UKC

Maybe they'll try this out (app first would no doubt be easiest) if there's enough support.

Where's the fun in that?

I presume you are concerned about the possibility of having less things to argue about 😁

Surely finer grades means more grade disputes.

TPS E0+?😉

'Fewer' things, surely?

I'd be interested to know why anyone would object to this. If you climb in the lower grades it doesn't affect you, if you climb in the higher grades you can ignore it if you want. But there is clearly a strong demand for finer gradation of the tech grade in the upper grades. 

I haven't objected to it, but I do see it as trying to hold back the tide.

What some people would consider to be range within individual grades, perhaps it's more related to their own strengths and weaknesses: balance, steep, thuggy, lay backs, rock type and so on? 

Where would 5c+ become 6a- it's like the older mild VS, grades within grades etc.. if a person really wants a 5c+ but not a 6a then perhaps they are already holding on too tight, chill, just climb a few more 5c. 

What I think would be better is to use grades like 7b or maybe even 7c at the top end. I should probably go and wash my mouth out now

tbh I think Font or French grades may make more sense (or a complete re-work or tech grades) but anything is better than the current situation were 6b can seemingly be anything from about F6A to F7B

Aren't you making the mistake of thinking the two grades are measuring the same thing, which they are not?

Presumably if 6b were F7b, it would be several consecutive moves of 6b and this would be reflected in the E grade, maybe E6 rather than E5 or something (assuming equally safe).

At precisely the same point that currently 5c becomes 6a (obviously!).

There is always going to be a grey area and disagreement due to individual strengths close to grade boundaries. If it is only the upper grades that are too wide (say 6c is the same width as 4b to 5a), then subdividing it into three grades will give no more grade boundary issues than there are currently from 4b to 5a, which we cope with fine.

No they should just swap the tech grade for a french grade. E4 (F)7a.

Following this they could then extend E grades across all the trad routes on their database using the format of E grade followed by local grade. They could start by allowing voting on both the adjective grade and french grade on all trad routes.

Just to make clear, the initial proposal was it to apply it to Brit 6b and above, as this is where to grade compression is. Not to 5c

The use of bouldering grades above 6a was the first plan, but this morphed into a simple plus and minus.

I think there's a very good reason why a 'hardest single move' grade has proved to be successful for easier routes but not for hard ones, and no amount of tinkering with the numbering system will cure it. The reason is that, while on less steep routes it's very often possible to hang around shortly before the crux and still have most or all of your strength left to do it. On harder and steeper routes, the difficulty of the hardest move itself isn't usually the limiting factor, rather it's the ability to hang around working it out (if onsighting) or the ability to get to the crux with enough left in the tank (if  redpointing) that's the limiting factor physically. A sport grade tells you that (as would a boulder grade for short routes) and is therefore a far more useful metric.

Aside from the fact that nobody has yet defined what a single move actually is, the very concept itself is only genuinely useful for routes that aren't pumpy, which excludes most routes above about E3 and plenty of easier routes too.

Furthermore, for routes that aren't sustained or pumpy (such as most easy and mid grade routes), the sport grade pretty much becomes a hardest move grade, since it's that which determines how many people are capable of physically climbing it. Of course, that means accepting a different numbering system for what is effectively the same thing, but it's hardly a new system as everyone is already familiar with sport grades anyway.

Not to mention that I suspect most people would be hard put to relate to French grades for easier routes; if they sport climb at those grades at all, the style would probably just be too different - it would take a lot of getting used to

Quite hard to define, but I think you know a move when you do one!

Not sure adding +/- at certain grades really helps, just makes things more confusing by introducing a brand new grade.

At least just using say Font grades across the board is simpler, and people *know* those grades. (Yes I know Font problem grades aren't strictly 'hardest move' and take into account the length of the problem, but everyone knows what a Font grade X move is). 

It's not a brand new grade. It is just subdividing, In fact its obvious advantage is that people don't need to get used to a brand new grade!

Everyone? I really have no idea and I've been climbing for 40+ years at times up to E5. Unless you actually go bouldering using those grades you won't know them. I suspect that people who climb in the lower grades are far less likely to be in to bouldering and it is those people for whom the current system works perfectly well. Without retaining the UK tech grade for lower grades, the people who climb at those grades are going to be paying in confusion for the small minority who climb at about E4 and above. Likewise if the a French sport grade is adopted - it's not appropriate at lower grades. Whatever happens for the minority at the top end should not mess up the system for the majority; either subdivide the tech grade or give something else in addition or instead of at the top end.  

