[abarro81]

While I see what JB is getting at, in 20 years climbing and 10,000 hours on forums I've never encountered the proposal that an Ex y is a y grade boulder followed by an Ex... Does that make Pilgrimage with the chossy top groove VS 7a?

I don't think this is willfully ignoring context, it's just an idea I've never encountered, and probably makes no sense in various examples (e.g., if a route is a trivial approach to a 7B+ boulder with baby bouncer protection to a scary E4, is that also E4 7a or is it now E8 7a??!)

[Johnny Brown]

As much as i think imaginary grades for grading imaginary routes is not going to help, let’s try a more concrete example.

Switch the top and bottom of WSS around. Same overall difficulty right? Would it be useful to give the real and imaginary versions the same E grade?

[Fultonius]

 Makes me even happier I've never climbed on grit and had to deal with this nonsense!

Imo, trad grades should, as a minimum, give you an idea of how "onsightable" a route is, and that an equal number of bold climbers should be able to climb an E4 5c, as good crack/face/technical climbers should be able to I'm an E4 6a...

I always think the hypothetical "balanced trad climber" should have an equal chance of onighting all E4s.

So having to be able to boulder 7B+ is just plain bonkers and cannot work within the trad grade range. E4 & 7B+, on the other hand, seems fine as a hybrid grade.

[Nemo]

What Fultonius said. 

Same overall difficulty right? 

Errrrrrrr.  No.  This is getting daft, if it wasn't already in the first place.
Does this really need saying on here?  The overall difficulty includes the danger bit, obviously.  ie: the second one would probably be at least E8 as it would have a top end Font 7B+ boulder problem a very long way off the ground.
The first one is a 7B+ boulder problem with a much easier finish (which to me, I wouldn't bother giving an E grade, but if insisted on, then the only one that would make sense is E6 or perhaps E7).

Generally, if I was writing a guide, I wouldn't bother giving highballs E grades unless the E grade is actually different to what it would be due to pure difficulty alone.  Then this entire (one thing we agree on) silly debate evaporates.

is that also E4 7a or is it now E8 7a?

Clearly some people would give it E4 and some E8, hence the shambles. 
If people can't agree what the number is even meant to represent, then the arguments about what the number actually should be seem utterly absurd.

Like you, I get what JB is saying, I just don't agree.
You can compare an 8c at Raven Tor with an 8c in Siurana.
You can compare an E5 at Gogarth with an E5 at Millstone.
The comparisons obviously aren't perfect, some people are better at some things than others.

But essentially grades work, they are useful, they allow us to pick routes at the standard we want, and they allow climbing news to be possible.  Not perfectly, and there's always routes that for certain people are going to be vastly harder / easier.  But for the most part, they work.

But they only work if you pick a style of ascent and compare climbing route X in that style with lots of other routes climbed in the same style.
If you try and grade something you've done after many attempts by comparing it to things you've onsighted, then grades don't work at all.  That's what giving WSS E4 is doing.  (Or at least it's what most people giving WSS E4 are doing - admittedly as abarro has pointed out, JB is actually suggesting something entirely different, but it certainly doesn't take many other examples to point out that that doesn't hang together at all.)

To me, the only reason to keep the current shambles is that clearly some people actually enjoy the controversy, BS and endless debates.  It's never going to be perfect and noone is pretending that it is.  But when different groups of people can't actually agree about what the numbers are meant to be representing, then it's hardly a surprise when, shock horror, person X downgrades person Y's new route by 3 grades.  This stuff could work a lot better given a little thought.

[andy moles]

Makes me even happier I've never climbed on grit and had to deal with this nonsense!

It is pretty good tbf.

[SA Chris]

Agree. A disagreement over grades on a few problems / routes is not reason enough to feel vicarious about denying yourself the experience of climbing on one of few rock types the UK is famous for.

[Johnny Brown]

mo, trad grades should, as a minimum, give you an idea of how "onsightable" a route is, and that an equal number of bold climbers should be able to climb an E4 5c, as good crack/face/technical climbers should be able to I'm an E4 6a...

I always think the hypothetical "balanced trad climber" should have an equal chance of onighting all E4s.

Oh jeez. Well you’ve done well to summarise the problem, which is people wanting an E grade to be like a sport grade, so they can say ‘I CLIMB E4’ and not have some weird exceptions bugging them.

