UKC

Dartmoor Grading

Wondering why a few problems on ukc have had a grade change recently. Is it because of the new rockfax guide coming out. Maybe wants to be seen as being accurate? Is ukc a part of rockfax?

Im not sure what the exact business arrangements are, but UKC and rockfax are very close. The Rockfax and UKC databases are also linked: some rockfax info takes precedence over what's in UKC, in particular if there's a rockfax grade this is used in place of the UKC grade.

In short you're correct, it'll be because of the new rockfax dartmoor guide coming out and any grade adjustments that have happened there.

Hopefully there will be a proper chance to adjust grades to what the voting on ukc says as per the old grades, otherwise it leaves us with just massively sandbagged crags again!

i.e. Snatch (f6B+) , which was benchmark V4, voted as V5 on UKC, but somehow now automatically downgraded to V3 without chance for crag moderators to change it?

I don't think the moderator for for the woods has been approached either. It's a shame that they couldn't have been involved in what they are volunteering their time for. Doesn't feel very democratic. 

The Superior Species f6C has gone down from 7a which I feel was fair but a starting foot crystal broke recently so needs another look now

I agree. Dartmoor bouldering grades were already quite a bit harder than peak district grit . Downgrading snatch must make it a contender for hardest 6A in England. 

Ego death had always been a core component of the Dartmoor bouldering experience. 

That and vicious skin removal. 

And things that squelch. 

UKC and Rockfax are different branches of the same business, although as highlighted here - the two are heavily interlinked.

Devon Bouldering is due to be published shorty. It's been written by Dave Henderson, who is a prolific first ascentionist throughout the area, and also the person responsible for putting together the inimitable Javu website, which documented the area back in the days when it was considered a bit of a backwater. I have many a fond memory of printing out pages from it and heading out onto the moors in search of random granite boulders...

When it comes to grade changes, I've no doubt there's a fair few, because as others have suggested - the area was privvy to a fair few sandbags. I suspect Dave may have left one or two in, as he has a sense of humour, but I suspect that he's tried to right a few wrongs where things were way out.

When it comes to not consulting the Bovey Woods moderator regarding the grade changes, I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but Tom Rainbow has received a heartfelt thanks for his contribution within the foreword, and I've no doubt he was instrumental in getting the facts straight. It should go without saying that feedback within the Logbooks was also taken into account, because that provides the opinions of a great many people - as opposed to just one - as well as highlighting any more recent changes that have taken place such as broken holds, snapped crystals etc...

I'm really looking forward to seeing the guide, as I've long thought Devon - in particular Dartmoor - deserves much more credit than it had previously been given, particular as far as bouldering is concerned.

I’ve noticed a few problems have received a grade change in spite of the logbook user voting system. I understand Dave Henderson, Tom Rainbow and others may have a more accurate grasp of grading, but I like the idea a grade could be reached by consensus and I’m unsure why this approach has been taken. 
 

Is it also true that crag moderators cannot change the grade of a climb featured in a Rockfax guide to ensure parity across UKC and the guides? To me this also seems to make the community nature of grading on UKC defunct. 
 

As long as Death Jug Mantel remains the worlds hardest V1, I think we'll all be happy.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/smallacombe_rocks-1145/death_jug_m...

This has been the case for many years now. Rockfax Digital and UKClimbing logbooks are inextricably linked and we need to bolt the grades down of UKC routes featured in Rockfax Digital to avoid getting mixed grades for the same route. The main reason for this is to avoid confusion, but it will also be essential for when we add grade voting to the app (which has been on the 'coming soon' list for a while).

The very long gestation period of this guide may mean that there are a few problems that have drifted a bit since the original work was done so a few grades may have slipped through. I'll get Dave to reply and offer his thoughts on that. If you want to highlight one of these then you can use the report grade discrepancy link with each listing.

Businesswise, as Rob says, UKC and Rockfax are the same company. As of January last year the company became an Employee Ownership Trust which you can read about here if you are interested - https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/2023/02/ukclimbing_limited_becomes_an_emplo...