Why not just add a french grade after the tech grade, so nothing gets a change of grade, we just add some useful information?

Adding a tech grade onto sport routes could be handy too.

If you want to be joined up, list them in the same order so that is easy to translate between sport and trad.

No, it's basically just saying this is easy for that tech grade, or that's hard for that tech grade. But that's all that every grading system basically does, just saying that X is harder than Y.

No, everyone does NOT know what a Font grade X move is, in the same way as you'd say I was wrong if I said " everyone knows what a UK tech grade 5b is".

I suspect that 6a may only actually need a "+" and "+ and -" may only need to be used for 6b onwards. I don't think anyone's worried about 5c.

Well after 48 hours it's still relatively close, 69 for, 60 against. And whilst that'd be seen as a huge majority for a political referendum, it doesn't seem definitive for this.

One point that someone made that I think's interesting, is that if this was tried out and it "failed" (whatever that might mean), then nothing's been lost, reversing it would be trivial. Changing to a different grading system would be much more difficult to undo (I don't mean technically, that would likely still be relatively trivial).

The main point that should never be lost in all these discussions is that a 2 factor/scale grading system will ALWAYS give you more information than a 1 factor/scale grading system.

Nah VS-

I think you massively overstate the utility one would gain from knowing it was soft 6b as opposed to hard 6b.

Sure I now know that if I were to hang on the rope and shake out for five minutes before trying the crux I probably can do it as opposed to probably would need to work it.

I still don't have a clue whether I will be able to climb it having started at the ground!

In practical terms it's not providing any real advantage and I will still be asking among my friends and acquaintances, "what's the French grade for that?" The E grade plus the French grade is super powerful and informative at E2+.

I think there may be a bit of confirmation bias at work here. I accept that tech grades 4c-6a are useful to a lot of current climbers, but there really is no reason at all why sport grades wouldn't be just as useful in the same difficulty range.

I accept your point (the only strong point in tech grades' favour, I think) that changing to sport grades would require many existing climbers to adapt. But the counter argument is that pretty much every new climber taking up trad will be (or will already have been) introduced to sport grades, so will not be faced with two competing systems to juggle at once.

The only reason people don't want low grade routes to have french grades added is because they are embarrassingly low on paper.

This leads to wounded egos and possibly a load of broken new climbers who don't treat that HVS 4c with quite the caution it requires.

Not sure about that. By my reckoning HVS 4c would change to around HVS F5a.

Not if it was a dodgy HVS (F)4c. Exactly the kind of "soft HVS" a newbie wall bred climber was looking to cut their teeth on.

If you are able to say that with any confidence, then there would obviously be no point in switching!

I don't have anything useful to add to the discussion, climbing far below the grade where this becomes a problem, except to say that I don't really understand why everyone is talking about HVS and low-grade climbers when the problem (as I understand it) only exists in the upper range of tech grades, where most people aren't climbing and those who are probably do more than a cursory look at the guidebook before throwing themselves at such a route?

I appreciate that it's been a long time since 6c became not hard and 6b approaching a rest, but the percentage of total climbers climbing at these grades must still be vanishingly low? Fixing the system at the upper end - whether it be by also supplying Font or French grades for routes, or introducing finer graduations in the system, or whatever - doesn't need to extend to the lower grades where the current system seems to work perfectly fine 

The issues with UK tech don't really affect lower grade stuff so it's rather easier to draw comparisons at 5a than 6c.

Besides, if you couldn't make a comparison then switching would be impossible anyway. It's kinda  a prerequisite of giving trad routes a French grade that you are going to have to, well... give them a French grade.

You seem to be forgetting that it is possible to give it a french grade by going out there and climbing it.

If you could make a comparison there would be no point in switching because they would be measuring the same thing.

Of course. By considering what French grade they should get. 

Well it’s hardly plausible that HVS 4c is going to end up being F7c is it?

If we can’t take a rough guess at how hard 4c is then British tech is a lot more broken than I realised. 

This idea isn't going to help because it's not getting to the route of why the British tech grade starts to fail at around 6b and above. There's two reasons.

1. The difficulty at this sort of level more often than not comes from there being multiple moderately hard moves in a row. I.e. we're talking about sequences as opposed to moves. The difficulty of hard climbing is always going to be best described by Font grades for sequences and French grades for sustained sections.

