UKC

UKC Forum User Bob says:

"The UK grading system is beginning to struggle to cope with the sustainedness of modern routes and the misunderstanding that many have of it. In this article the current "extensions" are discussed and several ideas proposed..."

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=3068

In reply to UKC Articles:

For the eds: "...more common..." not "...commoner"! Commoner is a noun not an adjective, so it won't get caught by spell check but is still wrong!

For Bob: I'm not sure why there is the idea that French grades are best for long sustained routes but no cruxy trad? Is it because more Brits ideas about French grades come from long, sustained French and Spanish bolted limestone pitches? But French grades get used everywhere now, so I've seen them having to cover super sustained granite cracks, short little grit granite routes, mid-grade trad etc. Surely Footless Crow and Fay could have a French grade?

In reply to UKC Articles:

i don't disagree with most of what your saying however i would hesitate in saying the system is broken or faulty.....i think it does a marvellous job, as long as you know the e-grade....and tech grade



and maybe French grade



plus v-grade for the hardest move you should be right*



* assuming you read the guide and post on UKC for beta :p

In reply to UKC Articles:

Sorry, I got to this bit << what about everyone's favourite rock, Grit? >> and automatically switched off.

In reply to UKC Articles: After reading your article, I would now expect to see a lot more climbers wobbling above their gear before taking a big whipper off Right Wall.

In reply to UKC Articles:

I thought this was going to be a useful article about how top end trad grades need improving to stopthe useless adding on 6c to the back of an e number. That would be useful as at the moment the guys climbing hard e routes have to ask each other for the French grade anyway. As the e and tech mean f*ck all at those difficulties. It's just somehongto brag about.

If the tech grade was made linear then more info could be gleaned from it. In the way it is used for easy stuff now. Making 6c or 7a actually mean something

In reply to UKC Articles: "The ability of individuals to deal with risk is so variable as to render any attempt at codifying it as being considerably harder than herding cats!"

Most of what you say I agree with but the above is a cop out and no more or less true than statements such as:

"The ability of individuals to deal with the difficulty of climbing overhangs compared to slabs is so variable as to render any attempt at codifying it as being considerably harder than herding cats!"

or

"The ability of individuals to deal with sustained routes to cruxy routes is so variable as to render any attempt at codifying it as being considerably harder than herding cats!"

I have changed my mind - if anything I would say codifying knowable risk is easier than codifying difficulty when difficulty has to encapsulate a variety of features, rock types, length of pitch and cruxiness.

I think risk could be neatly married to sports grades with about 6 levels of risk proportional to the difficulty of the route. Not that it will happen.

I think that its probably a good idea to give more info where it is available, knowledge is power after all, but as the article rightly points out this wouldn't better standing at the bottom of a route and feeling the butterflies rise at the thought of tying on. I think, however, that it would be a less useful exercise for lower grade routes, say less than 5+, as the spread of corresponding UK grades is lower.

You might now also find me teetering above my gear and taking a huge wipper of Right Wall.

In reply to UKC Articles: hmm... I think that the Rockfax Grade Table illustrates what's gone wrong. It should be simple. Each E grade should roughly cover 3 technical grades (discounting the occasional freak case).

One to signify that it's technically easy for the climber operating at the level given by the E grade, the second one "standard" and the other technically hard.

This starts with E1 (5a, 5b and 5c). Then E2 (5b, 5c, 6a). E3 (5c, 6a, 6b), E4 (6a, 6b, 6c), E5 (6b, 6c, 7a), E6 (6c, 7a, 7b), E7 (7a, 7b, 7c), E8 (7b, 7c, 8a).

It kind of goes off the rails around E5, as E5 6a is quite common (and as illustrated in the article, not THAT bold or sustained) and E5 7a rare. E8 is thought to be attainable by climbing safe 7a moves - I'd have thought that it should be E5 in that case.

There shouldn't really be any E9 (for now), unless someone convinces me that bold climbing at 7c is feasible... And yet in the Rockfax table we have E10 and E11, even though they both have a range in the lowly 7a/7b tech grades.

Not really a problem for me personally, but it's a shame if misuse of a good system leads to its demise.

In reply to jon:

haha, I second that!

Very interesting post though. Even the yanks are using french grades now. Although I haven't done nowhere near enough trad in UK to comment on what would work best, I find the E-grades applied in different styles very confusing. I see videos of guys claiming E7 ascents but with pre-placed gear... Anyways, pardon my ignorance

In reply to UKC Articles: Could it be that all the slack has gone out the system with no longer using the M prefix? Could ME2 be a route with a hard crux compared to a more sustained E2? Just an idea...

In reply to UKC Articles: Is this an error? "The adjectival grade is comparable in some ways to the French grade, it's an overall indication of the difficulty of the pitch/route. Used on its own that's all you get." I would have thought you were talking about the technical grade.

In reply to UKC Articles:

The main problem with the UK system is that there are 3 main variables to a route: (a) technical difficulty of the hard bit; (b) sustainedness and strenuosity; and (c) danger. The UK system packs three main variables into two grades, making it ambiguous at times. The easy way to fix this is to add in the French grade where appropriate, and hey presto you have three grades, from which you can decipher the three main variables.

The other problem, as Andy above says, is that English tech is way too compressed at 6b and above, and we need some grade inflation!

In reply to Juggler13:

Don't think so since the technical grade is for the crux move/section. French grade is for the whole pitch; adjectival grade is for the whole pitch so there is presumably some similarity??

ALC

In reply to Juggler13: An textbook example of a poor understanding of the British grading system

In reply to UKC Articles: Apart from the adjectival and technical grades most UK guidebooks have a description that can be used to cover the anomalies or when the difficulties aren't obvious.

If there existed:
Sandbag Wall E10, 6c, 150 feet. Climb straight up from the red-stained boulder.

Then, if there was a need, one could add words such as bold, sutained, difficult to protect etc.

In reply to a lakeland climber:
The other problem is that to the best of my knowledge the French grade is for the redpoint and/or intimate knowledge of the route which could be difficult to gain on a multi-pitch route.

For some time I have advocated a system of suffixing the tech grade with another digit to describe the seriousness of the route. That would leave the E as E for effort and the grade could be applied to sport and trad. So a sport route currently, say F6a, might get E1, 5b 0. Most sport would warrant 0 although a few might get 1 if the bolts were spread out or just above a ledge. I believe that a new Yorkshire guide uses a P system which sounds similar. I would add that I first suggested this to some guide book editors in the late seventies.

Al

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:


You could just use the American R and X to avoid yet another new grade system! Hmm, why not go the whole hog, adding in French and American? So RW is: E5 6a (6c+)R. Sorted!

In reply to Coel Hellier: Because I thought of my system first. Probably didn't but I'm sure it was a fairly early on in the grand scheme of things. It is also just a simple addition to an already well used and understood system.

Al

In reply to Coel Hellier:
You could just use the American R and X to avoid yet another new grade system! Hmm, why not go the whole hog, adding in French and American? So RW is: E5 6a (6c+)R. Sorted!

Can we also include the distance from the floor of the final hold of the crux sequence so I know how many pads I need?

ie. E5 6a (6c+)R (10m)

In reply to a lakeland climber: OK, but the technical grade is for difficulty similar to the French grade (albeit for the crux rather than the whole route) whereas the adjective grade is for difficult plus danger, etc. The sentence could probably use either word in that case. If I do have a misunderstanding of the UK grading system then it's because I'm used to southern sandstone where we just have the technical grade.

In reply to UKC Articles:

boring...

In reply to UKC Articles: Cough http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=330151&v=1#x4874216 cough...

Andy F

In reply to whistler:

Ditto. A rather rambling week article that didn't really say anything that we all haven't known for years, namely:
- it's fairly useful to give an approximate top-rope sport grade for harder trad
- we should shop using trad grades for roues that are in the modern idiom highball boulder problems.

The original article on Bob's website on the other hand is well worth reading.

In reply to UKC Articles: My main problem with the British grading system is just how vague the tech grades are at 6b and upwards as it is you might as well just say "hard, really hard and desperate" rather than "6b, 6c, 7a"

As it mentioned in the article they can span 3-4 French grades which is a lot when operating at the higher end of the spectrum where a year's training might be needed to progress one grade.

