UKBouldering.com
the shizzle => news => Topic started by: abarro81 on April 30, 2024, 09:27:33 pm
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8A+ = approx 8c. I always had E8 in my head as being safe 8a or 8a+? So I'm not sure the E grade gonna help make sense of anything here if it's E8 :lol:
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Get Gresh, Pearson and Randall to make sense out of it with their wanky e-grader
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8A+ = approx 8c. I always had E8 in my head as being safe 8a or 8a+? So I'm not sure the E grade gonna help make sense of anything here if it's E8 :lol:
Presumably going for the Dave Mac school of thought where sport 8b+ solo and sport 7b solo can both be E8 (I know which I'd have a chance on and which I definitely wouldn't).
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Really? OK, never seen mention of it.
I think the direct start is Leap of Faith, described as a direct entry to Lost Cause, which IIRC shares that first hold above the break on this.
E8 does seem a bit silly at 8A+ when Transcendence next door seems to be considered too hard for E8 at 7C+.
Source: https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2019/03/third_ascent_of_transcendence_e8_6c_by_dan_varian-71896
Then again, isn't West Side Story traditionally E4 at 7B+? It's almost as if trad grades are not very good for really bouldery routes.
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isn't West Side Story traditionally E4 at 7B+?
Pah, luxury! Layby Arete (7B+) is E2 6c.
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isn't West Side Story traditionally E4 at 7B+?
Pah, luxury! Layby Arete (7B+) is E2 6c.
I wonder how many E2 climbers have onsighted that? :lol:
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isn't West Side Story traditionally E4 at 7B+?
Pah, luxury! Layby Arete (7B+) is E2 6c.
Walk On By 7C+/ E3 :lol: unlike WSS the route and bouldering grade have never been used in the same guide though
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Having done all three, the only one which feels worthy of an E-grade is West Side, for which E4 would seem (fair without a pad). The other two are pretty standard boulders. Be interesting to know if Gawthorpe topped out though, no one does now.
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West Side, for which E4 would seem fair
Because WSS is, in the overall way an E grade should work, 1 grade easier than than Bat out of Hell and comparable to the Knock (just to pick a couple of examples in the same valley) :lol:
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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.
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Easiest way to deal with all that is just not to give highballs E grades.
What about routes like Purgatory, which is definitely not a highball, but where the difficulties and risk factor are roughly equivalent to a highball? :worms:
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Then, as should always be the case, you give it an E grade, consistent with how hard it would be to do other trad routes in an equivalent style. ie: As long as you compare how hard it would be to flash relative to flashing other routes. Or compare how hard it would be to headpoint relative to headpointing other routes. etc. Then there's rarely much problem.
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Shauna's ascent is amazing. Gav is obviously trolling.
Reluctant as I am to continue this sorry 'debate'.
Then, as should always be the case, you give it an E grade, consistent with how hard it would be to do other trad routes in an equivalent style.
That's not what anyone has ever done though, because it's not useful info. Generally people want to know two things - how hard is the boulder problem, and how hard is the scary bit. E4 7a for West Side gives you this. Upgrading it because 7a is dead hard is pointless, we already have that information. If you do the 7a bit, you then have to do an E4 bit to get the tick - it's 6a move at 4m, which is why it's the same grade as The Knock, which is a slightly easier move slightly higher, although in that case it's only 6a to get there. The same logic applies to the other examples, and is the reason why Verandah buttress is still HVD despite a greater tech/trad discrepancy than West side.
(At Slipstones they did get a bit carried away or confused admittedly, and as you go right along the crag the trad grades become superfluous. But it's an old guide now, and an isolated example.
Honestly beggars belief why people philosophise about how they think grades should work, and then go back to complain about how they are wrong, rather than just looking at the given grade and applying some common sense to why it might have been given.
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Shauna's ascent is amazing.
This is the wrong thread for this. But...
"how hard is the scary bit"
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And therein lies the fundamental problem. What you say is how many people use E grades (particularly those like yourself who don't spend much time climbing safe long cracks etc).
Many others say how hard is it overall, which is the only thing that actually hangs together.
Whilst ever that is the case, then people will continue to "philosophise" about it, as you put it, because currently it's a complete frickin shambles where someone gives E11 to something that someone else says is E8. At which point lots of people take Shark's view and say E grades should be ditched altogether.
My point in this and other posts is just that it doesn't need to be a shambles. It could and should be completely straightforward, if people just accepted that "How hard is the scary bit" isn't a grading system. And it could be done without regrading large numbers of routes (as said above, for highballs, the way to avoid regrades is just to not use E grades at all).
But I know continuing this with you isn't going to go anywhere useful. Thankfully a lot of guidebook writers these days are moving away from the silliness of the past and starting to do more sensible things.
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how hard is it overall, which is the only thing that actually hangs together.
I'd agree, nothing that would get 8a as a bolted route makes any sense at E4.
If you have 2 routes that have are both safe and would get the same French grade they should get the same E grade regardless if one has a short very hard crux and the other is a pump fest. It's the technical grade that should change not the E grade.
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What JB has described is UK 7a then E4, i.e. a boulder problem with a micro-route after. IMO this is not the same as E4 7a and does not convey the same information.
Thread split? It's a shame for this to be hijacking what is a phenomenal achievement by Shauna. So inspired and impressed to see what she's achieving whilst being a new mother.
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I'm with JB on this one. If a grade has to describe how hard something is, E4 7a for WSS makes no sense. If a grade has to describe what to expect, then it works perfectly.
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I bloody love a THE UK TRAD GRADE IS UTTERLY TERRIBLE / COMPLETELY WONDERFUL FOR GRADING TRAD ROUTES debate, great fodder for "Someone is wrong on the internet". Can we have a topic split and really let rip, please??
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many people use E grades (particularly those like yourself who don't spend much time climbing safe long cracks etc).
Many others say how hard is it overall…
Many use them both ways. Grades only make sense in the context of the rock they are applied to. That context is always obvious from the guide or the crag, and within that context the grade is just shorthand for various properties of the route, the properties varying with the route. That’s it.
But people sometimes ignore that context. Why would they do that, when the two things are inseparable? Usually because they are hoping to reduce the comparison of apples and oranges to two numbers. This usually falls down, because there are lots of styles of climbing, and lots of types of climbers, and while (I have just discovered) some climbs are harder than others, not in a way that you can predict without knowing the climber and the climb, and even then not reliably. You’re back to context again: the map is not the territory and the grade is not the climb. (Which is what Shark used to think, so let’s not take his views too seriously.)
And I’ve done plenty of long safe cracks thank you very much, although a lot of them were graded YDS. On some E plus tech would have given me more information up front, but on long routes the usual NA approach of grading sub-sections on the topo is better anyway.
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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??!)
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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?
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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.
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What Fultonius said. :agree:
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.
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Makes me even happier I've never climbed on grit and had to deal with this nonsense!
It is pretty good tbf.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 (https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/cambusbarron_west_quarry_aka_fourth_quarry-1197/looney_tunes-40960) 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? :blink:
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.
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Adam is JB.
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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.
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@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? :blink:
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.
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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%)
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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.
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I kind of agree with both sides of this argument.
E4 7a does kind of tell you what you need to know - if the common sense extrapolation that the bit after the really hard moves is roughly equivalent in difficulty to soloing 5c or maybe one 6a move at a worrying-but-not-going-to-kill-you height turns out to be correct.
However it's clearly not consistent with how the grading system normally works - i.e. the E grade describing the overall difficulty (for an on-sight attempt...though of course for harder routes it's not really for an on-sight attempt... :worms:). WSS is clearly harder than anything within the normal bounds of 'E4 level' overall difficulty, so it doesn't seem like the best grading system to be using.
If it's about imparting useful information, I'd rather know an independent boulder grade for the top section, personally (what is it? I never got that far)
JB - does E4 4c actually exist? I've seen 5b...
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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.
Surely given you're in your 9th decade, have been climbing trad all over the world for 87 years and something to do with this number of E-blah and that number of E-whatever, you'd realise that in an otherwise very functional system there will be the occasional outlier that won't quite fit into how that system usually describes and overall challenge, but will still convey some comparable information. As an E4 climber you won't get up the extreme outlier of West Side Story, as a 6a climber you won't get up the extreme outlier of Rubble....
This fixation on the most extreme outliers - particularly ones that were graded in a different era for a different style of ascent and are now accurately described as highball boulder problems - is really not the most useful way to see if His Royal Majesty's Great Brexitish Traditional Grading System still works well...
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JB - does E4 4c actually exist? I've seen 5b...
Yeah, I've done one. Several E4 5a's on Cilan, although it's quite common to go to alternatives like XS, HXS. For the pitch I did. I think E4 4c contains more info than HXS 4c. It was a horrowshow on many levels.
it's clearly not consistent with how the grading system normally works
I think what you mean is how grading systems normally work. The beauty of the E-grade is does both, and edge cases are clearly flagged by unusual overall/ tech grade combos.
If it's about imparting useful information, I'd rather know an independent boulder grade for the top section, personally (what is it? I never got that far)
It feels* about 6a, at a height that is uncomfortable but not guaranteed too injure. Compared to other highball E4s like No More Excuses, it's a bit easier and shorter but you've done harder moves to get there.
*would undoubtedly feel easier at ground level having not done uk 7a to get there.
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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.
I also think the other end of the scale is nonsense! I'm not fine with E4 4c either.
4c is the extreme bold end of E1 e.g. California Arete, which I'm sure you know but just for general context - a 50m solo.
Are there any E4 4c? Perhaps Fiend knows some, but I'd suggest they are way outside the mainstream of climbing, unlike WSS.
I guess I'd summarise by saying that for WSS and similar, a font grade and knowing that it's a highball (for which you only need eyes) is enough, and more useful than an E grade.
And if one insists on giving it an E grade then it's too hard to fall within the spectrum of E4 (IMO generally 5c-6b, extreme ends 5b and 6c), however short or safe.
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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.
I also think the other end of the scale is nonsense! I'm not fine with E4 4c either.
4c is the extreme bold end of E1 e.g. California Arete, which I'm sure you know but just for general context - a 50m solo.
Are there any E4 4c? Perhaps Fiend knows some, but I'd suggest they are way outside the mainstream of climbing, unlike WSS.
I guess I'd summarise by saying that for WSS and similar, a font grade and knowing that it's a highball (for which you only need eyes) is enough, and more useful than an E grade.
And if one insists on giving it an E grade then it's too hard to fall within the spectrum of E4 (IMO generally 5c-6b, extreme ends 5b and 6c), however short or safe.
Absolutely E4 is irrelevant with regards wss,before bouldering mats it was very relevant see also Ulysses! I don’t think jb/Adam is saying it should be given e4 anywhere he’s more explaining why it was, and therefore why it’s a bad example to rail against e grades as it actually shows they work perfectly well….
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Yes, exactly that.
NB, when WSS was given E4 7a: a) there were no bouldering mats, and b) no one used font grades except in Font.
The most useful/ popular modern grade would, I suppose be 7C(!). Although the (!) scheme hasn't been universally adopted, and doesn't really tell you if the hard climbing is high up or not, whereas E4 7a clearly implies it can't be.
