UKC

Can anyone suggest a logical way to compare the difficulty of sandstone climbs in the UK to sport grades, or even bouldering grades? Is this impossible due to how wide the grades seem to be compared to other systems? I might have to admit defeat :

In reply to jsmcfarland:

look at the comparison chart in the front of the book?

In reply to jsmcfarland:

Do you mean southern sandstone? Grades here can seem a bit strange if you're used to, say Pembroke limestone, but they make more sense the more you do.

In reply to jsmcfarland:

Southern Sanstone grades make no sense below ~5a but at 5a upwards the grades are approximately UK technical grades.

In reply to jsmcfarland:

I didn't really explain myself clearly in my original post so I'll try again. I was hoping somewhere someone had worked out that for example (pulled out of thin air) the vast majority of sandstone 5b's are roughly comparable with the vast majority of french 6a routes in difficulty (once you get used to different style) or whatever the case may be. I looked at all the trad/sport conversion charts and from those it seems that the UK technical grades are really quite wide compared to other systems and gets wider as difficulty increases, so in my mind that makes them quite hard to compare. Maybe I'm hopelessly confused, please point out if so

In reply to jsmcfarland:

From what I understand looking at http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades/ taking a single grade (tech 5b) it correlates with sport 5c, 6a and 6a+. Do I have that right?

In reply to jsmcfarland:

That's it I'm afraid, and it works even less well in the higher grades (English 6c-7a) not that I climb those grades.
Hence the reason why hard trad routes often get a French grade added in their descriptions.

In reply to jsmcfarland: The UK tech grade applies to the single hardest move, the sport grade to the difficulty of the route - clearly a route with one english 5b move at the start is easier than 30 moves sustained 5b.

The english system works rather well I think.

You will find sandstone grades a mystery till you have some experince of flared, strenuous ,sandy grooves with sloping holds.

In reply to wbo:

I thought the southern sandstone grading system worked as well as any I have ever come across, and was exceptionally consistent. The lower grades made complete sense to me, when I was a beginner.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

are not UK technical grades based on southern sandstone grades (which in turn were based on Fontainebleau bouldering grades)?

In reply to Doug:

Yes. The idea came (via the Morins) from Fontainebleau, though the way the grades were used was never the same. And when first applied (4a and above) to UK trad routes they could never be applied with the same consistency - because of different rock types, length of pitch, etc - and tended to be overgenerous by between half and a full technical grade. E.g 5a in the mountains might well be 4c at Harrisons.

In reply to jsmcfarland:

I should clarify - I always found sandstone grading a bit stiff, but generally inline with other places, but if the first place you go after the climbing wall the lower grades will be a bit of an eyeopener.

In reply to jsmcfarland:

Just to clarify what's been said. The grading system used on Southern Sandstone (SS) is exactly that used elsewhere in the uk.

It's just normal to omit the adjectival part (VS, HVS... ) as giving both parts is redundant. The reason for this is that the relationship between the adjectival and technical grades in the uk system depends on a lot of factors that are always the same for SS or known in advance.

Will the gear be good-? No. There won't be any.
Rock quality? - Sandy!
How sustained wil it be? - Just look up, you can see all the moves from the ground.

In reply to Removed UserArdverikie2:

Er ... the reason that adjectival grades are not used on SS is that the climbs are typically top-roped, so the leading (adjectival) grade makes no sense at all. If you solo them you could, I suppose, give them an adjectival grade, e.g Long Layback would be VS and Unclimbed Wall E2.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Most single-pitch unprotected climbs across the country are typically top-roped.
They are given adjectival grades anyway to indicate (among other things) that they are unprotected, whereas the neigbouring routes may be well protected.

There is simply no point in putting the adjectival grade in the guidebook on SS as every route is unprotected and therefore you can work out the adjectival grade from the tech grade, as you have just done.

In reply to Removed UserArdverikie2:

I belong to that perhaps old-school view (nearly 50 years since I started) that using an adjectival grade for top-roping is meaningless bollocks.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


No argument here but are you suggesting that if you lead say Downhill Racer it isn't E4 because people frequently rop-rope it ?

In reply to jsmcfarland:
It wouldn't be E4 on a toprope..

The predominant ethic on southern SS is toproping so the adjectival grade is meaningless

In reply to Removed UserArdverikie2:


I wish I could follow your bizarre line of argument. No, whether people toprope Downhill Racer has no relevance whatever regarding the grade for those who lead it. I'm not that keen anyway on people top-roping such routes anyway .. for a number of reasons. It's something I would do rather occasionally during my gritstone climbing, but never felt particularly proud of. Of course, I seconded many routes that were beyond my leading ability (or rather, nerve).

In reply to jsmcfarland:


At least, yes. Does it matter?

jcm

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

>If you solo them you could, I suppose, give them an adjectival grade, e.g Long Layback would be VS

I don't think too many VS leaders would solo Long Layback!!