Alan

Hi Alan 

Thanks for taking the time to respond. 

In Devon & Cornwall we have become used to a particularly flexible form of UKC because there hasn’t been a Rockfax guide and many of us use the UKC website as a reference when heading outdoors ( the CC guide and Javu are good, but miss out many contemporary bouldering problems). I think this means that the local bouldering community has been able to be relativity adaptive across your platform, especially as so much is still being developed or has been recently. It seems ‘bolting down’ the grades does somewhat put an end to this. Perhaps the new voting system you mention will address the issue of static grading? 
 

Are you referring to trad/sport or bouldering? I’m afraid I don’t know what a non-standard boulder problem looks like (high ball?).
 

I like the voting system/adaptivity in Devon and Cornwall, and think it works well 

Getting grading right for every climb and every climber is an impossible task but consensus shouldn’t be ignored.  

I’d rather consensus was factored in, rather than someone who can climb F8A (as an example) being the only expert on grading lower grade stuff.  I tend to find those who climb harder don’t have a clue when it comes to difference between F5+, F6A or F6A+, for instance.

Bouldering... and by non standard, jamming and mantels come to mind - anything with form as a nemesis.  Death jug mantel would be a good example .  Consensus 6B+?

Afx22 - very true re. harder climbers grading as well.

Lifes not easy!

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Surely 'static grading' is the end goal? 

The new voting system is just the old voting system but this time accessed from Rockfax Digital as well. 

Alan

Howdy all,

I have been working on this printed Rockfax guide since 2016 and have tried to amend grades (and stars) in line with the UKC consensus. Hopefully, that has resulted in more realistic grading although I know this may not have picked up all subsequent changes of opinions and/or hold breakages etc. In some cases, old sandbag grades remained eg. Death Jug Mantle at Smallacombe as it is so well-known it seemed a shame to change it (and what grade should it be?). In other cases, grading errors may have slipped through the net and I’m sorry for that.

Regarding the specific example of Snatch, the grade change of this was not deliberate. My original draft for the crag had it at Font 6B and somewhere along the line a typo snuck in. Despite checking multiple times, unfortunately this wasn’t noticed by myself or others who looked.

Given the sometimes unusual style of Dartmoor bouldering and the fact that many off the beaten track problems are rarely climbed, there will no doubt be plenty of instances where the grades do not end up pleasing everyone. Grade inconsistencies can occur in both directions, reflecting the prevailing trends at the time the first ascent was made - for example, in the early 00s loads of problems on Dartmoor were just given V3, whether they were f6A or f6C!. 

There are also some examples where problems previously listed on UKC were really too eliminate to warrant writing up at the original grades given. In those cases, I have put in a grade for the problem as it climbs in the most obvious manner.

Regarding the consulting of crag moderators (and other current local activists), generally speaking we have done so with drafts being sent out and feedback acted upon. Having said that, in some instances this may have suffered from the lag between checking and publication.

As always, grading is very subjective. Sometimes a consensus might only represent the average grade between two extremes; for instance on a morpho problem where the grade could range from f6B to 7B and noting the middle of the road for this wouldn’t really be very helpful.  

Work is currently taking place behind the scenes at Rockfax / UKC to ensure grading is as up to date as possible and the problems tally up between the book and online. This is an ongoing process so please be patient as the end result should be improved accuracy going forward.

I hope that explains things and that you enjoy the new guide.

Cheers, Dave

And don't forget the pasty shop recommendations for the second edition.

Hi Alan

By ‘static grading’ I mean grades of climbs only changing on UKC when updated issues of guides are released. For instance the grading at The Cuttings Boulderfield is inconsistent but has remained unchanged for years in spite of votes. 
 

Dave:

I’m not sure I’d regard myself as an activist. Thanks. 