I proposed scraping the UK tech grades and using French along with our E grades. So an old E3 6a might now be E3 f6c+ or whatever. It would work exactly the same only the difficulty can be pinned down more accurately.

Anyone got a reason why this isn't a good idea?

In reply to Lord_ash2000:


The French grade doesn't work well for cruxy routes, particularly ones where you have a good rest before the hard bit. Hence the combination of all three is better.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


This is the point I was making above. I know plenty of short, cruxy routes with french grades - granite has lots of them. I've done F6a routes ranging from UK 5a (maybe even just lots of 4c!) to tough UK 5c maybe even 6a cruxes.

In reply to TobyA:

Well so far in the last few months we've had American grades, British grades, French grades - it seems that none of them work at all. What on earth are we going to do. Adding a whole string of letters and numbers is just going to confuse the hell out of dummies like me.

In reply to jon:
Can I propose a new grading system that will solve all of our problems?

The Tapir Grade:

The grade is entirely based on the difficulty of the route relative to the first section of rock. So if you can boulder the first few moves then you shouldn't be in major risk of dying above.

T-- = A route that has a crux by the floor and is very easy above.

T- = A route that gets easier as you get higher.

T = A route for which the difficulty and rock quality of the whole route is accurately represented by the first couple of moves.

T+ = A route where the above section is harder or more serious than the initial section.

T++ = A route that is much harder or more serious than the start would suggest.

Rather than spending ages arguing about whether a given route is harder than another just use common sense.

I've officially fixed the grading nightmare, can I have a peerage?

In reply to Reach>Talent:


OK, so that makes RW: E5 6a (6c+)R T+

In reply to Coel Hellier:
No just ditch evety thing but the T+. Anyone standing at the base of Right Wall can see how tricky it is, if you know the top is harder than the base and you can only just do the base then you know you don't have a hope.
It will also make guidebook writers lives easy because virtually every route on the Cromlech is T+ or T++

In reply to Reach>Talent:


OK, but then how do you go about boasting in the pub in that system: "I did this great T today ..."?

In reply to UKC Articles:

Some interesting ideas, but I also have some major critisisms:

*You didn't explain what you thought was wrong with the 'H grade'. It definitely doesn't harm anyone, as it is effectively declining to comment on how difficult a route is to onsight.

*you haven't offered an alternative system for trad routes. E5 6b (F7a+) could be steep 5b into one move of 6b or slabby sustained 6b. The issue is that there are four variables (danger, difficulty, pumpiness and fear)so you need four grades.

In fact you may need even more, as you could have a super bold series of 5c moves into a safe 6b move, or sustained 6a safe moves into a 6b move. No system would work really, apart from a topo that showed the number of moves at each grade.

In reply to Franco Cookson:

Where's the SPA gone?

In reply to Coel Hellier:
OK, but then how do you go about boasting in the pub in that system: "I did this great T today ..."?

You just have to make do with boasting about your sandbagging...

" I sent my mate Jim up a T++ but I told him it was a T" etc.

In reply to Franco Cookson:


What's the difference between danger and fear?

In reply to UKC Articles:
you all sound like NERDS, ok it's a valid point to chat about, but to spend time bloging about?... life is too short, also i noticed that 99.9% of you are men, now that does speak volumes!

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Dream of White Horses- safe but scary, there for HVS.


And the mods revoked my SPA

In reply to Reach>Talent:


However in your system one could easily climb the same grade as Dave MacLeod, which is good boasting material.

In reply to UKC Articles:

How about:

E grade, Tech Grade, French Grade or boulder grade, and hardest unprotected move.

and whap +/- for tech grades about 5c.

E5 6a (F6c+) (5b)

or

E5 6a- (V3) (6a-) for Sniveling Shits.

In reply to Franco Cookson:
Does the hardest unprotected move have to include certain groundfall or just sufficiently rubbish gear/ a big enough lob that you'd probably not walk away from it?

I think the T grade is better

Sniveling Shits T+

In reply to Reach>Talent: certain serious injury.
So a 20 metre run out on the top of a 10 metre section of hard climbing.
8 metres above the ground with no gear.
or you're above a skyhook or on choss or something.

I'd definitely add the tapir grade. In face with all of those grades it describes everything.

London Wall E5 6a (F7a+) (0) T-

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Infact, with that you don't need the E grade, apart from to represent the difficulty figuring it out. This would solve grading for headpoints, as you could just miss off the E grade.

So something like the hypocrisy of moose would be:

6c+ (V6) (6b-) T++

In reply to Franco Cookson:
Smashing, weve finally fixed the E-grade. Fancy knocking together a guidebook update for popular areas?

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Indeed. The new system isn't even hard to understand. Going to introduce it.I'm deadly serious.

In reply to Franco Cookson: The question is will it take its place alongside that classic of the genre Ed Drummonds 'Extremely Severe in the Avon Gorge'...

In reply to UKC Articles:

it ain't broken yet ... i know where i'am with UK trad system ...

other grading systems work well with their own styles of climbing.

In reply to Franco Cookson:

Franco, please take Ex-Engineer's warning about Ed Drummond's unwieldy grading system very seriously.

In reply to Ian McNeill:

It's always been broken, it never told you what you needed to know.

In reply to Franco Cookson: Nonsense, it's always told me all I need to know but admit ignorance at grades above E5.

Al

In reply to UKC Articles:

Fair enough but only if this stuff appears in the higher grades only. I don't want sport grades to start appearing alongside E2s!

In reply to UKC Articles: Here is my defence for the yorkshire p grade-
You could easily have a route graded e5 6c and think its safe BUT...... What if the 6c move is low down and you have a 5c groundfall move from 10m? I also think we should use v grades as the tech grades and sport grades for the overall difficulty.
E.G. e5 v7 (p2 7b+)

In reply to UKC Articles: And as for those saying that sport grades should only be applied to e5 and upwards...... A load of rubbish because one mans e2 is another mans e6 so we everybody needs the info.

In reply to wando77:

Erm, E2 is E2 and a long way from E6, which ever way you paint it.

Andy F

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:

HVS 5b. Well protected right? What about a 5b boulder problem that leads into a 4c solo?

I believe you are talking Nonsense. The current system does not tell you what you need to know about a route at any grade. Fact.

In reply to GeoffRadcliffe:


Great route description. Bravo.

In reply to Franco Cookson:

what do you want ?

a inch by inch commentary with full gear list in order ? ;-0)

In reply to andy farnell: and if you dont get what I mean then you're dumb as dirt. A person who only climbs english 6a is in as much danger on an e2 as an english 6c climber is on an e6.... It's all relative

In reply to Franco Cookson: Nonsense? It gives you an idea of the overall difficulty and the hardest move. True, you can't tell just by the grade whether it's bold or sustained, however, using common sense when standing at the bottom of the route should tell you quite a lot. Fact.

In reply to andy farnell: The point I'm making is that I can climb e6 safer than a beginner can climb e2. Therefore a beginner aspiring to climb e2 deserves to know the overall difficulty too.

In reply to Ian McNeill:

I want to know:

the hardest move
how dangerous it is
how hard the dangerous bits are
how pumpy it is

In reply to Morgan Woods:
:p

And that + the guide description gets you 90+% of the way there.....any more and you'd blow the onsight

'One I can think of is Poetry in Motion at Rylstone. It currently gets E2 6a but is essentially a slightly high boulder problem, the crux is about half-height but there's a tricky move at the top so V2 (H) would be a better grade.'

So what exactly does V2 H tell you more than E2 6a? The crux is high or low? Its sustained 5c or 1 move 6a?

In reply to wando77:

Everybody doesn't 'need' the info. I don't want to have to wade through some french rubbish when all I need is the proper grades already given.

In reply to Franco Cookson:
What about it? A technically 5b move but in a safe environment followed by bold climbing but at a much lower grade. You are making the common mistake of assuming that the HVS only refers to the protection. Someone who can climb 5b should not have a problem with the 4c moves protected or otherwise. I would not have a problem with such a route and no problem with the grade. Indeed isn't Direct Route on the MOT VS 5b? which again probably describes it accurately.

