UKC

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:
Wow. Bon effort, as they say. Another Welford 7b+ then?

In reply to Jon Read:

Not bad, indeed. Only time I've been on that buttress I was foiled by the ice streak on Apparent North: sounds like pretty similar conditions.

jcm

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Impressive, good effort.

Do all E7 on-sights get reported or just ones in the Peak?

In reply to AMo:

This is another example of why E grades tell you little about the real difficulty of short grit routes. At Font 7b+ for the crux, I suspect it is a lot harder on-sight than Balance It Is, Master's Edge, Kaluza Klein, Deathwatch or any other grit 'E7's' that have been on-sighted to date.

In reply to AMo:

All the ones we get told or find out about.

Note: we do have a network of people who report news, including significantly the forums.

Geo spread of UKC staff: Alan and Nick in Sheffield, Kevin in Silsden near Skipton, Jack in Llanberis, myself in Ambleside.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: You need someone near southern sandstone then!

In reply to Tom Briggs:

Or indeed any grade about the difficulty of any bouldery route.

Trad grades don't tell you how hard it is to do something first go. They tell you how hard you've got to be reasonably to give it a go in safety, or something like that.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: Trad grades don't tell you how hard it is to do something first go.


I thought you said they were graded for the onsight.

In reply to Simon Lee and johncoxmysteriously :

It is still to be determined whether 'Trad' routes are graded for the onsight.

Know one seems to know, although many have an opinion.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

JCM has always contended they are and always have been graded for the onsight. Now he is saying something different. I await his response with keen interest.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Plenty of people know.


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

That's right Chris. The world is full of know-alls.

But it is still to be determined whether trad routes in the UK are graded for an onsight or not.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:




99.9 % of them are - the ones most of us climb.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Only by those who are happy to ignore the past 40 years of use of the E-grade system.

Chris

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: news to grades in 4 posts. Surely a record?

In reply to Chris Craggs:Only by those who are happy to ignore the past 40 years of use of the E-grade system

At the risk of repeating myself I was told 25 years ago by a good climber that a route is graded for the easiest way to do it. People have graded using different assumptions. Often they do not lead to a diffrent grade. For example you graded Chalkstorm on assumptions I wholly agree with. Others disagree.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

That adds nothing Chris.

Explain.

In reply to Simon Lee:


But 99/100 we generally assume we *have* done routes the easiest way once we get to the top. Sometimes we might think we've made a meal of a route and therefore assume it's easier than it felt and sometimes we miss holds or sequences and it actually is easier than it felt. But most of the time when we get up routes we get the moves roughly right and therefore have a reasonable idea of the (onsight) grade.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Like Ryan Pasquill with his FA of the wall left of New Statesman?

Hopefully guidebook writers will realise that the E and brit technical grade are being used less and less on E7 and above grit routes.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

The system was developed to give someone about to embark on a climb for the 1st time, a vague idea of what they might encounter. E2 5a or E2 6a for example. The tech grade was for how the moves felt on a top-rope on first acquaintance and the E Grade a summary of everything else. But of course you knew that.

The system has become mangled by sport climbing, top roping, head pointing bullshirt and ego - doesn't mean there was ever anything wrong with it in the first place.


Chris

In reply to Tom Briggs:

What grade did he give it then?

Actually I have come round to the idea that:

a) routes that haven't had an on-sight

b) route that folks have rehearsed

should get an H grade.

Problem is - what do you do with guidebooks? Publish with an H grade and as soon as someone on-sights the guide is out of date.

Chris

In reply to Simon Lee:


The onsight ATTEMPT.

C'mon - otherwise how could Jackaloupe get the same grade as Long John's Slab?

jcm

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Looks like bouldering to me. What's the point of an E-grade on a route this short?

In reply to LKPG:

Your average boulderer wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole!


Chris

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

All UK trad grades are graded for on-sight.

The only exception is the ones that are too hard to on-sight. :p


In all seriousness though, most of us consider grades to be representative of an onsight grade. It just gets fuzzy at the top because their so damn hard and people at this level would much rather justify their head point/ ground up ascents by 'muddying up' this definition.

In reply to Silum:

Very succinctly put that man!


