UKC

Hi, I'm about to step way out of my sphere of knowledge.

People here often say Brit trad grades break down after 6a, as each division covers too wide a range of difficulty.

This seems to be logical, as I'm not a good climber, yet with practice can send the odd easy 6b. This really just leaves 6c, as 7a is as rare as an unpolished hold at Chudleigh at most crags. Yet in Brit Adjectival grades there are many grades above my capability, ditto sports grades, V grades, YDS grades. So the case put by others seems very strong.

As Brit tech grades are about one move, or a short sequence, they must be close to bouldering grades. So why not just lay out a short sequence of,

6a = V3, 6b = V4, 6c = v5......

And just reevaluate all hard climbs on this new scale. The locals will know if that current E5 6b is V5 or V6, and is now E5 new7a. 

This would preserve our system, which at the bumbly grades I climb at works well. I get the impression that the majority (but not all) of harder UK trad routes are crux like, rather than sports like endurance fests, so bouldering grades rather than sports grades are the closer fit. Particularly as crux move is what the tech grade is closest to.

Just a thought. And boy would all those new grades give people something to argue about down the pub. And as no route would be assigned a lower number or letter than currently, all egos preserved. 

You know what I hate more than British tech grades above 6a? Bloody V grades! Tonnes of grade compression in the lower grades, let's keep it Font please and maybe can have a discussion. 

Sounds greats for the visiting tourists pushing their grade from V2 to V3, Left and Right Wall! Oh look there's another wall route next to us, only one grade harder. 

Completely agree about low grade compression in v grades. In fact I hereby propose an addendum to the low grade system, perhaps something similar to this...

V0 (easy), V0 (moderate), V0 (difficult), V0 (very difficult), V0 (hard very difficult)....

Seems somewhat comforting for some reason!

Do you mean you lead UK technical 6a and occasionally 6b?  If so, you’re being modest.  However, the UK system is designed to grade on sight leading rather than ‘sending’/head pointing.  It also needs to cover a lot of different rock types and styles of climbing.

In my (limited!) experience there’s a big difference between UK 6b and 6c (the difference between what I could on sight second and what I never managed without a fall).  And on sight leading is a different thing entirely. I never led harder than 6a on sight, so maybe I can easily tell the difference in this range.

On trad routes French grades are a much more useful addition than V grades. 

Most people discuss the French grades once you get into the bigger numbers. Might as well have them written in the guidebook 🙂

People get a bit too hung up on 'the grade'. We already have useful additions to the basic UK trad grade, in the form of the route symbols in Rockfax guides.

These fill in the gaps that the trad grade don't tell me. I know I'll enjoy a reachy, technical, rounded holds route, then get humiliated on a pumpy crack line. I already have all the information I need and want.

I'd rather have a boulder grade for a slabby / non sustained route or most on grit e1-e5 I think. I think french grades make a lot more sense once the sustained difficulties and pump management become the crux e.g. London wall and most routes harder (I imagine) 

I've always personally seen the Brit tech grade as only useful in conjunction with the adjectival grade. On its own a 5b means little, however when combined with E1 I know that the route is standard E1 difficulty and decently well protected, as opposed to E1 5a which I would see as easier but less protected.

I understand this isn't very helpful and I do definitely find a sport grades useful when figuring out overall difficulty of a climb, however I don't think the system is completely broken

You've clearly forgotten the most important UKC commandment:

- Thou shalt not criticise the British grading system for it is sacred

The British system in principal works ok in conjunction with a little description, knowledge and guesswork. In practice, if we were being rational about it as a working descriptive system rather than another national fetish we'd decompress the 6's into the 7s and open up the 8s, actually make it really useful.

jk

Don't take this the wrong way, and at the risk of sounding like a dick. You climb E1, and the grades still work pretty well at those grades. 

Now you're being modest about your abilities

I don't need to climb E8 to understand grades, I am aware that British tech grades are compressed relative to other grading systems at higher levels.

What is the actual problem here that needs solving though? Are people getting on E5+ and being surprised how difficult a climb is? If you're getting on routes at those grades you're not some punter that just sees a number, ties on and goes for it without having a good look at it and using other information to know what you're getting into.

