UKC

Despite a lingering finger injury, the American climber David Graham is firing on all cylinders in Spain.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

I found this a bit confusing, and this is in no way a dig at you Mick as Dave himself described it as such. It's not even a dig at Dave, more a confusion over wording.

I was well chuffed when I did my first "8b in a day", by which I meant that I first went on the route, worked it, and redpointed it, all in the space of a day. I was chuffed becuase doing a hard route "in a day" shows you can work out the sequences fast, practice them, remember them, and still have enough gas in the tank to do the final redpoint after a rest. I know a lot of other people who mean this in relation to redpointed routes done "in a day". So when Dave did 2 8c+s "in a day" I assumed that he meant this too - very impressive. But in fact Dave had tried both routes on previous days so in fact it was only the final redpoint of each roue that was on the same day. Still impressive, but much less so than if he'd never tried the routes before.

In reply to RupertD:

Confusion arises due to the difference between:

a) Climbing a route in a day i.e. from first touch to succesful redpoint in one day

and

b) redpointing two different routes on the same day, regardless of whether he's been on them before.

In reply to RupertD: Yeah I read the news item the same and was amazed! Still a mighty good effort, but I do feel the news piece needs some clarification.

In reply to Alun:

Thanks for that.

In reply to Alun:
I agree with RupertD and take done in a day to mean a). Option b) is not necessarily impressive at all. For instance if you get route 1 on the first try after warm ups then you're still going to have plenty of energy left to try route 2.

Also is anyone else suspicious about these spanish 8c+s. Dave Graham has previously suggested that many hard routes may be overgraded. And I just read this comment by Dave Macleod on Planet Mountain comparing a Siuruna 8c+, L'Odi Social, to Rhapsody:

Rhapsody is still a much harder route even if it was bolted. The crux of Rhapsody is maybe V11 and that's right at the end of a long route. On L'odi the crux is halfway and maybe V8.

Now erm, isn't V11 simply shedloads harder than V8?? Doesn't this description give the impression that these two routes are vastly different in difficulty even imagining Rhapsody is bolted?

In reply to stp:

Why should comparison with E whatever in Dumbarton cast doubt on an 8c+ in Spain. Maybe go try a few and report back, you could warm up an a few 8a's and 8b's while you are there then you'll have plenty of energy left for the easy 8c+.

In reply to Removed User:

Because E whatever's also 8c+ climbing yet has a font 8a crux, beyond all but up to 1000 people, where as the other has a font 7b crux. I like to think that one day I could pull a move that hard, as opposed to jumping one. Short hard 8c+s (e.g. Hubble) are font 8b. If these routes are of similar lengths then I know which one I'd choose for my project. Click Click. Easyjet? One flight to Spain please!

Assuming Rhapsody was bolted of course, but even if I lived in Glasgow personally I'd still head for the sun.

I think you might want to do a bit more reading about the wide descrepancies in sport grades, and how they historically came about.

There are two ways of rectifying this, down grade a lot of the vast majority of soft sport routes, as Macleod, Graham, and Simpson (I think) would like to do, or upgrade our few cherished test pieces and rewrite sport climbing history, which would be far more convenient for a lot of people in Europe.

Macleod did go to Spain and do an 8c+, but he was more interested in confirming Rhapsody as at least 8c+ than he was downgrading a holiday tick.

He got himself in a bit of a situation, when he suddenly found that Dunnes 2 E10s were easier than his E9s. I don't know if he'd been spending a whole load of time on his own routes but anyway, what would you do - retro claim a whole bunch of your own routes at E10, or down grade the ones you'd repeated? Similarly, I can't see that anyone would have taken the claim of 9a climbing on a trad route above an RP seriously, even though it doesn't seem impossible.

So we're left with an annoyingly inconsistent situation, but at least you know what's what.

P.S. Mick, maybe that should've read "Two 8c+ sends in a day for Dave Graham", or "Two 8c+s in a day claimed by Dave Graham".

In reply to Paz:


I suspect I don't ...


Are we not talking about the apparent modern trend to overgrade hard sport routes and wasn't it Graham who recently offended Simpson by suggesting that his Siurana 9a was just such a route ...

In reply to Removed User:

The two 8c+s that Dave did at Bruixes in Terradets are probably right at the grade. Steve Mac's done both and was of the opinon that the grades are right. Remember that there's a lot of room in a grade.

Some things on the continent are soft, some are not. They'll probaby get sorted out over time. The exact place of some of our routes relative to them waits to be seen, but we probably have a number of hard routes that may need upgrading to bring them into line with general continental grades. BUt the same holds true on the continent. Many of Dani Andrada's hard routes have been downgraded, but some, for example Ursus, 8c, are recognised as being very hard. Dave Graham suggested Ursus was 8c+

With A Muerte, Dave suggested it may be 8c+, but still went with the 9a grade. This is exactly what Rich did. Edu Marin didn't downgrade it either.

Breaking routes down into being grade x hard up to the crux then a V something problem crux doesn't always give a realistic idea of the grade. The tenuousness of the moves, style of climbing compared with the climbing leading into it and other factors also have a bearing on the overall difficulty.

In reply to RupertD:

I suspect the difficulties of climbs are both subjective and impossible to place perfectly on a linear scale. I'm certainly not about to claim any expertise on the 8c+/9a boundary. My original rather flippant post alluded to the ridiculous comment "is anyone else suspicious of these Spanish 8c+ grades"

In reply to Removed User:

Well my reply was to tell you that in fact, I think a lot of people in fact are suspicious of the grades, if not (thanks to Ru) of those of these particular spanish 8c+s.

Maybe suspicous is a bit of a harsh word, when `take these big numbers' with a pinch of salt, is more accurate.