Chris

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: C'mon - otherwise how could Jackaloupe get the same grade as Long John's Slab?


I have no idea what Jackaloupe is but presumably it is less serious than Long John's and is at the top of the grade as opposed to the bottom.

So if its hard but well protected its graded for a ground-up dogged ascent and if its bold then for an onsight clean ascent.

The penny has dropped - the E grade is whatever you want it to be. Silly me trying to make sense out of nonsense.

In reply to Simon Lee:

Surely you never seriously imagined that the E grade represented the difficulty of doing the climb first go, did you? A moment's thought would have shown you how silly this was.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

And btw I thought you were a Peakie?! Jackaloupe a John Allen fistjamming horror at Gardom's East (I think, anyway AKA Moorside rocks), best known for Johnny flailing on it in Best Forgotten Art.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Now regularly laybacked at font 7A/7A+

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:
Did I hear about this about a week ago from somewhere else?
James

A brilliant effort to Dave though!
James

In reply to Chris Craggs:

I disagree. It's the continued use of the E grade for hard, bouldery routes that's pandering to egos. Climbers are better informed with experience of sport climbing and bouldering and better equipped to appreciate how difficult something really is.

Ryan gave the wall left of Statesman Font 8a. What more does one need to know?

I don't see what H grades tell you other than a route hasn't been on-sighted at the time of the guidebook publication. The point is that bouldering grades are far better for describing technical difficulty than British technical grades. There's a massive difference between Font 6c+ and Font 7c, yet we have grit E7's within this band. You can generally see the level of danger just by looking at the route. Hence Kaluza Klein has probably had 100+ ascents, whereas Little Women has had 3.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: Forgot to add good effort Dave obviously, think this is one of the most aesthetically pleasing gritstone blocks for me.

In reply to TimS:

Is that so?! I was wondering when licking my wounds in the bath the evening after trying it why I hadn't thought of this approach.

jcm

In reply to Silum:


Could explain how climbers go about giving an onsight grade for a route please?

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: Surely you never seriously imagined that the E grade represented the difficulty of doing the climb first go, did you?A moment's thought would have shown you how silly this was.


That would require squaring the even sillier notion that some routes are graded for success and others for failure.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

I think you have spent too much time in the US. I have been climbing for 26 years and have always understood that the grade given to routes was for an on sight ascent. Perhaps I have been deluding myself all these years?

In reply to craig d:

An onsight grade makes sense for me as it is the way I climb. I don't think I'm in the minority in this respect.

In reply to GrahamD:

Its also the way most people climb in the uk, and hence most grade opinions come from onsight experiences, and hence uk climbs are typically graded from an onsight perspective. However saying 'graded for the onsight seems to get people in a flap, Mick especially.

In reply to Adam L:

I should add props to Dave, awesome effort.

I'm not sure this is entirely new levels of difficulty in onsighting as Tom suggests though. Font 7b+ and 7c flashes are pretty common, and there are plenty of peak highball/ former routes of that grade to have been flashed. The distinction of having a rope on is getting increasingly arbitrary.

In reply to Tom Briggs:

Well F8a tells you how hard it is doubtless - but its a bouldering grade and the route isn't a boulder problem.

New Statesman is E8 7a - so how many E grade and tech grades harder is the new route? I can't see the problem - grades are a continuum, at what point does it suddenly become unusable?


Chris (feeling his age!)

For 99.99 percent of Uk climbers (inc me ) the E grade works perfectly.
I too have always thought that a grade was offered to give me a rough idea of how hard it is if I walk up to give it a go without any prior knowledge.

To me the Uk grading system is perfect. E5 6a tells me more about a route than Font 6b+. French 7a, etc etc

If the minority keep harping on about the problems which don't exist enough people will get convinced that there is something wrong with it when there isn't.

The Ent

In reply to Chris Craggs:


It becomes unusable when a wide range of difficulties gets compressed into "7a" instead of people using 7b, 7c etc. Surely guide-book writers are mostly to blame for this "Scottish VS" syndrome?

