UKC

Anyone spent any time climbing in Yosemite (or failing that anywhere in America/Canada) on here?

I'm currently trying to get my crack climbing ability a bit more sorted, with a vague pipe dream of going to Yosemite to do a big wall in a couple of years time. Trying to figure out what YDS grades are roughly equivalent to in terms of routes I know or can train for. I do know that they work similarly to french grades, but sport routes are low on jamming and I don't really find my crack climbing ability correlates with my sport climbing ability, particularly, so it's a bit difficult to translate.

So in the style of this post (http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=254683#x3755112) Can anyone suggest a grade in the 5.xx format for any of the following (or any other routes which are more or less jamming cracks?), in the style of this post?


Amazon Crack (Burbage)
Obscenity
The Grazer
The Mall
Embankment 2
The File
Bond Street
Great North Road
Supra Direct (Millstone)
Dexterity
Plexity
Great Peter
Delectable Direct
Embankment 3
Embankment 4
Shaftesbury Avenue
Piccadilly Circus
Regent Street
Great West Road
Knightsbridge
Time For Tea Original
London Wall

etc. etc.

Doesn't have to be bang on but it would be useful to have an idea what vague sort of level would be feasible to free (ie. whether aiming to free up to about 5.10 is realistic or whether the aiders are going to have to come out for anything harder than, say, 5.7). Also know that yosemite grades have a reputation for being a bit nasty at the grade, but try to rein in the sandbagging a touch, please

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

Can't help with your list, I don't think I've climbed a single one of those, how bad is that!

I have however had a spanking from Yosemite. The cracks tend to be or feel slicker, less featured and more sustained than uk cracks. Most uk crack routes I've done (apparently not many in the peak area!) tend to be just a few jams to an edge/rest... repeat.

I'd lead a handful of E1s and bouldered at about V3/4 when I went and I generally found the valley grades as follows:

5.6 easy catch-all grade
5.7 slab easy to VS, 5.7 corner/crack solid VS
5.8 slab don't recall, 5.8 corner/crack HVS
5.9 slab E1, 5.9 corner/crack solid HVS/E1
5.10 untouchable

That's just my experience, I'll no doubt be wrong in the eyes of some. I generally avoided my weaknesses/fears (mainly offwidths). Routes/pitches felt quite sustained, perhaps due to the heat and slick rock, perhaps due to my prior experience being 90% grit.

jk

In reply to plexiglass_nick: london wall 5.12a
stuff like the file could get anything from 5.6 through to 5.9, depending on how sandbaggy the route is.

for a 5.11a finger crack expect a uk equivalent of E3.

In reply to jkarran:

Heh, the list is quite Millstone focused mostly as I have wandered round there more than other crags

Thanks though, that is handy.

Just seen you replied to my post here:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=360822&v=1#x5259666

thanks for the thoughts on tactics, approach, etc. Trying to get my head around just how daunting an undertaking it's going to be (for a crag rat!), but clearly nothing in the UK is really going to prepare for the sheer scale of it.

I am expecting to take a bit of a beating, especially as my jamming is, while improving, a long way from being my strong suit (though hoping to change that a bit by the time we go...)

Yep, I'm expecting 30m of splitter crack with no holds other than the crack to feel different to, well, pretty much anything in this country.

Fairhead I think might make for good training, lots of long pitches up soaring crack lines but they do tend to be quite generous on the occasional jugs and face holds also, at least on the routes we did.

How did you get on with the aid? If you were doing it again, what would you do different?

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

Amazon Crack (Burbage)
Obscenity
The Grazer
The Mall ...5.7
Embankment 2 ....5.7
The File ...5.7+
Bond Street ...5.8
Great North Road ...5.8
Supra Direct (Millstone) ...5.8
Dexterity ...5.9 (in Yosemite...might get .10a in JT)
Plexity
Great Peter
Delectable Direct
Embankment 3 ...5.10a
Embankment 4 ...5.9
Shaftesbury Avenue
Piccadilly Circus
Regent Street ....5.10b
Great West Road ...5.10c
Knightsbridge ...5.10c
Time For Tea Original ...5.10a
London Wall ...5.12a

These all assume a little time spent adapting to the style. Yosemite grades may feel harder for the first two or three weeks until you acclimatise.

