UKC

Hi uk boulderers 

The adoption of font grades has become widely accepted in the uk as we all know, superceeding the V grades inherited from the states some years back. What I find difficult to fathom is the wide range of difficulty / or comparative ease of problems found within the given grade. I'm well travelled within the uk given that I've been climbing for some 40 years or so now, and I'm more than familiar with '"local grading" scenarios and tough venues where you have to fight for your grades. 

With V grades, I've always assumed that V4 was more or less British 6b which is fairly tough. British 6c was really hard back in the day and imo still is. Im sure that I can't climb british 6c, but I've managed f7c . I appreciate that I tend to prefer long endurance traverses, but I've also been seen to do the odd bloc problems too from time to time

I suppose my point is that with font grades perhaps it would help if there was ALWAYS a british tech grade to accompany it. I know some venues adopt this approach, but usually only for the lower grades. If this approach was used for all font grades, then it might help us developers think better about where the font grade actually lies, because I've got no idea these days. I used to grade things as I saw them ( ie. British 6a is quite hard. 6b is pretty damn hard, and 6c is really hard etc...) but then these would invariably get anywhere upto 4 font grades added by people who repeated them. Then I went the other way and probably over graded them trying to address the issue.... now I just approximate!

This is even more acute with the grading of traverses where font grades are difficult to apply due to their length alot of the time.

Is there room for additional symbols such as the ones used in rock fax guides to help explain grades such as pumpy, or sustained etc? that reflect higher font numbers just as E grades reflected this? For example f7a (6a) ( then symbols for pumpy, fingery highball, and length etc)?

As you can probably guess it's raining here in Wales and I'm just musing, so here's an invitation to muse along with me. Just because we have a system, it doesn't mean it can't be tweaked does it?.

..don't shoot me down guys!

Cheers , phil

Na, I don’t think Font grades need any tweaking. So long as all the problems in an area a graded in approximate order i.e. most 6a+ are easier than most 6b then that’s good enough. Ideally those grades will also align with some well known bench mark problems but if they don’t hey-ho. No-one dies on a boulder problem because it was under graded.

British tech grades are only useful up to 6a. People were reluctant to grade anything above 6b for so long that 6b ended up being ridiculously wide, 6c became the absolute living end and 7a barely exists. Whereas Font grades now go up to 9A, so you would be trying to cover a range of 17 font grades using only three grade bands, thus conveying no useful information whatsoever.

This is basically why nobody except low to mid grade trad climbers cares about uk tech grades any more. They could have been used to convey useful information at the upper end of the scale, but because of the way people chose to use them circa 1980 or so they weren't, and it's too late to change all that now. All Ron's fault, probably, for grading the Gordale cave routes "6b".

Nail. On. Head!

British grades are useless once you get to English 6c & 7a. Too late to change it now though.

For bouldering Font grades are more accurate in the lower grades, V grades are more accurate in the higher grades. 

I think maybe you have got the wrong end of the stick? V4 should be Font 6B or 6B+, V5 Font 6C. 

I don't think its too late to change it... simply add + and - for 6b and above and UK trad becomes much more useful. 

Also as a low to mid grade climber I know very well what UK trad grades means in the range to 5c and most of the many climbs I enjoy are tech graded about right wherever I climb (adjectival grading is a bit more variable). I always saw a hard single move f6A and UK tech 6a and a hard single move V2 as being equivalent in technical terms (until Rockfax moved the V2 to V3). However, font and V grades sub f6A are used so badly they are almost meaningless in anything more than a rough comparison at a particular location. Especially so at font (where problems are usually at least two grades harder due to erosion and polish) and for most indoor V grades (usually at least two grades too easy)... the implications of indoor V grade climbers, sub f6A in ability, going to Font for the first time are obvious!

My proposal:

a. pretend there's no such thing as British tech and those numbers/letters on trad routes which look like a font grade are actually a font grade.

b. define V grades in terms of Font grades so the V scale becomes just another way of presenting a Font grade.

c. Now that Font grades are the only scale try and be consistent with them.