Clearly there is a problem with high grade stuff, evidenced by the fact sports grades have become commonplace. At my own punter level I like to try to onsight routes at British 6a, I don't know if that's going to be f6b (warm up for me) or 7a (gonna have to fight like an absolute b*rstard to onisight). Now I've kinda got round this by only getting on things I know I can safely fall off but its a little annoying. I don't really think the Brtish system is too bad (at in the low-mid E's I climb) but if you were to re build it it wouldn't look much like it currently does! 

Err, that's exactly what onsighting is! If I jump on a route which is 6C it could be anything from Font 6C-Font 7C+. something I may flash steadily, to something which may as well be a dyno to the moon.

English 7A is far, far worse.

Edit: I've basically said the same as Ebdon 🙂

In reply to:

Would smaller tech grade bands from 6b upwards help?

Well, I don't want to get in the way of another thread about grades that doesn't actually go anywhere....but

Why don't we have a discussion about would have to happen to *actually* change things for the better? Because evidently, just talking about it on UKC doesn't work.

I would suggest the most realistic route to change things, would be to lobby UKC to start allowing people to vote for font/french grades on trad routes in their database.....with a view to at some point in the future, start incorporating it into guides, once they've had a chance to settle.

When the problem people are describing is that the system is specifically only broken at higher grades, pointing out that it works fine at lower grades doesn't really add much to the conversation.

If someone with that kind of experience is looking for something to headpoint at the limit of their ability, sure, they'll probably know some people they can ask for suggestions and have good tactics for pre-practice. But plenty of people operating at those grades are mostly climbing with the same onsight approach that most of us would typically apply to most of our climbing, and that makes a meaningful grading system just as valuable to them as to any other climber.

Unless I'm missing something it seems to me that the compression problem at higher tech grades could be solved at a stroke by adding +/- above 6a. It would look very much as it does now. 

All of these discussions seem to be based on the misunderstanding that a couple of numbers and letters can tell you all you need to know about a route. You need a text description or some symbols at least to give all the info most climbers want.

That wasn't what I said. What I said was, there is plenty of additional information out there if people do want to supplement the information provided by the British trad grade alone.

I'm just not sure anyone has the energy or motivation to undertake this, which would be a massive task, in addition I think the British system works well up to 5c (I know some would say 6a) which is where the vast majority operate. I also think E grades are pretty good (Arguments around headpointing notwithstanding). 

ETA, I find this cartoon funny whitch is semi relevent here 

I'm not sure that's true. When I was a punter trying E5's I was taking precisely the same approach that I am using just now as a punter at E2. I get all the information I reasonably can (short of feeling I've forfeited the onsight) before tying on and having a go.

I guess we'll just have another few days worth of discussion where everyone agrees British tech grades are compressed at the top end, and nothing changes.

Not necessarily a bad thing, what on earth would we pass the time with if tech grades were made more sensible

I suppose the intesting thing (if such things interest you!) Is that for hard test pices modern guidebooks will give a French grade, and that and font grades are what you hear the pros talking about on social media.  Even at low mid E classics its not uncommon to hear or see mention of a french grade, so this is a change that in some respects is happening organically. 

As an aside I think French grades don't work well for short routes (I.e. lots of UK trad) so you might want a boulder grade as well - possibly information overload!

I was referring to what you said in your original post on the thread...

When the discussion is about the top end of grades, the fact that you already have all the information you need at lower grades isn't very relevant. I agree that the Rockfax symbols you mentioned add useful info, but not really about the grade.

To be clear, I'm also not operating at a high enough level for the compression of the tech grade to be very relevant to my climbing. But I can easily see the problem people are describing. At levels where the tech grade is so compressed that it doesn't really add any info, there might as well not be a tech grade included at all. And I can see that I would miss having a tech grade when I'm looking at guides myself.

As you're well aware (but others may not be), adding just +, or +/- to 6a tech and above has been suggested as a solution several times, but unless it's actually implemented somewhere, the current situation (adding font, French, V) will just continue.

IMO I think it's now too late unless someone like Rockfax or Ground up decide to try it out and it's well received.

See https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rock_talk/adding_+-_to_uk_tech_grade_poll...