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Well if New Statesman is Font 7c at the bottom (a guess, as I don't know), it's significantly harder with what appears to be a similar height of crux etc. But it also looks like the FA was padded out and there were a few spotters. So is it E10? Or is it a cleaner fall than NS, so it's E9? You can look at it and see what a fall is going to mean from the crux. I'm not saying that the E grade is 'unusable', just that it gives you less information than the Font grade, so why bother.

In reply to Adam L:

Just wondered what these were?

In reply to Chris Craggs:


If you have a look at http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades.html you can see the problem -- the grades E9, E10 and E11 all have the same accompanying tech grades. Indeed the tech grades change by only one in the entire span from E7 to E11. If they kept incrementing the way they do further down the grades the problem would be largely solved.

People are wanting sport or Font grades primarily because of the refusal to use the tech grade (not the E grade) properly. Since Rockfax are one of the UK's most influential guidebook publishers, perhaps they could help sort the problem? Past innovation (e.g. the division of "extreme" into E1, E2 and E3) has usually come from guidebook writers. Hint hint.

In reply to Tom Briggs:

Ryan gave the wall left of NS (Gerty Berwick) E9 7a. He might have described the crux as Fnt8a but he definitely gave the route E9.
Or am I missing something here (I have been away from t'interweb for a week)?

In reply to Coel Hellier:


If, of course, it were the case that individual moves kept getting harder rather than there being more of them per route. There must, after all, come a time where this point is reached.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Some routes are cruxy, some are sustained, same as its always been. I don't think these new harder routes can necessarily be more sustained at a particular level of move difficulty than those in the past.

In reply to teddy:

I have no idea. But like I say, there must come a point where moves cannot get harder, and routes get more difficult only by there being more all-but-impossible moves on them.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


I don't think we are reached that point yet, not by a long shot.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Sounds good, but we can't just extend the tech grades at random! If the folks doing the routes believe they are 6b, 6c or 7a who are we to start trying to stretch these into 7b, 7c and upwards?
Despite this, I think you have a good point, just need to get those at the cutting edge on board.


Chris

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Grades grades grades! lol . . You guys . . . . . . . .

Good effort dave!

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


Perhaps. By the same argument there must come a point when the world 100-m record stops decreasing. But there is no sign of it yet.

In reply to Chris Craggs:
Splendid at last the voice of reason . Leather on willow , dew on the grass , pie chips and peas etc ,

In reply to mick o the north:

>Leather on willow

I've been waiting for music like this all my life!

In reply to craig d:

Same here.

But how do you give a route an onsight grade?

Do you have to have onsighted a route to give it an onsight grade, or can you have worked on a top rope first, then lead, then guess an onsight grade?

I'm interested in the process.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: thought this was about little women and kentmere, now that really would be impressive on-sight.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:


New-router onsights a new route, reckons it's about E3 6a, grades it E3 6a.

Or, new-router onsights a new route, reckons it's about E3 6a but his mate who follows him up says he missed a good hold and it's more like E2 5c, so they grade it E2 5c.

Or, new-router pre-practices a new route, leads it when he's got it wired, reckons it's probably about E9 6c had he led it onsight. Lots of people argue.

Simple isn't it?

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:


Well I suppose as these guys have never done 'proper' trad climbing before there is no way they could even guess at an E Grade or tech grade.

Now - if they had worked their way up through the system, E1, E3, E5, E7 then they might have a clue what grade these routes are!


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

How do you know? I think most top british boulders have done a decent trad apprenticeship in my experience and would be emminently qualified to make such an assessment.

In reply to Matt Vigg:

Where does he get the E3 6a from?

In reply to teddy:

T'was a quip!


Chris

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:


I give up, Mick, where the f*ck do you think he gets it from??

jcm

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:


He gets it from his past experiences of E3's and 6a moves, and all the routes he's climbed at various other grades probably help him plot the route on a scale too. The more experience he has, the better he'll be at picking numbers and letters that a majority of other climbers will agree with. It's definitely fuzzy but we all know it works.

In reply to Matt Vigg:

If it works so well how come there is so much debate over it all?

In reply to koopa:

The vocal minority.

The Ent

In reply to teddy:

Contender for missed point of the day award.