2. People don't know what individual British 6c or 7a or 7b moves feel like because they seldom encounter them. Grades are only really useful in comparing one thing to another thing of a similar difficulty so if you haven't come across many identified individual moves of that difficulty then how can you calibrate your gradeometer? I've only ever done one individual move which I know to be 6b because it was on a trad route with a one-move crux (Eavestone Wall). Everything else of that sort of difficulty has been a sequence better described by a Font grade or, for a sustained section of a route, a French grade. Adding a plus and minus doesn't help this.

I wonder how many of the people who voted have actually regularly climbed routes with 6b/6c moves on them?

Also, while old boys might have squeaked up some E5s in their time without ever going bouldering or sport climbing, the modern climber wanting to climb E5 and above will almost certainly be well versed in Font and French grades 

Not really sure what you're on about. There's a range of plausible French grades that an HVS 4c could get. It's not realistic that an HVS 4c would ever be F8a if it was bolted, and it's not particularly realistic that it would get F2.

HVS isn't where the issues lie. You can should be able to take a pretty good guess at how physically hard a British 4c route is going to be. The issue is in the higher grades where there is a much broader range of physical difficulty covered by a given tech grade. I'm a bit surprised that this is a remotely contentious observation.

Maybe, but lets not break the system for the majority who are never going to climb E5 or never aspire to doing so.

Maybe I'm behind having not read the latest posts, but there's no breaking the system because surely nobody is seriously suggesting that sequences or sections on easy routes need French/Font grades applying to them?

Of course. That was my point. It just seemed you were trying to make a direct translation.

I've no idea why you should think that. Any tech grade could be anything from a single move off a rest with the rest of the route far easier to being long, super-sustained and strenuous.

My point was that an HVS 4c is likely to come in at around F5a if bolted/imagined to be bolted. I.e. not an "embarrassingly low number" as asserted by Brown.

HVS 4c is likely to be somewhere between a single badly protected 4c move and sustained, well protected 4c climbing. The hardest moves should feel harder than 4b and easier than 5a, which is a modest but not huge range. From that you can estimate the range of physical difficulty that you would expect to find on an HVS 4c. Which part of that are you disagreeing with?

Eh, well yes. 4c to put it more simply!

None. I'm not sure what you point is. And I'm not sure why you are now taking into account the adjectival grade as well as the tech grade.

I was disagreeing with your assertion that there is a wider range of physical difficulty at a high tech grade (ie in the French grade) than at a low tech grades. Why should there be?

That's the whole issue being discussed. That above a certain point tech grades start to encompass an unhelpfully broad range of difficulty. You're literally on the other thread talking about "the compression problem at higher tech grades".

I'm not sure what you are reading into what I wrote, but you've picked up the wrong end of the stick somewhere along the way.

The compression issue is that there is a greater range of difficulty of individual move covered by, say, tech 6c than 4c.  I'm not sure why you are bringing "physical difficulty" French grades in to it.

Dear Lord, can we just assume that when I said "broader range of physical difficulty" it means the same thing as "greater range of difficulty"?

Well I think most people understand the French grade to be the physical difficulty grade.

Anyway, if we were at cross purposes, I'd have assumed you would have realised from the last part of my post at 16.42 where I made it expressly clear that I'd understood you to mean French grades, but you deleted that when you quoted me!

The FRCC comprehensive guidebooks already have a sport grade for harder stuff where appropriate AND they use the +- on the E grade for some routes. 
Useful info, but not essential. 

You edited your post to add that. I’d already started to reply so I never saw that change. I assume that you are posting in good faith, I’d appreciate the same in return. 

Doesn’t really matter what I say if you’re starting assumption is that I’m being dishonest. 

Yes, I added it for absolute clarity.

I am posting in completely good faith. Apologies if you hadn't seen my edit.

Anyway my previous post at15.58 should have made it clear that I'd taken your "physical difficulty" to mean the overall French grade.

I am not doubting your honesty at all; I just thought you had been a bit confused, but it turns out just unclear (to me at least)

Funny how we might be quite happy with equating "physical difficulty" with a sport grade, but somehow reluctant to acknowledge that this pretty obviously useful "physical difficulty" metric can be a more helpful guide for climbers than an ill-defined hardest move grade that only makes sense for a limited range of route grades.