See also: http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=123123&v=1#x1699411

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

Your quest has a couple of problems:

a) The YDS is the worst grading system on the planet. It basically gives a pitch a grade based on the hardest move on the pitch. Imagine looking at a 60m pitch and all you know is it's graded UK 5a. It could have 1 or 20 moves of 5a, and be sustained or not, and you don't know anything about the gear...

...on the other hand, you do get used to the style of routes in the valley, and most importantly get wiser and fitter: most crack sections even on 5.7-5.9 are WAY more sustained than anything on your list. Gear by necessity has to be more spaced but when you place it is generally bomber. And finally, their topos give away way more beta which offsets the grade issue somewhat.

b)if you genuinely want to do big walls then you are looking at it the wrong way. Don't worry about your free climbing ability because you have no idea how you will react when you get on a wall. Transitioning from aid to free is hard and from what I could see many people aid large parts of big walls that they could notionally do free. Concentrate on getting good at aiding.

But for fun:

Amazon Crack (Burbage)
Obscenity
The Grazer
5.6

The Mall
Embankment 2
The File
5.7

Bond Street
Great North Road
5.8
(a typical 5.8 layback crux might be 3 times longer than the crux of GNR)

Supra Direct (Millstone)
Dexterity
Plexity
Great Peter
Delectable Direct
Embankment 3
Embankment 4
5.9
(Grt Peter is harder than those imo - 5.10a?)

Shaftesbury Avenue
Piccadilly Circus
- dunno

Regent Street
5.10a/b

Great West Road -dunno

Knightsbridge
5.10b

Time For Tea Original
5.10a

London Wall

But none of that tells you much about climbing in Yosemite!

In reply to duncan:

Spot on. Thank you. Unfortunately it is as I feared

Ouch, I am going to my have work cut out I think, and that is before we even think about the offwidths. While I am picking your brains about it, can you think of any more particularly comparable routes to add to the list?

Dexterity - I'm assuming that is for the RH (direct) finish?

In reply to Stig:

Hmmm ok. That is actually helpful.

Coming at this from the position of not having done any aid climbing, yet. (though am aiming to sort this soon, ish)

I am already thinking that we can't afford to be at all precious about style though. We are inevitably going to end up aiding a large amount of it, I think partly my question was not so much about trying to free large chunks as trying to work out a strategy for moving as quickly as possible. My assumption is that free climbing the bits which are reasonably comfortable would be faster than aiding, which I suppose in turn is faster than trying to free stuff at your limit.

Definitely going to leave decisions of how much to free, open until we get there. Do you not think it's worth trying to build on crack climbing skills as much as possible in the mean time however?

Point taken about the aiding, and transitioning from free to aid and back.

In reply to plexiglass_nick: Just back from Canada (Squamish) and climbed a few cracks. The main difference I feel between UK cracks and Squamish cracks are the footwork.

In the UK, you can generally get away with only the odd foot-in-crack move. Out there, some pitches (for example The Zip at 5.10a) are pretty thin hands, crack in feet the whole way.

I found corner-cracks much easier than face cracks, for exmaple, the Grand Wall is 5.11a and we found it ok, but it's mainly corner cracks and laybacking.

I did my first offwidth in Skaha, it was 5.10c and probably one of the most physically intensive 40m of climbing I've ever done!


After 3 weeks we still didn't have a good idea of the grades, and, we were told they are soft in Squamish compared to Yosemite!

If you have big plans, make sure you have time to build up to it. We got there after 4 weeks of solid climbing in Scotland and Norway, expecting to cruise 5.11a straight away and got spanked on 5.10c. By the end of the trip we were doing 11d onsight on bolts (face climbing) and 11b onsight trad (mainly thin corner cracks).



On final bit of advice. Learn to thumb stack. It's one of the most versatile jams there is!

Check my logbook for an idea of grade comparisons.

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

Dexterity cop-out: ...5.8

Billy Whizz ...5.10b
Comes the Dervish ...5.10b
The Mau Mau ...5.11a
Arms Race (Avon) ...5.11b
Fingerlicker ...5.11c
Bob Hope ...5.11c
Ramshaw Crack ...5.10c

In reply to Stig:

The YDS might have been originally a hardest single move grade, like the UK tech. grade, when it was the Sierra Club system in the 1930s. It is now a cumulative difficulty grade, so fungible* with sport grades, like every other tech. grade in the world apart from the stupid UK one.