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it's clearly not consistent with how the grading system normally works
I think what you mean is how grading systems normally work. The beauty of the E-grade is does both, and edge cases are clearly flagged by unusual overall/ tech grade combos.
What I actually meant was 'not consistent with how the British trad grading system normally works', and I think that statement is true, on the understanding that the first part of the grade normally describes overall difficulty.
Neither E4 4c nor E4 7a are the most useful way to describe those respective types of experience IMO - though I'm conjecturing in the first case because I haven't done one! Presumably no gear, a shit belay, very sustained and extremely loose. I'm curious why E4 seemed more useful than HXS? On that kind of terrain, why not E3, or E5? It's so far outside the normal distribution of the grade range, how do you pick a grade? I have done ungraded choss approaches that have felt more of an ordeal than climbs of a given standard and joked that they were E5 4a or whatever, but really all that's doing is shoehorning a different (though, like highball bouldering, related) kind of experience into a grading system that isn't great for it.
I agree E4 4c and E4 7a do give a reasonable idea of what to expect, but I think there are other ways of grading that do a better job. Since they exist anyway, we might as well use them (in the case of WSS, I think everyone actually agrees).
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Yes, exactly that.
NB, when WSS was given E4 7a: a) there were no bouldering mats, and b) no one used font grades except in Font.
The most useful/ popular modern grade would, I suppose be 7C(!). Although the (!) scheme hasn't been universally adopted, and doesn't really tell you if the hard climbing is high up or not, whereas E4 7a clearly implies it can't be.
Thanks JB and Northern Yob, agree and understand why it was E4 7a originally. It still seems a bit tight for E4 with a modern perspective, but as others have said it's a fringe case so there's not a lot of precedent, and in any case there are lots of historical anomalies of sandbags and soft touches, often regional.
Also agree that it's not a very useful example if we are discussing the merits of the E grade system. Which, please can we not 😂
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joked that they were E5 4a or whatever, but really all that's doing is shoehorning a different kind of experience into a grading system that isn't great for it...
I think there are other ways of grading that do a better job.
Why not suggest and explain them then? I've already done WSS. I think what really happens in these cases is the grade exists in a bigger context - the rock and the shared knowledge of it. In sport climbing you can more typically ignore that, for trad or unprotectable grit not so much.
To me XS or HXS are really vague - I suppose they imply E1-E3, and E4-E7? Whereas we discussed it at the top and decided it felt very much like an E4 pitch, (i.e harder than E3 but not E5) but there almost certainly were no 5a moves. I've no idea if that is XS or HXS, suggestions welcome! The only alternative I can think of would be 5.10 X, which is like 7c (!) - just a difficulty plus danger ratiing. If you understand E4 4c it tells you the most, I think. As I said, we did a 'popular' E3 5b the day after for comparison, which has been the traditional Lundy snappy scare route, harder moves but a solid grade less overall.
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Can we have more people discussing the merits of the E grade system and then asking to not discuss the merits of the E grade system, please :lol: :lol:
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:lol:
And just for the record, I think WSS is a great example for discussing the merits of E grades, which is why I keep using it, even if everyone deletes the E-grade with pads nowadays.
I don't get the fixation that E4 should be broadly the same overall whatever. They're not just E4, that's half the grade. E4 7a is clearly way harder than E4 5c for most E4 climbers*. The fact that uk grades can do so much more than others is a feature not a bug.
*but not all, because frequently I am him, as my belayers on pumpy routes will attest.
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joked that they were E5 4a or whatever, but really all that's doing is shoehorning a different kind of experience into a grading system that isn't great for it...
I think there are other ways of grading that do a better job.
Why not suggest and explain them then?
Well in the case of WSS, a bouldering grade, obviously. And possibly, in place of the supplementary information that E4 provided, a separate bouldering grade for the top.
I'd have thought that the vaguer grades of XS or HXS for sustained chop 4a or 4c would be more appropriate to that kind of experience, accounting for the fact there are probably headstrong climbers who couldn't normally lead more than E1 who could do them, and people normally capable of on-sighting E6s who couldn't. Obviously you can't account fully for climbers having different relative strengths, but that particular example seems to push that to extreme?
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doesn't really tell you if the hard climbing is high up or not, whereas E4 7a clearly implies it can't be.
I guess what E4 7a doesn't tell you, is whether there's an E4 but up high after a 7a boulder (your interpretation of how grades should work) or a VS up high after a 7a boulder (with the E grade being earned by the difficulty of the crux move, which I guess would feel committing without pads even on WSS; which would be closer to my or some others' understanding of how these grades should work, even though we'd all give it E6 at least anyway if forced to use trad grades). I guess when I used to go out soloing, if there was an E1 6a micro route I knew the 6a was low but would have no clue if the top was going to feel like VS or E1.. but maybe I just never understood how e grades get applied to micro routes. Seems like I'm far from being alone.
The more I think about it the more it does kind of make sense, but it will never be intuitive because it doesn't fit with how the E grade is used on most routes, where it represents a broad measure of overall difficulty taking lots into account (difficulty, obviousness, tenuousness, danger etc.). So if your trad experience was on more conventional routes it would not occur that that's how the grade was being used. It didn't to me until this conversation!
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I don't get the fixation that E4 should be broadly the same overall whatever. They're not just E4, that's half the grade.
I get what you're saying with this, but people seem to find E grades confusing enough even with the assumption that the 'E' part represents the approximate overall difficulty, without making it even more complicated...
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E grade represents the overall difficulty, except when it doesn't, at which point it may not may not encompass the difficulty of the hard bit to some extent (but not a full extent, I'm still not clear on this) depending on whether the FA grew up in Pembroke or Sheffield. Clear?
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I'd have thought that the vaguer grades of XS or HXS for sustained chop 4a or 4c would be more appropriate
I tend to think of XS/ HXS as being more suited to loose ledge shuffling, more like extreme versions of your 'E5 4a' approach suited to headstrong punters. And as I said above I'm very unsure of where the grade boundary lies.
Whereas our E4 4c pitch had more in common with Gogarth E5 5b like Death Trap - i.e. it's vertical, sustained proper climbing but you've very limited faith in either the holds or the protection. A proper trad E6 leader would have been fine, if perhaps slightly traumatised as I was. A headstrong E1 leader would either backed off or died.
or a VS up high after a 7a boulder (
(Edit: you've added more context) Clearly this would never have been given an E grade at all, because to anyone doing the start it would be trivial. As it is, it isn't trivial, and people back off it even with pads, so it got E4. E1 6a would suggest that the 6a is fall-offable but I would expect harder climbing at height than 'VS', but if it was dangerous 5b or 5c it would get more than E1 overall, so you can expect 5a ish I think. The grades are 'overall', they just cover a lot more variety than other systems.
I get what you're saying with this, but
I'm not proposing any changes I'm just explaining how it already works, and always has done. The proof is in the guidebooks.
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Whereas our E4 4c pitch had more in common with Gogarth E5 5b like Death Trap - i.e. it's vertical, sustained proper climbing but you've very limited faith in either the holds or the protection. A proper trad E6 leader would have been fine, if perhaps slightly traumatised as I was. A headstrong E1 leader would either backed off or died.
I'll take your word on this, I'm just finding the pitch in question quite hard to imagine!
I'm not proposing any changes I'm just explaining how it already works, and always has done. The proof is in the guidebooks.
In some guidebooks, from a specific era, for particular areas! i.e. the period between the development of E grades and the proliferation of bouldering pads, on sedimentary outcrops in northern England...
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That doesn't include the sea cliffs, where there is just as much weirdness at the opposite end?
It's the same everywhere I've been in the Uk, but I did learn early on there was a variety of styles, and not to throw a hissy fit and claim the grades were 'broken' if I an E4 didn't suit me. Well I might have had some fits but I didn't claim the grades were broken.
I have tended to seek out uncoventional routes though, so was exposed to the breath and scope before my head got all swol from climbing big numbers.
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Someone should have stuck that in a guide or something. I think I would have found it useful to know back when I climbed on grit quite a lot... Now you say it it does make some sense, but if you started climbing somewhere without many micro routes it's not obvious. I'm also not entirely sure that's how it's used round the country? I don't recall micro routes in Avon feeling like they used that system, but maybe I'm misremembering.
I think you're projecting or imagining when it comes to people throwing a fit about these grades. I recall people just treating them like a joke, because that's how they seem if you're used to normal grading :shrug:
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I have tended to seek out uncoventional routes though
You probably are in a relatively small Venn overlap of specialties there, ankle-breaker grit soloing and seaside death choss.
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They’re both five minutes from his house.
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They’re both five minutes from his house.
Is his house bifurcated by a rupture in the fabric of space? :-\
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2nd home wanker….. in north wales too, I can feel another great debate coming on. 😂
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A plague in both his houses clearly.
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Someone should have stuck that in a guide or something. I think I would have found it useful to know back when I climbed on grit quite a lot... Now you say it it does make some sense, but if you started climbing somewhere without many micro routes it's not obvious. I'm also not entirely sure that's how it's used round the country? I don't recall micro routes in Avon feeling like they used that system, but maybe I'm misremembering.
Handily most guides do include a few paragraphs on grades:
The system of grading for routes in this volume is the traditional British style, a combination of adjectival and technical grades, and assumes the leader has a normal rack, including standard camming devices, nuts, slings, quickdraws etc. The adjectival grade is the first part of the grade, and attempts to give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb. This will be influenced by many aspects.
Being a massive dweeb I've gone and checked a few other guides and they all include very similar wording (Rockfax eastern grit, CC South Devon, CC Dartmoor, The Sheffield-Stanage area 1970 reprint, Peak Limestone South 1987, Moorland Gritstone Chew Valley 1988, Derwent Valley 1981).
You could be forgiven for thinking the adjectival grade is widely understood to "give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb".
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"attempt to" - which it does with reasonable success for 95%of the routes in the country. Yet everyone seems to be focus on the two tiny flat end of the bell curve. You know, the bell ends ;)
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"The most useful/ popular modern grade would, I suppose be 7C(!)"
Agreed
"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."
Again, agreed.
Not done any E4 4c's but done plenty of things that aren't too far off. For those who haven't seen such things, then since we're talking hypotheticals, imagine kicking steps in an 80 degree slope of "rock" resembling the shifting sands on a sand dune with no gear and a pit of tigers underneath you and you'll get the idea. There's plenty of stuff in the UK that's not that far off that hilariously. Routes certainly doesn't need to have much in the way of technical rock climbing to feel like they are overall E4 or E6 or much harder.
"But if we go up the same amount - to 6c/7a - it's somehow unacceptable? Why?"
Because for the E grade to actually have any use, it needs to be the overall grade of the route. Which includes physical difficulty. That works fine for the examples above when there's hardly any physical difficulty but huge amounts of other skills required and danger. But if it's the overall grade of a route, then something that's Fr 9c can't ever be E4. Or something that's Fr8a for that matter. Completely safe Fr8a cracks are overall considered overall to be E7. For E7 to mean anything, then completely safe Fr8a shorter routes also need to be E7. Giving them E4 completely undermines the foundation of what E grades are meant to represent.
"Your E6 or 7 is a bizarre attempt to translate into some overall sport grade."
