10.  And so that E12 isn't supposed to be the equivalent of bolted 9c - 9c+, which seems a long way out if Bon Voyage is E12. 

So the basic conversion is a bit out, but that's straightforward to fix.
And whilst it's hardly revolutionary as tables like this have been around forever, the above conversion table is by far the best thing about the eGrader. 

Crucially, for any given Fr grade, the above (rightly to me at least) sets a lower limit to the possible E grade for any given physical difficulty. 
ie: for long routes, any Fr7b+ is at least E6, any Fr8a+ is at least E8, any 8c (once the table is adjusted a bit) is at least E10.

And that does match reality for long routes - e.g: I can't think of any long Fr7b+ trad routes in the real world that get less than E6.
And it's clearly how lots of hard climbers think about the basics of grading long routes - it sets a lower limit, and then you need to think about whether the E grade needs to be higher because of everything else.

But...

Where even that bit completely falls apart currently is when you look at short routes.  Where something which would be Fr7c+/8a ish - currently gets E4. It's not a bit out.  It's miles out.  Something of that physical difficulty only even vaguely makes sense at E4 in the sense it's used outside of micro routes, if you're comparing doing it after lots of work, with onsighting trad routes (which is I think at least how some people have traditionally graded highballs). 

So it feels like a completely different grading system for short routes currently.  I had naively thought that that circle could be squared by some relatively straightforward changes - not giving highballs E grades, and adjusting some of the grades of slightly higher stuff upwards a bit.
But that would require some changes to how E grades are used and thought about, which if this thread is anything to go by, seem highly unlikely.

[Nemo]

"I have no real idea about what's actually being debated here."  -Andy Popp

Yeah, this thread hasn't really gone very far.  From what the eGraders tried to do, it seems clear that at the top end, there's a desire for a clearer, simpler, more logical method of grading stuff.

I'd somewhat naively thought that in 2024 on here, it might be possible to have a discussion about some of the inherent problems with the UK trad grading system, taking into account the changes that have happened over the last few decades.  And seeing if there wasn't some way that the system couldn't evolve into something a bit more fit for purpose for everyone.  And that somehow that discussion might end up being, well, useful.

But clearly I'd massively underestimated the level of opposition to even the basic suggestion that perhaps giving E4 to something that is Fr7c+/8a, might not really make much sense.  When that became clear after a couple of posts, I should have given up, as that starting point blows out of the water any attempt to make the system more straightforward and rational.

I'd also underestimated quite how fundamentally different, different people's views are, on how the system actually works now - even people I know well and have climbed with lots.  There's an awful lot of private versions of the UK trad grading system floating around in different people's heads. 

Ultimately any real change would need to come from the people at the top of the sport.  But given the level of opposition seen on here to change of any kind, I think even they would have a hard time doing much other than some very small tweaks around the edges.

And so whilst this has been entertaining at times, it doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere useful.

I do think that French and Font grades replacing the tech grade somewhere upwards of E6 is likely to become standard, as behind the scenes that's how it's been for a very long time.  Making that more widespread in guidebooks I think would definitely be a good thing, and I suspect in time is pretty much inevitable.

But E grades themselves, I think this thread has illustrated, probably have little chance of turning into anything that's terribly coherent any time soon.  No doubt they will muddle along with all the current confusion for a while.  Hopefully in time they might evolve a bit. Otherwise long term I suspect the next generation will just bin them, at least for headpointing hard routes. 

And I don't think this stuff will just fix itself.  If sport grades are out of line in an entire newly developed area or something.  Then in time people come travel to that area, the routes get repeats from non locals, and over time the grades are ironed out.  But more repeats of UK trad routes is never going to help iron things out.  Because people can entirely agree about how hard something is and yet give it completely different E grades - because ultimately, they're using  different grading systems, that happen to use the same symbols.

I still think that with relatively small scale changes, you could get to a system where when grading a new route, you could just compare to all the other routes of all shapes and sizes that you've done in that style (onsight / flash / headpoint etc).  And then give the E grade based on which subset of those routes the overall difficulty compared to.  That would be a coherent grading system. But it would require change, which from this thread at least sounds like is impossible. 

On the more philosophical stuff, ultimately, there's some views of grading systems that clearly on here aren't uncommon - that I simply don't understand and will never understand.  And I grew up in the thick of the UK trad climbing scene as much as anyone.  But to me if you want to romanticize about trad climbing, then read poetry, or books or lots of other things.  I learnt to climb with a guy whose idea of doing laps was repeatedly reading Pritchard's "Mainline to Reality", whilst listening to The Doors and dreaming of Wen Zawn.  I get it.  Or at least I thought I got it.  But in my brain at least, I just don't see how any of that in any way whatsoever relates to grading systems.  I don't get how anyone would want a grading system to be anything other than, well....  useful.  And that if it could evolve to be more useful, that that wouldn't be a good thing.  But clearly that's just me, and presumably Pete was right - there's some kind of cultural attachment to particular views of grading systems, that I'll never understand.