I'd certainly favour that. Firstly it's an easy fix and secondly it will expose and allow tweaks of minor misgrades, to be consistent with how the two combined grades work well below mid extreme. I remember how, during BMC and YMC work, because most highballs were being given trad and bouldering grades this 'exposed' many historical misgrades (usually, but not always, significant trad undergrades: eg if it's V2 or f6A it can't also be VS 5a but it could be cruxy VS 6a or an HVS 5c or a brutal E1 5b, if the trad grade is wrong, or V0/f5, if the bouldering grade is wrong).

no offense but the rockfax symbols generally mean nothing to me. its just not that useful. some 'heart flutter' routes seem safe whilst others are scary or even death on a stick...

the french grade is the next most (and possibly as/more useful) than the uk grade. combined it should give you about as good an idea as possible, that is without using the US system. i quite like the idea of french grade plus R or X.

So far the suggestion seems to be to have grading system of two parts the french grade to show the overall difficulty and a boulder grade for the crux, if only such a system already existed...

Sport grades only work for headpoints or routes with fixed/majority fixed gear, they can't account for the amount of effort required to place the gear. if a route is f8a to toprope but all the gear is super fiddly and in inconvenient places who's going to be able to grade it accurately? There is no precedent in the French grades to allow for this.

Pretty sure nobody has been suggesting sport grades as a replacement for E grades. A lot of people now think it makes total sense now to use the sport grades that everyone is already familiar with (from wall at least, and often from sport crags too) to replace UK tech grades (which are now only genuinely useful between about 5a and 6a).

Why ever not? By convention we don't grade for placing the clips these days (though there's often no grade difference either way in reality) but that's a new-ish convention, you don't have to go far back to find live discussions of the pinkpoint vs redpoint. If we established the convention such that when f grades are applied to routes climbed on gear then that grade is for the route placing a typical amount of gear on lead. That works just fine, you just need to establish the principal even if it slightly different to the one used for sport.

Someone who has climbed the route placing the fiddly gear and has sufficient experience to compare it with others. If they can lead it and give it a British grade they could equally give it an f grade for that lead which as you clearly identify, may well be in excess of f8a.

We might not want this system but there's no reason why it couldn't be applied.

jk

Can I point out that it's not a problem with French grades per se, after all the french happily grade short routes all over France. I think the problem is that we (brits) don't really know how to apply French sport grades to short routes.

But let's face it. The E5 is your starting point for whether you can get up it, not the 6a/6b/6c. It might be easier but more run out, in which case you should have something in the tank, or it could be well protected but bloody desperate. In which case, you're still good.

One issue with that is that I am pretty unfamiliar with French grades in the range that would apply to the majority of the trad routes I do; I rarely do a sport route as physically easy as the vast majority of trad routes I do. I suppose I could get used to them, though I'm not actually convinced that sport grades would work very well for most routes below about E2 anyway. I think the fact is that the UK tech grade works better up to that sort of grade and perfectly well up to about E4/5 even if the French grade is more useful above that.

.

That would be covered by the E grade. 

Our trad grades work perfectly fine for the overwhelming majority of climbers.

If Johnny Foreigner wants to come over here climbing, what better souvenir to take home than a HVDiff 5b, VS 4a, or E1 6b? 

I think the grade system gets you in the right ball park (whichever one you use!). There is wide variation at both ends of the scale and plenty of sandbags and soft-touches in between. 
A wise man once said “there’s them you can do, and them you can’t” which simplifies it nicely. What more do you need?

Andy

My controversial climbing opinion is that if you want a two-part grade for UK trad where one part is an "overall" grade (eg UK adjectival grades), the best second part would still be a "danger grade". The first question that I'd ask about a route is "am I going to path this, find it hard, possibly fail or definitely fail". The second, applicable to routes where I might fail, is "if I do fail, am I going to end up hanging around getting laughed at, or am I going to end up in hospital"? If I've got the answer to those two questions then that's generally enough and I'm probably happy to have a go (or not) without having to hunt down any further beta.

I guess you could make an argument for also wanting an "oblig" type grade for mountain routes where you can't just lower off and ab for the gear later so hitting a move that you just can't get past by any means is actually quite a big issue. But then the current system doesn't really help you there either.