Not everyone wants every detail of the whole route. Fact.

Al

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:
I'm not making any mistake. If you set off on a HVS thinking it was well protected and it was infact a solo you'd be a bit worried, unless HVS wasn't at your limit. Same as if you assumed you'd be climbing london wall, but ended up on the crux of Edge Lane, just cause you CAN climb it, doesn't mean you want to.

In reply to UKC Articles: Aren't we in danger of losing the point a bit here?
The guide is an indication of what you might expect to find, not a blow by blow description of exactly what you will find, otherwise why not go the whole hog and write an essay for each climb. How much info do you need before it ceases to be onsight?
With a grade, a guidebook description and a visual inspection from the ground you have all you need to know for 99% of routes.

At the top end there may well be a problem, tweak things a bit perhaps, but these routes rarely get lead onsight anyway. An abseil inspection tells you more than any grade can!
We really don't need 5 grades to describe your average E2.

In reply to Franco Cookson:
>

Then I suggest you toprope every route before you lead it.
Remember, climbing, or at least trad climbing, is an ADVENTURE sport!

In reply to pec:

Fully agree.

In reply to Franco Cookson:

If I could Franco, I'd climb it for you as well!

In reply to UKC Articles:

I said I'd not get involved in this sort of discussion anymore but its snowing outside and I've nothing better to do so here goes.

I've been climbing for 45 years and discussing the grades of climbs and arguing about grading systems for all of that time. Its a fundamental part of our sport and assuming someone ever came up with the perfect solution whatever would we have to talk about in the car, on the walk-in and in the pub. Climbing would be very dull.

None of the curent systems in use world wide are perfect and all throw up anomalies that might frustrate us or better, massage our egos. Its part of the game. None of the systems should induce us to recklessly and/or unknowingly climb into serious danger. Most good guidebooks give much more general information about how the grading system in use in that area works and usually very specific information if a climb is unusually loose, unprotected or strenuous. Comparison charts give a rough guide as to what to expect of unfamiliar systems compared with systems we are used to on our local crags. Plus our eyes and experience give a final check when we stand below the cliff.

I accept that some climbers aspiring to climb hard trad routes in Britain find it useful to have a comparative Sport grade though I personally wouldn't want to rely on it. For instance a steep E5 6b that is well supplied with peg runners on a lakeland crag should still be approached with an E5 mind-set rather than the F7a+ mind set. Falling off onto rusty pegs is far more worrying than falling onto good bolts which is what the sport grade is all about. I think it leads to false confidence and encourages a top-roping ethic when most of our trad climbing is graded for the on-sight.

To me the British system is still the best and most flexible for most trad-style climbing the only part of it that currently needs some rationaliation is around highball bouldering or what I used to call micro-routes. V's, Fonts or Es - all depending on the number of mats and/or spotters? For what its worth if a short gritstone route (like Poetry in Motion) can be practised and jumped off from onto one mat give it a bouldering grade. If it needs a pile of mats or top-rope practice leave it with an E grade.

Dave

In reply to Franco Cookson:
Here is an example Och Aye Wall Direct at Gardoms which gets VS 5b.
I bunged a pad under this a couple of years back and headed up it when 5b was absolutely at my limit. I got my feet about 3-4m off the deck and hadn't found a hard move so I backed off as I was worried I'd not yet reached the '5b move' and didn't want to meet one any higher up. Turns out the 5b move was by the ground and just a spectacular soft touch for the tall (felt more 4c/5a). If I'd had the T- grade I'd have topped out.

Och Aye Wall Direct T-
tells you all you need to know if you can get off the deck.

In reply to Franco Cookson:

How on earth, you may wonder, did any of the great pioneers before 1970 make any first ascents at all? There are times when I think we'd all benefit from going back to that simple system of adjectival grades ... and nothing else

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
No Gordon, go properly back to basics:

Embrace the T grade. You know it makes sense.

How about the adjective grade + technical grade followed by four numbers representing; number of hard moves, protection, quality of rock, style of climbing?

In reply to Steve Woollard:

and while we're at it, how about lots of other numbers representing e.g. the aesthetics of the route, the aesthetics of its setting, the severity of its aspect (i.e. which way it faces, how much sun it gets), the frictional properties of the rock in the damp, its vulnerability to wind, its historical merit, the intricacy of its moves, the memorability of its crux, its variety and richness of character, the subtlety of its line, and the proximity to the nearest pub? P-lease.

In reply to Dave Musgrove:
Well put Dave.
I dont really think there can ever be a single alpha-numeric system that will completely encapsulate everything that people might want to know about an individual route (well at least not without it becoming very cumbersome and difficult to follow).
As you have said the simple addition of a shortly worded description is often all that is needed to address most if not all of the issues raised here eg;
E5 6b, steep and sustained but well protected.
E5 6b, bold and sustained 5c climbing up the lower wall leads to the technical but well protected crux etc etc.
That said though I do also think that Bobs article makes some very valid points with regard to highball bouldering and sustained stamina routes (although I think your reply has addressed the issues regarding grading decscriptions in relation to highball bouldering very succinctly).
As you've always said what would we have to talk about if we didn't have grades!!
(and just to throw in my tenpenceworth, as I've always said about UK technical grading, never forget that what you are attempting to do is use and objective system to describe something that is actually highly subjective; one persons 5c is another persons 6a etc)

In reply to Keith Morgan: It would be interesting if somebody had a copy of 'Extremely Severe in the Avon Gorge' by Ed Drummond, and could scan the grading system page into the historical gallery.

In reply to UKC Articles:
from what i understand the problem is that the current info E something and technical grade, on one hand do not convey enough information, and on the other hand are already complicated enough, as to not want to add more parameters to every route.
one problem is that , as said already, the technical grade covers a wide range of french grades, and the E factor also covers technical difficulty to some extent. is there a E5 4a anywhere ? it can exist ... something with one piece of protection in the middle and very easy.
you may argue that no one will want to climb that..
anyway, as i understand the sustainability of the route, and protection of the crux are areas that bother people. a simple line next to the grade can cover sustainability. a flat line, 5b would mean 5b almost every mean. adding a bump to the line at the end, would mean 5b at the end, and the rest easier. so basically its a mini topo as a line with bumps. the bumps can also be negative meaning easier sections than 5b. so basically 5b __--__ would mean a 5b crux in the middle. 5b --___-- would mean 5b cruxes at the beginning and end.. etc..
this kind of line may be encoded as numbers. not too complicated.
the E factor can also have its own line, and when you put both lines on top of one another you get the complete information. so eventually you get two codes , one for technical difficulty and one for protection.

ok, maybe i studied 2 much math in my life...

In reply to Franco Cookson:
>

What you need is a decent guidebook then.


Chris

In reply to Dave Musgrove:

I won't bother quoting your whole post but you've just about summed it up perfectly.

I really really don't understand why people can't get along with the UK system???

E

In reply to Enty:

Edited...

In reply to Chris Craggs:
Absolutely. We don't need the grade to give every possible bit of information about the climb; just a concise summary of how hard it's likely to be. If you climb past the crux of an E1 6a and then the top move turns out to be a rather awkward and unprotected 5a move; then
1. you should be able to manage it if you're onsighting E1.
2. unless the guidebook is really poor, it will warn you in the description.
So what more would you need to know?

In reply to Enty:
Also very well summed up in the original hard back version of "On Peak Rock" on pages 17 and 18

In reply to Enty:
And for another example that elucidates many of these issues check out the text under the title of "How to Grade a Route?" on page 13 of the Sardinia guide; Pietra di Luna.
Interesting stuff IMHO.

In reply to UKC Articles:

"Continuing to use E5 as our example grade, routes like Right Wall on the Cromlech are reckoned to be F6c+ while Doubting Thomas at Malham is probably F7a+/F7b, that's four sports grades. This is hardly fair on the climber even if they do "modify" their expectation when standing beneath the route. How has this come about?"

One is on vertical mountain crag with not much gear and one is steep well protected Yorkshire Limestone.

Hold on why does everything have to be fair? Life's not fair.