Yeah OK. English 7a can be anything from French 7b to French 8b! Basically covering weekend warrior (admittedly fairly good weekend warrior) grades to pretty much elite grades. 

Easy to say, but while UK trad is the only reliable consistent comparison I'd rather we transition a bit more slowly. At the moment V grades are used in quite a few guidebooks and in most of the biggest indoor venues (especially The Depots).  All the easier bouldering in current BMC gritstone guides had a UK tech as well as a V grade as it was a joint trad and bouldering guide and at lower grades UK tech was better understood. In the YMC grit guides the tech to font conversion and consistency of that was taken seriously (where previously, for a highball, an agreed f6A might be given as an alternative grade view  for a sandbag HVS 5a in the older definitive).

Climbing grades need simplifying not complicating. 

My own preference would be for everything to be V or at a push everything indoor to be V and outdoor to be font. Everyone says indoor and outdoor grades are different so why do we insist on using the same scale?

Thats not a fair comparison. A sport route might be easy outside a technical crux or mega sustained at a much lower UK tech grade. The sensible comparison would be with bouldering grades. The 4 UK tech grades from 6b to 7b covers a bit over 12 bouldering grades... adding, say, a 6c- and a 6c+ alonside a 6c would make noticable differences of the different systems roughly equivalent again.

Whats the point in changing stuff? 

Font or V grades work just fine. The only addition I like is for long problems that get a French grade in addition.

I can't see any benefit to introducing UK tech into a grade discussion about bouldering, it's a trad climber thing.

Of the bouldering centres near here it is about 50:50 between V grades and Font grades.  The easiest thing would be for the indoor chains to define a conversion table between Font and V grades which is simple enough for people to swap to the system they prefer from whatever the wall uses in their head.

How can you convert when the useage is so variable?

Just impose a simple rule which makes the V scale as used indoors increase with exactly the same steps as the Font scale.  It's not the same as the current V scale but indoor climbers aren't going to care, the main thing is it is an increasing series of positive integers which reflect difficulty.

Font 4c and below   VB

5a = V0, 5b= V1, 5c = V2, 6a = V3 and so on forever

Grade creep is happening everywhere else in trad grades. Why not just accelerate the creep of the adjective grades for a while until it catches up. 

Now I'm really confused.  V grades and Font grades measure exactly the same thing: the difficulty of a problem by the easiest method. There has always been good conversion tables. UK tech grades in fact originated from Font grades (via southern sandstone). The problem has always been climbers not using the grades properly. 

I propose a 3-way conversion Indoor Font: Indoor V: Grade at which you'll get spanked first time outside

It's redundant to have two scales for indoor boulders.  What I'm suggesting is that walls just take control and make the conversion so simple that you can convert between the grades at a wall which uses V numbers and one that uses Font grades instantly without getting out a table.    Making the grade increment on the V scale exactly the same as the grade increment on the Font scale and defining V1 as Font 5a makes the two scales equivalent and trivial to convert.

Its even more redundant to have three scales for indoor use... Font, Old V and New V. 

If indoor walls can't agree to use one of two scales, you're not going to get them to agree to use one of three. 

Especially since most places don't really use grades, they use colours, they don't reset the 6a to 6b, they reset the yellow or the pink. 

What you are saying is to invent another scale as V grades already exist and don't exactly match Font grades and no one can change that. Before some Brits started to mess around with V grades, V1 was always f5!? Rockfax were the first to move the bottom end of V grades around.

Yes but remember actual Font grades at Font are a lot harder than Font grades elsewhere

Sure they can, there is no ISO for climbing grades with a sample of noble gas somewhere that they are derived from.   It's all subjective and drifts over time. If the big climbing wall chains define V1 = f5 and stick to it then pretty soon everybody that climbs indoors regularly will be that V1 = f5.  