I'm afraid that's news to me Rob; I wasn't consulted on any grade/star revisions. I have to say I am bemused by some of the revisions to both grades and star ratings, from memory I am sure that some are directly opposed to UKC voting consensus but since grade votes have now been removed they can't be checked by the 'moderator' (if that's what I still am; doesn't feel like it!)…but in terms of star ratings, have a look at Terror Twilight, reduced to ** despite having six *** votes and no others. It would have been nice to have been consulted over them; whilst I appreciate that this guide has been such a massive undertaking that asking everyone to comment on everything would have been unrealistic, I would have thought revisions of this nature would also have been run by moderators first to see what they thought, if nothing else then as a courtesy for the hours of time and effort that they have put in to voluntarily setting up and maintaining the UKC pages. 

I'd also like to point out that the UKC page for Bovey Woods is now a bit of a mess, with many problems appearing more than once in different places on the page.

This could cause significant problems as The Woodland Trust may well be monitoring the total number of climbs at the venue which has leapt up since 'the nuclear button' was pressed last week. As a result it could well appear to an untrained eye as if a slew of new problems have recently been climbed (which contravenes one of the access rules put in place in 2020) so it is imperative that these duplicates are found and removed as a matter of urgency by whoever it is who is responsible for creating this situation. 

This is in hand. We had problems with the data transfer from the book to the 2 databases we need to run this system. The fact that the names have evolved over the years through different books, and that we are describing non-linear crags but clusters of boulders that can be described in different sequences, means that matching the various names to the same problem has been extremely difficult. We have been in touch with the key crag moderators and they are on the case.

Alan 

Maybe voluntary moderators are now only of use on esoteric crags to buff out Ukc? I don’t think I’ll spend the time on it any more. 

I see what you mean!

With regard to my previous comment, Dave did consult with me in the summer of 2022 when he sent the document for the woods in a preliminary form. There were many issues pertaining to the naming of problems (Alan has subsequently alluded to this in a later post) and that became the focus of the exchange. As a result, many of the grade/star rating revisions that had been made were missed by me at the time.  Apologies to Dave, I know he has worked incredibly hard on this and it must have been galling to have read my comment, especially as it was made in error. 

That would be a shame. We really do appreciate the contributions from moderators. Feedback is vital for guidebook writers who use UKC (not just Rockfax authors) and diligent moderators are essential in this process.

Can I just stress again that this is a very specific case which has not happened before and is very unlikely to happen again. It needed a bouldering area (linear L to R crag much easier to sort) with a big online presence away from UKC, a print book that added more variations into the mix and a Rockfax book that work was started on before we developed our current process which flows from UKC to the book.

Alan

Thank you for the apology Tom.

Just to further explain the specific issues with this section of the guide (and now UKC logbooks), at the time I started writing it, many of the problems in the woods didn't have names. As names were required for everything I then added these. Subsequently, problems have also been named on UKC and these inconsistencies were picked up and corrected when the draft was sent to Tom Rainbow as moderator. 

There are similar issues with other crags on Dartmoor. When problems were previously unnamed or referred to as, for example, javu problem 23, I added names. In some instances, where I was aware of boulder problem names that pre-dated those on UKC (i.e. old problems added to UKC and claimed as new ones) I updated these. This has led to some inconsistencies as the Rockfax and UKC data is brought into line but as Alan James has explained, the issue is being corrected.

As for the example of the Terror Twilight starring, I have tried to be consistent throughout the guide. Whilst it is a great problem (and was on my regular circuit when I climbed in the area) I think most would agree it is not as good as Nether Edge or Devon Sent. As the latter two are accepted as benchmark 3 star problems I knocked a star off Terror Twilight.

Hopefully that clears things up.

Cheers, Dave

I got a bit caught out on Saturday with the rockfaxing of a tor where to my eye the descriptions have also changed. Is this the case or is it just my poor memory? And if so are Rockfax descriptions also "bolted down" within UKC?

Being a transplant to Dartmoor I'm very excited by recent guidebooks across devon and cornwall and by the continued development of such widely accessible boulders and crags. Loved the friday night vid continuing to fuel the fire with V grades and Franklin pads!