Having briefly been lucky enough to climb with some really good climbers and been able to work (and be dragged up routes) much harder than I can on sight I learnt that above E2 (for me anyway!) the problem isn't necessarily how hard any move might be but will the hard move bring you to a well deserved rest or to another move that's just as hard. 

Thanks everyone for your comments.

If people could enter votes into the poll above on whether to encourage the addition of an optional +/- to 6a, 6b, 6c, 7a (as we have in sports grades) that would be great:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rock_talk/adding_+-_to_uk_tech_grade_poll...

Thanks Michael.

When doing so, it might worth be thinking if you are dead against the idea, or just not sure it is worthwhile. These are very different things. The former suggests that if it was introduced, you would desire its removal.

My reasoning for why this topic is worth thinking about is:

1. for some reason I am quite passionate about our trad grading system. I'm not sure I can defend this stance, and it is just a grading system after all.

2. based on the logic presented earlier, it would seem to fail at or above 6a.

3. Whilst this a higher grade than most trad climbers climb at, it isn't at the top of the top end. As far more people are climbing sport 7b and above, I can see Brit 6b at some point being seen as a much more common thing to be aiming at

4. Things tend to percolate down, be it tight shoes or red pointing, so if there is pressure to also include sports or bouldering grades at 6a or above in trad descriptions, this might spread through the whole range of grades. So at some point I can see VS 5a being replaced by F5c PG. I'm not sure this matters, and many might like the idea, but as I just said, for some reason I don't like the idea. Hence the idea is to solve the this failing with the aim of preservation of the system.

5. Point 4 implies of course that not only might we see E5 6b+, but eventually VS 5a-. However in both the French and YDS systems the fine graduation hasn't crept all the way down, so possibly not. And I'd rather see VS 5a- than F5c PG.

6. Some replies have stated this would be a lot of work. I'm not sure about this. In most guide books (not Pembroke!) the number of routes at this grade is rather small, and we have the comments and votes on UKC; locals will have a feel for the routes anyhow. Taking the photos for the guide must be much harder. I'd be more than happy to do this for my local crags, but as I pointed out earlier, I can't climb those grades.

7. It is reversible, in that if people shout it down, it can be removed during the next iteration. 

Anyone writing a guidebook at the moment who agrees and fancies testing the waters if the voting suggests people don't think the whole idea is an act of madness?

Thanks again.

D

VS (F)5c would cover it nicely.

Eventually the F would become redundant.

Yes, that would be an alternative. But as I indicated above, for reasons that are not possibly rational, I'd like to see the Brit system preserved. I.e. an overall grade followed by a tech grade. Maybe I just want to bag the odd 6b- before I die.

Interesting idea. Not directly comparable though, as the tech grade is for the hardest move or perhaps short sequence, whereas most boulder problems are longer than that. A sport grade provides a better sense of the overall difficulty and if it’s cruxy, the guide book could note that and put forward a sport grade to reflect this. 

On a side note, I don’t think trad 6a could ever be f6b. To my mind, it should be at least f6b+ and that would be a cruxy E2 6a. Most trad 6a routes would be 6c to 7a, some 7a+ and perhaps a few might get 7b.

Hi. During the above, we seem to have moved the initial proposal of a major re numbering, to simply replacing Brit 6b with 6b-, 6b, 6b+. Ditto 6c and 7a.

Would you see this as possible, sensible and uncontroversial?

It seems sensible, in conjunction with including sport grades for E6 and above routes and some E5 routes. In fact some guide books already include sport grades. It won’t really make sense for grit but makes a lot of sense for longer pitches. Subdividing the tech grades from 6b makes sense regardless of the nature of the route. 

It's been broken for so long now it's a wonder that we've all managed to get by all this time  

Ah - British trad grades...

First, we'll make you learn a bunch of acronyms, some of which sound like medical conditions.  (VD anybody?)

And the easiest ones (Mod, Diff, etc) will be deemed so lowly to not even have a tech grade attached.

After that, you've graduated to something deemed worthy of a tech grade!  However it'll probably be something like a 4c, so you'll be expecting a gym route 4c jug ladder.