There's also at least one FRCC guide (no longer current version) with MVS+ and VS-, go sort that one out 😁

John you must remember that when tech grades first came in (I think you're old enough, apologies if not), there was quite a bit of debate about whether it was for hardest move when helicoptered in on a top rope, or hardest move by the time you'd climbed "normally" to get there - which meant it might be a completely different hardest move, and do you remember Crags 4, Ron on Supersonic "could this be Britain's first 6c" (might have been "the UK's" rather than "Britain's") because it was being graded for the hardest move by the time you got there, and because Geoff was being media savvy provocative.

Eventually this debate settled down to "helicoptered in on a top rope" and in hindsight, this might have been the critical mistake, because 1) what exactly was the hardest move in isolation, and 2) the other way effectively graded a sequence between possible rests which would likely have been more clearly understood, would have better coped with a strenuous sequence of similarly hard moves and would have been much closer to the French grade.

The reason the debate went the "single move" way is I think largely down to the climbing scene at the time (or at least the reporting and "marketing" of) being very dominated by Peak grit, where routes are often very cruxy and single move grades made more sense at the time.

I don't remember whether any of your hard grit routes are cruxy or sustained (so far above my punter pay grade), but by the time you were doing those, it was too late.

An unambiguous apology for the accusation, without caveats and immediate retractions, is what I would have actually appreciated.

Both of you stop bickering please.

If you really expect that perfect communication of what you mean is going to happen through a text only medium, then you're being rather naive.

Chill and let it go.

As Will Hunt pointed out, on harder routes it’s not necessarily the individual hardest move which is the main issue.  The bigger issue is how sustained the route is before or after that move and indeed whether it’s one 6b or 6c move or several. The adjectival grade helps but it also reflects the boldness, so the nuances can get lost. Hence having a sport grade is pretty helpful.

That said, subdividing the tech grade makes sense. It’s just not the main issue. 

Of FFS. There was just a misunderstanding and unfortunate crossed wires with my edit. I have been entirely reasonable. 

Completely agree with all of that, and yes I am old enough to remember it at the time.

I always thought it was a bloody stupid idea to have as a grade something that wasn't part of the experience of actually climbing a route. Still do.

The fact that it's still just about relevant for routes you can easily hang around on is the only thing keeping it alive. The sooner it's consigned to history the better, and replaced by something that actually reflects the experience that ALL climbers can expect on routes of all grades.

Nope, I realise they measure slightly different things. The problem is that english 6b ranges from something I'd pretty much expect to flash to a difficulty that is bascially out of my league above a bouldering mat, let alone on a rope. The  spread is just too wide

If you are going to have a single tier grade for sport, it has to be an overall grade (otherwise how do you know who the best climber is?) and, in the absence of factors other than physical difficulty, it will therefore also be a physical difficulty grade. For trad we have the adjectival overall grade to tell us who the best climber is, so there is not the same argument for a physical difficulty grade; it has to stand on its own informational merit in the context of trad. Which it might do, but this does not follow from the fact we like it for sport.

I'm at one with John A on this. I've not responded on this thread so far because I responded (quite verbosely) on the thread only a few weeks ago that covered almost the same ground, and John, and others, have said most of what I would want to say. I've also not responded to the poll. As someone pointed out. it's really not appropriate for me to do so as I've never climbed the grades concerned (and never will). But replacing UK tech grades with French sport grades makes a great deal of sense to me at the grades I do climb. Yes, I would have to make a mental conversion, but for new entrants to trad climbing it makes every sense to grade how physically hard the route is using the system for doing that that they are already familiar with.

There is, as someone pointed out above, a slight, but potentially dangerous issue, that wall-bred climbers moving on to trad might see, say, "HVS f5a", and assume it's easy. They might need to be advised that this equates to leading an indoor wall line with its easiest route 5a, while carrying an extra couple of kg of gear, and where at least half the bolts have been removed, all the holds (including those on harder routes) are the same colour, and several of them are potentially loose.  You'll also be hanging around by each bolt for several minutes before clipping.

Martin

Interesting how those numbers seem very different to the posts. It is hard to find any anti posts. Yes people think it not needed, pointless, or will not fix the problem completely, or think sport or bouldering grades a better idea. But few if any seem anti the idea. If introduced, is there a single person who would request the removal of the + or minus?

What exactly is the strong reason not to do this?

I don't climb at these grades anymore, but at my prime I was pushing E3-E4 regularly. I never found hard Vs soft technical grades an issue. But then again (and maybe this is important) I read the guidebook and could interpret it. The Rockfax guides may have many advantages, but the text is simply not as informative. A picture may (allegedly)be worth a thousand words, but I'm not sure that this holds for trad climbing.