E

In reply to Enty: Agreed; and how can you give F6c+ to Right Wall anyway? Although I haven't climbed it, I've abseiled down it a few times and watched people attempting it. It's nothing like a sport route; difficulties include tricky route finding, sparse protection, intimidating exposure, and steep rock (it is slightly overhanging, IIRC). Perhaps it should really be E4 for the on-sight, but I'd rather try Resurrection than Right Wall so I suppose it should be graded harder.
And if RW had bolts all the way it would probably have been E1 or E2, and now F6c+, but so what?
Whereas Doubting Thomas (I'm told) is more like a sport climb but with the need to place your own gear; not as hard to give an F grade to.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Haven't read the article but I like what John Redhead has said about doubt and climbing, I think we shouldn't be asking for all the possible details from a grade, having some doubt about what you might come across on a route is a good thing and very related to the overall experience and what you take from it. As for the upper end stuff, the guys doing it already add extra info as they see fit when describing it, by adding a french grade or boulder grade, etc. maybe this already gets put into some guides against some top end routes. Why do people asking for it want this extra info in all grades?

In reply to UKC Articles: At this rate the next generation will be wanting routes marked up. LH, RH, LF, RF to indicate where to put each hand and foot and labels on all the cracks with numbers showing what nut size to use.

Al

I'm all for enhancements to the grading system but I disagree with your dismissal of Yorkshire P grades "because you can see for yourself what the landing is like".

Surely half the point of the grade is to give you an idea of what the route is like before you go there. Skim through the guidebook, think yes that place has lots of safe E1/E2 to play on, looks like a nice crag to visit. P grades win in this instance.

In reply to UKC Articles:

I think the UK system should work, the main problem with it (looking up from my lowly position) is that the UK tech grades are so wide above 6a that I think they need splitting (say by using a '+' to indicate top half). I know this width problem to be true as grades by their nature relate to subjective 'noticable differences' and all the other grade systems in the world have way more steps around UK 6c.

A second issue is the narrowing of tech grades ranges as adjectival grades move up the extreme bracket. This isn't a system problem though, although it might be a misuse problem sometimes (mitigated by the fact the 6b, 6c and 7a tech grades are very wide and today's climbers are simply not good enough to do technical safe E9's and E10s!)

In reply to UKC Articles: Its all a bit of a storm in a tea cup. Just climb!

It seems to me James Pearson made an assesment at E12 at the time and it grabbed headlines (i'm sure that was planned) but is now prepared to admit he may have overgraded which is fair enough, it also seesm Dave Mac was just being a bit of a d**k and headline grabbing by downgrading it so far.

In reply to Offwidth: The point is that as people get closer to the limits of possibility then the increases in grade will by definition get smaller and smaller. Look at athletics, running records are now more rarely broken, and if they are it is by hundreths of a second even in middle distance events.
Thus 7a UK may be equivalent to in say, the 100mts sprint, where to compete at all these days you really need to run well sub 10 , wheras you could win an olympic gold with just over 10 a comparatively few short years ago.
Seb Coe's 800 mts record has still only been broken twice after all thses years, so assuming that was the climbing equivalent of UK 7a, it took 20+ years to establish a higher grade.

In reply to Al Evans:

As I said, too many other grade systems disagree for this to be likely. UK 6b upwards the grade bands ARE too wide in terms of equivalent noticable differences cf the lower UK tech grades. I think having an upper 6b etc would really help climbers read the subtleties of the combo with adjectival grades.

In reply to Gaston Rubberpants:
(In reply to UKC Articles) At this rate the next generation will be wanting routes marked up. LH, RH, LF, RF to indicate where to put each hand and foot and labels on all the cracks with numbers showing what nut size to use.


So as someone who isn't a fan of providing too much information can I count towards your support for the introduction of the T grade? The only grade a pure on-sight ethic needs

In reply to Reach>Talent: Which guidebook did you use fro Och Aye Wall...thought it was clear in most the crux was the start?

In reply to Offwidth:
I didn't use a guidebook, I asked a mate (with a guidebook) what grade it was

In reply to Reach>Talent:

Maybe there is a lesson there!

In reply to Offwidth:

I really can't agree with that. Surely, different physique / style means that you can't divide the tech grades too finely. We should maintain a noticeable gap between tech grades so that we can be fairly sure that any 6b is always harder than any 6a (in broad terms, for the vast majority of climbers). Idealist, I know!

In reply to Franco Cookson: Right Wall isnt unprotected 5b, its harder, somewhere like 5c/6a for the crux. also, it is more 6b+/c than 6c+ overall (oh and it is protected just a bit further away than usual).

to Bob: it isnt E4 either as that would mean many E4s going to E3 (show me another E4 with 6a climbing and similar runout?)

as for the article and comments generally, this has been talked about on here countless times. despite the short shrift many people (who probably arent in a position to comment in the first place) give to the sport grade argument, the fact that it increasingly appears in guides suggests that many do recognise its usefulness.

i would argue that, shorter routes aside, the UK grade (starting as low as you like but definitely needed at E5 and above) and looking at the route simply doesnt give enough info. therefore we need something else. most people are conversant with French grades and the style sport routes are done in gives people a proper feel for what they can / cant muster on lead when placing gear.

i just dont see how / why people cant see that above certain levels the E grade isnt enough. we need something better that encourages / allows us to get on things that are rendered rarified by the mysterious E grade. and no, this doesnt mean the start of blow-by-blow descriptions or the end of adventure. its not like the Cromlech etc are these untainted undescribed wastelands - they have long standing guides and plenty of traffic...

In reply to jon: jon:
In reply to Franco Cookson:


-If I could Franco, I'd climb it for you as well!

I think that throw away comment is unfair.

I don't think what Franco is asking is unreasonable. The main purpose of grading is for choosing routes you are up for that day. The main two questions I ask myself are am I fit/climbing well enough and feeling bold enough to have a reasonable chance of success on this type of route. A french grade would give me a better idea of the technical/physical challenge and an indication of the seriousness would give me a better idea whether I was confident enough to attempt it. These general pieces of info are fudged in the current system and a bit of guidebook or mates knowledge is usually required if you are pushing yourself to gather whether it is likely to be within your abilities or hopelessly out of reach. Challenging yourself is great but ending up wasting a day failing on a route that you never stood a cat in hells chance of getting up in the first place is ungreat.

In reply to UKC Articles:

I vote for adding a french grade to the two.

Really gives you all you need, danger, hardest move, sustainedness.

With respect, a number of you are missing the point. Lots of people have been discussing relatively low grade routes. But everything IS fine up to around E6. Sure, Franco is right that you can’t tell everything you might possibly want to know just from the grade but that is what the description in the guide is there for. A few sensible words are far better than a jumble of 10 different numbers trying to analyse every conceivable measurable thing associated with every route. In trad climbing, a simple paragraph of text is much clearer than something which looks like a maths equation.

The issue is for high grade routes, where it is pretty easy to see that the technical grade is no longer much use. This is important both for the people climbing these routes and also for the way things are reported in the media both here and abroad. For these routes, replacing (or just adding to) the tech grade with a French grade (or highball Font grade for some short routes) solves all the problems and is how the vast majority of people climbing these routes think about them…

So a few examples:

Gaia E8 7b+, NightMayer E8 7c+, Chupacabra E8 8a, Trauma E8 8a, Indian Face E9 7b+, Meshuga E9 7c/7c+, Parthain Shot E9 8a+, The Big Issue E9 ~8a+, The Walk Of Life E9 8a+, Widdop Wall E9 8b, Gerty Berwick E9 (Very) Highball Font 8A, Muy Caliente E10 8a+, To Hell and Back E10 8a+, Equilibrium E10 8b+, Rhapsody ~E10/11 ~8c/8c+, Echo Wall ~E11 ~8c/8c+ etc etc…

(See notes * and ** at the bottom)

That is pretty much how most of the harder climbers in the UK actually think of these routes - the French grade (or Font grade) IS common knowledge for almost all hard routes… It’s just taking a while for some guide writers and news writers to catch on – although slowly things are changing and French / Font grades have been added to a number of trad guidebooks already. As the article said, once you have them, you pretty much have the same information as the American system – just in a different format. And in my view it’s actually better, because it’s much clearer to see which routes overall are most impressive using the combined E and French grades than with the US system. In fact, it is the capability of allowing people to compare roughly how impressive or newsworthy it is to have climbed wildly different styles of routes which is one of the things which makes the E grade system rightly popular in the UK.