Add in some obscure ones only used in certain regions just to keep people on their toes (I only learnt of MS and MVS relatively recently).

Finally you'll get to something that uses numbers - E2 is definitely bigger than E1.  But the tech grades will still confuse some visiting climbers. ("Hey, that blank grit arete is E4 6a.  I can climb F6a easily!")

And once you've reached upper E-level wad status, you'll informally add a comment like "the climbing feels about F8a".

I suspect the answers are yes, maybe, maybe.  And people will still use the sport grade to describe how physically hard it is.

 "Subdividing the tech grades from 6b makes sense regardless of the nature of the route. "

Thanks for that. Please can we do this guidebook people 

People who routinely climb routes of those grades are repeatedly telling you that it's unlikely to help and it's not what they want to see. But you seem insistent on having it anyway. Why?

Thanks John, because 

1. People have been expressing the opposite view too. Some climb those grades.

2. The majority of the votes have been Yes in the poll (although the majority is small)

3. The yes side seem enthusiastic. The no side seem more based around, can't see the point, not sure it would help, please can we have sport or bouldering grades. Which of course was my original suggestion. And previously made by many others. Few seem to be saying. No! Then giving a logical reason why keeping things as they are is the better option. I must admit I'm struggling to see how it can be better if people are willing to put the effort in to add the odd plus or minus.

4. As I said a couple of times above, a probably irrational, and not logically defensible desire to defend / keep the Brit grading system. Not sure why to be honest. But I feel that if things are bust at the top, and people keep saying so, the solution that might be selected will remove our system as things tend to flow downwards. 

If I had to choose, I’d prefer a sport grade to a subdivided tech grade but both would also be helpful.

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!

How much work is it though. UKC could just add a font grade column to their logging page for routes of E5+

My experience of talking with people about harder routes in the 6b and harder range usually goes something like this.

"That e7 6b looks like a cool route, how hard is it?"

"About (insert sport grade from 6c to 7c+"

And then you have a good idea of how hard it is.

So we just add that to the description (something I note already happens occasionally) and retain the uk grade to give some danger/sustainedness guidance.

For sports grades for trad routes can I just clarify, is the consensus this is for how hard it is on a hypothetical top rope or is it how hard it is including placing gear? I had always assumed the former (as that's what you do for sports climbing) but I think on a recent similar thread on here some people were doing the latter.

I guess getting the correct f or F grade for each route would be a pretty epic task. But would keep people arguing on here for decades to come, so maybe it's in UKCs interst to crack on!

Well I did write a substantial answer on the other thread.: The problem is not the grading system but the move towards topo style guides which are light on description.

Thanks for that. Much appreciated. Reading that you seem less anti the idea of giving people the option of adding a + or - if they wish, but think that a more helpful solution would be more text in guidebooks. Have I got that right? Thanks

Yes, and maybe I can expand a bit further, as I have been pondering further on this topic since I wrote my original reply

By way of background, I've been climbing for 40 years now. I started off as a trad climber, but have climbed a lot of mainly lower grade sport with my kids as they have been growing up. I'm now teaching them to climb trad (and alpine). I still climb quite a lot of long(ish) multipitch 'plaisir' sport with them.

I was climbing at the Corny di Machaby (sport) in the Aosta Valley earlier this year. We just rocked up, looked at the Topo in the car park, picked a line, and climbed 11 pitches without a care in the world. 

I can't imagine doing the same on a trad route. Recently I climbed Cioch Direct on Skye (trad). Ok, so it's a route I have done at least half a dozen times, including solo a couple of times, albeit not for 20 years. And my climbing partner that day has done it a similar no of times, about the same time ago (we hadn't climbed together since university). But we did get the guidebook out at one point to double check which way the route went at the top of the crux pitch.

I think that what I am getting at is that trad and sport are different games with different expectations, and in general one prepares for them differently. In general, I don't need to think about routefinding on a sport route, but it can be a big issue on trad - even on shorter routes: does the line naturally follow the gear, or do I need to move off line to protect it (and at the more extreme end of this question- how do side runners impact the grade). On a sport route, I know I can generally both fall off and retreat with impunity, whereas both might be more demanding on a trad route (leaving aside the extreme example of Breakaway in N Devon, where my guidebook states that "retreat after the end of P2 would at best be extremely difficult, and at worst terminally easy".

