1

chuffing / Re: Does E4 for WSS make sense?

« Last post by Moo on Today at 10:25:46 pm »

This is everything UKB should be.

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get involved: access, environment, BMC / Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣

« Last post by teestub on Today at 10:19:29 pm »

Essentially saying ‘We are not going to let our members vote on this because we are afraid it might pass’ is a pretty horrible thing for a membership lead organisation to be writing!

3

news / Re: calling of the lime

« Last post by haydn jones on Today at 10:12:01 pm »

Well that was this shittest grit season on record for me. I had a desperate finial last effort hail mary on my project late one night this week but it was way too warm. Don't think I managed a single boulder of significance to me this winter on the grit.

Anyway I'm glad that's over now. Absolutely frothing for kilnsey and Malham this year. went for a walk up gordale scar and around to malham and sure enough all the signs were there of a golden season. (surely it can't keep raining for ever!) anyway I'll be going to Raven Tor on Sunday for the anual pilgramage of the calling. See you there!

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chuffing / Re: Does E4 for WSS make sense?

« Last post by stone on Today at 10:09:15 pm »

This is totally the type of climbing I steer clear of but I think I understand the "how hard is the scary bit" E-grade logic.

The bottom of WSS only feeds into the E grade in that it is harder to do the serious second half climbing after being powered out by having just bouldered 7B+.

So if someone climbs 7B+ fine but doesn't climb bold E4, they know to steer clear. If there was an amazing resting position such that the top only felt E2, they might give it a go.

What really didn't make sense was when bouldery bolted sport routes in the UK got E grades that bizarrely just followed a physical difficulty logic -simultaneously with us having unbolted routes that didn't. So you got an E6 tick for Entrée    -But no one gives sport routes E grades anymore.

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get involved: access, environment, BMC / Re: BMC Resolutions shout out 📣

« Last post by Duma on Today at 09:58:22 pm »

That is absolutely fucking shameful. I am astonished and will not be renewing my membership.

6

news / Re: significant repeats

« Last post by abarro81 on Today at 09:46:07 pm »

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 

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chuffing / Re: Does E4 for WSS make sense?

« Last post by abarro81 on Today at 09:32:48 pm »

On th other thread I thought I understood JB's grading system for micro routes, where E4 7a was 7a then E4... But now it turns out it's 7a then E2, and the E grade does include the difficulty of the start but but only to some unquantifiable extent. So E grades are overall, but only kind of overall. Maybe like a set of overalls but 3/4 length in the trousers. I get it. Until the next thread where It turns out I don't. Maybe after 40 years climbing it will all make sense?

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news / Re: significant repeats

« Last post by ToxicBilberry on Today at 09:13:29 pm »

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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chuffing / Re: Does E4 for WSS make sense?

« Last post by Fiend on Today at 09:06:54 pm »

7B+/E4 5c (or whatever the fucking top half of fucking WSS is as I have no fucking idea...)

That's quite cantankerous for someone who started a thread specifically to prove himself wrong about WSS 

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news / Re: significant repeats

« Last post by Fiend on Today at 08:57:40 pm »

"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