UKC

I'm trying to link two 8A boulders together but there's differing opinions between people on what the grade would be any suggestions?

E8 6c

Classic

16AA

Serious answer, it depends on too many variables to answer in such a simplistic manner. And newsflash, there's almost always differing opinions on grades. Welcome to climbing.

Link two together? How? Do you climb the crux of both? Straight up? Traverse? Tell us more! Have you linked it all yet?  Because trying something and actually climbing something can seem miles apart in terms of difficulty until you work out the beta/get used to the moves etc...

Surely you just walk between the two 8A boulders so the grade is as for the individual boulders (unless the walking is particularly fraught).  Now, linking two 8A boulder problems on the same boulder would be a whole different thing.

Maybe have a search for other link ups (maybe Parasellas? or abroad) and see what they've been given.  Didn't Ondra do some chunky link ups recently (8B+ into 8A = 8C or something? I can't remember the details). If both problems are endurance rather than cruxy then a route grade maybe be more appropriate than a boulder grade (e.g. route 8c+).  Is there a good rest between them?  Remember you aren't doing any harder moves so its unlikely to be a massive jump in grade.  Why not do the link then tell us what it was and we'll give you lots more conflicting advice?

16B, come on.

Well, 16B, 'but only just, though it may feel harder in all but the best conditions...'

Probably not easier than 8A and not harder than 8B. Let us all know how it goes.

Oh! I was expecting a thread on TPS!

How disappointing

The "SuperTed" grade maths is that adding extra starting moves means that you're more warmed up for the main event, and hence V11 + V11 = V10. This logic has been successfully applied to Kudos wall in the peak, and i would imagine would work equally well in other eliminate style venues, say for instance, Gollums Cave in Avon.

An alternate dodgy grade maths:

Assume 8A = V11

("V"11 + "V"11 + 2) / 2 = "V"12 = 8A+

For that to be a valid approximation, you'd have to climb all of the parent problems, with no overlap and no rest or shake-outs in between (and no heel hooks).