No, it really isn't. It's an attempt to make E grades actually mean something and be used consistently. And the only thing that makes sense for it to mean is the overall grade of the route. Which includes the difficulty and the danger and everything else. You're trying to eliminate or significantly reduce the importance of the physical difficulty bit on a particular subset of routes which undermines E grades entirely. Just because that's how it's been historically doesn't make it a good idea. It's why there's still endless ridiculous debates about this subject, a little like the one we're currently having.
"everyone seems to be focus on the two tiny flat end of the bell curve"
This same shit comes up time and time again for hard routes in the news, which is why people care. Might be 2% of overall volume of routes, but it's the 2% that's often in the news and hence the routes people often talk about.
"Is this a generational thing?"
You might have a couple of years on me, but not much more I don't think.
"I really can’t get my head round why lots of people have such a problem with it or are against them"
Not got anything against them at all. Precisely the opposite - I'm trying to defend them as I think that if used properly they are the best way to grade trad routes.
I'm just pointing out that they need to be used consistently to avoid all the criticism that gets thrown at them.
"The only issue I can see here is people who think of themselves as 'E4 climbers' might get their ego pricked"
No. The main issue as far as I'm concerned is that at the top end, hard trad grades in the news have become a joke, as noone can agree on what they are supposed to be representing.
Which makes the UK the laughing stock of the world when people can't agree whether something is E8 or E11 - ie: whether it should be world standard news, or something for a few people to go "nice one" to their mate in the pub.
"E grade represents the overall difficulty, except when it doesn't, at which point it may not may not encompass the difficulty of the hard bit to some extent (but not a full extent, I'm still not clear on this) depending on whether the FA grew up in Pembroke or Sheffield. Clear?"
:lol: Indeed.
The Egraders were right in terms of their aims - ie: E grades could and should be a lot more consistent. They just stratospherically messed up the implementation.
What they should have done was posted something about how E grades should and could be used consistently.
And then put their heads together and spent some time writing a proper graded list for all routes ever given E9 or harder. That's the only way of actually sorting out hard trad grades and making them consistent, not some silly gimmick on a website. And if they'd even started that on a piece of paper, they'd have realised that their translations were a million miles away from reality and would involve regrading the vast majority of routes in the UK.
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The reason why Egrades don’t work at the top end is because they are rarely applied objectively/properly, those at the top end have to contend with their ego’s, public opinion, sponsors etc etc this is the case with all grades not just E grades! Sport climbs and boulders aren’t immune to downgrades/upgrades and people certainly don’t agree on them all. E grades give lots of info…. Sometimes I agree sometimes I don’t! Sport grades give less info… sometimes I agree sometimes I don’t. It’s all the same whatever the system.
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With sport routes and boulders, typically significant downgrades only happen when people find better beta.
The vast majority of people (at least those who travel to at least some extent) climbing at that level tend to roughly agree about grades when they've used the same beta (with obvious exceptions for height dependent stuff etc).
With UK trad routes people can climb exactly the same sequence and yet come up with a completely different grade as they are using a completely different grading system. That's not sensible. Sure sponsors, public opinion, beta and all the rest of it are always going to play a part, but sorting out what the numbers are actually meant to represent is a pre requisite to even bothering trying to assign something a number.
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With sport routes and boulders, typically significant downgrades only happen when people find better beta.
The vast majority of people (at least those who travel to at least some extent) climbing at that level tend to roughly agree about grades when they've used the same beta (with obvious exceptions for height dependent stuff etc).
With UK trad routes people can climb exactly the same sequence and yet come up with a completely different grade as they are using a completely different grading system. That's not sensible. Sure sponsors, public opinion, beta and all the rest of it are always going to play a part, but sorting out what the numbers are actually meant to represent is a pre requisite to even bothering trying to assign something a number.
Have you got some examples of these vastly differing grades given to things in uk trad at the top end, or the bottom end for that matter??
Beyond james Pearson who has himself admitted he got it extremely wrong, I can’t come up with anything that’s been savagely downgraded/up graded you talked of E8-E11 up thread…. From my knowledge just like bouldering and sport climbing, there aren’t many huge variations, even taking into account the ease of getting extra publicity by over inflating trad grades (due to less likelihood of repeats) this is normal with any system.. like I said it’s not science.
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Well, there's the obvious longer ones - Walk of Life, The Long Hope Route, Muy Caliente etc, but I'd agree that for the most part that's for very different reasons, and not really what we're talking about.
In the context of this discussion, I was more thinking of, well, pretty much every highball esque route I can think of. Think people have just been using WSS and Careless Torque etc as examples that most people have tried or done and so know something about. But if people can't agree whether Careless should be E6 or E8, or WSS should be E4 or E6, even when they use exactly the same sequence and completely agree about the physical difficulty, then I think it's hard to argue that everything is fine. And it's also not hard in that context to see how something like The Promise or various highbally things of Francos, could get such different grades from different people (and yes pads also come into the picture obviously).
Franco seems to think the E grade is so broken he's attempted to create his own grading system. Dave Mac never graded Echo Wall, which I don't know, but I'm guessing wasn't a Sharma esque snub at grades in general, but more that he felt things were all over the show and giving E11 or E12 or whatever didn't mean much until everyone was agreed on how the grading system should actually work.
I do think there's something resembling a coherent system forming finally towards the top end, and whether it sticks or not, perhaps James Pearson giving Bon Voyage E12 is a good marker on a well accessible and likely popular route to compare other things to. Although as you say with these things often not seeing a lot of repeats, it perhaps takes longer to sort out than would otherwise be the case, and so no doubt there'll be lots of adjustments down the line. How many of the current E10s and 11s are actually overall harder than old skool E9's like Face Mecca, Widdop Wall or Dangermouse? I guess we might know in a few decades.
So, perhaps I over egged it slightly above.
But, really the beef is just that as has been evidenced by this thread, various people who've been in the climbing world their entire lives still can't agree what the E grade is meant to represent. Which is pretty ridiculous.
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Well, there's the obvious longer ones - Walk of Life, The Long Hope Route, Muy Caliente etc, but I'd agree that for the most part that's for very different reasons, and not really what we're talking about.
In the context of this discussion, I was more thinking of, well, pretty much every highball esque route I can think of. Think people have just been using WSS and Careless Torque etc as examples that most people have tried or done and so know something about. But if people can't agree whether Careless should be E6 or E8, or WSS should be E4 or E6, even when they use exactly the same sequence and completely agree about the physical difficulty, then I think it's hard to argue that everything is fine. And it's also not hard in that context to see how something like The Promise or various highbally things of Francos, could get such different grades from different people (and yes pads also come into the picture obviously).
Franco seems to think the E grade is so broken he's attempted to create his own grading system. Dave Mac never graded Echo Wall, which I don't know, but I'm guessing wasn't a Sharma esque snub at grades in general, but more that he felt things were all over the show and giving E11 or E12 or whatever didn't mean much until everyone was agreed on how the grading system should actually work.
I do think there's something resembling a coherent system forming finally towards the top end, and whether it sticks or not, perhaps James Pearson giving Bon Voyage E12 is a good marker on a well accessible and likely popular route to compare other things to. Although as you say with these things often not seeing a lot of repeats, it perhaps takes longer to sort out than would otherwise be the case, and so no doubt there'll be lots of adjustments down the line. How many of the current E10s and 11s are actually overall harder than old skool E9's like Face Mecca, Widdop Wall or Dangermouse? I guess we might know in a few decades.
So, perhaps I over egged it slightly above.
But, really the beef is just that as has been evidenced by this thread, various people who've been in the climbing world their entire lives still can't agree what the E grade is meant to represent. Which is pretty ridiculous.
As already mentioned above… they are pretty much irrelevant for any highball, mats, font grades etc etc
As for Franco…. I’ll defer on if he’s the messiah or not…..
For me it’s a misconception that E grades are broken, they work actually quite well and convey more information about the climb than most other systems… there isn’t a perfect system and I’ve yet to see any proof that anything else would work any better. With regard dangermouse, widdop wall the same thing would occur regardless of the system, some things are graded harsh some aren’t… your Gibson is balanced out be a Gresham… If you truly believe people who have been climbing their whole lives would suddenly agree on the grade of things if another system was used, I think your smoking crack!!
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"attempt to" - which it does with reasonable success for 95%of the routes in the country. Yet everyone seems to be focus on the two tiny flat end of the bell curve. You know, the bell ends ;)
Very good :2thumbsup:
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As for Franco…. I’ll defer on if he’s the messiah or not…..
He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy with a limited repertoire
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Someone should have stuck that in a guide or something. I think I would have found it useful to know back when I climbed on grit quite a lot... Now you say it it does make some sense, but if you started climbing somewhere without many micro routes it's not obvious. I'm also not entirely sure that's how it's used round the country? I don't recall micro routes in Avon feeling like they used that system, but maybe I'm misremembering.
Handily most guides do include a few paragraphs on grades:
The system of grading for routes in this volume is the traditional British style, a combination of adjectival and technical grades, and assumes the leader has a normal rack, including standard camming devices, nuts, slings, quickdraws etc. The adjectival grade is the first part of the grade, and attempts to give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb. This will be influenced by many aspects.
Being a massive dweeb I've gone and checked a few other guides and they all include very similar wording (Rockfax eastern grit, CC South Devon, CC Dartmoor, The Sheffield-Stanage area 1970 reprint, Peak Limestone South 1987, Moorland Gritstone Chew Valley 1988, Derwent Valley 1981).
You could be forgiven for thinking the adjectival grade is widely understood to "give an overall sense of the difficulty of a climb".
No Remus, the only explanation is that we all thought it worked like that because we want it to be like sport grades. Especially those authors of the 1970s guide :lol:
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I’ve only bothered to read half this thread, but basically JB and Northern Yob are correct. But then maybe I only think that cos I’m squarely in this Venn overlap:
You probably are in a relatively small Venn overlap of specialties there, ankle-breaker grit soloing and seaside death choss.
The best two types of climbing right?
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The best two types of climbing right?
I'm pretty conventional myself, I quite like multiple pitches of immaculate flowing climbing up compelling features on impeccable rock (I know, :yawn: right?), but each to their own.
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Have attempted a belated thread split since, bafflingly, shark seems more focused on trivial things like the future of the BMC and a trip to Mingulay. Apologies to anyone whose bon mots were accidentally left in the car park as we drove off.
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:dance1:
That's a dank Saturday sorted then.
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Have attempted a belated thread split
Heavy handed if you ask me, there has definitely been a theme of Significant Repetition in this
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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.
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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.
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@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? :blink:
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.
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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.
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@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? :blink:
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…..??
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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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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….
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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.
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Possibly off-topic, and perhaps this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was mildly interesting that Dave Macleod contradicts himself here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5aS6vwrW6k, 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".
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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! :)
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@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.
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@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?
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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.
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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.
FFS! At no point did I say that! That would be retarded. What I said was putting a ledge halfway up WSS would make it easier. Which it would. Making the start of WSS 8C would, for me, remove any E grade at all because the top would now be completely trivial, and no one is going to try/ do it without pads anyway. Maybe engage with the examples I’ve given rather than extrapolating to non-existent examples and then imagining my trad grade.
It seems that you personally can only parse E grades by first grading them in French/ font grades, and then converting and bumping up and down a bit. I’m not sure this is a great approach. I would say start with the technical grade, but your bizarre view that the Uk tech grade is a somehow closed scale stopping at 6c suggests this is doomed to failure too.
