[Hoseyb]

My understanding ( admittedly from a point in my past when I still regularly trad climbed) was that as a tech grade spiked for the adjective grade, as it past the point of laced up with gear, the beast became more cruxy. So much so that a judicious point of aid could reduce it to a bog standard example of the adjective grade.

Hence there were S 6a and VS6b nestled away in the more exciting parts of the countryside.

A more sustained lace up would garner as higher adjective grade?

To be honest by the time my rack migrated to the loft, I'd got quite confused. The Beast in Me was my last internal debate as it was sportingly bolted with a sustained (safe) crux of eng6b armbars.

I opted for the Haston Hard Very Marvellous f7b (30m ish) as I could understand that ( although I've still probably only climbed around 100 outdoor sport routes in 36 years of climbing).
Rockfax interpreted that as a 7b sport route which could cause someone a nasty shock as the last third is unprotected and a f6c+ in their own right.

[crimpinainteasy]

The idea that WSS as an E4 makes any kind of sense whatsoever is ridiculous.

The problem with giving highballs E grades is that lots of people for way too long have conflated doing highballs after lots of work with onsighting trad routes.  How many people have actually onsighted WSS?
If you compare doing it after work to headpointing trad routes, which is the only thing that actually makes sense - then WSS would be at least E6.
And Layby would be E5, Careless would be E8 etc.
ie: headpointing Careless is probably a bigger deal than headpointing E7/8's like EOTA or Gaia, probably not as big a deal as headpointing E8/9s like Meshuga.
flashing Careless is pretty much world class - bigger deal than flashing EOTA or Gaia, but probably not as big a deal as flashing Meshuga.

That's the only way it's actually consistent.  The downside (at least to people trying to make a living out of hard headpointing) is that means that lots of "E4 climbers" suddenly find they can and have climbed E7's - which makes hard E grades suddenly look a lot less remote.

Easiest way to deal with all that is just not to give highballs E grades.  And certainly not to give them completely pointless, inconsistent and confusing E grades.

I admittedly don't have too much experience with trad grades but if sport 8a translates to E6 or harder, then yeah it makes no sense WSS can be less than E6 considering there are virtually almost no sport routes less than 8a with a 7B+ boulder crux.

[crimpinainteasy]

@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.

I'm not sure I really understand your point about Font. Those technical v4s in font will feel every bit of v4 when you execute them with perfect technique. On the other hand, a font 7B+ boulder problem is going to feel substantially harder than any 6C boulder no matter how perfectly you execute the former.

[ToxicBilberry]

The problem here is the fundamentals of the discussion wrong. The grading systems while comparable in some broad strokes are incommunicable to each other. A bit like different religions or other cultural practices.

[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.

I'm not sure I really understand your point about Font. Those technical v4s in font will feel every bit of v4 when you execute them with perfect technique. On the other hand, a font 7B+ boulder problem is going to feel substantially harder than any 6C boulder no matter how perfectly you execute the former.

It was in reference to Fultonius expecting to be able to climb any E4…. And that wss couldn’t be E4 because there’s no chance he could climb it… I’ve climbed much harder than v4, but that doesn’t mean something I can’t do can’t be V4. Make sense now…..??

[spidermonkey09]

Grades aren't as useless or mystical as you and Adam seem to be implying though. There are certain grades everyone could reasonably say they could climb every route /problem of that grade, regardless of style etc. The way you two are using them is not the way most others do, as Barrows had alluded to. They use it as an indication of overall difficulty and WSS, whilst an edge case, is clearly not an E4 in the common sense metric. It fails the smell test.

[northern yob]

Really….. so what grade can you climb any route at..? Regardless of style, I think our only point is it’s way under your max grade… and that doesn’t mean grades are broken, it’s more people’s ego’s are inflated. Go to Czech or Yosemite, and tell me you can confidently climb anything, literally anything at 5.10 (a grade well below your max) and we will point you at some stuff and pull up a chair….
Climbing is diverse… grades are diverse. I genuinely find it fairly ludicrous that anybody could expect to climb E4 anywhere… even ondra respects what E4 could mean in Czech, more people should be like him and get over themselves…

[Will Hunt]

I think WSS at E4 is fine. When the difficulty is in a short boulder problem close to the ground the E grade is always brutal. It's always had to be that way to stop boulderers going round thinking they've done some big E number.