But, using the “proper” UK system, nearly every route over E7 (including all the examples I’ve just given) is given a tech grade of either 6c or 7a for an equivalent French grade ranging from roughly 7b+ to 8c+! Really, tech 6c and 7a are just appended on the end of the E grade, in order to keep the system consistent. No one actually pays too much attention to it. For hard routes, the tech grade is pretty much a waste of ink. Whereas the combined E and French / Font grades along with a quick description tells you all the info you need to know.

Now, some people have suggested that instead of doing this, we should extend the UK tech system. But there is a good reason why no one has bothered to do this. The majority of top end trad climbers talk about physical difficulty in terms of French / Font grades. They tend to have climbed lots and lots of Fr8as or Font 7Cs, but only a few routes of comparable physical difficulty as trad routes. Thus it is not surprising, that when it comes to grading their new trad route, they usually turn to their vast experience of French or Font grades to compare the new route to – rather than trying to extend the UK tech grade system, where they would have done very few trad routes of similar physical difficulty to compare with.

But if you really felt the need, you could order the above list and other hard routes in terms of the hardest move, starting with things like Gerty Berwick, Equilibrium, Echo Wall / Rhapsody / Widdop Wall etc and going down to things like Gaia, Nightmayer and The Indian Face. And then you could split the list into bands and assign new tech grades of 6c, 7a, 7b and 7c to each… And after all that you would have essentially no more information than you had at the start with an E grade, a French / Font grade and a description of the route. It’s not really a worthwhile exercise – which is why no one has ever bothered.

Now, some other people have suggested that the French grade is so useful, that we should add it for routes of all grades. But this is entirely unnecessary. For the lower grade routes in the UK, the tech grade very often IS the equivalent of a French grade – in fact it’s even more specific than French grades with 4a, 4b, 4c, 5a, 5b, 5c covering roughly the same ground as French 4 – 5+. This is the grade range of the vast majority of UK trad routes – and the very specific nature of the grades is one reason why it is so popular with lower grade climbers.

Of course, there ARE some legitimate criticisms of the way tech grades are defined in the lower grades, with it not being clear whether a route gets a low tech grade due to danger or sustainedness (this problem goes away for the high grade routes as soon as you add a French / Font grade). And tech grades have also often been used a little inconsistently. In fact, in my opinion, the confusion about how UK tech grades actually work is at the heart of just about all the whittering about the “complexity” of the UK grading system – it only seems complex because very often people pretend that the tech grade is something that it isn’t.

Obviously the tech grade is SUPPOSED to be the grade of the “hardest move”. On some easy routes where getting pumped isn’t too much of an issue that is indeed how it works. And it also works this way for some very cruxy routes or ledge shuffles with occasional tricky pulls in the higher grades. But often, it is really just a pseudo French grade giving a guide to the overall physical difficulty of the pitch. E.g: if you took the “crux move” of Positron off the headwall and stuck it on a boulder problem it would be 4c – but the pitch gets 6a because it is sustained and pumpy. In short, Bob is right on his blog when he says that the tech grade in practise has been “defined” by how hard the hardest move FEELS in the context of the route – which obviously takes into account how hard and how sustained the climbing has been to get there. Ie: it is often used just like a French grade.

BUT, in practice, most people understand all this, and so, in conjunction with the route description, it works totally fine for all easy to mid grade routes – and because it has so much history as well as the fact that it is so useful for low grade routes, where often the “hardest move” really is the stumbling block, it is never going to change.

As for separate grades for sustainedness and danger (like the P grades used in the Yorks Grit guide) – well guide writers can include information like this if they want – no one is likely to object. But I can’t see it becoming standard practise because four separate numbers makes the grade totally unwieldy and also because it’s just as easy to say “it’s really pumpy / dangerous” in the description. (Also as Bob said, danger is often a rather difficult thing to quantify - it often depends on how experienced you are at placing gear, and staying calm in scary situations. Lots of sport climbers going to places like Gogarth find routes very dangerous, some of which are completely safe once you get you’re head round how to protect them.)

Notes from previous post

* On some trad routes e.g the Big Issue, Beau Geste etc, one of the hardest things about leading the route is placing the gear. The French grade suggested in the UK for such routes is usually the “top rope French grade” – ie: The Big Issue is 8a+ on top rope, but placing the gear is really hard and pumpy and makes it at least a French grade or two harder to lead.

** A common myth about the UK grading system is that the grade is only “for the onsight”. In fact, just as in sport climbing, for 99% of routes the grade works perfectly well for headpoints, flashes AND onsights although obviously, the latter is far more difficult and impressive. And just as in sport climbing there are occasional (usually hard) routes which are RELATIVELY more difficult to onsight than to headpoint due to weird gear or a not obvious toe hook etc. These small number of routes are usually graded for the easiest sequence: ie – for the flash / headpoint NOT the onsight – but the guidebook usually either points out that the true onsight would be very hard or just spells out the weird gear etc… (Think what grade Master’s Edge would get if you didn’t know about the tricam and just set off up with a normal rack etc etc…) In short you gain very little by using “H grades” – it would almost always just be a different letter with the same number after it. What it does tell you is which routes have had onsight ascents and which have not. But that can easily be specified in the description without confusing the grading system (or in a table as in the Goredale section of the Yorkshire Lime guide).


Summary

So what needs to be done is utterly straightforward. We don’t need another gazillion articles and threads discussing this stuff. We just need to add a French / Font grade onto the end of the current grade for routes over E6 (or at least most of them – it probably isn’t worth the effort at some of the looser sea cliffs where the tech grades are low enough for them to still work etc…). No big deal. And if it is useful for a small number of easier routes then add it for them too (but for the most part this isn’t necessary). And of course, it’s already being done in quite a few places. For the routes you’ve done this for, whether or not you bother to include the UK tech grade or not really doesn’t matter – it doesn’t tell you much for those routes in the first place – and it REALLY doesn’t tell you much once you’ve got a French / Font grade. But then again, including it doesn’t hurt anyone either.

Of course, some people don’t like grades to try to be too precise, and some people just don’t like grades at all. There’s no problem if someone doing a first ascent doesn’t want to attach a French grade to it. But for the harder routes, this will mean that there will be speculation from (usually clueless) people as to what it would be, and probably to the route being misreported and probably overhyped by some journalists. Of course that doesn’t really matter – I’d just prefer to see someone who’s actually climbed the route trying to put a French grade on it, even if it’s a little vague, than someone who’s never even seen it. And in the end, after someone comes to repeat it, a French grade for the route will be passed round by people in the know anyway.

In conclusion, E grades themselves are great and work right across the grade spectrum – and for onsights, flashes and headpoints. The tech grade works fine alongside the route description and the E grade for easy to mid grade routes but it does becomes progressively less useful as you move through to the higher grades. For higher grade routes, you just need to add (or replace the tech grade with) a French or Font grade for the route. This would be very helpful for the people attempting to climb these routes. And it would also make news reports a LOT clearer both for people inside and outside the UK…

In reply to shark:

Well yes and no. If it's a sport climb then personally I like to have as much beta as possible if the climb is at my limit - I know lots of other people don't, but I'm guessing here Franco is talking about hard trad. If the grade tells you EVERYTHING - all the points he notes above - then the value of the onsight is diminished - the adventure too.

In reply to UKC Articles:

"Obviously the tech grade is SUPPOSED to be the grade of the “hardest move”. "

Where does this come from?

I remember when uk technical grades were spreading out from southern sandstone and everybody was trying to get heir heads round them. The common explanation ( which i believe was in the cloggy guide, which was the first non southern sandstone guide to have them in) was that it was the grade of top roping the pitch.

Seemed simple enough!

Now, for uk 6a and above, i have no idea what i'm getting into and just ignore it. it's French grades for me, for F6b+ and above, and i try to add that info to ukc database.

