What Fultonius said.
Same overall difficulty right?
Errrrrrrr. No. This is getting daft, if it wasn't already in the first place.
Does this really need saying on here? The overall difficulty includes the danger bit, obviously. ie: the second one would probably be at least E8 as it would have a top end Font 7B+ boulder problem a very long way off the ground.
The first one is a 7B+ boulder problem with a much easier finish (which to me, I wouldn't bother giving an E grade, but if insisted on, then the only one that would make sense is E6 or perhaps E7).
Generally, if I was writing a guide, I wouldn't bother giving highballs E grades unless the E grade is actually different to what it would be due to pure difficulty alone. Then this entire (one thing we agree on) silly debate evaporates.
is that also E4 7a or is it now E8 7a?
Clearly some people would give it E4 and some E8, hence the shambles.
If people can't agree what the number is even meant to represent, then the arguments about what the number actually should be seem utterly absurd.
Like you, I get what JB is saying, I just don't agree.
You
can compare an 8c at Raven Tor with an 8c in Siurana.
You
can compare an E5 at Gogarth with an E5 at Millstone.
The comparisons obviously aren't perfect, some people are better at some things than others.
But essentially grades work, they are useful, they allow us to pick routes at the standard we want, and they allow climbing news to be possible. Not perfectly, and there's always routes that for certain people are going to be vastly harder / easier. But for the most part, they work.
But they only work if you pick a style of ascent and compare climbing route X in that style with lots of other routes climbed in the same style.
If you try and grade something you've done after many attempts by comparing it to things you've onsighted, then grades don't work at all. That's what giving WSS E4 is doing. (Or at least it's what most people giving WSS E4 are doing - admittedly as abarro has pointed out, JB is actually suggesting something entirely different, but it certainly doesn't take many other examples to point out that that doesn't hang together at all.)
To me, the only reason to keep the current shambles is that clearly some people actually enjoy the controversy, BS and endless debates. It's never going to be perfect and noone is pretending that it is. But when different groups of people can't actually agree about what the numbers are meant to be representing, then it's hardly a surprise when, shock horror, person X downgrades person Y's new route by 3 grades. This stuff could work a lot better given a little thought.
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