I voted no.

anyone who can climb any HVS on sight is a properly capable climber and no mistake..

Thanks for the honest reply! Just so we can get a better understanding about the no side, what do you see as the main downsides? Thanks. 

Does anyone know if French grades at one time didn't have the plus. Was its introduction controversial? If so maybe the history of that might be valuable for both sides of the debate? 

My reasoning is that actually the issue is the guidebooks.

I was recently browsing at the Rockfax (I think)  South West area guide at a local wall It was the same A5 size, glossy, with lots of lovely Topo photos and much less text. I then went home and compared it to my shelf of late 90's SW guides: 2 volumes of West Penwith, north Devon, South Devon and Dartmoor - areas I climbed in a lot as I was living in Plymouth at the time.

There is no way I would prefer the new glossy guidebooks (and I do own a few). The paucity of information is really quite quite remarkable. I'm not really surprised that today's climbers are complaining about trad grades. It's because the information we once relied on is not there.

I'm running from memory here (I'm on holiday a long way from any guidebooks). But take a classic like Astral Stroll (E1 5b). My recollection of the description in the Bosigran and the N Coast CC guide from the 90's is that while it gets the Standard E1, the guide left you in no doubt that this was potentially a very serious and committing area to climb in, and that as an E1 leader, you would want to have a bit spare on the tank if conditions weren't perfect. IIRC the new Rockfax guide has a beautiful photo on a gorgeous sunny day, describes it very briefly as a classic, and that's it.

So I really wouldn't be surprised even at E1 by climbers feeling they were being let down by the grading system. But my point is that it isn't the grading system. It is the guidebooks.

One final point. The Rockfax guides do work brilliantly for sport, and so far for me, for alpine as well. There used to be some really shockingly poor trad guides around - labours of love, and absolutely better than nothing, but badly presented. Rockfax have forced guidebook writers to up their game. I just think that the photo heavy and text light format does not really work for trad.

British adjectival grade + Font grade (where appropriate)

British adjectival grade + French grade (where appropriate)

British adjectival grade + both grades (where appropriate)

British tech grade --> bin

Everyone will get used to it pretty much instantly.

Sorted!

My main concern with that is that the interchangeable use of sport and Font grades would be very confusing unless a climber is highly familiar with both already. Also that the choice of which (or both!) to use would be quite arbitrary in many cases.

I think it would be enormously simpler if sport grades were to be used in general for all roped climbing and Font grades for boulders. Seems to work perfectly well enough in most of Europe that way. If it really is a two-move wonder on a rope then just add two letters to the Font grade and call it a sport grade! 😉

The difficulty with that is with those good old highballs which some will happily solo and others won't go near without a rope. 

Capitals vs lower case, and maybe a different colour/font in the guidebook for emphasis?

I could be persuaded by your simpler solution, though French grades are a bit naff for boulder problems.

Perhaps British adjectival grade + French grade (Font grade in brackets if it's especially cruxy/bouldery)

You do hear top climbers describing a hard new route as something like F9a+ with a crux that's an 8B+ boulder problem (hope I've got those the right way round 😁)

Just no

Good point, well made.

Guidebooks don't have enough words in these days, so we shouldn't change the numbers. The logic is impeccable.

My perspective on this is informed to a large extent by introducing beginners to climbing. When you, for example, take someone who has only bouldered indoors out sport climbing for the day, then trad climbing the next day, and explain to them the different grading systems and why they are like they are, the absurdity of it becomes pretty stark.

If you were designing a set of climbing grading systems from scratch, they would not look like they do. The only reason not to change them is because people who have been climbing for a long time are attached to them.

Well yes but how will I know if I'm a proper climber if I can't feel smug when I overhear people mixing up font, V and French grades up at the crag and be able to mansplain the intricacies of different grading systems? I need somthing to feel elitist about!

Interestingly enough a ‘UK Tech Plus Grading System’ was introduced for a brief amount of time between 2000 and 2009 in David Atchinson-Jones 1st Edition of ‘Sandstone – Southeast England’. This was a first step with regard to dealing with a growing issue of using a UK Tech grade as a stand-alone grade for top roping. Later this system was dropped and he introduced front grades as an adjective grade to the UK tech grade or at least to offer more accurate information.