In reply to jon:

With reference to Nemo's characteristically thoughtful and comprehensive response I can give an actual instance of why I found the grading of harder trad routes frustrating. A long time ago I tried Hunter-Killer in the Leap. I now see that other climbers rate this as 7c. Small wonder I failed to even dog it - I couldnt even sport climb this grade at the time. Another E66b trad route in the 7b-7b+ range I might have stood a chance of ground-upping. There was no adventure in attempting Hunter Killer - it was just a waste of time being on it.

In reply to Nemo:
Good post, and it's nice to see that someone has a proper understanding of how the system works.
I think that some of us (me included) don't find it quite so easy so see why the technical grade is no longer much use. So perhaps you could spell it out. As far as I can see it seems fine up to E5, so I guess that the mid-grade route band ends there (it might disappoint some E4 leaders to find that they're only mid-grade climbers, but perhaps that's correct!).

What I can't get clear in my mind is best illustrated by a couple of examples.

1. A sustained, pumpy route has moves no harder than 5c; so if asked, you might rate it E4 to signify that there's nothing on the route to stop someone who climbs 5c fairly regularly - BUT that you'd have to be an E4 leader to stand a chance of leading the route in fair style. The guidebook would only have to say "E4 5c - extremely sustained and pumpy but well protected" and you'd have the necessary information in a nutshell.

2. Exactly the same type of route, but this time the consensus is that no move is harder than 6c; so if you regularly find 6c moves manageable then no technical move will stop you on this one. The "standard" grade for E5 is 6c; but as this route is so incredibly sustained you add two full E points to the standard - making it E7. So even though it's "only" 6c, the route is recommended for E7 leaders and above.

So the question is; why does that approach work for 5c but not 6c?

In reply to Andy Stephenson:

I think you will find that the "standard" (median) adjectival grade for 6c is at least E6. Most E5's will be 6a or 6b.

I don't see the problem:
Median adjectival grade for 5c is E2, very sustained and pumpy with good protection gets E4.
Median adjectival grade for 6c is E6, very sustained and pumpy with good protection gets E8.

It all seems pretty consistent.

In reply to Andy Stephenson:

E5 6C?

Can't be many of those around.

E

In reply to UKC Articles:

The UK tech grade works fine for me:
5b is steady. Ok when pumpy or bold.
5c is tricky. Ok when a bit pumpy or a bit bold.
6a is hard. Like 5c but I need to pull the stops out if I am a bit pumped or runout.
6b is nails. Very good chance of falling off. Avoid if sustained or pumpy or much at all above gear (which explains why my limit is E5 on a very good day).

So it tells me all I need to know (in conjunction with the adjectival grade). I suspect most people climbing up to E5 could produce a similar personal interpretation.
Obviously I am not in a position to comment on its usefulness above E5 or 6b and accept that it may become too compressed; so why not extend it or add + or - subdivisions if it helps?

My preference would be to add a French grade to the UK grading system, since most British climbers are familiar with its use and there certainly seems to be a demand for it judging from the prevalence already of its use informally particularly in the higher grades.
For all I know a font or V grade might work just as well for people who boulder a lot, but I hardly ever go bouldering so couldn't comment!

In reply to Nemo: you say all ok up to around E6. i say ok up to E4 as theres the link between adjectival and tech grade to guide us i.e.

E3 6a is the 'correct' E3 grade; steady or relatively sustained with good gear
E3 5c is maybe spaced gear or a short, harder physical section
E3 5b run out at some point on the route
E3 6b cruxy and well-protected

this seems to go out the window at E5 e.g. Flashdance, Get Some In, The Snivelling Shits, London Wall and The Minotaur all offer widely varying challenges yet all get E5 6a.

i appreciate that how the route looks and some beta might help clarify things but i think that misses the point. for the very reason you give i.e. climbers doing both trad and sport typically feel better able to quantify routes in terms of French / Font grades (because of their accuracy and range), the sport grade gives a much needed additional layer of information compared to the bare adjectival and (mis-used and mis-understood) tech grade.

simply put, above a certain level and for longer routes (i dont know about grit and sport grades, maybe Font better here?) a sport grade often seems to describe the climbing better and surely thats what a grade aims to do?

In reply to shark:

Ah, the very essence of climbing, Simon. You live and learn! I'm stuck over here with a French grading system that is SO variable depending on where you are - Swiss Valais 7a could be 7b+ in some parts of France... , so I guess this debate is a bit irrelevant to me.

In reply to ksjs:

A similar list for E5 5c to E5 6c could easily be produced!


A similar list of routes offering varying challenges at E3 5c could easily be produced!

In reply to Enty:

The Storm in Cheedale used to get that and, having done it, it felt a better description for me than E6 6b which it went up to and the 7b as it is now, but I'll settle for 7b because it is a sport route....but that still seems to tell me slightly less - is it 7b sustained or 7b cruxy? E5 6c told me it was cruxy! (The crux move felt harder to me than nearby routes with 6b moves anyway)

I can see the advantage of using sport grades alongside E grades but I don't really agree that the technical grade ceases to operate somewhere around 6b. I've done a fair few routes with 6b moves and have had no trouble envisaging harder moves - after all, if I could do them then surely it was possible for better climbers to differentiate further?

By all means use sport grades for harder routes but don't ditch the technical grade - particulalry for cruxy routes.

In reply to shark:

But just a minute - Franco wasn't asking for a simple French grade, was he? So your example isn't really appropriate. I don't care if the UK tech grade gets replaced by a French grade - I've always thought it's far too broad. I just dont see why we need to be totally over-informed. What Franco was after was akin to having a mate standing at the bottom with him, talking him through the route.

In reply to ksjs:

Does it? Seems the same to me.

E5 6a/6b is the "correct grade" steady or relatively sustained with good gear but possibility of spaced gear or a short, harder physical section.
E5 5C run out - Edge Lane
E5 6C - Steady with well protected hard crux or hard move off the deck - BC's example above.

E

In reply to Bulls Crack:

Nobody said that E5 6c does not or should not exist - but they are outliers and there are far, far more E5's at 6a or 6b.

In reply to Andy Stephenson:

"Surely, different physique / style means that you can't divide the tech grades too finely"

The divisions are arbitrary though. In terms of a nominal units of noticable differences the 6c grade is way wider than the 5b grade. That is an historical fault of UK grading....in my view if things had worked better a hard 6b should have been given '6c' 6c should be '7a' through '7c' etc.

I have a lot of sympathy with nemo's long post but I see french grades as a useful adjunct, rather than a fix for this; especially given gritstone weirdness where onsights/flashes of even lowly french grades could be problematic. French grades are more useful in working out if a headpoint attempt is worthwhile. We could repair the current Uk system at high grade by subdividing current UK tech to encourage onsights/ground-ups. As an example if 6c had three subdivisions trying to onsight an E7 tough 6c would give a very different grade message than an E7 easy 6c; in close to the same way an E3 5c differs from an E3 6b or VS 4b to VS 5a etc.

In reply to Enty:
I agree, but based on E2 5c, E3 6a and E4 6b being the "standard" grades, then it's logical that the next one up is E5 6c. Even if that isn't actually how it's (mis)used.

In reply to Andy Stephenson:

But I think that E3 5c and E3 6a are pretty much equally common. E4 6a is certainly more common than E4 6b and E5 6a and E5 6b are pretty much equally common. There is no reason why there should be one particular "standard" tech grade for each adjectival grade (or even a linear relationship). In fact, from a "standard" VS 4c to a "standard" E2 5c there is an average 1 tech grade per adjectival grade. From Standard E2 5c to E5 6a or 6b it is 0.5 and above E5 lower still (the upper grades problematical compression).

In reply to Andy Stephenson:

It would be more like E2 5c, E3 5c/6a, E4 6a, E5 6a/b wouldn't it?

Is there any reason why folk seem to think overall and tech grades should go up at the same rate?

I always interpreted the difference as being more to do with the usefulness of having a bigger range of overall grades to cover the range of situations found while climbing at a higher technical standard, rather than to do with the higher tech grades encompassing a greater range of difficulty?

In reply to Robert Durran:

Sorry, I see we've typed something similar.

