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« Last post by Will Hunt on Today at 05:58:50 pm »
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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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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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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@Northern Yob - Generational thing? You being funny? I'm in my 5th decade and have been trad climbing for 20 years. I've climbed trad in Cornwall, Wales, northern Ireland and all across Scotland. E3 and E4 would be the zone where I probably have the best "feel" for grades, and, looking at my logbook I've done 83 E3s and 63 E4s. When I rock up to a new crag in a new area, I usually drop to the more comfortable grades and then build up. I'll look at the trad grade, description, maybe notes on UKC..., eyeball the route then think "aye, that looks a goer". So far I've found grades to be pretty consistent within +/- half an E grade and I've had similar success onsighting wherever I go.
Some places I've had more success, North Wales and Fairhead, for example - maybe I just had a good week, climbing well and good conditions, or maybe they were a bit easier? Who knows.
But fucking hell, if I rocked up to a crag and there was an E4 7a all I'd think is:
Are they on crack? 
Please put aside your straw man arguments about trying to relate back to sport grades... no one mentioned that, no one (in this thread) is arguing that. I'm not "back calculating", I'm using the UK trad grade exactly how most of the people I climb with use it - a scale that gives you an idea of the relative difficulty of onsighting a route.
Maybe in the obscure microcosm of parochial grit weirdness E4 7a makes sense? But in any place where you have to put more than 3 bits of pro in before topping out, it's bonkers and breaks the system.
Evidently not…. We are basically the same generation.
Isn’t this the same with all grades, there are always things which fuck it up…. A lot of 5.13 onsighters probably can’t get their heads around a 5.11 offwidth, how can it be the same grade as their regular warm up….
Have you been to font?? I like to think I can climb v6/7 pretty much anywhere (I can most places) there are things which equate to v4 in font, I can’t even get off the ground on. Does that mean they aren’t that grade? Adam ondra doesn’t fall off many v10’s I wouldn’t imagine? Yet he dropped Marie Rose. What E4 7a does is tell you it’s one of those rare problems before you even pull off the ground therefore doing it’s job perfectly… conveying information.
I'm not sure I really understand your point about Font. Those technical v4s in font will feel every bit of v4 when you execute them with perfect technique. On the other hand, a font 7B+ boulder problem is going to feel substantially harder than any 6C boulder no matter how perfectly you execute the former.
It was in reference to Fultonius expecting to be able to climb any E4…. And that wss couldn’t be E4 because there’s no chance he could climb it… I’ve climbed much harder than v4, but that doesn’t mean something I can’t do can’t be V4. Make sense now…..??
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« Last post by Wellsy on Today at 03:57:03 pm »
Following the huge damage of the Motion of no Confidence, including the withholding of ~£150k grant funding (even though that motion was lost by a very large majority at the AGM), Council set the 0.5% membership level for future membership motions to the AGM, to prevent further risks of that type.
As an alternative, motions need only 25 members to go to Council who can approve it for AGM if they agree.
The subsidiary motion was unanimously opposed on Council as they felt it had significant extra cost, significant transition costs and significant extra risks to the organisation; and because they felt it disenfranchised Competition members to an extent.
If Council had to support every motion like this there would literally be no point in such a Council decision and as such the 0.5% rule we have to follow would be equally meaningless.
Detailed financial declarations will be made in May after Audit is signed off by the Board (when we have agreed accurate 2023 accounts). As such the finance motion will pretty much be met before the AGM.
Despite this formal position it's obvious Simon has highlighted numerous issues that most of us on Council feel need looking at for future AGM motion submissions (and especially the communications of that process) to try to prevent such a mess happening again.
It would be really sad if members left or reduced their contribution, because of this result. I would encourage some careful thought on the matter, given the good work that has continued through the difficult times in the last few years, especially in Access & Conservation. The importance of the BMC is the core staff and volunteer cohorts, not the governance structure.
It's a bit of a joke to ask members to give careful consideration after the complete piss take of a response Simon got. Maybe the BMC could do some careful consideration itself first?
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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?
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 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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« Last post by Hoseyb on Today at 10:57:09 am »
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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« Last post by andy moles on Today at 10:51:01 am »
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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