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.
"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
"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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