In reply to shark:


That, of course, together with a couple of other figures - we're talking Alpine scale here - is more or less the system used by Versante Sud in their guides to the South Face of Marmolada - hardly regarded as a sport climbing venue - and Swiss Rock, covering areas like Wenden and the stuff on the right side of the Eigerwand.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Just mis-read your post Ian as ... highly regarded... and wondered what you were on. Having now read it properly, I'm wondering what I'm on!

In reply to jon:

A comfy chair, I would imagine!

In reply to Nemo:

Thank you for such a clear and enlightening explanation. You are correct that most of us, me included, had missed the point, probably because most of us have never climbed above E5 and/or F7b (some of us considerably less). It is really useful for a change to have the considered perspective of someone who is obviously climbing regularly at the cutting edge. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Dave

In reply to Ian Parsons:


Hi Ian

I didn't know that. Does it work well in practice ?

Simon

In reply to Robert Durran:

could it? due to the compressed nature of the tech grade and broad span of E5 difficulty / style (anything from 6a+ ish to 7b ish, thats 8 French grades by the way) im not sure that it would be as useful.


could it? even if you can show me this i dont think it adds that much given that there is a logical progression in difficulty (denoted by the E and tech grade changing) up to E4 that helps the improving climber easily assess and prepare for stepping up. this is exactly whats missing at E5 and above.

In reply to Enty:

hold on a minute! depending on how i interpret this sentence i can get it to cover all the climbs i mention. this doesnt show that these routes arent widely different, its just vague and illustrates exactly why theres a problem.

In reply to Robert Durran: hence the need for a clearer guide from grades at higher levels...

In reply to ksjs:

Tells me all I need to know.

Or, using the two classic examples - London Wall and Flashdance, both E5 6A - doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out for themselves what's involved in either of those routes.

E

In reply to ksjs:

Depends whether you see it as a problem or not.

E

In reply to Enty: we could go on like this you dont see a problem, i do. all i can say in summary is something along lines of what Shark says above i.e. theres lots of E6 (not to mention E5) i want to get on but i often have little idea of whether i will get a kicking (or worse) or i have a solid chance of success. a French grade would give me what i need to make a more informed and better decision.

In reply to ksjs:

What you're asking for in effect is for the UK tech grade to be broken up a bit more then, no? And French grade does just that. I don't have a problem with that at all. Or have I gone to sleep somewhere along the line?

In reply to shark:


I've no idea, Simon; sadly, despite best intentions, I have yet to climb on Marmolada, and the small amount of stuff I've done on Swiss mountain limestone was well before the guide came out and was generally spacedly-bolted rather than pure trad. However, the fact remains that guidebooks using this type of grading to cover trad and semi-trad areas already exist; part of my reason for posting was in the hope that people with more direct experience of these areas would chip in with their thoughts on how well they thought the systems worked in practice. Perhaps it would be useful to outline how the two guides approach the grading issue, and give a few popular examples for the benefit of people who have done some of the routes but don't have the modern guides.

Maurizio Giordani's Marmolada guide uses a grade made up of four figures:-

1) French grade, 1 - 8a+; an obvious question would be whether these are intended as sport/redpoint or onsight grades, bearing in mind that it's not the sort of place where most people would be working pitches! At a guess most of these will be some sort of translation from earlier UIAA grades. There might also be a supplementary aid grade - A0,A1,A2 etc - but routes are generally graded for their most free state (free-est?).

2) Protection grade; this consists of an R followed by a number from 1 to 6. R1 is described thus (in translation): "Easy to protect, always solid, safe and numerous protections. Few compulsory passages. Potential length of fall: some metres; fall without danger." whereafter the scale rises through increasing levels of nastiness to R6: "Not possible to protect but for short and insignificant passages far from cruxes. A fall could be mortal." Although it sounds a bit long-winded I would imagine that in practice it works like the Yorkshire P-system, but with more gradations. It applies equally to routes which are completely, partially, or not at all equipped with fixed gear, either pegs or threads - so not unlike, I suppose, many old trad limestone routes in this country. Where the fixed gear consists solely of bolts the R is relaced by S, and where both types of fixed gear are encountered it becomes RS. Of course, out of the 180 routes in the Marmolada guide only a handful have an S grade; the majority are R, with a few RS.

3) Time/length grade; on loan from Yosemite etc, a roman numeral I to VII. This basically gives you an idea of how long you'll be on it, always assuming you're competent and efficient at the grade. A quick skim through the book revealed only one VI - hardly surprising as this is the grade of all El Cap big wall routes; VII is reserved for places like Baffin, Patagonia and the Baltoro. It only relates indirectly to actual difficulty, in that a very easy 2000' route isn't likely to take all day, whereas one with several pitches of aid climbing probably will. I think this is possibly the least useful of the components of the system, especially as route length and normal climbing time are also given. Across the Pond, although Americans still speak of Vs and VIs, its use on shorter routes seems to have largely died out.

4) Overall Alpine adjectival grade; PD,D,TD,ED,EX (no AD, apparently) with additional + or - as necessary. It will be interesting to see how closely or otherwise these correlate with people's impressions of routes' likely E grades, this being an entirely rock area (ie not complicated by some other alpine factors).

A few well-known examples:-

Don Quixote - 6a/R2/IV/D+ (not sure about this; a few people have said 6c)
Fish - 7b/R4/V/ED+ (second pitch above cave usually gets 7b+; Giordani says 7a)
Fram - 7b+/RS4/III/EX (up to the Fish cave)
Vinatzer - 6a+/R2/IV/TD (Messner Finish - 6a+/R3/IV/TD)
Tempi Moderni - 6c/R4/IV/ED-
Cinquantenario Fisi ("Gogna") - 6b+/R2/IV/TD
Tomasson (South Face Original route, 1901) - 4+/R2/IV/D
Micheluzzi - 6a A0/R2/IV/TD
Solda - 6a+/R2/IV/TD
Larcher-Vigiani - 8a/S3/IV/EX (with 90 bolts in 13 pitches, obligatory 7b, reasonably spaced bolts [suggestion that S3 equates to 5 metre spacing on hard sections], I assume that this is fully-bolted; probably Marmolada's first).

I'll come back later with details of the Swiss guide (if anyone's still awake).

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Cheers Ian.

Is there any inter-relationship between the R grade and the French grade? ie a bold 5 might get R3 but a route with a well protected 7b section but a bold 5 section might only get R1 or R2 given that a 7b climber should be able to cope OK with a bold section of 5 ? (this would seem sensible)

I appreciate from your comments that you might not be able to answer this but someone who has working experience of the system might.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Do you have any details of the route that starts in the tunnel where those workers were killed in an explosion during the early years of last century? That and the other 'semi-mythical' tunnels that exist in that mountain fascinate me.

In reply to Robert Durran:

err yes!

In reply to Bulls Crack:

My reply was aimed at Enty to whom you were replying.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Just like E3 5b's

E

In reply to Enty:

No, E3 6b's.

In reply to jon:

Are you referring not specifically to the route but to one of its more significant ascents, in the course of which the various participants, having aborted their first attempt via the aforesaid tunnel, subsequently used it to regain the route and continue, in triumph, to the top? I'm currently unaware of other tunnels; can you enlarge on this?

In reply to Ian Parsons:

Bit too late for me to understand your answer. I was of course referring to the Eigerwand. I'm aware of a route called something like Dynamiten joch (or loch?) or some such which I believe appears in the guidebook to which you refer. The topo has it starting apparently in the middle of nowhere, but it is in fact a window in a little known tunnel where, as I say a number of workers were killed in an explosion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungfraubahn As I remember from a brief glimpse at the topo, it didn't seem to be anywhere near the line of the rail tunnel that we all know, but up to the right somewhere (I think, but I'm not sure). I spoke to an old Grindelwald guide last year about this and he nodded and also alluded to a host of other tunnels in the mountain. Some of these were created during the early years of the 1900s and some were supposedly made at a much later date - maybe (European) wartime when the Swiss were upping their civil defences. Does the name (and my German is non existent) Eaglejoch mean anything?