The wonderful thing about Uk grades is they have two halves. E4 5a tells you it’s death on a stick. E4 7a tells you it’s desperate, but short-lived AND not dangerous. Just because you don’t fancy either despite normally liking E4s doesn’t make them wrong.

the overall difficulty includes the danger bit, obviously.  ie: the second one would probably be at least E8 as it would have a top end Font 7B+ boulder problem a very long way off the ground.

Sorry, I meant overall physical difficulty, but yeah I agree, makes sense.

The first one is a 7B+ boulder problem with a much easier finish (which to me, I wouldn't bother giving an E grade, but if insisted on, then the only one that would make sense is E6 or perhaps E7).

Makes no sense. Again: the 7a already tells you it’s really hard. Your E6 or 7 is a bizarre attempt to translate into some overall sport grade. That not the point of E grades. It’s E4.

[northern yob]

100% what Adam said… it makes perfect sense, to me at least. Is this a generational thing??

As Adam points out much better than I could, E grades aren’t sport grades… the whole point of them is to convey information, which they do in a not that complicated way, I really can’t get my head round why lots of people have such a problem with it or are against them. There’s got to be some serious miles in this…. Thread split surely.

[spidermonkey09]

100% what Adam said… it makes perfect sense, to me at least. Is this a generational thing??

As Adam points out much better than I could, E grades aren’t sport grades… the whole point of them is to convey information, which they do in a not that complicated way, I really can’t get my head round why lots of people have such a problem with it or are against them. There’s got to be some serious miles in this…. Thread split surely.

I think it is at least in part generational. Nobody cares whether West Side Story was once E4 in some black and white guidebook. In real life it isn't to >95% of climbers, its 7B+, and I'm firmly on team 'it doesn't need an egrade but if you insist its clearly not E4, its E6 at a minimum.'

I love E grades, they're great; to throw your point back at you, I can't get my head around why lots of people are intent on using them for things they clearly suck at and are in practice useless for.

[northern yob]

100% what Adam said… it makes perfect sense, to me at least. Is this a generational thing??

As Adam points out much better than I could, E grades aren’t sport grades… the whole point of them is to convey information, which they do in a not that complicated way, I really can’t get my head round why lots of people have such a problem with it or are against them. There’s got to be some serious miles in this…. Thread split surely.

I think it is at least in part generational. Nobody cares whether West Side Story was once E4 in some black and white guidebook. In real life it isn't to >95% of climbers, its 7B+, and I'm firmly on team 'it doesn't need an egrade but if you insist its clearly not E4, its E6 at a minimum.'

I love E grades, they're great; to throw your point back at you, I can't get my head around why lots of people are intent on using them for things they clearly suck at and are in practice useless for.

Just to be clear I’m not insisting on anything…. I couldn’t care less what anyone calls anything, I was just pointing out how it’s actually quite a simple concept, nothing more nothing less….. agreed they don’t work for highballs, but they weren’t ever meant to, they are from a time before bouldering mats (which are ultimately why they don’t work for highballs) I think they convey information about certain things quite well…. Different systems can also do that. Ultimately it’s all subjective so it’s never going to be a science, which it seems some people seem to think it is. One man’s e4 is another’s e3 in the same way someone’s 7b is 7c.

[Fultonius]

100% what Adam said… it makes perfect sense, to me at least. Is this a generational thing??

As Adam points out much better than I could, E grades aren’t sport grades… the whole point of them is to convey information, which they do in a not that complicated way, I really can’t get my head round why lots of people have such a problem with it or are against them. There’s got to be some serious miles in this…. Thread split surely.

Adam? Who's Adam?

JB, you seem to have a very strong view on this. I don't - as I've said I have next to no experience of this highball/E-Grade issue. The closest I can think of is  Looney Tunes at Cambusbarron which is (from very distant memory) around Font 6B at a *likely* ankle breaking height. I actually fell off soloing it once and managed to spin round and somehow miss all the boulders but I got very lucky!

@Northern Yob - Generational thing? You being funny? I'm in my 5th decade and have been trad climbing for 20 years. I've climbed trad in Cornwall, Wales, northern Ireland and all across Scotland. E3 and E4 would be the zone where I probably have the best "feel" for grades, and, looking at my logbook I've done 83 E3s and 63 E4s. When I rock up to a new crag in a new area, I usually drop to the more comfortable grades and then build up. I'll look at the trad grade, description, maybe notes on UKC..., eyeball the route then think "aye, that looks a goer". So far I've found grades to be pretty consistent within +/- half an E grade and I've had similar success onsighting wherever I go.