The fact that the UK tech grade when being used with an adjective grade forms information on the idea of how many of a so-called move there are plus all the other risk aspects of the climb, the plus or minus aspect does not add much at all. I think as many people have pointed out that at some point the grade may well be dropped. What it will be replaced with is probably the French route grade but in the long run, I suspect the adjective side will be replaced also with a new traditional grade. At the moment though I suspect the current grading system will remain but it’s possible that in text a French grade may be introduced over time for specific routes that would benefit from having one.

Looks as if Ed Ward Drummond was ahead of his time with his 3 type grading system which indicated 1) technicality 2) protection3) rock quality. Perhaps 4) for strenuousness ought to be added. OTH Brit adj + tech grade and a couple of words in Route description seems to be understood by most. Is the +- system proposed really for adding info or feeding egos ?  If the grade is squashed at the top then surely the answer is to open the top end. I’m old enough to recall when xs was the top grade and that opened up into the e grades. 

You're not the only one on here who doesn't seem to have got the point that it isn't simply a matter of grade recalibration. The hardest move on steeper routes (which includes most from E1 upwards but increases quickly with the grade) is not going to be faced when fresh. The level of pump when you get to it is going to be at least as much a limiting factor as the difficulty of the move itself. With steep routes, the tech grade is simply measuring something relatively irrelevant compared to the overall cumulative difficulty of linking it all. Knowing that you might have been able to do the crux had you not been pumped is of little consolation.

But surely that the combination of adjectival and grade ie e4 5c is either death on a stick or a pump fest. Surely the words on Route describe make that clear? I can’t see a +- making any difference to that. What also makes that clear is if the F grade is also given if ie 6b+ is a heck of a difference to 7a for that example. You’ve then got it all , hardest tech move, difficulty of the undertaking and the seriousness. 

If you have 3 grades then it's pretty obvious that you're likely to be better informed than with 2. The question at hand is which grade to use in conjunction with the Adj grade in a 2 grade system to give the most useful info to the most climbers most of the time. And I'm yet to hear any good reason (that isn't essentially inertia) for preferring tech grades, when they are fundamentally of such limited use on any route where pump is a factor.

Not so much attached to them, it's more that it's sort of my 1st language and effectively I translate bouldering grades to UK tech (not doing any sport at the moment so no translation to French required).

But I appreciate that most people now coming into climbing would be having to translate French or bouldering grades to UK tech if they embarked on trad.

If you were designing grading systems now, and allowing at most a 2 factor system, then I think you'd have one to give the physical difficulty, and one to indicate the "quantity" of other things that might affect success, of which protectability/danger would be a significant component. On routes where these "other things" are negligible (well bolted sport, boulder problems with ok landings), the single physical difficulty grade would suffice.

If French grades were applicable to boulder problems, then French for all, add adjectival for trad could work really well, but one of the problems is having French for routes, bouldering grades for boulders. What we need is one grade to rule them all... 😁

I'm coming to the view that change is necessary, largely because most people coming into climbing nowadays, first learn and best understand French and bouldering grades.

How easy/difficult would it be to grade boulder problems with French grades - does it work?

In most cases the guide book text is similar and having a clear photo topo makes life a lot easier. In the case of Astral Stroll, a picture says a thousand words - you don’t need to say how serious it is if people can clearly see that it’s a traverse a few metres above the sea. So I wouldn’t particularly blame the guide books. 

While out climbing today, I was pondering on how easily I could give French grades to trad routes I have done. In general I think I would find it very difficult. Routes that I cruise would have such low French grades that I never do routes that easy when sport climbing, so I am unfamiliar with them, while my experience of the supposed physical difficulty of routes I don't cruise are so massively clouded by either being gripped to a lesser or greater extent or by the effort of placing the gear, or both, that I really have little idea what grade they would feel if bolted. So I think I would find a transition to the French grade pretty difficult, though maybe possible over time. 

I would have thought that the obvious solution is for UKC to add a voting option for French grades (and Font grades if people want them, though they mean almost nothing to me!). People could get them there if they want and it could become a resource for a possible future transition in guidebooks.

A sensible, practical way forward.

I think possibly you've got the same "issue" as me; UK trad grading (adjectival & tech) is my first "language" and other grading is like a second language that I have to translate back to my first. Maybe with enough use different grading would start to feel natural in the same way that eventually you're able to think in a second language.

Most new climbers are the opposite, by the time they get to trad they're having to translate UK trad grading back to whatever grading they've become totally used to.