In reply to shark:

Hi Simon

Although there appears to be nothing on this in the guide's intro, I would be very surprised if the protection grade referred to anything other than the harder pitches; as you suggest, this would make sense. A grade that awarded a very serious label to a route containing an unprotected pitch of V - which a likely aspirant might quite possibly be capable of soloing - but with a very well-protected 7b crux pitch, would give completely the wrong impression. In a Dolomite context, too, a couple of other factors might apply; firstly, on rock which by nature lends itself well to leader-placed protection, the easier pitches, being probably more featured, should afford better gear, while secondly, and in contrast, on more compact rock relying for the most part on peg protection it's likely that, in common with the general norm whereby pegs are far less in evidence on pitches up to about V than many would probably expect, the easier pitches would likely be significantly less well-equipped. I think in fact that, in your example, it would only become a problem were, say, a 6c pitch to be poorly protected, it being arguable that a serious pitch of that grade might well present as great a challenge to the leader as a safe 7b one.

In Britain, of course, where the discussion is mostly centred around single-pitch routes, or maybe multi-pitch ones with a recognized crux, the ambiguity needn't arise; the protection grade, like the French grade, would apply to the crux pitch, and were there any doubt both could be applied to the individual pitches of a long route. Indeed, with our current system, and without specific further information, who is to know that, on an E2 with pitches of 4c,5c,5b and 5a, the second pitch on its own might not be E1 5c and the third E2 5b, and therefore the crux. There's always the option of applying E grades to the individual pitches of a multi-pitch route, but in general we don't.

In reply to ksjs:
That's the main point of grades. If you're climbing E6 then you just skim though the guide book for anything at E6. I guess that you can cruise (English) 6b and pretty much get 6c first try, so you just look for E6 6c if you want something with a solid chance of success and not too much risk.

Don't you?

In reply to jon:

Ah - I'm with you now; I was of course referring - cryptically - to the Stollenloch, and its use by Hiebeler, Kinshofer, Almberger and Mannhardt during their first winter ascent of the 1938 route in March of 1961. The guide shows the route Yeti as starting from the Dynamitloch, of which I've never otherwise heard, some way to the right of, and quite possibly higher than, the Stollenloch; I assume it also leads into the railway tunnel - "dynamit" is fairly self-explanatory, and "loch" simply means hole.

The idea of any other tunnels is news to me, but intriguing! Eaglejoch - or, presumably, Adlerjoch - doesn't ring any bells; joch, meaning col, would presumably have to be a topological feature on the mountain, and hence well-known. If we're talking about tunnel entrances then Adlerloch - loosely translating as eyrie, perhaps - seems far more likely. But it still doesn't ring any bells, although you'll be more familiar with the mountain than I am. It is, however, a far more enticing subject than any fine-tuning to the UK grading system!

In reply to jon: no, youve been paying attention - have a star! thats pretty much what im after

In reply to Andy Stephenson: maybe its partly a question of experience (lack of) for me and long-standing hang ups about E grades and what they represent (possibly stemming from friends who introduced me to climbing where anything above VS was treated with significant respect and the approach was generally a conservative one) but i dont really trust E grades at E5 and above.

i mean how can one grade (E5) cover around 8 French grades? you can definitely narrow down what experience youre going to get (route position in graded list, general beta, how route looks and guide description) but for whatever reason - variation in how the tech grade has been applied, historical inconsistencies, FA's abilities etc - i always have a lingering sense that im not quite sure about what i might be about to get myself into.

when you say just get on some E6 6c i have no idea what that might mean when on the route (apart from the fact that there arent too many knocking around!) the grade conversion suggests 7c/+ but who knows what the reality might be like. maybe i just need to get on more things and see how i go? i guess though i just dont like the suck it and see approach and thats what the adjectival grade seems to bring.

In reply to ksjs:

You say that about trying to push to onsight E6 - does not everyone have this feeling when pushing their grade at whatever level? If you jump on a route within your comfort zone, then you can be pretty confident you can cope with whatever it throws at you, but this is not true when you try a route on which you presumably expect to be near your limit. If you are pushing your grade, you probably want a route of a style which suits you, and so more beta (or a French grade!) might well be of help. I know that I would certainly try to seek out more beta on an E5, since I only tend to get up (or even try) them when they suit me! Would not an E2 climber keen to push to E3 be just as keen on additional beta as you are for an E6?

Having said all that I think that there are E5's people do and E5's people don't do (this may apply more where I mostly climb in Scotland!) and the ones that people don't do can be a sandbag, either because they have had very few ascents to confirm the grade or because (and this is why the problem really starts at E5) the first ascent was done in dubious style (cleaning, inspecting, dogging etc, checking or preplacing gear, even top roping) and the first ascentionist was not therfore in a position to give an objective grade from a proper on sight experience. These routes also often tend to be dirty! I suspect there are surprisingly few climbers who could confidently on sight almost any E5 in the guidebook (let alone E6!).

In Reply to Dave Musgrove:

Cheers for the comment. I wasn’t really planning on adding to what I wrote before, but after reading what you said I think I probably ought to clarify something. I don’t want to spray my climbing CV on the internet, but equally I don’t want to mislead – I’m no “cutting edge” trad climber… Far from it. I learnt to climb as a trad climber and worked through a good number of the classics up to a decent standard, but then focused on sport / bouldering – and whilst Fr8b+ and Font 8a isn’t total punterdom, it’s hardly cutting edge unless you’re under 15 or well over 50! The reason I know far more about the harder trad stuff than I otherwise would is because I spent years living / climbing / bouldering / belaying / drinking / talking with a number of people who are at the top end of the trad scene – and ended up seconding or helping work out sequences on TR on a number of the harder routes. But of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would all agree about this stuff either with each other or with me…

Not that that makes any of what I said less valid…

Offwidth:

Yeah, I think adding French / Font grades on the end of what we already have is probably the best idea (and is what is already happening in some places). I don’t think there’s too much for anyone to object to with that – if some people don’t find it useful they can ignore it.

ksjs:

I don’t think there’s much point having a heated argument about exactly where the cut off point is when it’s useful to add French / Font grades. This should be left to local guide writers and will be different in different areas. But I still think E6 is a pretty good guide as to where they become really useful – although you could look at it the other way and add them for routes which are physically harder than Fr7a (which would mean that some of the harder E5’s in places like Pembroke would get them etc…) It doesn’t really matter. But however you do it, as I suggested before, a little common sense needs to be applied - a French grade isn’t going to be a fat lot of help on an E6 like Death Trap Direct…

In reply to Robert Durran:

I don't think any climber yet could onsight every E5 in a big modern definitive: logistics (cf UK weather) let alone talent make this amazingly hard.

In reply to Offwidth:

I didn't say "every". I said "any"!

In reply to UKC Articles:

E5 6cs really should not exist. Unless it is just one move and soft 6c with bomber gear and obvious how to do it.

With the rising average strengths of clibmers, it is likely that higher boulder grades will be included in easier-graded routes. But 6c is quite hard and very hard to do ground up if you are only used to climbing E5s.

I hope to see a reduction in the grade over the next few years as many of these classic sandbags are upgraded to at least E6.

In reply to Robert Durran:


Which is why more information is a good thing. If we are trying to develope the onsight part of the sport, why not accurately grade and describe every aspect of the route. The 'preservation of adventure' that others in this thread have spoken of is all well and good, but a hindrence to onsight ascents. Look at people like Neil Dickson. Before his attempt at stuff like 'margins' he must have seeked out info on how bad the gear actually was and where the hard bits of climbing were. That's what you need to push your grade and let's face it, we're not talking about recording specific beta, just vital info that will get people pushing the sport.

In reply to Franco Cookson:
The sport grade and E grade combo would be more informative in general and a thoroughly good idea.

However, I'm not sure that that the absence of published topo of Margins with section-by-section bouldering grades and an overall sport grade is what's holding back a flood of onsight attempts.

In reply to Franco Cookson:


E5 6c routes are in the same bag as E4 6b and E3 6a routes with hard moves for the E Grade - what's up with that?


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

There's a difference between E5 6c and E3 6a. It's worrying that as a guidebook writer, you don't now that.

In reply to Franco Cookson: 2 grades in both cases? I think you need to work on your assertiveness... you're coming over far too humble.

In reply to Offwidth: 6b is a bigger grade than 6a so extends into super-safe E5 in a way that 6a doesn't do with E3. Hence E5 6cs should be a lot rarer than E3 6a.