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Would the top of WSS really be totally trivial for all Font_8C climbers?
I've seen a Font_8C climber fail to retro flash Tinof 7b because he got nervous, massively massively over-gripped the holds and pumped out (quite low down the route).
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yeah the logic that a short boulder close to the ground = a lower E grade still doesn't make sense to me.
This is baffling. For a given tech grade, things that earn a bigger grade are sustained, length, danger etc. Things that earn a lower E grade are shorter, safer, not sustained etc. What doesn't make sense?
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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….
Aaaargh! I never said, and I don't think I've seen anyone say that "all grades must be trasnferrable to all other grading systems in all styles". And I never said "I expect to be able to travel around the UK and onsight E4 everywhere"
All I was saying, is, that, in my experience (and that of many mates) The standard use of a trad grade to get a good understanding of how hard it might be and how much chance I have of onsighting it seems to work pretty well. Is it any surprise that I got shut down on Fear of Infection (https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/clogwyn_mawr_cwmglas-10172/fear_of_infection-123033)...no, but then it's a wide crack/offwidth. Did I have a good understanding of how hard it was going to be when I looked at the guide, looked up at the rock and got cracking - hell yeah!
I'm happy to accept that I am totally inexperienced with hybrid highball/trad graded hard boulders. I think I did one HVS or E1 6a at Bowden 20 years ago and that's about it. So I guess if you guys say "it works and we all understand it" then I can;t massibely argue - it's just not how the UK Trad grades work on normal trad routes aroudn the rest of the country in my experience
The point Adam/jb and I are trying to make is E grades work as well if not better than any other grade system.
I don't think I've seen anyone argue anything different here? (Except that above 6b (I'd argue 6a) that the grade widths are so wide to be pointless. Adam seems to be arguing against this, but I can't see the logic.
uk 6b - runs from font 6B to 7A,
UK 6c: 6C to 7C+ :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink:
However, at the mortal grades, if I go up to a steep, pumpy looking E4 5c crack I might think "no move harder than 5c, lots and lots of them, no rest but actually ok protection, pumpy to place. Probably up toward Fr6c sport grade.
Similar E4 6a: maybe a harder crux.
E4 5c, could also be 5c moves in a spicy / dangerous position, and only be Fr6b climbing.
Or you could get a route with a few bouldery sections, but well protected. Harder to onsight, due to technical sequences. E4 6b. For that you know you're going to be safe, but need to really crank out some moves. French grade could range a lot in this... We all know hard one-move wonders that feel lower grade on the redpoint, but tricky to onsight.
This is where I think the beauty in the UK trad grade lies, it's not easily and directly transferrable to other systems, but when you ask "average" climbers to rank a load of routes at a crag in ascending order of onsighting difficulty, there's usually a fair bit of a agreement. ( Also why the E-Grader idea is a bit shit).
I still can't get my head around E4 for WSS can make any sense in this context.... If you did a graded list of that crag, would the onsightableness of it come below............. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Just checked the crag page and see they are ALL boulder grades....
Fuck it, I'm out, If E4 makes sense in highball routes in the peak then so be it, but I'm glad that lunacy doesn't spread out to the rest of these islands....
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yeah the logic that a short boulder close to the ground = a lower E grade still doesn't make sense to me.
This is baffling. For a given tech grade, things that earn a bigger grade are sustained, length, danger etc. Things that earn a lower E grade are shorter, safer, not sustained etc. What doesn't make sense?
So we can agree that having boulder mats and it being close to the ground makes it "as safe it can be"...? Yes?
So let's say we have WSS with 7B+ crux at 2m, protectable by mats, with an easier but still bold top out that will give people the willies...
Let's transport that to a 20m cliff, give it some E1 climbing to get to 8m up, place 3 bomber cams (as a safe as it can be), then bust out your font7B+ crux, and then run it out to the top of the crag.
E4 7a yes?
:blink: :blink: :blink: :blink:
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Statement of the bleedin’ obvious probably but the adjectival (E) grade works very well for what it was designed for: estimating the difficulty of onsighting a trad. route - a composite of physical and psychological factors - for an average* climber.
E-grades are less suited to climbing when you can have lots of goes at a route, either above pads or on a top-rope, as this thread demonstrates! Rather awkwardly this happens to be by far the most common approach to harder climbing.
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.
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".
In my view, some of the confusion in the harder grades would be reduced if we just binned the UK tech. grade substituting French or Font. grades as applicable. There is no requirement an E grade has to be followed by UK6c or something equally ambiguous. It would be interesting to know what "outsiders" think of this.
For WSS and similar, a bouldering grade is obviously most appropriate, since 99% will boulder it out above pads. If I was writing a guide I’d add a couple of sentences similar to the following: “7B+ to the break. Those continuing upward should note the top would be E4 in isolation and will probably feel harder if you’ve just done the start.”
*Historically a 5’ 10” bloke who could jam. This may need reviewing in 2024.
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For WSS and similar, a bouldering grade is obviously most appropriate, since 99% will boulder it out above pads. If I was writing a guide I’d add a couple of sentences similar to the following: “7B+ to the break. Those continuing upward should note the top would be E4 in isolation and will probably feel harder if you’ve just done the start.”
Largely agree with this post but no guide should be countenancing the idea that doing WSS to the break is doing the problem! Better to write; 'the major difficulties are complete when the break is reached but the top section is still insecure and tricky; its certainly not over.'
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What Duncan said.
(Except that above 6b (I'd argue 6a) that the grade widths are so wide to be pointless. Adam seems to be arguing against this, but I can't see the logic.
The main part of the problem are the 7a deniers like Nemo, not me. Thankfully not very many of them! Nemo's objection, if I recall correctly, is something akin to Xeno's paradox where any move can be subdivided into components no harder than 6c. Ignoring the reductio ad absurdum aspect, I suppose you could argue that on something like WSS which is both intricate and bottom end 7a, but I don't see see how you can really argue in 2024 that 9c or 9A are just a lot of 6c moves.
uk 6b - runs from font 6B to 7A,
UK 6c: 6C to 7C+
I've always had uk 7a starting around 7B up to 7C+ ish, with 7b covering 8A and up. Of course this is for cruxy boulders not stamina traverses. So Deliverance (giants excepted) represents bottom end 7a, WSS more solid at the grade, Storm, Brad Pit etc mid-grade. 7b would cover moves like the start of Careless start, The Joker, or Help The Young sit. I don't have a lot of experience of harder boulders, and there don't seem to be many on routes, but I'd assume short 8B+ must be getting in to uk 7c and 9A therefore 8a. Aidan does seem to be doing harder moves than existed in the eighties!
Let's transport that to a 20m cliff, give it some E1 climbing to get to 8m up, place 3 bomber cams (as a safe as it can be), then bust out your font7B+ crux, and then run it out to the top of the crag.
E4 7a yes?
Clearly not! Why would you think that? Putting that section anywhere but off the floor is going to be E5+, you've then added a 12m runout with deck potential from 15-20m. :blink:
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OK, the measurements are off. I was hoping to make it so that the top out was sketchy but not life threatening, with a trivial start that added nothing to the difficulty.
Point being, adding a trivial start *only makes it more workable* not *more onsightable*.
So why would the grade change?
Unless you're saying the UK trad grade is *not* a measure of how hard it is to onsight. If that's the case then I've clearly been living on a different planet for the last 20 years.
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I still can't get my head around E4 for WSS can make any sense in this context....
You've already explained it:
Or you could get a route with a few bouldery sections, but well protected. Harder to onsight, due to technical sequences. E4 6b.
Now imagine the same route with a single bouldery section and make the rest easier climbing - to still get E4 the move would have to be harder, so E4 6c yes?
Now make the route very short, barely a route at all, and put that single hardest move right on the floor...
Yes, I think a big part of the problem is the focus on 'onsightable'. I've never done a route where the E-grade is higher because it's hard to read. Astra on Pavey is the perfect example - steady E2 IF you find the hidden hold on the crux. Totally blind. It gets E2, would be E3 if you pushed through without. Have you any counter-examples?
On the above WSS example, grades have followed the logic above rather than placing a lower limit on what an average E4 climber could onsight, because otherwise you just end up binning all the bouldery routes into less grades, which gives less information. As I keep saying, the grade isn't E4, it's E4 7a. 7a tells E4 climbers they haven't a cat in hell's chance of onsighting it, but they can have a go without consequence. Verandah buttress is HVD 5b likewise.
some of the confusion in the harder grades would be reduced if we just binned the UK tech. grade substituting French or Font. grades as applicable. There is no requirement an E grade has to be followed by UK6c or something equally ambiguous.
Some, maybe. It wouldn't solve anything for me - mostly because I don't see big problems. Grades are subjective. Going to a narrower scale like Font grades gives an illusion of greater precision without necessarily increasing accuracy. Plus in Font, the scary highballs have easier moves - presumably we ignore these (not to mention traverse grades!!).
I find grading interesting - it arises universally with systems that should be easily translatable, but aren't, because simple number scales become imbued with cultural differences. I think it's more interesting to try to understand the differences in application than to try to homogenise them. Nobody's stopping anyone using all the scales when they discuss a route.
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Very little time today, and probably most of this week. So not read all the above properly, hope I've not misunderstood the gist. But very quickly:
"I've always had uk 7a starting around 7B up to 7C+ ish, with 7b covering 8A and up"
But that isn't how it's actually used right, except for on a small subset of micro grit routes?
Indian face gets 6c. (ie: a Fr7b+)
Rhapsody gets 7a. (ie: a Fr8c+)
(And given time, I could give more examples all day).
That isn't a frickin useful technical grade.
Whilst he didn't like it when I said it earlier, the truth is that as far as I can tell, JB tends to think about this stuff in terms of a particular subset of short grit bouldery routes. Sure he's climbed longer safe stuff occasionally, but it doesn't seem to affect his views on grades as that's predominantly not what he's thinking about.
And perhaps more importantly, he has zero interest in headpointing (and indeed a lot of disdain for it), and so has no interest in a grading system that hangs together upwards of E8 (which is primarily where all the bunfights around this stuff happen and where we need a better system going forwards).
"if I recall correctly, is something akin to Xeno's paradox where any move can be subdivided into components no harder than 6c"
No, it has nothing to do with that.
It is the fact that for hard trad routes, all the people climbing them (even hard trad specialists) have climbed way way more things of that physical difficulty as sport or boulders.
And so they compare physical difficulty via the hundreds of similar level sport or boulders they've climbed, vs the one E10 that might have had similar physical difficulty. That's just how it is. You can complain about it all day, it just isn't going to change the reality of how people talk about physical difficulty on hard trad routes.
(Obviously there's all the separate issues around the tech grade not having a clear definition, being supposed to be the grade of the hardest move, but never really being used like that etc - put the crux of right wall or positron on the ground and they would be 4b). It works fine up to around 6b, above that, it just isn't useful, has never been clearly defined, and everyone climbing hard routes stopped talking about physical difficulty that way a very long time ago.
Could say a lot more.
I may not get time, but If I get around to it in the next few weeks at some point, I may try and put together a very quick attempt at a graded list of everything out there over E9. At which point when everything on the entire list gets 6c or 7a, with maybe one or 2 7bs, the argument about the pointlessness of the tech grade makes itself.