Hi Dave 

Terror Twilight is a good example of my point. You believe it’s two stars, but people on ukc believe it’s three and have voted accordingly (as per Tom Rainbow’s post). You probably are correct, but it makes me question the point of having a voting system or volunteer moderators to implement changes/upkeep crags if it will be overridden when guides are published and everything is ‘bolted down’ (correctly or incorrectly).

I really enjoy the rockfax guides and this isn’t a criticism of the hard work you’ve put in - I’m sure the guide will be fantastic. It is the crossover between the guide and the way I thought ukc functioned which I’m unsure about. If lived somewhere with a rock fax guide I would’ve realised this years ago! 
 

There are two description fields, one for Rockfax (uneditable by moderators) and the normal UKC one - https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/bonehill_rocks-292/the_green_room-... which is as before. It is only the grade and star-rating that we bolt down.

Alan

Stars are awkward. If we went with the voting for stars on UKC then there would be millions of really dubious 3-star and 2-star routes. People vote on their experience which distorts the star votes massively. The guidebook editors have to bring everything into the context of the whole area, and the rest of the country to an extent. That said, there will undoubtedly be discrepancies.

Alan

great thanks Alan.

Dodgy memory it is then, haha.

excited for the guide.

Also to throw my 2p in on Stars. I've been blessed to be able to climb on 4 continents and many countries and my mind absolutely boggles when people with relatively small amounts of world experience start talking "world class" and "3 star, must do". 

Its all very relative and none of it should detract from your enjoyment of our absolutely insane pass time. In particular as someone who boulders a lot more than any other form of climbing. I have to remind myself that I am actively finding hard ways to get up small rocks, and having lots of fun falling off most of the time. Most days are 3 stars if i escape the to do list and just get outside

Hi Alan

I think this and some other responses have been a bit too reductive and missed the point I was trying make -  unintentionally or not I can’t tell. I suppose you have to engage with us as moderators/ex-moderators as we’ve helped or continue to help create a product which can be monetised.  I do, however, feel unsatisfied with the response. I’ll leave the forum here. 
 

cheers 

Well as someone that has climbed e4 & 6c in recent times  I've never got of the ground on DJM. 5+!!! WTF? Then again I'm really crap at Bouldering.

Time perhaps to record our thanks to Dave Henderson for his Javu website which has been a wonderful resource over the years, and also to Tom Rainbow for all his recent additions of mid grade Sports climbs in the region. Berry Head & Churston Quarries, and Omelette Wall come to mind.

Personally I think this is quite a harsh take. My experience is that the UKC/rockfax team/guidebook authors are pretty open to discussion. It would be nice if there was time to canvas all opinions on grades etc., but putting together something like the Dartmoor book must have been a monumental undertaking as is, and I can well understand if there wasn't the time or energy to canvas grade opinions from all and sundry.

Hi Remus 

As I mentioned in my previous post I think you/the team have misunderstood, you have been reductive, and that is not the point I was trying to make or the direction of my initial posts. Have you read through them all?

I give up. 

Look I’ll put it this way.

Rockfax and UKC take data created by a community of  dedicated volunteers, monetise it in the form of monthly subscriptions and guides and also in the process ‘bolt it all down’ so that said community can no longer update or edit it on the website they initially used to help create it.

I think that’s a shame.

Just to play Devil's advocate - how does it compare to benchmark 2 star problems? If it's better than those the counter argument comes into play - it must be 3 star.  Maybe it's 2.5 star?

We are discussing this.

The system dates from when guidebooks were the standard that everything revolved around hence it made sense when we did it 10-15 years ago. In most cases, it was our data anyway that had a UKC listing since the origin of the vast majority of the Rockfax-covered crags on UKC was Rockfax itself.

We can see that this has now changed so it is probably time to review this policy.

Alan

Sorry, I wasn’t sure we were on the same track when your team described your voluntary content creators as “all and sundry”.