[thunderbeest]

One of the problems from an outsider is the focus put on the E part. Rhapsody E11! But I wouldn't have a clue what the tech grade actually is on it, event though I've read quite some things about it, you never see it mentioned in any headlines.

[northern yob]

I’d pay good money to see the reactions of the locals in Czech when some British guy rocks up and tells them that route x couldn’t possibly be E1/5.10/6a as he always can climb that grade anywhere…..

Also as I keep saying it’s the same with any system…. Tell Americans their grades are fucked cos offwidths fuck it up. The majority of sport climbers can’t climb 5.11 ow does that mean that crack wads who only climb in the desert should expect to climb 5.13 in the RRG because all the 5.13 crimpers cant move on cracks….

The point Adam/jb and I are trying to make is E grades work as well if not better than any other grade system.

[northern yob]

Grades aren't as useless or mystical as you and Adam seem to be implying though. There are certain grades everyone could reasonably say they could climb every route /problem of that grade, regardless of style etc. The way you two are using them is not the way most others do, as Barrows had alluded to. They use it as an indication of overall difficulty and WSS, whilst an edge case, is clearly not an E4 in the common sense metric. It fails the smell test.

Grades aren’t mystical or useless at all, at no point have we said that.

And yes wss isn’t E4 it’s 7C in my opinion, it used to be E4 for the reasons discussed already, it’s a fact… it was given that! We have tried to explain why….

[ToxicBilberry]

Grades aren't as useless or mystical as you and Adam seem to be implying though. There are certain grades everyone could reasonably say they could climb every route /problem of that grade, regardless of style etc. The way you two are using them is not the way most others do, as Barrows had alluded to. They use it as an indication of overall difficulty and WSS, whilst an edge case, is clearly not an E4 in the common sense metric. It fails the smell test.

Grades aren’t mystical or useless at all, at no point have we said that.

And yes wss isn’t E4 it’s 7C in my opinion, it used to be E4 for the reasons discussed already, it’s a fact… it was given that! We have tried to explain why….

Grades are definitely mystical, that’s why they fail the smell test of the hardcore materialist.

[thomas røllins]

Possibly off-topic, and perhaps this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was mildly interesting that Dave Macleod contradicts himself here , around 30-45 secs in, by stating that Echo Wall (which elsewhere he has argued may "only" be E10) is in fact a bigger deal than Rhapsody (accepted at E11 both by Dave and by subsequent ascentionists). 

Re E-grades more generally, to me the only really interesting question is whether the climbing world beyond UK / Ireland will adopt them in any meaningful way?". The rational expectation is surely "no".

[spidermonkey09]

What grade could I say I could climb anywhere in any style? Probably about HS! I will reply to the rest tomorrow if I have time/can be arsed, although I don't think we will agree! 

[Nemo]

@northern yob: As I said before, I'm not in the camp that wants to ditch E grades. I'm suggesting improving how they are defined and used.  Because if it stays as complicated as it is currently, the younger generation putting up new routes will just say screw this and give their new route Fr8b R (which I think we both agree would be a step backwards). 

"I genuinely find it fairly ludicrous that anybody could expect to climb E4 anywhere"

On that, we can agree - I don't expect to climb any particular grade anywhere.  I'm well aware that there's plenty of niche's from offwidths to armbars where any grade I'm likely to have a frickin mare on.
That's fine.
I do expect E4 to be defined the same way everywhere, otherwise E4 doesn't mean anything.
That's an entirely different and entirely reasonable thing to expect.

As has become clear over the various threads there's (at least) two fundamentally different ways of defining how E grades should be used in play here.
There's those of us saying they should be the overall grade of the route including everything.
And JB (and others agreeing) saying that the physical difficulty of any hard start to a route should be discounted from the E grade except in how that hard start influences how tired you are on the higher part. 

So for JB, the start of a route could be a Font 8C slab into an E2 finish, and as long as you weren't pumpted from the Font 8C, then he'd still give it E2.
Now I've finally understood what he was talking about, I can just about see how you could persuade yourself that this is sensible.
But I really don't think that's the best way for E grades to be used at all.