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So not read all the above properly, hope I've not misunderstood the gist
Why bother then? You've misread. Who would possibly relate uk tech grades to sport grades? That would make no sense.
JB tends to think about this stuff in terms of a particular subset of short grit bouldery routes.
No, which is why I used lots of sea cliff examples. I'm using these, and grit, to illustrate the extremes, which seem to confuse people. No one is confused about the middle of the road.
I will admit to not being very interested about the grades of E9+. Grades are arrived at by consensus, and there isn't any here, because they have few ascents with less objectivity than normal.
Indian face gets 6c. (ie: a Fr7b+)
Rhapsody gets 7a. (ie: a Fr8c+)
Well, as I keep saying, these are half the grade and E9 6c and E11 7a do tell you rather more. As much, or more, as 7b+ X and 8c+ R?
The question is not 'are E-grades perfect' it's 'is there a better system?' If top climbers found it unusable, they would have adopted something like the above. Why haven't they? Because 8c+ R doesn't suggest something special, whereas E12 might. I can see if you've a preference towards safe, hard climbing, you might prefer 8c+ R because it suggests the difficulty isn't remarkable by modern standards, and wouldn't pull focus from the 'real-deal' 9b+. But others might think the opposite; there are many climbs, and many types of climbers, and plenty of room in the modern media to celebrate all of them.
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I’m not convinced the crux of Right Wall would be 4b off the deck?
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Why haven't they? Because 8c+ R doesn't suggest something special, whereas E12 might.
I don’t get this bit; 9aR for Pearson’s thing for example still lets you know it’s amongst the physically hardest trad pitches ever climbed, and not a total clip up either; I don’t see what the extreme grade adds?
Top UK climbers probably like E grades as double digit ones are way better for column inches due to the punter interest!
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"Who would possibly relate uk tech grades to sport grades? That would make no sense."
Errrr. Anyone trying to give the UK tech grade to any long hard route to satisfy the likes of yourself or an old skool guidebook writer, when they know perfectly well how hard it is in Fr grades.
"E9 6c and E11 7a do tell you rather more. As much, or more, as 7b+ X and 8c+ R?"
But not anywhere near as much as what you actually should have, which is E9 Fr7b+ and E11 Fr8c+
I'm not saying anything terribly novel here.
The above, for routes over about E6 has already been adopted in many guidebooks.
"Because 8c+ R doesn't suggest something special, whereas E12 might"
Sure. On that we're agreed. As said many times now, I'm NOT trying to get rid of E grades. I'm trying to make them actually work as a coherent system at all levels of difficulty. I agree that if used properly, they're better than all the alternatives for grading trad routes.
"Unless you're saying the UK trad grade is *not* a measure of how hard it is to onsight."
It is up to around E7. As I said before, on stuff above this, it's not in practice how it's used. Things E8 and above are graded on how hard they are to headpoint (and indeed some may be utterly ridiculous to even consider onsighting - doesn't mean they're given E15).
The question is not 'are E-grades perfect' it's 'is there a better system?' If top climbers found it unusable, they would have adopted something like the above. Why haven't they?
They have. You just seem to not have noticed. It looks like this (and this is obviously a very small subset of routes over E9 to illustrate the discussion - there's clearly loads of info missing - just posted where I got to with it earlier in the half an hour I had to play with):
E12?
Bon Voyage 9a Annot (France) James Pearson (2023), Adam Ondra
Hard E11 ?
Echo Wall 8c/8c+ Ben Nevis Dave Macleod (2008)
E11
Power Ranger 8c+ James Pearson (2017)
Tribe 9a/9a+ Cadarese (Italy) Jacopo Larcher (2019), James Pearson
The Best Things... 9a William Moss (2023)
Crown Royale 9a Norway Pete Whittaker (2023)
Hard E10 / E11?
Rhapsody 8c/8c+ Dumbarton Dave Macleod (2006), >3 repeats
Lexicon 8b+ Pavey Ark Neil Gresham (2021), >3 repeats
Meltdown 8c+ Yosemite (US) Beth Rodden (2008), >3 repeats
The Recovery Drink 8c+ Norway Nicolas Favresse (2013), Daniel Jung, Pete Whittaker
E10
Choronzon 8b+ Pembroke Neil Mawson (2014), Steve McClure
Equilibrium 8b+ Burbage Neil Bentley (2000), Neil Gresham, James Pearson
The Groove 8b Cratcliffe James Pearson
Baron Greenback Direct 8b+ Wimberry Pete Whittaker
To Hell And Back 7c+ Hell’s Lum Dave Macleod (2007), Dave Birkett
Le Voyage 8b+ Annot (France) James Pearson (2017). >3 repeats, including a flash by Sebastien Berthe.
Magic Line 8c Ron Kauk (1996), Lonnie Kauk, Hazel Findlay, Carlo Traversi
The Bull 8b+ Jeremy Smith (2013), Ben Harnden
The Bigger Baron 8b+ Pete Whittaker (2014)
Stranger Than Fiction 8c Mason Earle (2015), Brittany Goris, Lor Sabourin, Pete Whittaker
GreatNess Wall 8c Steve McClure (2019)
Century Crack 8c Tom Randall (2011), Pete Whittaker, Danny Parker, Fumiya Nakamura
E9/10
Hold Fast Hold True 8a/8a+ Glen Nevis Julian Lines (2013), Iain Small, Franco Cookson
Hard E9
Face Mecca 7c+ Cloggy Nick Dixon (1989)
Widdop Wall 8a+/8b Widdop John Dunne (1998), Jordan Buys
E9
The Long Hope Route 8b Dave Macleod
The Walk Of Life 8a+ Dyer’s Lookout James Pearson
Dark Religion 8a+ Dinas Mot James McCaffie (2016)
Holdfast 7c+ Glen Nevis Dave Macleod (2002)
The Fugue 8a+ Glen Croe Dave Macleod (2002)
Achemine 8b Dumbarton Dave Macleod (2001)
If Six Was Nine 8a+ Iron Crag Dave Birkett (1992)
Indian Face 7b+ Cloggy Johnny Dawes (1986)
Mission Impossible 8a+ Ogwen Neil Carson
Something’s Burning 8a+/8b Pembroke Charlie Woodburn (2012)
The Big Issue 8b Pembroke John Dunne
The Prow Font 8A+ Kyloe In Andy Earl
Captain Invincible 8b/8b+ Burbage South Sean Miles (1991)
Baron Greenback 8a+ Wimberry Pete Whittaker (2013), Ben Bransby
Gerty Berwick Font 8A Ilkley Ryan Pasquill (2009), James Pearson
The Lizard King 8a+ Ilkley Jacob Cook (2014)
Muy Caliente 8a+ Pembroke Tim Emmett
Clearly there's a LOT more to add into that (huge numbers of routes missing, probably lots wrong in the above). As and when I (or probably better someone else) have time, I'll try and improve it, but it may be later in the year.
But it's fine for demonstrating that the above is actually a cohesive grading system. Giving all the above 6c, 7a or whatever, is not useful and it's not how pretty much anyone climbing those routes thinks about it.
Or at least, it could be a cohesive grading system, if everyone can agree how E grades should actually be applied, particularly for shorter routes.
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Why haven't they? Because 8c+ R doesn't suggest something special, whereas E12 might.
I don’t get this bit; 9aR for Pearson’s thing for example still lets you know it’s amongst the physically hardest trad pitches ever climbed, and not a total clip up either; I don’t see what the extreme grade adds?
Top UK climbers probably like E grades as double digit ones are way better for column inches due to the punter interest!
I understood it as ‘something special’ referred to the ‘imbued cultural differences’
‘I find grading interesting - it arises universally with systems that should be easily translatable, but aren't, because simple number scales become imbued with cultural differences. I think it's more interesting to try to understand the differences in application than to try to homogenise them.’
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"Who would possibly relate uk tech grades to sport grades? That would make no sense."
Errrr. Anyone trying to give the UK tech grade to any long hard route to satisfy the likes of yourself or an old skool guidebook writer, when they know perfectly well how hard it is in Fr grades.
"E9 6c and E11 7a do tell you rather more. As much, or more, as 7b+ X and 8c+ R?"
But not anywhere near as much as what you actually should have, which is E9 Fr7b+ and E11 Fr8c+
I'm not saying anything terribly novel here.
The above, for routes over about E6 has already been adopted in many guidebooks.
"Because 8c+ R doesn't suggest something special, whereas E12 might"
Sure. On that we're agreed. As said many times now, I'm NOT trying to get rid of E grades. I'm trying to make them actually work as a coherent system at all levels of difficulty. I agree that if used properly, they're better than all the alternatives for grading trad routes.
"Unless you're saying the UK trad grade is *not* a measure of how hard it is to onsight."
It is up to around E7. As I said before, on stuff above this, it's not in practice how it's used. Things E8 and above are graded on how hard they are to headpoint (and indeed some may be utterly ridiculous to even consider onsighting - doesn't mean they're given E15).
The question is not 'are E-grades perfect' it's 'is there a better system?' If top climbers found it unusable, they would have adopted something like the above. Why haven't they?
They have. You just seem to not have noticed. It looks like this (and this is obviously a very small subset of routes over E9 to illustrate the discussion - there's clearly loads of info missing - just posted where I got to with it earlier in the half an hour I had to play with):
E12?
Bon Voyage 9a Annot (France) James Pearson (2023), Adam Ondra
Hard E11 ?
Echo Wall 8c/8c+ Ben Nevis Dave Macleod (2008)
E11
Power Ranger 8c+ James Pearson (2017)
Tribe 9a/9a+ Cadarese (Italy) Jacopo Larcher (2019), James Pearson
The Best Things... 9a William Moss (2023)
Crown Royale 9a Norway Pete Whittaker (2023)
Hard E10 / E11?
Rhapsody 8c/8c+ Dumbarton Dave Macleod (2006), >3 repeats
Lexicon 8b+ Pavey Ark Neil Gresham (2021), >3 repeats
Meltdown 8c+ Yosemite (US) Beth Rodden (2008), >3 repeats
The Recovery Drink 8c+ Norway Nicolas Favresse (2013), Daniel Jung, Pete Whittaker
E10
Choronzon 8b+ Pembroke Neil Mawson (2014), Steve McClure
Equilibrium 8b+ Burbage Neil Bentley (2000), Neil Gresham, James Pearson
The Groove 8b Cratcliffe James Pearson
Baron Greenback Direct 8b+ Wimberry Pete Whittaker
To Hell And Back 7c+ Hell’s Lum Dave Macleod (2007), Dave Birkett
Le Voyage 8b+ Annot (France) James Pearson (2017). >3 repeats, including a flash by Sebastien Berthe.