The Ent

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:
"I have no idea. But like I say, there must come a point where moves cannot get harder, and routes get more difficult only by there being more all-but-impossible moves on them."

Just look at hard bouldering at say V14/Font8B+ (the non stamina ones). We aren't really close to that are we?

In reply to teddy:

A few examples: Ryan Pasquill flashed My Buddy the Apple 7c/7c+ and highball, Neil Dyer flashed Sole Power, 7b+/7c and highball. Ben Bransby did Cornelius E8/ font 7c extreme highball second go.

In reply to Adam L:


Thanks Adam. Yes these do seem to be hard, although I'm not sure I'm quite in agreement with you that they directly compare to routes with gear on them, even though they are highball. I'll wager that Sole Power is significantly easier than Little Women, despite what the grades say and second go is good but not an onsight. I still think that as soon as you tie in, you're playing a slightly different game from highballing, just my opinion!

Re the gag last night, I don't normally joke about such matters! but will admit I probably lost something in the translation there (it was late!)

In reply to teddy:

My Buddy though? Both harder and a longer piece of sustained climbing. When Jon did the line to the right, exactly the same height, he placed gear as the tree was in the way of a clean fall.

In reply to Adam L:

These are all flashes though, so whilst they are stunning achievements they can't really be compared to an on sight.

Shame this thread started as news about someone actually climbing an E graded route in the style it is graded for (on sight) has turned into this. Great effort Dave, nice one!

In reply to StuM:


Turned into what? A discussion about style, grades and another superb climbing achievement.

What do you want, multiple posts saying well done?

I prefer the mix.

In reply to StuM: These are all flashes though, so whilst they are stunning achievements they can't really be compared to an on sight.


Yes they can. From the description of Little Women being Font 7b+ then a highball Flash of 7c/7c+ is the same ballpark of equivalence as an achievement. The detail of comparinmg the two could go be made more informatively by someoone familiar with both routes/problems.

In sport climbing onsighting 7a is an equivalent achievement to redpointing 7c or thereabouts.

In reply to Adam L:

Yeah that is pretty damn impressive, I have seen that in Winter Sessions. I'm blown away by Dave onsighting LW with no video to watch, no prior knowledge at all. Both amazing achievments!

Lets remember this is no ordinary Font 7b+ we are dealing with here, its a Welford 7b+.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Groove Is In The Heart is just to the right of Little Women.A matless ascent without the preplaced runner awaits.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: Good effort to Dave, getting Little Woman first go is well impressive. I did little woman last year (I think I took about 4 or 5 falls before I did it (ground up)and as much as I think the E grade is by far the best way to describe routes with gear on of all the routes I have done this is the one most suited to a bouldering grade. Hands off rest (only about 10ft up) from where the gear is placed, then make 5 hard moves to a good hold (then 1 more 6a move to the top)

On many of the highballs people are doing you are far more scared and have less chance to look at the holds first. I don't know what the hardest font grade onsighted on a route (in the uk) is but this must be up there.

I thought it was very nice too.

Re: E grades, do people who use them at all regularly find them 'broken'? Does the fact that there can be instances found, especially at the very edge of the grade lens, where some aberration occurs. Some of these recent clamourings could, as Enty intimated, and if one were to be led by headlines, give the impression they were not working.

E grades have somehow had the finger pointed at them in the chatter surrounding recent headlines. It would seem to my understanding, more, that it was just that some routes got misgraded (with no cynical accusations or bitching intended, I just think it informs the debate).

I would be interested in knowing, where, exactly have E grades been broken? Perhaps Mick Ryan or Simon Lee, two of the foremost knights brandishing their jousting sticks against the wounded King E, could you tell me the most recent trad routes you have done, and tell me how the grade of these routes were 'broken'. If I knew the 20 most recent experiences of the grade, perhaps I could better understand their failure?

And to people looking for the exact explination of how E grades work - they are graded for an onsight ascent by an average-heighted white middle-class male whose physical and mental strengths were dished out in equal measure. Any variations from this norm can expect a variation in perceived difficulty. And this definition is true in every case except where it isn't.