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:



Well, of course I'd done it loads of times before I soloed it, and was climbing a lot better than VS, so it was difficult to judge the grade. I suppose if it was made of gritstone, with decent protection, it would be VS 5a. But anyway, too much talk of grades, as always. Rather than the route (one of the better routes on SS).

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:



and I wish that I could follow yours. The grading system (& indeed the ethical system) are the same everywhere in the country.
How prevalent top-roping is or isn't at any particuar location or route has no effect on either. Previous sandstone guidebook writers have simply made some decisions to make the guides easier to read that's all.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


But that was a while ago, the grades were probably accurate then. I think a lot of the confusion about SS grades is because anything below about 6a has worn so badly that the route bears little relation to what the FA climbed.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I was just trying to work out how to translate technical grades into roughly equiv. difficulty of sport climbs. It seems easier to do that with full trade grades because the adjective grade helps 'place' the technical grade in comparison to the sport grades, if that makes sense. At this rate I will just start grading the sandstone climbs 5a,5a+,5b,5b+,5c,5c+.......sigh

In reply to Removed UserArdverikie2:
Actually Downhill Racer is E5 because too many morons top rope it and have polished it. Leave bold grit slab classics until you are good enough to climb them.

I think the opposite to Gordon about southern sandstone grades. The low grade stuff is all over the place (and often sandbag graded) like font, but from 5b upwards it settles down nicely. When I first went there I got way more 5c moves first go than I would on grit and got a wake-up-call on some of the 2s despite being a fan of clefts.

In reply to Hooo:

I think wear-and-tear explains some routes but its hard to understand in a chimney unless huge lumps have gone. Old skool climbers just graded easier clefts and delicate slabs stiffer than we do today.

In reply to Offwidth:

All I can do is report how I found the grades (in Ted Pyatt's wonderful old 'South-East England' guidebook) when I first started climbing in 1966. They seemed not only very useful, but very consistent. There really was a difference between a 2A and a 2B, and 3As and 3Bs were something else again. I remember we reached the 'giddy heights' of 5A quite quickly, but 5Bs were a whole different kettle of fish. By early 1968 we were climbing consistently at 5C, which meant that, when we made our first big climbing trip to the mountains – to Snowdonia later that summer, we were leading (bottom end) HVS in just three weeks. It took me a further two years to reach Extreme (i.e. present-day E1). IIRC, John got there much faster because he didn't suffer the psychological effects that I did after our mishap in Norway in 1969.

In reply to Offwidth:

When I say first trip to the mountains, I mean first climbing trip to the British mountains - we had already been to the Alps on two holidays with our father by then. We went to school near the sandstone, and couldn't get to Snowdonia etc until we'd learned to drive.

In reply to Offwidth:

PS. If one seeks hard SS grades, High Rocks is the place. There's always the aptly-named Boa-Constrictor Chimney at "4B" ...

In reply to jsmcfarland:



I'm not sure that the rockfax table says this. It says an E1 might be sport 5c,6a,6a+. There is no column for British tech grade in the table.

Some British 5b's might get F6b, or F6b+. For example very steep ones with a long series of 5a and 5b moves.

The thing to understand is they measure very different things, so the although there will be some correlation, it is less strong than you might like.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

At font today 3a normally starts at UK 4a with some polished slabs maybe being as hard as UK 5b. SS tech came from font before a lot of the polish took hold and UK 4a has changed a lot since then with most of the change since 66. The Nunn peak guide transferred SS grades to peak lower grade lines introducing varied, mainly sandbag, grades.

In reply to Offwidth:

Why don't they just upgrade the polished ones where it make a difference? I've suffered on them before now

In reply to Bulls Crack:

Tradition I guess. Ive got regrades for whole circuits but not enough time really to take the job on properly. You can easily miss the lowest grade method to do a problem (in the same way that the start of Verandah Buttress has a sneaky F4 method that's really hard to spot). However featureless pof-polished slabs wont have an easy way.

In reply to David Coley:



That isn't normal though is it? Before Kalymnos came along and twisted the system, UK 5b was normally around F5+.

Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Some might say that it's the British grade that's the one that's twisted, giving a clearly much harder physical challenge the same grade

In reply to Chris Craggs:

I'd say there were lots of E3 5b's that were F6b

In reply to David Coley:

Maybe many easier sports grades were wrong as they became very polished and were judged by much better climbers. For all the fuss of soft grading at Kalymnos the voting doesnt seem to be for downgrades of the easiest climbs. I dont trust UKC votes within a grade (for instance the easiest Stanage VS classics get an average of a third of a grade inflation) but they are rarely more than a whole grade out.

In reply to David Coley:

Lots really, I can't think of many E3 5b routes?

Great Slab (Froggatt) is one and would be F5+ with three bolts. Ocean Boulevard (Swanage) is another E3 5b and might be F6a with half a dozen bolts.


Chris