Magic Line 8c Ron Kauk (1996), Lonnie Kauk, Hazel Findlay, Carlo Traversi
The Bull 8b+ Jeremy Smith (2013), Ben Harnden
The Bigger Baron 8b+ Pete Whittaker (2014)
Stranger Than Fiction 8c Mason Earle (2015), Brittany Goris, Lor Sabourin, Pete Whittaker
GreatNess Wall 8c Steve McClure (2019)
Century Crack 8c Tom Randall (2011), Pete Whittaker, Danny Parker, Fumiya Nakamura
E9/10
Hold Fast Hold True 8a/8a+ Glen Nevis Julian Lines (2013), Iain Small, Franco Cookson
Hard E9
Face Mecca 7c+ Cloggy Nick Dixon (1989)
Widdop Wall 8a+/8b Widdop John Dunne (1998), Jordan Buys
E9
The Long Hope Route 8b Dave Macleod
The Walk Of Life 8a+ Dyer’s Lookout James Pearson
Dark Religion 8a+ Dinas Mot James McCaffie (2016)
Holdfast 7c+ Glen Nevis Dave Macleod (2002)
The Fugue 8a+ Glen Croe Dave Macleod (2002)
Achemine 8b Dumbarton Dave Macleod (2001)
If Six Was Nine 8a+ Iron Crag Dave Birkett (1992)
Indian Face 7b+ Cloggy Johnny Dawes (1986)
Mission Impossible 8a+ Ogwen Neil Carson
Something’s Burning 8a+/8b Pembroke Charlie Woodburn (2012)
The Big Issue 8b Pembroke John Dunne
The Prow Font 8A+ Kyloe In Andy Earl
Captain Invincible 8b/8b+ Burbage South Sean Miles (1991)
Baron Greenback 8a+ Wimberry Pete Whittaker (2013), Ben Bransby
Gerty Berwick Font 8A Ilkley Ryan Pasquill (2009), James Pearson
The Lizard King 8a+ Ilkley Jacob Cook (2014)
Muy Caliente 8a+ Pembroke Tim Emmett
Clearly there's a LOT more to add into that (huge numbers of routes missing, probably lots wrong in the above). As and when I (or probably better someone else) have time, I'll try and improve it, but it may be later in the year.
But it's fine for demonstrating that the above is actually a cohesive grading system. Giving all the above 6c, 7a or whatever, is not useful and it's not how pretty much anyone climbing those routes thinks about it.
Or at least, it could be a cohesive grading system, if everyone can agree how E grades should actually be applied, particularly for shorter routes.
I don't know anything about E-grades but your list would tend to suggest that if something is 8b+ it is E10 at a minimum and if something is 9a it is E11 at a minimum
So is it kind of a case of maybe, take the route grade in french, assume its bolted, safe, pleasant etc. Whats that E-grade? Then add on potentially more if it's spicy/dangerous/lethal?
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What grade system we use is largely dependent on the users: first-ascensionists, early repeaters, climbers and guide-book writers.
In Scandinavia this has led to replacing Scandi grades with French grades for sport, but keeping Scandi grades for trad. The Scandi grades has 25% wider grade-bands but otherwise follow the same logic as French grades.
In the US they often quote grades as 5.13- 5.13 5.13 for trad and 5.13a - d for sport, making the bands 33% wider for trad. Same tendency.
I think that it is useful to have wider grade bands for trad as there are more confounding variables on trad routes; it is harder to reliably estimate the physical difficulty of a route when you also struggle with putting in pieces and are sometimes a bit freaked out etc.
I suspect that the wider grade-bands is the main advantage of the adjective grades over French grades for UK trad as well. Because the system does not appear inherently much better than any other system to grade trad routes. If it was, non-British climbers who have been exposed to the system would switch to the British adjectival system, but we do not.
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I’m not convinced the crux of Right Wall would be 4b off the deck?
Obviously it isn't. Much as I'd like to think Nemo is exaggerating for comic effect, I don't think he is. It's not hard to see how you'd reach the conclusion that tech grades don't work, or stop at 6c, if this is the foundation for your wobbly logic.
I do expect E4 to be defined the same way everywhere, otherwise E4 doesn't mean anything.
the tech grade not having a clear definition...
I've never seen a grading system clearly defined. They all attempt the same thing - reduce the overall difficulty to a single number. The only variation is the grade width, and cultural differences in how they're applied.
I don’t get this bit; 9aR for Pearson’s thing for example still lets you know it’s amongst the physically hardest trad pitches ever climbed
I understood it as ‘something special’ referred to the ‘imbued cultural differences’
Partly that, partly the fact that 8c+ is a 35 year old grade of which hundreds of examples exist. E11 or 12 not so much.
The above, for routes over about E6 has already been adopted in many guidebooks.
Weirdly I've never see one. Which ones?
E12?
Bon Voyage 9a Annot (France) ... etc
Good effort pulling all that together, although given I joined the chat to explain the application of the E4 grade, I'm not sure we're having the same discussion. Is there a clearer logic you can discern in here? Sources in particular would also be useful given that we've very little knowledge of these routes between us, but appreciate that might be a job for someone else. For the grit ones I do know a bit about, from a quick google I can't find sources for the given french grades - are they yours? Whereas the news reports do inevitably use uk tech grades, occasionally font. So I can see why french route grades might make sense on similar terrain to sport like Pembroke, but the argument is much less strong elsewhere.
I think that it is useful to have wider grade bands for trad as there are more confounding variables on trad routes
Agreed. The strength of the Uk system is, I think, that you have two elements, both quite broad, so individually the elements are more likely to be accurate for most people, but the combination of the two also brings precision as well as the flagging of variables.
non-British climbers who have been exposed to the system would switch to the British adjectival system, but we do not
Whereas Uk climbers abroad inevitably return convinced of it's superiority (I'm not talking about E7+ here), but also when the hardest routes are done outside the Uk, a uk trad grade is often offered. But as illustrated by this thread, I think there are issues getting to grips with it, particularly if you are an experienced climber who already understands other grades. At first it seems the same, but then you come across the exceptions... it is easier to discard it as nonsense than have the humility to understand.
The cultural element is also strong - I often think about pure crack pitches in YDS, because that's what most of them were given. 5.11+ might typically be something like E4 5b, but the vagueness can sometimes be more descriptive.
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Which is fair enough given that generally in the US trad climbing = crack climbing due to the nature of the rock over there, and the popularity of places with quality climbs of this "genre".
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Sound logic and reason will get you nowhere jwi - the British E grade isn't a utilitarian tool for defining and labelling difficulty of climbs in order to make identifying suitable challenges more straightforward; like morris dancing isn't just about having a dance. Both are about celebrating a niche British culture which traditionalists don't want to lose.
I think British trad climbing has roots in/is influenced by the British class system, because it's unavoidable like the water you swim in (and something I don't like which is perhaps why I'd be happy for the E-grade to be adjusted to get rid of the tech part). When you change how to define British trad climbs to a more universally understood definition you remove some of the power of the culture. Away from the more obviously-amazing British cliffs, UK trad routes like lots of climbs worldwide are only 'special', to use JB's words, because of the culture surrounding them - i.e. the people and the stories told by them and about them - not because of the outstanding quality of climbing or magnificence of the situation relative to anywhere else. Traditionalists like JB are imo against change less for rational utilitarian reasons, and more because they're emotionally attached to a niche culture and how they see themselves fitting into it, and to a wider idea of being British.
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I think British trad climbing has roots in/is influenced by the British class system, because it's unavoidable like the water you swim in (and something I don't like which is perhaps why I'd be happy for the E-grade to be adjusted to get rid of the tech part)
Interesting perspective! Can you expand, I'm not seeing the links myself? Obviously mountaineering has upper-class roots in the Uk, but by the time tech grades were imported (from font, in the seventies right?) my impression was that a lot of the movers and shakers were working class.
Otherwise, yeah some of that is true, some of the time. I don't think it's the whole story at all. I don't think I'm particularly 'attached to... a wider idea of being British', for starters.
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Spoken like a true Brexiter petejh ! ;)
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I can see where Pete is coming from. I think Northern yob and JB might feel a particularly strong identification with being a "British trad climber," steeped in the culture, history and yes, the grading system of it. They grew up, if I'm guesstimating their ages correctly, in the glory days of British trad and when British climbers were expanding the sport overseas, the era of hard grit, Ben and Jerry, the idea that British climbing and particularly grit is somehow special. I can see how one might, consciously or subconsciously, kick a bit against the perception that the grading system, which embodies the uniqueness of the British climbing scene, was being homogenised in some way. We saw something similar a month or so back when Ted K was concerned about Rockfax ceasing to use tech grades in their guides (turned out to be not true.)
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I can't speak for Jase but was never really steeped in British climbing culture. I am very attached to the British landscape, but not so much the population or culture. When I moved to Sheffield I found the scene pretty uninspiring tbh, was never a Ben and Jerry fanboi either.
What I am very attached to is the idea that trad climbing is, at it's core, about self-reliance and freedom. By this I mean the rock is left for others to choose their own adventure on, not 'made' into climbs. I'm not sure this is even an accepted British thing, it seemed to be implicit when I was a youth, but not so much any more. I took my son up the east face of Tryfan for the first time this weekend and, despite its long history of being climbed on, we didn't see a single piece of fixed gear of any kind. Almost anywhere else I've been climbing in the world that wouldn't have been the case. I hosted lots of foreign climbers on International meets in the noughties and despite being accomplished climbers, they were often surprised that many routes had no fixed gear at all. They were always impressed by this, and on more than one occasion remarked that 'every ascent is like a first ascent'. I think this is worth preserving on its own merits, not special because its British. Even in Britain it now seems to be a constant battle against a majority view that trad climbs are where you don't put all the bolts in so that punter tradsters can indulge themselves in placing cams.
E grades, honestly, are a more head than heart thing for me. I think they work fine and it annoys me when people say they don't. But mainly that's because, like the YDS example above, I've always measured trad grades to trad routes, whereas I've done next to no easy sport climbing so have no reference.
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Thinking about this a bit more, I think my chief attachment to Uk grades vs other systems is that they reflect messy reality - trad climbs vary widely in many aspects and will resist being pigeonholed into any sensible order of difficulty.
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Whereas Uk climbers abroad inevitably return convinced of it's superiority (I'm not talking about E7+ here), but also when the hardest routes are done outside the Uk, a uk trad grade is often offered. But as illustrated by this thread, I think there are issues getting to grips with it, particularly if you are an experienced climber who already understands other grades. ...
But this is only natural, non? Despite climbing routes with French grades on 95% of the time, when I do a traditionally protected multipitch route on the continent together with someone from Sweden/Norway I will inevitably talk about the pitches in terms of Scandi grades. Like "you really think that pitch was 8-? That seems a bit generous, no?" "Yeah, I found it more like 7+" etc... even if there is no limestone in Scandinavia. And if someone from scandinavia ask me about the routes I would tell them what I think the Scandi grade is, if it is trad.
British grades seems perfectly reasonable for the pitches I've been told the grades for. I have a pretty good idea what kind of grades I can get up with little effort vs huge effort vs not at all.
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I think British trad climbing has roots in/is influenced by the British class system, because it's unavoidable like the water you swim in (and something I don't like which is perhaps why I'd be happy for the E-grade to be adjusted to get rid of the tech part)
Interesting perspective! Can you expand, I'm not seeing the links myself? Obviously mountaineering has upper-class roots in the Uk, but by the time tech grades were imported (from font, in the seventies right?) my impression was that a lot of the movers and shakers were working class.
Otherwise, yeah some of that is true, some of the time. I don't think it's the whole story at all. I don't think I'm particularly 'attached to... a wider idea of being British', for starters.