Yes, there's a bunch of guidebooks out there with grades for outdoor problems which won't match this indoor system but the mapping between outdoor and indoor grades is inherently problematic. 

I don't think there has been any grade creep in the USA, although I hasten to add that I am only qualified to judge in the sub-5.12 grades (English 6a and below). (Hell! I never even got close to a "fairly good week-end warrior", according to the definitions of deacondeacon above!)

That's an interesting point. Have we had to adjust the conversion charts to cope with the creep on the UK side?

I did some analysis a few years back on Peak Grit guidebooks and UK adjectival grade creep has been on average no more than a grade on the classics since the first guidebooks and most of that was before the 1980s. Some people mistake grade creep as FA sandbag graded routes being outed, or things like moving away from the 'Scottish VS'. Outdoor UK bouldering grades are probably too new to demonstrate any creep. 

I agree. For the vast majority of climbers operating up to, say, E5, UK tech grades make perfect sense and they will know what to expect (For me, 5a=steady, 5b=tricky, 5c=hard, 6a=proper hard, 6b=desperate) and I see no reason why a +/- at 6b and above shouldn't make them equally good at higher levels.

Of course, there cannot be equivalence between UK tech grades and V (or Font) grades, because they are measuring different things (hardest move and overall grade). I only very rarely boulder outdoors but indoors I certainly attach UK tech grades to problems graded with V grades and I can tell the difference between V4, 6a and V4, 6b. I think such a formal two tier system would be ideal for British climbers.

It should be possible to do it pretty easily on classics, say by using grade votes on UKC, if enough people voted. Trouble is I've just looked through Froggatt 2 and 3 star routes (as popular as harder grit classics come) and only Stapadictomy looks totally reliable with a few others, like Narcissus being relatively clear.

The f7c'c that you've done, are you sure they are not french sport grades? I know the crags around here the long traverses get sport grades which people often confuse with boulder grades.

Apologise if im asking a daft question, and if someone else has already asked.

I prefer the V grades over anything else just for it's simplicity. Granted it can be somewhat inaccurate in the lower grades but considering what it is grading is highly subjective, does it really matter that much?! I don't think I've ever cared about the exact number, just the general range.

I much prefer french as what I can boulder can roughly translate to what I can lead and my outdoor lead (again in french) is usually 1-2 behind that (less experience I suppose). 

With V it only becomes the same once you get to V7 / 7A. I guess once you can happily bash out 7A/ V7s you stop caring because its 1-1 conversion from that point onward.

I def appreciate the macro level when stood at the bottom of a route going "hmm this new one looks ok, hmm says 6B+ ok.. perhaps Ill save that for after the warm up cos that wont be a cake walk"  

Also down here in Bristol all my guide books are in French and the TCA and Redpoint grade lead in french  so its just easier. I get abit fucked up when at Bloc or I visit london and its all V lol

Who knew?!

It's clearly illogical to say that the tech grade  - very happy an successful at 6a and below  - should suddenly stop working at that point/. I was never any great shakes at bouldering but regularly did/still do 6a moves (they're a bit harder than 5c for reference) , 6b was easily identifiable ( it was harder than 6a) and moves I found harder than 6b I thought stood a good chance of being 6c!  And since other climbers could climb much harder things it want difficult to envisage 7a and 7b

It's illogical to claim that tech grades break down above 6a in theory, but in practice they do seem to (for reasons discussed above). They also lack utility, as how can you expect 4 tech grades (6a to 7a, since 7b is not really in common use) to cover font grades from 6A to 9A (that's 18 grades) with any kind of resolution? Does it help to know that you are doing a 7a move on that 7B bloc and there is at least one 7a move on that 8A one over there too?

I really struggle to work out exactly how introducing a lower resolution, flawed, and limited grading system on top of the existing convention is supposed to solve a problem.

You are completely missing the point. Could work and does work are two different things.

You might think that. So might I. The trouble is, everybody climbing hard routes round about the time it became relevant thought moves harder than 6b were mostly still 6b, for about the next three or four grades.