In some respects I agree with you - clear Topo photos do make life a lot easier. But I don't think that in general the descriptions in Topo guides are that good. Yes, they baldly give the same information (go up, go left, go right), but they lack the nuance which gives a lot of useful information.

On Astral Stroll, my broader point is that the more limited information in a Topo guide really doesn't give the same level of information about the overall ambience and seriousness of the area. Like me, you have been climbing for years so you can look at a crag and a route, and weigh up the seriousness of the situation as the tide and the weather change. Not everyone can do that. Every summer the coastguard is busy rescuing stuck tourists. I do worry about inexperienced trad leaders(maybe good sport climbers) not understanding the potential seriousness os some trad routes because the Topo photos give an unrealistic expectation. 

I'm not too bothered about the tech grade going as such. It's if the next step is that they come for the adjectival grade that resistance will be needed!

I think there is a far greater risk that the adjective grade gets dropped if no changes are made to the overall trad grade.

The suggestion of moving to the following:

Adjective Grade = how hard it is for the average climber to climb the route, taking into account the difficulty of the climbing, the danger, the insecurity of the moves, and any other X factor's.

Technical/ grade = french grade of how hard it is to climb on a top rope assuming the easiest sequence is used.

Would I think give our system the ability to move forward into the future on a much firmer foundation. The adjective grade still has primacy and it's not just a danger rating by proxy as it is in the Egrader algorithm. Its not bound by the tr grade and it still provides it's primary purpose of telling you how hard it is to climb the route.

If it's really hard to place gear then it gets a higher E grade. If it's easy climbing with terrible gear but totally fluffable it gets a higher Egrade. Conversely if it's super obvious, dialed in moves it might get fewer E points even if it's dangerous.

I think we are talking about "opening up the top end" Brit 6b and above. But doing it in a way that is simple, (I thought) uncontroversial (got that wrong) and fast. All 6b's remain 6b, but some will be 6b- or 6b+. The French seemed to not have had a problem doing this with sport grades.

While I understand the approach of simply adding a +/-, it feels like sticking a plaster on a broken leg. The problem with British tech (in my opinion and in what seems to be the opinion of many others) is that a grade that represents only the hardest moves feels quite useless on a long trad route. This in combination with modern topos leaving out details that would've previously been included makes the tech grade feel relatively useless.

Another problem I had personally with tech grades when first starting trad was that I had them confused with French grades and ended up getting on a route that was far too hard for me to lead because I thought I could easily lead 5a. This definitely is partly my fault as a naïve climber, but it is an experience I wouldn't be surprised if others went through too. This is obviously less important than the other issues raised, but having multiple conflicting systems with the same grading language can be very confusing to those not used to it and possibly lead to people being massively out of their depth (aka me).

I started out all in favour of the +/- idea. The tech grade compression at the top end seemed silly and it struck me as a really obvious minor tweak to bring back some differentiation without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But contributions from people with experience at the grades where it's most relevant, particularly very clear explanations from John Arran, have convinced me that the real problem with the tech grade at the top end isn't the compression but the "single move" constraint. I've swung back to favouring the addition of French grades at the top end. Though it's largely academic for me because in a good year I only just scrape into grades where it becomes even slightly relevant.

Given that nobody has said why +/- would not be an improvement, I suspect that most of the votes against are actually votes against the tech grade altogether. Which I don't think was really the point!

If tech grades were abandoned, I'm pretty sure that I would spend the rest of my life looking at old guide books and asking people what tech grades they thought routes were. A bit like British climbers abroad trying to find out what E grade routes are at the moment.

Because the modern CC and FRCC guides have already fixed this issue by adding a french grade (or boulder grade) to the routes at E5 and above where it makes sense. In this case +/- wouldn't give any useful information

I'm surprised you haven't got used to French grades for trad routes through trad climbing in Europe? It's worked for me: some seem hard, some seem soft, much like any grading system, but you know roughly when they feel right.

Interesting point, and a counterpoint to the long post that I put on the other associated thread. (https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rock_talk/broken_brit_trad_grades_why-761...)

We are both very much agreed that recent Topo style guides leave out important details that are useful to a trad climber.

But where we differ (and your view definitely has merits) is that coming from sport to trad you confused sport grades with UK tech grades and got onto routes that were too hard. I would like to keep the grading systems separated as far as possible to make it crystal clear that sport is not trad and you can't do a simple comparison.

But interestingly today's news item "First Ascent of Anapanasati E9 6c by Matt Helliker" includes the following...