I'm not sure about the class system, although I think it (the trad grading system) evokes a sense of belonging to the British Isles like reading the poetry of T S Elliot, Wordsworth or the writing of Tolkien. The traditional grading system is evocative of this in a way which would be poorly represented by adopting any other system, a bit like using a Rock Fax guide as opposed to something more authentic / sincere. A shit map of a map. In the book 'You and Your Profile, Identity after Authenticity' the authors discuss pre-enlightenment ways of being in the world as having a strong degree of sincerity - this referred to knowing your place in the world - like John the Blacksmith's son John who was to be a Blacksmith. Maybe the traditional grade is related to the class system at this level of sincerity. You don't have to be attached to the wider idea of being British when it's implicit in your sense of belonging to the place.
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Jeez, we've had the Karl Jasper's theory of the UK tech grade and this is now drifting into the Marxist analysis of the E grading system. :lol:
"I'm not sure we're having the same discussion" - JB
Indeed. If it's not already obvious, 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.
ie: Sort out E grades so that they actually form a coherent grading system at all levels of difficulty.
I really don't think that's an impossible task.
But the trouble with any attempt at turning E grades into a coherent system is all the current idiosynchrasies, of which highball grit routes are high on the list.
You're trying to defend some of those historical idiosynchrasies, particularly at lower grades, without really caring about what happens upwards of E8. Hence why we're not agreeing about very much. Probably didn't help that we started by talking about an E4 that doesn't need an E grade, but you know, <someone is wrong on the internet> etc.
"So is it kind of a case of maybe, take the route grade in french, assume its bolted, safe, pleasant etc. Whats that E-grade? Then add on potentially more if it's spicy/dangerous/lethal?" - Wellsy
Essentially that's the gist, particularly for hard routes, and that was the starting point for the eGraders right. But in general, there's lots of other factors that come into the equation - loose rock, soft rock, insecureness or otherwise of climbing, location and atmosphere of crag, level of commitment required, how weird the gear is, level of intimidation etc etc. They all play into it, but certainly the physical difficulty should guarantee a minimum E grade for something in any sensible version of E grades.
Which is my beef with JB's version of grading things like WSS, as with his way of grading you can have any level of physical difficulty and a very low E grade (as he's largely discounting the physical difficulty of stuff close to the ground). Which makes E grades not the overall difficulty. And means there's a disconnect between grading that kind of route and stuff a bit higher. Which makes them useless for comparing stuff outside a local context (which JB clearly likes and I clearly don't).
"I suspect that the wider grade-bands is the main advantage of the adjective grades over French grades for UK trad as well. Because the system does not appear inherently much better than any other system to grade trad routes. If it was, non-British climbers who have been exposed to the system would switch to the British adjectival system, but we do not." - jwi
The wider bands are certainly part of it. But there's definitely more to it than that.
One thing that to me makes the UK trad scene different to pretty much anywhere else in the world I can think of, is the variety of geology in such a small space. Within a 3 hour drive of most of the north of the UK, you can climb a completely bewildering array of different styles, angles and rock types. You don't see that as a sport climber in the UK (which is nearly all limestone). The bouldering has more variety. But the trad variety is enormous.
As SA Chris pointed out, a lot of the time, particularly for hard routes, trad climbing in many other places = crack climbing - and in that scenario, then E grades add nothing. Obviously there are places outside the UK where there are hard bold routes, including Scandinavia. But for the most part the more dangerous stuff isn't as widespread as in the UK, particularly in all the varying styles from death by sandy disintegrating sea cliff, to sliding down slabs stripping RPs, to decking from 40ft onto nasty boulders. The thing that makes the E grade genuinely useful, is the ability to compare these varying different types of silliness and say that overall, when you take everything into account, they are E whatever.
And it really does work pretty well - at pretty much every grade, you'll find for example if you're a typical E5 onsighter, that for the most part you really can onsight (pushing towards your limit) various different E5's on various different rock types at various different angles with various different levels of danger. Whereas E6's of all types can feel like a completely different world, and most E4's can feel relatively straightforward. (Obvious caveat to that being known weaknesses, such as offwidths or whatever). And yet those E5's that overall really do feel similar, with other grading systems may be given anything from 6a X to 6c R etc. It just doesn't allow the same comparison you get with E5.
So I'm definitely in the E grades are good camp. I just think they could be much, much better, given a little thought and consistency.
"Weirdly I've never see one. Which ones?" - JB
<Pulling random book off bookshelf> - take a look at Lake District Rock. e.g even very traditional crags like Dove Crag, although lots of other examples in there.
To be clear, they've gone with the E7 6c (Fr7c+) type notation.
Not that the 6c bit tells you much, but at least it stops the likes of yourself spluttering your coffee all over your new guidebook :P
"Sources in particular would also be useful" - JB
I'll sort out a much better version of that list in the not too distant future, and then can explain where all the info's from (simple answer is lots and lots of different places).
"Is there a clearer logic you can discern in here?" - JB
It's actually an interesting exercise, and there's all sorts of things that become obvious when there's a proper list of hard routes to relate things to. e.g: how far out the eGraders were even for their own routes, the fact that at the top end E grades are getting narrower relative to French grades (ie: they aren't staying 2 Fr grades wide as they roughly do from E5 to E8). And lots of other stuff.
"Obviously it isn't. Much as I'd like to think Nemo is exaggerating for comic effect, I don't think he is. It's not hard to see how you'd reach the conclusion that tech grades don't work, or stop at 6c, if this is the foundation for your wobbly logic." - JB
OK, as said before, I didn't really want to get into the UK tech grade, as it just isn't relevant any more for hard routes in any way. Really the discussion about this belonged in 1994, not 2024. People have been talking about French grades for stuff upwards of E8 ever since I've been climbing (how on earth JB has moved in the circles he has and this has passed him by is beyond me, but presumably he just switches off his brain when this stuff gets mentioned).
But since it keeps coming up, since a lot of the confusion about the UK trad grading system in general revolves around it, and since JB has clearly never understood what I'm on about, I'll try and explain what I mean. JB ain't gonna agree, but perhaps he may at least understand.
To be blunt, the UK tech grade is a poorly defined pile of nonsense. Supposedly it is the grade of the “hardest move” on a route. But any degree of thought shows that this is never how it has actually been used in practice, other than perhaps on extremely short routes. 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. It certainly wouldn't be 6a.
Typically what the UK tech grade really is is how hard the hardest move feels in the context of the route. Which is an entirely different thing, much more closely related to how French grades work than JB seems to want to admit. Hence the main pitch of Positron is a 6a pitch because it’s pumpy, not because it has any “6a moves".
The point is that there's always been confusion in the UK system as to where sustainedness belongs, with most people sticking it in the tech grade, but occasionally a few people trying to include at least some of it in the E grade. Along with 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).
This confusion around the tech grade is at the heart of an awful lot of the whittering about the “complexity” of the uk grading system – one of the main reasons it's complex is because the definition of the technical grade has been such a shambles.
But at low grades it all hangs together fine. For the most part those routes tend not to be that sustained so a lot of the problems mentioned above evaporate. And for the vast majority of UK routes (ie: up to around Fr 6a), the UK tech grade is actually more specific that the equivalent Fr grade. ie:
UK 4a, 4b and 4c roughly equates to Fr 4 and 4+.
UK 5a, 5b and 5c roughly equate to Fr 5 and 5+.
UK 6a roughly equates to Fr 6a – 6c.
UK 6b roughly equates to Fr 6c+ - 7b+.
UK 6c, 7a and 7b roughly cover the ground from Fr 7b+ - 9a.
But the truth is as said above in various places, above E6 and particularly when people were headpointing stuff, the tech grade went out of the window decades ago. Obviously you could take a list of hard trad routes like the one posted above, split them into different categories of physical difficulty, and then assign them all tech 6c, 7a, 7b, 7c, 8a, 8b etc. But what the hell is the point. You then have created a new much shitter version of French grades, with confusion around where sustainedness lives, that no one can relate to the vast majority of routes that they've climbed of that physical difficulty.
Hence it was dumped a very very long time ago. People just pay lip service to this nonsense and roughly give everything from 7b+ to 8a+ tech 6c and almost everything above tech 7a, except for the odd really bouldery thing where upwards of Font 8A+ it might get tech 7b.
To paraphrase T_B and Tom's conversation from the other thread:
So that route is E8 7b?
Yeah.
So... How hard is it?
It's Font 8A+.
Ah OK, that makes sense.
Any grading system, where on being told two numbers, you then have to ask how hard is it?
Then get another number and then everyone knows what they're talking about.
Such a grading system is ridiculous.
Which is why pretty much everyone stopped using tech grades for hard routes a very long time ago.
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, because as discussed above the technical grade works OK for routes roughly up to E6 (on the understanding that for the most part the tech grade is really the grade of the pitch, not the hardest move). But above this cut off point (or perhaps lower in some places like Pembroke), switching to French / Font grades is the way to go, and in practice is how pretty much everyone discusses those routes already.
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While I agree with everything you've said Nemo, I do think ( as I said before much earlier in the thread) that for those of us operating at the lower end of the spectrum tech grades can indicate not only protection but cruxy- ness.
Although I can see that being relegated to the description
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I quite like the french use of obligatory ( 7b(6c+ obl) for that. Letting you know you can frig it 😁
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I have no real idea about what's actually being debated here. But I'm not going to let that stop me from weighing in ...
I think Northern yob and JB might feel a particularly strong identification with being a "British trad climber," steeped in the culture, history and yes, the grading system of it. They grew up, if I'm guesstimating their ages correctly, in the glory days of British trad
That's me, in age, much more than JB and NY (is NY Jason Pickles? If so, I've only just realised). Both tech and E grades were very new and still being worked out when I started. They emerged as elaborations on the existing system, itself a product of earlier elaborations, in order to give a fuller picture of the difficulties and character of a given route. It's just struck me that it's as much about the character bit as it is about the difficulty bit: not only hard is something, but also what is it like. That's a question that is much more relevant to the kind of trad found in Britain than, say, on most sport climbing. I'm not saying British trad is completely unique but it has particular qualities that are reflected in the grading system that evolved to describe it (and, again, I think a grade is a description as much as it is some kind of ranking device).
So, the grading system was never really "designed" but evolved alongside climbing's evolution. And for the most I always found it incredibly fit for purpose, flexible and nuanced. Difficulties at the top end are probably as much about the difficulty of grading at the top end under any system as they are about faults of this specific system.
Anyway, like I said, I've not really been able to work out what is actually at stake in this thread, so who knows.
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One thing I find very appealing about the trad grading system is how it incorporated the difficulty, the exposure, the security, the danger etc
I think that font grades are let down by only considering the physical difficulty (opinions differ on whether they consider the technical difficulty bit honestly as far as I can tell they don't).
I'd love it if we had a bouldering grade system which incorporated other elements.
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Anyway, like I said, I've not really been able to work out what is actually at stake in this thread, so who knows.
From humble beginnings as an argument over whether E4 makes any sense as a grade for a 7B+ boulder problem with a highball finish, Nemo has struck out boldly to fix the entire application of the British grading system, conveniently glossing over the small matter of the grade meaning two different things in the arcane bracket of E5 to E8.
I think that more or less sums it up?