*tobyfk

In reply to plexiglass_nick: Not done much aiding, but once you start aiding a pitch, just keep aiding. It's mega scary going from aid to free mid-pitch. It depends if you're properly aiding, or just french-freeing. If there's one aid move on a pitch, just yank on the gear. If it's an aid pitch you'll be set of for it so free-climbing will not be much fun.

{I've literally only aided a few sections, so more experience folk will have better advice}

In reply to duncan:


That is how they *should* use it - and clearly do for modern sport routes - but is clearly not the practice in yose and surrounding areas. For instance the topos for Owens River mark on the position of the crux with YDS notation. And why else does the Supertopo guide for Yose have to resort to frequent "this route gets 5.x but it's really a route for solid 5.x+1 climbers)!!

In reply to Fultonius:

Good to know. It's sounding like I should get on the aiding ASAP so I have an idea what to expect from this stuff.

Thumb stacks - Trying to get my head round these now, I can see how they *will* work, but they definitely don't feel very solid yet.

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

Thanks all, these comments are really useful. Please keep it coming.

In reply to plexiglass_nick: They'll feel solid after doing a solid them enough - especially if you can find a wee bump to nestle your thumb on.

I thought I'd use ring-locks more, but we didn't find many pitches that needed them - they're maybe more common in Indian Creek! I'm assuming you're pretty solid with fingerlocks, hand jams and fist jams?

You will find you have favourite sizes and nightmare sizes. I don't like thin-figers as I'm a banana-fingered shovel-handed heavyweight! (Hence failure on Crime of The Century) I'm also not a big fan of baggy-hands to tight fists. (or even good fists, but that more of an enhjoyment thing, I usually get up them fine, just end up with no skn and sore feet!

It's really like all other forms of climbing - all in the feet! Only place gear on a solid lock, every lock shold be a rest, or you'll get pumped out and die!

In reply to Stig:

I'm not clear as to your point about grading at Owen's River Gorge.


That's just good old-fashioned undergrading, or modern climbers struggling with "traditional" styles, nothing to do with how the system is applied.

The enduro. corner on Astroman has no move harder than 5.10a. It is correctly graded .11c because of it's sustainedness. Crimson Cringe has no single move harder than you'd find on a cruxy 5.10c ... but no move easier! It is graded .12a. Conversely, Separate Reality, graded 11d, has a definite crux and two moves much harder than anything on the Cringe. In UK grades, CC might get E5 5c, SR E4 6a/b.

In reply to Fultonius: That first sentence made no sense.

What I meant to say was, you'll feel solid after doing them enough. You must embrace the crack. Love the crack. Don't fear the crack!

In reply to Fultonius:

hmm, ok, now I am confused. What is the difference between a thumb stack and a ring lock? In a thumb stack, do your fingers stack over your thumb, and in a ring lock does your thumb curl round your fingers?

Getting reasonably solid now with hand jams and fist jams. I still drop a grade or two on fingerlocks but am trying to address this.

I'm just planning on putting the crack mileage in for the next year or so. I have gone from bricking it at the mention of jamming to actively seeking it out, which I reckon means progress has been made.

In reply to plexiglass_nick:


The problem with mixing free and aid is that you have to compromise on the shoes... Wear your trainers and that HVS section is going to feel pretty hard. Add in the hassle of transitioning and freeing with all the aid clutter hanging round your feet and it's maybe faster to aid it after all.

...Wear your climbing shoes and they'll be ruined by scuffing the tips on the wall in your aiders, your toe nails will go black and your arches will bruise but you'll be quick on the pitch. You might be slow tomorrow though with mangled feet.

Finding the right balance is hard. There's no point worrying about doing stuff in 'good style', just go as fast as you can sustainably go. For me it was mostly a race against time before the wall defeated me physically (cuts, bruises, bleeding nails, heat) or mentally (exhaustion mostly). That said, I'm a bit soft, most people seem to cope better than I did.