Some places I've had more success, North Wales and Fairhead, for example - maybe I just had a good week, climbing well and good conditions, or maybe they were a bit easier? Who knows.

But fucking hell, if I rocked up to a crag and there was an E4 7a all I'd think is:

Are they on crack? 

Please put aside your straw man arguments about trying to relate back to sport grades... no one mentioned that, no one (in this thread) is arguing that. I'm not "back calculating", I'm using the UK trad grade exactly how most of the people I climb with use it - a scale that gives you an idea of the relative difficulty of onsighting a route.

Maybe in the obscure microcosm of parochial grit weirdness E4 7a makes sense? But in any place where you have to put more than 3 bits of pro in before topping out, it's bonkers and breaks the system.

[webbo]

Adam is JB.

[lukeyboy]

The wonderful thing about Uk grades is they have two halves. E4 5a tells you it’s death on a stick. E4 7a tells you it’s desperate, but short-lived AND not dangerous. Just because you don’t fancy either despite normally liking E4s doesn’t make them wrong.

Sure, I think most are fine with the principle of same E grade with low tech grade for bold/sustained or high tech grade for safe/short-lived, but for the latter isn't that what E4 6b is? Or perhaps 6c at a stretch?

Font 7B+ just seems outside the realms of E4 however short or safe.

[northern yob]

@Northern Yob - Generational thing? You being funny? I'm in my 5th decade and have been trad climbing for 20 years. I've climbed trad in Cornwall, Wales, northern Ireland and all across Scotland. E3 and E4 would be the zone where I probably have the best "feel" for grades, and, looking at my logbook I've done 83 E3s and 63 E4s. When I rock up to a new crag in a new area, I usually drop to the more comfortable grades and then build up. I'll look at the trad grade, description, maybe notes on UKC..., eyeball the route then think "aye, that looks a goer". So far I've found grades to be pretty consistent within +/- half an E grade and I've had similar success onsighting wherever I go.

Some places I've had more success, North Wales and Fairhead, for example - maybe I just had a good week, climbing well and good conditions, or maybe they were a bit easier? Who knows.

But fucking hell, if I rocked up to a crag and there was an E4 7a all I'd think is:

Are they on crack? 

Please put aside your straw man arguments about trying to relate back to sport grades... no one mentioned that, no one (in this thread) is arguing that. I'm not "back calculating", I'm using the UK trad grade exactly how most of the people I climb with use it - a scale that gives you an idea of the relative difficulty of onsighting a route.

Maybe in the obscure microcosm of parochial grit weirdness E4 7a makes sense? But in any place where you have to put more than 3 bits of pro in before topping out, it's bonkers and breaks the system.

Evidently not…. We are basically the same generation.

Isn’t this the same with all grades, there are always things which fuck it up…. A lot of 5.13 onsighters probably can’t get their heads  around a 5.11 offwidth, how can it be the same grade as their regular warm up….

Have you been to font?? I like to think I can climb v6/7 pretty much anywhere (I can most places) there are things which equate to v4 in font, I can’t even get off the ground on. Does that mean they aren’t that grade? Adam ondra doesn’t fall off many v10’s I wouldn’t imagine? Yet he dropped Marie Rose. What E4 7a does is tell you it’s one of those rare problems before you even pull off the ground therefore doing it’s job perfectly… conveying information.

[Wellsy]

I always think the hypothetical "balanced trad climber" should have an equal chance of onighting all E4s.

Fultonius the hypothetical is real! I can proudly say I have an equal chance of onsighting all E4s (0%)

[Johnny Brown]

I think most are fine with the principle of same E grade with low tech grade for bold/sustained or high tech grade for safe/short-lived, but for the latter isn't that what E4 6b is? Or perhaps 6c at a stretch?

So do we agree 'standard' E4 is around 5c/6a? So we are fine with going down to the 4c/5a grade in extreme cases - bold, sustained, loose, poor protection. But if we go up the same amount - to 6c/7a - it's somehow unacceptable? Why? Admittedly West Side is an edge case because the crux is off the floor. If you had to do that move off a rope, yes, it would be E-harder.

The only issue I can see here is people who think of themselves as 'E4 climbers' might get their ego pricked. But a lot of solid E4 climbers will boulder that hard, even more so nowadays. A lot less than would get on an E4 4c I'd wager.

What I don't get is that all these weird grades are in the guidebooks, and have been since I started reading them in the eighties, and they all made perfect sense to me. I think the problem probably started with those grade conversion tables - they only could have worked had the tech grades followed a sort of normal distribution curvigram instead of blocks.