And whilst we're all agreed that you don't need to use E grades on small ish highballs, there's a continuum right, from 20ft routes to 30ft routes to 50ft routes.  A lot of these (and indeed higher routes) have boulder problem starts, some of which people have included the difficulty of the boulder into the E grade and some of which people haven't. 

What's the problem with the above:

- It took many pages on an internet forum for most of us to grasp what JB was arguing for.  It's complicated.  For all normal length routes, the E grade is based on the overall difficulty.  With JB's version, there's a subset of routes where you do something entirely different and ignore physical difficulty if it's safe and short (other than how it impacts how you feel on the higher bit).  But noone is ignoring any physical difficulty on long safe routes. 

- How big is a boulder problem.  ie: on WSS it's easy to see which bit JB is ignoring the physical difficulty of.  On other routes it ain't that simple, and people will always disagree whether the physical difficulty at 10ft, at 20ft etc should or shouldn't be counted in the E grade.  It just doesn't work.

- It means you can't compare ascents in different places, which is one of the main points of grades in the first place.  ie: flashing an E7 with JB E grades, could be as impressive as flashing a normal E10.  ie: it makes any climbing news revolving around person has climbed E grade x, impossible for anyohe to know how newsworthy it is without knowing the intricate details of how E grades are used in that little bubble.


The above isn't the usual grading disputes that northern yob has described happening in all other aspects of climbing. If people were arguing about the specific number on a specific climb, within the context of an agreed system, that would be fine. But that's not what we're talking about - we're talking about completely different ways of defining how E grades should be used.   


All I've tried to do in these and previous posts is try (in vain clearly) to get agreement on a simple clear definition of what E grades are actually meant to mean.
To me there's only one way of doing that:

E grades represent the overall grade of the route, incorporating everything including all aspects of physical difficulty, danger, and everything else.
That's it.
A straightforward definition like that means that you can pick a style (onsight, flash, headpoint) and compare the route in question to all the other routes you've done in the same style, when giving it an E grade.

That is a grading system that is clear, simple and easily understandable.
And it's not some enormous revolution. 
We're all agreed that we don't need E grades at all for at least the smaller end of highballs.  And the above is already how pretty much everyone climbing longer routes thinks of E grades already.

The only legitimate argument for JB's view of the world that I can think of is what Will pointed out.  ie:

"It's always had to be that way to stop boulderers going round thinking they've done some big E number."

But the easier way of doing that, is as said before, to not apply E grades to highballs until they are high enough so that the E grade is different than what would be needed for physical difficulty alone.


The irony of all this is that I suspect that in defending the ancient idiosyncrasies of how E grades have often been used in the past, and keeping in play all of the crazy different complications and subsets of things with different rules, JB and others may be unintentionally giving ammunition to those who want to do the opposite of what they want, and ditch E grades altogether.

[crimpinainteasy]

@northern yob: As I said before, I'm not in the camp that wants to ditch E grades. I'm suggesting improving how they are defined and used.  Because if it stays as complicated as it is currently, the younger generation putting up new routes will just say screw this and give their new route Fr8b R (which I think we both agree would be a step backwards). 

"I genuinely find it fairly ludicrous that anybody could expect to climb E4 anywhere"

On that, we can agree - I don't expect to climb any particular grade anywhere.  I'm well aware that there's plenty of niche's from offwidths to armbars where any grade I'm likely to have a frickin mare on.
That's fine.
I do expect E4 to be defined the same way everywhere, otherwise E4 doesn't mean anything.
That's an entirely different and entirely reasonable thing to expect.

As has become clear over the various threads there's (at least) two fundamentally different ways of defining how E grades should be used in play here.
There's those of us saying they should be the overall grade of the route including everything.
And JB (and others agreeing) saying that the physical difficulty of any hard start to a route should be discounted from the E grade except in how that hard start influences how tired you are on the higher part. 

So for JB, the start of a route could be a Font 8C slab into an E2 finish, and as long as you weren't pumpted from the Font 8C, then he'd still give it E2.
Now I've finally understood what he was talking about, I can just about see how you could persuade yourself that this is sensible.
But I really don't think that's the best way for E grades to be used at all.