"if the line were on a solid limestone seacliff (such as Pembroke), then he would have graded it hard E8 with its 7c+ climbing and a droppable 7B boulder sequence above a very big run out"

So we've got the whole lot there, UK adjectival, UK tech, French and Font 😁

I was thinking more today about all this at the crag today and am swinging back more in defence of the tech grade. At the very least we will still need the language of it. I was arguing that a route must be harder than E2 because it has a run out with 5c uncomfortably far above less than bomber wires and ending with 5b that you might hit the ground from. How do you say that with French grades or could it be said with bouldering grades? I think that if official grades switched from tech to French, we would just be switching informal stuff from French to tech. Nothing gained overall. 

Sort of in a fairly vague sense. I certainly feel much less informed than if I were given a straight E grade. We make do abroad, but I doubt there are many British climbers who wouldn't enquire about an E grade when they could. I made a point of giving my opinion of E grades in my Wadi Rum article on here and I know they are appreciated. I think I once came close to persuading a British born writer of an American guidebook to put E grades at least in the index for the classics. It would have been really useful for travelling brits and would have been worth it anyway for the American reaction!

Which gives people a decent idea of how hard the route is. 

It depends on the style of route for me. If it's sustained and well protected, a French grade is totally sufficient (I guess these are the kinds of route I generally choose to climb when I've travelled). If it's a bit wiggy and awkward to protect, I'd prefer to know an E grade!

I think we agree in quite a few aspects. I totally agree that trad needs to be distinct from sport, this is where I see the adjectival grade shining.

My issue when I started trad was that I thought they weren't distinct when they actually were. I think my experience would have actually been much safer and educational if I had correctly been able to understand the difficulty of the route, rather than believe it was actually much easier.

I think that most climbers, especially those who focus on indoors (me included before I started trad) are absolutely terrified of trad and don't want to be leading anywhere near the limit. 

Maybe this is more of an endorsement of learning from an experienced partner on second before you lead, which was something I missed out on mainly due to hubris. As it stands I do still love the Trad grading system, especially the adjectival grade, I just think that the tech grade often ends up being an afterthought when it really should be a technical guide.

It definitely needs to be more complicated 

I really think that scrapping the tech grade and replacing it with the "toprope" grade will open (British) Trad grades up to a worldwide market.

It means you can add it to another system as a complimentary prefix. When in America its Bachar-Yerian (5.11d) E6 5.11d, when in Wales its Lord of the Flies (E6 6a) E6 (F)7a+, and when in Europe its "Unknown crack at Annot" E6 (F)7b+.

I find UK Adjective grades incredibly useful in the range I've climbed at which is up to E7 and I think that it unleashed in the marketplace of ideas as a Trad prefix they could attain universal adoption.  (I have basically stopped looking at the tech grade on routes above E2 as I don't find it provides any useful information to me.)

I also think it will be great for preserving danger on routes as the headline number increases with risk and people love chasing big numbers.

I've actually rarely used the French grade for trad in Europe (more in Wadi Rum probably), but where I have it has been almost always for a completely different style of climbing than the steep euro-cranking I am used to with bolts. It has mostly been granite or sandstone crack systems and I suppose I have almost thought of it as a separate grading system with 6a being about HVS/E1 as a sort of rough benchmark for the sort of stuff I've neen doing (is that about right?). I really don't think my experience of it sport climbing has been helpful at all but I accept it might be in higher grades.

That is a valid point. Foreigners seem to have heard of E grades even if they often fail to understand them but it is understandable that they would find the tech grade meaningless. With the French grade they are familiar with attached they are far more likely to "get" E grades which can only be a good thing.

I like to think of the greatest strength of the E grade as a "kudos grade". I think the same information could probably be implied with a protection grade and some sort of physical difficulty grade (such as is done crudely in the US), but almost everyone likes a bit of kudos!

As used in the US, the YDS is a bit rubbish, but maybe it would be the ideal solution to adopt it alongside the E grade. The best explanation I have heard of the YDS is that it is a sort of mini French grade for the hardest passage between stopping places (I presume a stopping place on an easy route might pretty much be a no hands ledge while just a decent shake out on a really hard route), so it might offer the best compromise between Font grades and French grades. It would also have the advantage that lots of British climbers are already familiar with it for trad. Perhaps the Americans could reciprocate by scrapping their R/X thing and adopting our E grades. Both systems would be improved and we would enter a golden age of transatlantic harmony.