There's plenty of big stuff to go at if you can climb low extremes with reasonable self assurance and are willing to get stuck into the aid.

jk

In reply to plexiglass_nick:


My final post...I know two UK teams who climbed The Nose who were basically solid VS/HVS men. They both took 5 days, aiding most of the route. I know another team who were strong E3/4 leaders, had done lots of training, read all the right advice, appeared to listen to me(!), practiced their hauling and jumaring, and gave up on day 1.

The successful teams were all hardy mountaineers, prepared to suffer a bit and not completely intimidated by the thought of 3000' of climbing. One team took an unplanned hanging bivi in the Dolt Hole (7 pitches up) on day one. The E4 leaders bailed from the Stove-Legs, several pitches higher, because "we were going too slowly".

Climbing ability is not as important as the other stuff. Having said that, if you can lead 5.10 on the wall you can climb 80% of The Nose free. This will be a lot quicker and much more fun than aiding, many pitches up there would be classic routes if they were off the ground and it would be a shame to be frigging them.

In reply to plexiglass_nick: Pretty much. Ring locks seem to work ok in parallel cracks that are slightly wider than fingerlocks. Thumb stacks work well on cracks just shy of handjams.

It's all about improvisation!

In reply to duncan:

Cheers Duncan for the food for thought.

Sounds like we should think about getting lots of long long mountain days as well as the climbing ability and the technical stuff.

In reply to plexiglass_nick: Stuff up in the Dubh Loch, Ben Nevis, Shelterstone and Etive Slabs will all bee good testers.

If you can do E1/E2 quickly and confidently on those, you'll be in good shape!

In reply to Stig:
>
i thought the YDS was a grade for overall seriousness and sustainedness etc?

In reply to duncan:

They all look about right. Worth remembering that the cracks are relentless rather than very technical; it isn't unknown to get a 40m pitch with no real footholds. Face climbing is a different game again.

Chris

In reply to duncan:

Your assessments seem generally accurate to me, Duncan.

The usual conversion (e.g 5.9 = 5a), as per the charts in Rockfax guides for example, often seem to overstate the UK grade relative to the YDS one in my experience. On a lot of US crags 5.9 usually seems to me to be more like the traditional Peak District HVS 5b (many of which have drifted up to E1 or even E2 in recent guidebooks)than 5a, and would be worth E1 in Wales. Either most crags in the US that I've tried have sandbag grades or the usual grade conversion is suspect. Part of the problem on some US crags is that the older climbs still retain an old grade which may seem very stiff compared to more recent climbs. Castle Rock in Boulder Canyon, for example, has some real stinkers graded 5.9 or 5.9+ which were done years ago by good climbers. They're equivalent in my view to some of the things at Stoney that were given HVS in the 1970s. In UK guidebooks many of these old-time nasties have been upgraded, but in the US they seem generally reluctant to do this.

On the other hand, at some crags in the US the "standard" grade conversion does seem to work reasonably well, once you get used to the style of climbing.

In the list above I've added YDS grades from Stewart M. Green's "Rock Climbing Europe" which includes selected crags in the UK. But I suspect that his grades may have been derived simply from a grade conversion table rather than from direct experience.

In reply to plexiglass_nick:

As a grit bumbly who climbs in Josua Tree and Yosemite NP a fair bit I've not had many problems once I understood the grading (often stiff, especially on slabs) or with the YDS system. I mainly aim around 5.7 (from easy climbs to the the odd 5.9 lead and harder trs). Unlike some advice above about YDS garding for the hardest move I find sustained routes tend to be graded taking surrounding moves into account (eg a single 4b moves might be 5.6; stacked 4b moves with half rests for 10m might be 5.7; 4b sustained no rest might be 5.8). I prefer YDS on big routes as PG, R and X ratings give a much better view of what I need to know as a climber compared to the often ambiguous UK grades. eg South Crack has 5.8 uncertificated crack climbing which is no problem for me (tough sustained VS) but hidden above is a 10m+ 5.7R unprotected slab which felt close to E1 4c.

In reply to plexiglass_nick:
One of the interesting things is that the UK simply doesn't have many routes which offer climbing similar to the granite cracks of North America. Getting fit, getting your lead head together, and getting on routes that require jamming will all help. But the bottom line is to be prepared to spend a bit of time learning the trade. As someone else pointed out its all about the footwork, toes jams and pasting on slippery rock.
In a lot of places, classic 10c-10d cracks will feel like E3 at first.