I await the policy review with interest. 

We 'monetise' the info in the Databases strikes me as an odd way of looking at how creating a guidebook works - not too dissimilar  to something I overheard years ago, 'all you need to produce a guidebook is a digital camera',

Chris

In reply to Removed UserChris Craggs:

Of course you monetise it. I’ve put first ascents on ukc, these were curated by a moderator, and Dave Henderson then came and added them to a rockfax guide which you are selling. This is the case for countless other problems and even whole sectors (Hillside etc.) which will feature in the new guide. 
 

I don’t object to this, but rather how it is handled on what (at face value) appears to be a community spirited enterprise. 
 

This is going round in circles. 

Edit:

We could go also into details about how ukc t&cs dictate how (how not?) that community data can be used? However, it isn’t really why I posted on this thread. 

Pay your money, make your choice. Or don't.

I'm looking forward to receiving the SW bouldering guide I have on pre-order and working through it. I'll smile. It'll be fun. I'll feel happy. I'll get spanked. I'll navel gaze and wonder what that means about me, maybe I should give up and be a triathlete instead? I'll probably have a sandwich and fiddle with the AeroPress in a stiff breeze. I'll try somewhere new. Maybe I'll share the experience with others? That'll be nice. 

There's no dark forces at work here, just some people making a guide to playing with rocks. I really can't understand your concern.

I hope you can get out on something fun soon too!

BB

I try not to get involved. I deleted my post almost immediately and I am sorry it actually appeared, apologies for any offence incurred,

Chris

I think that was Remus - not on our team but he is a diligent and much-appreciated moderator of 27 crags (the number 27, not the alternative climbing website).

Alan

Apologies Chris, I thought it was playing up my end so just copied it in. Unfortunately I can’t remove it now. No offence incurred, sorry if that’s how it came across.

I wanted to add my 2 pence to this for what it's worth. I apologies in advance for my partial ignorance as I have read some of the discourse, not all but my comments are, in my belief, sufficiently broad.

I think it is important to remember that a grade does not change your physical experience of a climb, only your mental perception of its worth, and only if you allow it to. In fact it is incredibly impressive that in the majority of cases a grade is often only a single division out in either direction, especially in such a subjective context.

I am totally on side that information should be as correct and accurate as possible and for that reason I am extremely excited to see this new guide. The south west is my home and where I ply my modest craft on rock and the information has been largely shared peer to peer up until the release of resources like JaVu, the climbers club guide, the culm and coast guide and now this latest Devon guide. It is a vast improvement and a welcome one.

I don't think we should lose sight of the improvements in such an asinine debate about grades.

I think (not 100% sure) in part, the debate was about how data taken from a partially community created resource is used and ‘bolted down’ so that the community loose some ownership over it by not being to edit or update it? 
 

I didn’t think it was about what grade a climb is, per se.

Hi Ryan 

I’m not sure which section of the thread you’re referring to, but the post above summarises what I was trying to say well. Possibly better than I managed! It wasn’t about grades going up or down for me. 

I’m also looking forward to reading the new guide having spent many hours trying to find problems and sectors on previous occasions. 
 

Hi everyone

Wasn't aware I was kicking such a hornets nest there! I'm not hating on rockfax or ukc. Was just curious if there was a relationship between the two. Rob Greenwood answered my questions pretty early on. Thanks for that. I feel I should apologize to Tom rainbow for him getting dragged into it and any stress that may have caused. We don't know each other but I have nothing but respect and appreciation for all the work he's put into this area I love to climb the most. Also congrats to Dave Henderson for producing such an excellent guide book. I'd go as far as saying the best I've ever bought (and I have quite a few). I don't feel im qualified enough to talk about what grades should be given to what problems. I'll leave that one to my peers (but Supergirl 6c come on!  haha) I'll just carry on trying whatever I'm inspired to go try. It's about the experience after all! Hope you all have a great year on the moors or wherever you may go. 

All the best

Dan