A grade is a grade. It doesn't matter exactly what it is for. It just is. A lot of the debate above is like a bunch of boffins in a lab in Oxford trying to calculate which jokes are funny and which jokes aren't. It just is. An unprotected grit arete graded E6 is a grade harder than the one graded E5 and that is a grade harder again than the one graded E4. An E4 on Gogarth Main Cliff is one grade harder than the E3 and that is one grade harder than the E2. Tales of Yankee Power and Supersonic are a grade harder than A6 Amber Gambler and Flakey Wall, and they are one grade harder than Perseus and Robert Brown.

A man walks into a butcher shop:

Man: I bet you twenty quid you can't reach me that beef off the top shelf.

Butcher: No way.

Man: Why not?

Butcher: The steaks are too high.

In reply to Niall Grimes:

E grades work fine for me Niall, as they do for most.

I'm primarily asking questions about them.

I'm interested in their nature, evolution and how routes are labelled with them.

There's a job for you.

No one has yet provided a decent explanation - not even you.

Glad you are partaking in this evergreen debate.... but at some point please leave your keyboard and get out climbing you saddo (just kidding!).

Mick

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Your wish is my command, good knight.

Goodnight.

PS, questions are cool, but I could have sworn that you had taken a 'position'.

In reply to AMo:

Obviously it's far harder than anything I will ever climb but I'm sure there are loads of much more impressive on sights than this that don't make it to the news. I have seen a couple old hippies in Cheddar onsight a 2 pitch E6 with bugger all gear (and their gear was pretty manky) & a crap landing, surely that is more impressive than someone onsighting a route which is so short it should probably get a bouldering grade rather than an E grade. Too many northern gritstoners on here who have never seen a crag more than 8 metres high. Hard impressive routes are regularly climbed on bigger, more dangerous, more remote, less popular crags.

In reply to Niall Grimes:


Not really. They'll never die, they are part of us all and we should be proud of that. I'm sure most are.

Be good if we could have some definitive statement/article about them: their history, evolution and use.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about them - then you get the clever dicks who shout down those that aren't as familiar with them.

I'd like to see the definitive article about them: a FAQ that we can direct people to so that those are new can be educated ( at thebmc.co.uk).

That is my primary concern.

Bob's article is good and is a starting point: http://www.aqvi55.dsl.pipex.com/climb/uk_grades.htm

Different people's viewpoints would be good in your article Niall.

Consider this:

"The publicity given to climbers who made free ascents in the 70's was vastly o0verrated. Usually no mention of nefarious tactics - like top rope inspection which reduces the difficulty by two grades"

Paul Ross 1994.

Get busy Niall and do not be late.

Mick

In reply to SC:

What makes you think that its harder? When I was trad climbing (10 years ago now) I climbed with a few people who onsighted big trad E6's in Wales and it certainly wasn't newsworthy. An onsight of a hard bouldery E7 which stopped the likes of Ben Bransby (see above) is certainly worthy of news imo.

In reply to SC:

Are they? This comes up regularly but no one ever seems to come up with the names / numbers to back it up. And E6 doesn't really count unless we're talking the hard end of the grade.

In reply to SC:

I bet this would have been nowhere near as hard as Little Women. E6's get onsighted fairly frequently, if it was newsworthy then why didn't these guys write in to UKC or somebody on their behalf? Either don't complain about selective reporting or report stuff, can't have it both ways.

Do you know of any unheard E7 onsights not on gritstone that have not been reported? I can't think of any.

In reply to Ian Patterson:

Here's one example local to me that I'm aware of: Faerie Stories at Fair Head, done back in June.
http://fairheadclimbers.com/pages/new_routes/new_routes.htm (scroll down for it).

FA with minimal abseil inspection, according to the chat on the forums it should be E7. That's quite impressive.

In reply to AMo:

Interesting link; I remember thinking when I did Hell's Kitchen the right arete would be interesting. E6 6a interesting, it seems, or presumably 7a X or something ridiculous in Mickspeak.

Best crag in the UK?!

jcm

In reply to teddy:

If they haven't been reported then the chances are you'd have to know the ascentionist personally to have heard about it. I know that Dan Mcmanus onsighted Authentic Desire on Cloggy for example. It's just a case of whether anyone bothers to publicise it.