Which brings me (eventually) to my main point. I think that there is a false equivalence being promoted in some quarters between sport and trad. While I am perfectly capable of getting scared and backing off sport routes, there is little risk of injuring anything but my dignity. By contrast, there are quite a lot of trad routes you could potentially hurt yourself on of you messed them up. There are times and places you just have to give yourself a stiff talking to, because you are out of options.

So before committing to a trad route, especially one towards my limit, I want the best information possible - and I am very firmly of the opinion that while good topos are very valuable,  good text descriptions are an absolute must ( and the Rockfax ones tend to be too lightweight due to the reliance on photos and symbols)

A final couple of points:

First, there is no real harm in having +/- on UK technical grades on trad routes - as you say my point is simply that I think that with good guidebook text they are unnecessary.

Second, I am very much opposed to swapping UK tech grades for sport grades as part of a trad grade. The games are too different, so using a different grading system makes sense. As anecdotal evidence, think of the number of social media posts requesting partners that are something like "lead 7a+ sport, E1/2  trad". There was a thread here on UKC a year or so back that posited that Right Wall (E5) would be sport 6b+ if bolted. 🤣

I think from E5 and certainly above that, having a sport grade is very useful. I can make an assessment of seriousness from what I can see (unless it’s a sea cliff route which I can’t see!) and hopefully the guide book description will mention if it’s bold. As for physical difficulty, again looking at the route gives you an idea but E5 6a on its own just tells me that it’s somewhere in the 6c to 7a+ range, which is rather wide. Whereas VS 4c is a fairly narrow grade and adding a sport grade doesn’t really serve any useful purpose.

I think Right Wall is 6c and that’s a useful piece of information. Fear and Fascination is also E5 6a but it’s 7a+ and that is also a useful piece of information (and indeed Lakes Rock includes sport grades for the steep routes at Dove Crag).

Well I've only occasionally climbed at E5, but I was pretty solid at E3-E4 many years ago. As gradings reflect a consensus, I always assumed that if I couldn't get up a route, the problem was me, not the route 😃.

I'm not sure I agree with you about VS being a narrow grade. To you it might seem so, but to the average VS climber the grade encompasses quite a wide range of difficulty. For example at Bosigran, Little Brown Jug (5.7) is a much, much easier proposition than Anvil Chorus (VS 4c). - the latter being much more sustained and strenuous with more difficult gear placements, and arguably just as technically difficult. In fact IIRC my old CC Bosigran guide specifically mentions Anvil Chorus as a site of multiple accidents.

I think my overall point still stands. As guidebooks offer less information as text, there is a demand for compensation through more information in grades - for example adding a sport grade to the UK trad + technical grades.

Currently injured so have time and inclination for a rant...

In reply to David Coley:

There is no demand to subdivide the UK tech. grade from people who climb at the grades you are suggesting should be subdivided. They all use French and/or bouldering grades. Andy Moles, John Arran and others on this thread for whom this is in their sphere of knowledge, suggest subdividing the UK tech. grade would not be helpful. UK tech. is measuring the wrong thing, subdividing it doesn't stop it measuring the wrong thing. 

Subdividing the UK tech. grade was tried at the end of the 70s by Steve Bancoft in his Recent Developments guidebook. The effect was to compress the grade (Bancroft 5c+ anyone?!) and the idea wasn’t generally adopted. 

Around the same time others made a tentative step in the opposite direction, Fawcett originally suggested 7a for Strawberries because it was obviously harder than other 6bs of the time and its sustained nature meant 6b (for the single hardest move) didn’t express this difficulty. Unfortunately this sensible modification - to bring the UK tech. grade in line with every other rock grading system in the world - did not stick. 

In reply to gooberman-hill:

There is no such thing as sport grades, you mean French grades. In France, 7a+ is used on trad. and sport routes. Similarly 5.12a could be trad or sport, 25 could be trad. or sport and so on. The entire rest of the world seems capable of understanding there is a difference between the two styles of climbing despite using the same grade. There is nothing special about British climbing or climbers and we’d manage fine with French grades for sport and trad. given the opportunity. Using an adjectival grade and a French grade together for all trad. routes (my preference) makes the difference even clearer. The exceptionalism of some British climbers is weird. 