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I quite like the french use of obligatory ( 7b(6c+ obl) for that. Letting you know you can frig it 😁
The obligatory grade is amazingly useful to figure out how hard it is to get up a route. It is also pretty "compressed" in the higher grades. It is really really rare to find a route where it is harder than fr 7b between the bolts.
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One thing I find very appealing about the trad grading system is how it incorporated the difficulty, the exposure, the security, the danger etc
I think that font grades are let down by only considering the physical difficulty (opinions differ on whether they consider the technical difficulty bit honestly as far as I can tell they don't).
I'd love it if we had a bouldering grade system which incorporated other elements.
I disagree, it's hard enough to get multiple people to agree on a grade as is. Things like technical skill required are even more subjective since for example what might be a piss heelhook for one person could feel desperate for another. Grades are only a rough guideline at best anyway, and trying to grade based on factors other than how hard it is to execute the boulder relative to other bouders of a similar style is just adding unnecessary layers of complexity imo.
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@Andy Moles:
I guess I asked for that with the way that last post started, which didn't really come out right.
Anyway, "stuck in grumpily" feels a bit more appropriate than "striking out boldly".
And this started out as one conversation in a different thread, and then got split out to a general thread about E grades. So, sure, I broadened the discussion out a bit.
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I think that font grades are let down by only considering the physical difficulty (opinions differ on whether they consider the technical difficulty bit honestly as far as I can tell they don't).
To me this is a bizarre dichotomy and not one I'd ever even considered. For one thing, you can't fully separate strength from technique - the ability to execute a tricky heel hook requires core strength as well as coordination, for example. No amount of brute strength is going to get you up certain things without at least a reasonable application of technique, and the same vice versa, so it seems self evident that both count towards the grade.
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Surely font grades take into account technicality?? Otherwise all slabs would get very low grades… ?
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Surely font grades take into account technicality?? Otherwise all slabs would get very low grades… ?
Yeah, exactly. I've never even heard of the idea that technicality doesn't count towards the grade.
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Surely font grades take into account technicality?? Otherwise all slabs would get very low grades… ?
Or high grades depending how shit people become at climbing slabs..
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Surely font grades take into account technicality?? Otherwise all slabs would get very low grades… ?
Yeah, exactly. I've never even heard of the idea that technicality doesn't count towards the grade.
Likewise. Where on earth has that idea come from?
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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.
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I think that font grades are let down by only considering the physical difficulty (opinions differ on whether they consider the technical difficulty bit honestly as far as I can tell they don't).
To me this is a bizarre dichotomy and not one I'd ever even considered. For one thing, you can't fully separate strength from technique - the ability to execute a tricky heel hook requires core strength as well as coordination, for example. No amount of brute strength is going to get you up certain things without at least a reasonable application of technique, and the same vice versa, so it seems self evident that both count towards the grade.
I agree with you completely and that's why I think it is ridiculous but still, that is what I have been told.
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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.
It’s a logical impossibility. Technique is the skill of weight distribution and movement. It can’t be 100% stripped out of dead hangs, let alone an activity as complex as climbing. They’re talking nonsense.
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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.
They're talking complete bollocks. Literally could not be more wrong.
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Maybe so and yet I definitely think that some people are using font grades that way, indeed I know some people are.
I would say that I also think a lot of things are graded without real thought to the technical demands, especially on sandstone rock types, by people who ostensibly would say the grade should incorporate the technical difficulties. Although I think that's also an element of if you are good how can you know how hard something is to someone who isn't? That's not easy to get a good sense of.
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Anyway an E-grade like system for bouldering would nicely show the difference between say, Gritstone Megamix and Mermaid that 7A and 7A does not.
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What people say and think they are doing, and what they are actually doing, don’t always coincide
Think about the relentless focus on technique in repetitive activities like swimming, sprinting and cycling. Then tell me that it is possible to grade a climb ‘without technique’.
Just because you don’t understand what you are doing doesn’t make the misapprehension true.
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Anyway an E-grade like system for bouldering would nicely show the difference between say, Gritstone Megamix and Mermaid that 7A and 7A does not.
If you were bothered about that you could just add a ! like eg. the North Wales Bouldering guide does. Its also fairly obvious from a simple look at the problems in question which one is highand which one isn't.
Anyone using font grades that way hasn't thought about whether it makes sense even remotely and they're using them wrong. Its as simple as that.
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*shrug * the opinion is out there, anyway
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I’m not having a go at you Wellsy.
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Oh no I'm not saying you were, just that it is out there. I don't agree with it at all, personally. But it definitely is out there. Like Roswell.
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Totally incorrect use of font grades is out there in the streets every day, as John Redhead might have said...
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That’s the first time I’ve heard that. Kind of weird given Font is so techy/tricksome. Or maybe that’s the point?
My understanding is grades in Font get bumped up for exposure/height.
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Wellsy - whoever told you that is an idiot, as everyone else has pointed out. Fortunately they're also in a vanishingly small minority so their view is irrelevant.
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Idiot is maybe a bit harsh. Incorrect though yes. I'm not sure it's such a rare view as you say but I've no real idea.
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First time I've ever heard of it in 20 years of climbing.. sounds like TB has never heard of it in even more.. plus it makes absolutely no sense, it takes about 3 seconds to realise it's not how grades actually work and another 3 to realise it's an approach that would inherently be doomed to failure (did my heel pop so many times on Fat Lip because I'm technically inept or because my hamstring is weak, or both?). So I'm pretty happy to say it's idiotic to think that unless you're a beginner.
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Should have just pulled on and campused to that good edge I suppose
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Is that E6 6b on the "West Side Story is E4" grading scale or the "West Side Story is E6" grading scale
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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.
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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
:clap2: :2thumbsup: :beer2:
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a bit harder than White Wand.
WSS is a lot harder than White Wand though innit ;D
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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
:clap2: :2thumbsup: :beer2:
Your powers are weak old man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nuhc80TGu-g
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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.
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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.?
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Without making a political analogy, being larger and more active doesn’t make something any more right 😆
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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.
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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....
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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)
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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
:clap2: :2thumbsup: :beer2:
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.
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"clearly this is flat out BONKERS" - JB
Wouldn't be the first time.
"you get to appear on youtube in a lab coat" - JB
:lol: 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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"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.
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I think one issue might be that there aren't *actually* that many E6+ trad climbers regularly on here. And it's very peak-centric.
I guess what really need to happen in the E7+ bracket is for someone to create a graded list database, where people who have actually climbed the routes can give a suggestion of E grade, French grade, font grade for crux etc. And then rank them in their own personal order of difficulty. Crunch all the numbers and, voila!
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For the most part E grades work absolutely fine up to about E6.
For harder routes that are predominantly headpointed, just go down the line of a French grade (or Font grade if more appropriate) and danger rating. Have an E grade in brackets if you must.
If you're going to inspect and top-rope it first anyway, the E grade doesn't really matter, because you're going to acquire all the information you need in a safe and controlled way, and the physical difficulty + danger grade is easily adequate to inform you of whether it's worth a look.
This would also help make a distinction between routes that are predominantly ground-upped and predominantly projected, and the wadsome foreigns will be less confused.
Obviously this won't happen because people can't stand inconsistency, and because then the climbing consumer of Britain can't jizz themselves over E11 7a, and sponsorship and advertising revenue and carabiner sales related to hard 'trad' will collapse.
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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
I hesitate to prolong this discussion, but here goes ...
I would see this set of conversions as spot on for only a rather small subset of absolutely bombproof single pitch routes. Outside of that very specific genre of routes the ranges are too high, too narrow, and don't overlap, as they do in reality.
If the aim is to construct a more 'linear' version of E grades then I think that is doomed. In my view, the whole point of E grades + technical grades is their flexibility, not their rigidity.
This is also all rather abstract when we actually use grades in context. Even if we simply have a picture with a line drawn on it and no description, when we are actually stood beneath a crag we take in a range of visual clues that help us make sense of a combination of letters and numbers on the page: does the rock look solid; does it look compact and hard to protect; how tall is the cliff; how steep; are the lines obvious or hard to read, etc. etc. Of course, having a guide book description adds even more information.
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So in summary, we have a grade system in Britain that only works for on-sighting. Routes =>E7 90+% of the time aren’t attempted onsight. The grading system doesn’t make much sense for these routes. All roads lead to H grades. 🙄
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This is also all rather abstract when we actually use grades in context. Even if we simply have a picture with a line drawn on it and no description, when we are actually stood beneath a crag we take in a range of visual clues that help us make sense of a combination of letters and numbers on the page: does the rock look solid; does it look compact and hard to protect; how tall is the cliff; how steep; are the lines obvious or hard to read, etc. etc. Of course, having a guide book description adds even more information.
Ah, well that's all good as long as you are using grades for their primary purpose: to give information on difficulty to the aspirant ascentionist.
The problem comes when using grades to compare dissimilar routes in order to benchmark achievements, for example to compile a graded list where Century Crack is in some way comparable to Equilibrium. Leading to the reductio ad absurdum that WSS is harder than Right Wall because it takes most people a few more goes. Because E-grades consider the extra dimensions of risk and consequence inherent to trad, they can only be comparative within a genre – 'safe-but-sustained', 'bold-and-technical' to quote the Grit List from 25 years ago.
As for the H-grades idea, in my limited experience the E grades for harder climbs are indeed given for a hypothetical ascent without pre-inspection. That’s the only way a route such as Meshuga could merit E9: it’s straightforward if you have top-roped it, but working it all out going from the ground would be pretty exciting. At least comparable to onsighting Indian Face or Hubble ;)
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when we are actually stood beneath a crag we take in a range of visual clues that help us make sense of a combination of letters and numbers on the page: does the rock look solid; does it look compact and hard to protect; how tall is the cliff; how steep; are the lines obvious or hard to read, etc. etc.
Not an approach recommended after abseiling into a seacliff though, unless there is an easy escape route, or your jumar / runaway game is good.
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Leading to the reductio ad absurdum that WSS is harder than Right Wall because it takes most people a few more goes.
That's hardly ad absurdum, WSS is much harder than Right Wall! It's not just 'a few more goes', there are loads of climbers who would onsight Right Wall but wouldn't get up WSS after a multi session siege. And yes, the same is true in reverse, but only for boulderers who don't actually climb trad.
Not that this matters, because WSS isn't graded E4 any more.
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Bit of an absurd comparison to make, was what I was getting at. At least apples and oranges are both similarly-sized spherical fruit.
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Bit of an absurd comparison to make, was what I was getting at. At least apples and oranges are both similarly-sized spherical fruit.
Apologies, re-reading your post I agree with the general point.
Though my impression is that hard E-grades are not always graded for the hypothetical on-sight attempt - listening to what various people climbing those routes have said or written, it doesn't always seem to be a consideration. In Dave Mac's recent-ish video on how he grades routes, for example, he didn't even touch on it.
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This is also all rather abstract when we actually use grades in context. Even if we simply have a picture with a line drawn on it and no description, when we are actually stood beneath a crag we take in a range of visual clues that help us make sense of a combination of letters and numbers on the page: does the rock look solid; does it look compact and hard to protect; how tall is the cliff; how steep; are the lines obvious or hard to read, etc. etc. Of course, having a guide book description adds even more information.
Ah, well that's all good as long as you are using grades for their primary purpose: to give information on difficulty to the aspirant ascentionist.
Silly me!