In reply to AMo:

A quick google search finds Dan McManus gets a namecheck here

http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web08x/newswire-onsight-e8-dickson

and in quite a few other articles.

Which sort of proves the point, E7 onsight is still hard and onsight of a bouldery John Welford E7 7a is certainly of interest.

In reply to Niall Grimes:

Me? If any jousting knight is going to deal lethal blows its a widely liked and respected guidebook writer using more useful bouldering highball grades instead of 'proper'grades - good on you.

You are the thin end of the wedge but it will be my great pleasure to keep hammering your behind.

In reply to AMo:

True, that's interesting about the Cloggy one...I bet there aren't too many more though that we don't know about by climbers who are not well known, either that or I am well out of the loop!! Actually, I suppose the star performers frequently onsight E7's so they often perhaps don't bother to report them. I guess E8 onsight is the next level that is truly 'news'. I still think little Woman is well impressive purely cos of how physically hard it is.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

It's good isn't it, amazing haul of hard new routes done up there in the last few years.

In reply to teddy:

E7 onsight, and indeed ground-up, will be newsworthy for quite some time.

It is near the cutting edge of climbing achievement in that particular style.

Oh and some old guys have done E7 ground-up.... unreported of course.

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC:

Onsights of hard E6 are still newsworthy, surely? Would an onsight of Strawberries go unreported? Onsights of E6s in US, like Optimator and Phoenix still get mentioned in climbing media, at least if they are done in addition to other feats, or by someone braking into the grade.

In reply to jwi:

You are probably right Jonas.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Good stuff, I think I said more or less the same some posts up the stack. Nice to see the guidebook producers showing a common front!

I suspect all the hot air about the system being 'broke' stems from:

a) yoofs never like whatever their forebears did
b) certain correspondents like stirring - good for column inches - or bandwidth nowadays!


Chris

In reply to StuM:

I wouldn't agree, since the advent of UKC, and especially on gritstone, a lot of pedantic nonsense has been spouted and an onsight has become a somewhat mythical ideal. There are flashes and there are flashes, having seen a video a few years ago is a world away from watching a friend of similar build work it on top-rope for an hour. All the flashes I mentioned above as comparable had minimal beta, and the climber was having to make up the moves as he went.

In reply to Chris Craggs:
>


No need to blame.

The root cause, this year at least, is headpoint style and headpoint grades, and the significance of some of the latest ground-up/onsights. The disparity between those two styles as regards assigning an E-grade to those climbing experiences.

Questions quite rightly have been asked by many and it has been a hot topic everywhere - from the London tube, to climbing shops and walls, out at the crag, in the mags and on the forums.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

>Questions quite rightly have been asked by many and it has been a hot topic everywhere

I'm sure that up at Cloggy last summer they were speaking of little else.

Well said Adam L; quite right.

jcm

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Could be right there though Chris ; 0 )

I was just with Dave Birkett and he got a call from a climbing journalist, Sarah Stirling, asking all kinds of invasive questions about grades.

Birkett waxed lyrical u course.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

You were there too John?

Yes I could hardly believe the gradespeak at Cloggy last summer.

Kids these days, eh.

Send them over to >>>>>>> http://8a.nu/

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Yeah, I wasn't sure 'sustained Font 5, R' really quite captured the experience of Great Wall.

jcm

IIn reply to johncoxmysteriously:

John John.

Get up to speed will ya?

Everyone knows it is E4 6a ... Fr6b+ ... Font 6a .. R ... P2

Anyways, the only way to capture the experience is to do the route. Grades are just a tool.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Actually it's nowhere near even sustained Font 5 - can you imagine Science Friction x 3 on the gear of GW?! Shudder.

jcm

In reply to Jack Geldard - Editor - UKC: Well done Dave, awesome effort. Such a shame these UKC news threads just turn into mass grade debates.

In reply to peterbull:

Mass debates is where its at.

In reply to GrahamD: Plenty of other threads to do that on fella.

In reply to peterbull:

You aren't seriously suggesting that the only acceptable replies on threads that start "NEWS: xxx climbs YYY at Ez 7b" are along the lines of "Well done old bean" are you ?