And whilst we're all agreed that you don't need to use E grades on small ish highballs, there's a continuum right, from 20ft routes to 30ft routes to 50ft routes.  A lot of these (and indeed higher routes) have boulder problem starts, some of which people have included the difficulty of the boulder into the E grade and some of which people haven't. 

What's the problem with the above:

- It took many pages on an internet forum for most of us to grasp what JB was arguing for.  It's complicated.  For all normal length routes, the E grade is based on the overall difficulty.  With JB's version, there's a subset of routes where you do something entirely different and ignore physical difficulty if it's safe and short (other than how it impacts how you feel on the higher bit).  But noone is ignoring any physical difficulty on long safe routes. 

- How big is a boulder problem.  ie: on WSS it's easy to see which bit JB is ignoring the physical difficulty of.  On other routes it ain't that simple, and people will always disagree whether the physical difficulty at 10ft, at 20ft etc should or shouldn't be counted in the E grade.  It just doesn't work.

- It means you can't compare ascents in different places, which is one of the main points of grades in the first place.  ie: flashing an E7 with JB E grades, could be as impressive as flashing a normal E10.  ie: it makes any climbing news revolving around person has climbed E grade x, impossible for anyohe to know how newsworthy it is without knowing the intricate details of how E grades are used in that little bubble.


The above isn't the usual grading disputes that northern yob has described happening in all other aspects of climbing. If people were arguing about the specific number on a specific climb, within the context of an agreed system, that would be fine. But that's not what we're talking about - we're talking about completely different ways of defining how E grades should be used.   


All I've tried to do in these and previous posts is try (in vain clearly) to get agreement on a simple clear definition of what E grades are actually meant to mean.
To me there's only one way of doing that:

E grades represent the overall grade of the route, incorporating everything including all aspects of physical difficulty, danger, and everything else.
That's it.
A straightforward definition like that means that you can pick a style (onsight, flash, headpoint) and compare the route in question to all the other routes you've done in the same style, when giving it an E grade.

That is a grading system that is clear, simple and easily understandable.
And it's not some enormous revolution. 
We're all agreed that we don't need E grades at all for at least the smaller end of highballs.  And the above is already how pretty much everyone climbing longer routes thinks of E grades already.

The only legitimate argument for JB's view of the world that I can think of is what Will pointed out.  ie:

"It's always had to be that way to stop boulderers going round thinking they've done some big E number."

But the easier way of doing that, is as said before, to not apply E grades to highballs until they are high enough so that the E grade is different than what would be needed for physical difficulty alone.


The irony of all this is that I suspect that in defending the ancient idiosyncrasies of how E grades have often been used in the past, and keeping in play all of the crazy different complications and subsets of things with different rules, JB and others may be unintentionally giving ammunition to those who want to do the opposite of what they want, and ditch E grades altogether.

yeah the logic that a short boulder close to the ground = a lower E grade still doesn't make sense to me. Would that mean Lucid Dreaming would only get E6 since the meat of the boulder is all pretty low down followed by a 7a slab?

[Nemo]

Should have added a bit of small print to the above before it gets pointed out.
As said previously on here, whilst for the most part you'll get the same answer whichever style you pick to compare routes with, sometimes there's a difference, in which case roughly:

for routes roughly under E7 compare via onsight (because noone gives a toss if it's a bit easier to headpoint a few E2's because almost everyone is at least attempting to onsight them) - which gives the completely standard E grade definition in most guidebooks.

And for routes roughly over E7 compare via headpoint (because quite a lot of very hard routes would be ridiculous to try to onsight, need a variety of unusual gear etc - and noone really gives a toss if a few E11's would actually be more like E20 to onsight, as noone is going to try and onsight them - anyone going anywhere near flashing or onsighting really hard routes tends to pick their routes very carefully and have a certain amount of knowledge as to whether attempting such a thing is a remotely good idea (usually obvious by just going and looking at the route).

Sure, around E5-E8 there's lots of people trying to onsight, flash and headpoint, but there isn't some grade where it all falls to pieces as mostly you get a very similar answer as to what number it should be whichever style you pick to compare with.