On mountain project, people similarly advertise for partners stating they lead 5.11 sport and 5.9 trad. This just demonstrates folk understand they have different limits on sport and trad., disproving your suggestion they will be confused using the same grading system for both styles. 

Hmm, I don't think the subdivision was the problem with that guidebook, it was the savage downgrading of technical grades except for some of the new crop of Allen/Bancroft routes.

I'd forgotten about Ron's 7a for Strawberries.

This has all been very interesting, at least to me.

I didn't make up the line that there was compression at 6b. This has been repeated here for years, by some quitegood climbers. I had assumed it was correct. Possibly my error.

I get the point that many think it would not provide the solution they are looking for. Which seems to be bouldering grades, French grades and better descriptions. However what has surprised me is that people are strenuously anti the idea. That it is a bad idea. And worth fighting against. I thought people would gravitate into bins of, pro, ambivalent and can't see the point. Not anti. I got that wrong. However I'm still left wondering that if it had been introduced say 30 years ago. Would those same people be campaigning for it's removal. I wonder if the disapproval is in this sense symmetrical. Which is the classic test.

Nowt as strange as folk.

My experience in France has been that the "French grade" is actually a sport grade. On longer routes the alpine grade system will be used (i.e. F, PD, D,TD, ED) to give an overall route grade. Individual pitches will then be given a sport grade (eg 5c, 6a etc). This combination is used where the routes are long enough, even if they are not alpine in character. I've seen this grading system used both for pure sport and trad routes, plus intermediate routes with maybe one bolt every 20m plus belays.

The French grade really is a sport grade, as it represents the cumulative physical difficulty of climbing a pitch, regardless of any safety concerns. If a bolted route is particularly spicy it will be given an "Expo" suffix or similar, to indicate that it might provide more of a challenge than the grade normally implies, but the grade itself remains the same. E grades handle this far more effectively as they allow for a whole range of added difficulty increments for any number of reasons. But the sport grade as a fundamental indicator of physical difficulty is now almost ubiquitous throughout the world, in different guises and with different numbering systems. And for very good reason.

I always found it fine a bit further on. When repointing it was easy to identify when  moves were  harder than 6a so 6b - about my limit  - but now and then  I  did a few moves that  felt harder so maybe 6c. And, given I wasn't anywhere near a top level  climber it didn't blow my mind to imagine there were a few other tech grades beyond.  

However,  the increments between those further grades? Dunno. 

I think I'm right in thinking british tech should be for the onsight so red/headpoint isnt really relevant (allthough perhaps another argument). According to rockfax (give or take with my dodgy interpretation of the chart):

British tech 6a can be f6b+ to f7a

6b is f6c+ to f7c

6c is f7b to f8a

7a is f8a to f8c+

7b is f9a and beyond (yikes!)

I don't think there is any doubt that each of those covers a pretty massive spread that gets worse the higher you go. Where it breaks likely depends on how hard you climb, but I think few find it useful from 6b onwards. Personally, not climbing harder than British 6a I find the difference between f6b+ and f7a pretty substantial.

I don't think that proves anything. Even if, say, 6b encompassed a very small spread of technical technical difficulty, there is going to be a world of difference in French grade between a one move wonder and a long, sustained, pumpy pitch of 6b. If anything I'm surprised the spreads given are not larger.

IMO AC should be HVS which is what Pat Littlejohn graded it.

….and it’s the grading system that the vast majority of climbers have a pretty good feel for from indoor and outdoor exposure to it, with most starting climbing at an indoor wall. 

I think its more of the case that 6b for example can be found on F6c+ to 7C rather than 'is'.

Does anyone know of a UK6B that is f7C. Most E7,s UK6C are usually f7B/7B+ e.g. Masters Edge Millstone 7B+.

Bold as Love (E6 6b)

Bit of a tangent, but I find that really irritating...I mean, as if UK adjectival grades aren't wide enough - people still have to straddle two of them.