UKC

Oh god, another grade related thread, I hope the community will forgive me.

I am wondering if folk can help me fill in a sort of conversion to get an idea of what each Trad grade feels like on the french sport scale if it is a) safe as houses, b) bit scarey and c) death on a stick. I am really only interested from E1 upwards, wayhay for arbitrary elitism . Bearing in mind that:
1) I'm interested in mid to long pitches, not boulder problems that need font grades.
2) Obviously there will be some variability, I am looking for average or benchmark type information.
3) The grades I put in below are based on what I've read in some guides and been told by some other people, they are kind of educated guesses.

E1
Safe: 6a? Scarey: Death:

E2
Safe: Scarey: Death:

E3
Safe: Scarey: Death:

E4
Safe: Scarey: Death:

E5
Safe: 7a? Scarey: Death:

E6
Safe: 7b? Scarey: 7a+? Death:

E7
Safe: 7c? Scarey: Death:

E8
Safe: 8a? Scarey: Death: 7b?

E9
Safe: Scarey: Death:

E10
Safe: Scarey: Death:

I'm really asking this because I find that if a trad route is safe, even a little run out, then I can pretty much climb as hard as I can on sport and I'm quite interested in how much stronger I can expect to have to get to progress.

In reply to henwardian: For safe routes this might be of interest: http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades.html

and this might be useful for bolder routes...
http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades-bold.html

In reply to henwardian:

Erm.....confused.com

I always understood that technically, drop 2 or 3 grades of the sport grade to get UK tech.

6a, would then be 5a or 5b.

Other than that, if a grade falls outside it's usual adjectival grade, then closer attention is required to something.

E1 5c "should be" well protected, but 5c could also be E2 to E4.
E4 5c is probably in your terms "death on a stick"

In reply to henwardian:

Safe E1 is F6a, scary E1 is F5c, Very scary E1 is F5b

Just keep adding a grade to each scale so safe E5 is F7b, etc. So Right wall is V scary and is probably F6c/+, Doubting Thomas at Malham is safe E5 and is as hard as any F7b I've been on.

However you also have to take into account hanging around placing gear which can add to the pump, a trad pump feels quite different to a sports one!

Ignore the "take two off the tech grade to get the French grade", it's wrong, you have to compare the overall grades in each system

ALC

In reply to NorthernRock:

This sort of works in the lower end of the scale but it completely breaks down past about brit tech 6a equivalent.


This isn't really what I am getting at though, I am looking for a french equivalent. Also, it isn't correct because E4 5c is often well protected, just very, very sustained 5c, e.g. Electric Blue at Rhoscolyn, No Cruise at Glen Lednock and Spaced Out Rockers On The Road to Oblivion at Reiff. So really you need to both look at the climb and read the guide desc before you can get an idea of what makes it E4.

In reply to a lakeland climber:

Hmm, this seems in the right ballpark but F7b for E5 seems pretty hard. A friend I talked to who had done various E6s said that fairly well protected E6 was about F7b, also, the few E5s I have been on have been pretty safe and felt about F7a.

In reply to henwardian:

I think you're trying to calibrate something that's not worth assessing with poorly protected/cruxy routes. You can - if yo wish - make a comparison between safe/sustained trad routes and homogenous sport routes after that it all becomes a little pointless/

In reply to henwardian:

Don't convert, learn to think in 'foreign'.

In reply to henwardian:

...which is why I think american style 'R' and 'X' suffixes would be useful at the end of UK grades.
The OP's table seems to be correct having E8 at F8a.

In reply to Toerag:


We don't. For example I set off up Lundy Calling at Shorn Cliff on Sunday. E4 5c (and my first E4 since 1983, so not to be taken lightly). I looked at the description, looked at the route and decided that it would be unwise to fall off until after the peg. At that grade it was also going to be sustained, else it would have been E3.

I duly ran out of steam one move from the top and slumped on a wire. Oh well, never mind, but the guide told me everything I needed to know, although I do think climbing straight up from the peg rather than stepping left as advised would have been better, and I might have made that

In reply to henwardian:

Someone with ample experience of these kinds of grades once told me that to toprope an average E5 normally would approximate F7a, but that most people climbing E5 would need to be climbing at least F7c sportwise.

If you climb as hard trad as you're climbing sport, you're not doing yourself justice.

In reply to Stefan Kruger:

In terms of onsight climbing my trad and sport grades are pretty much identical, I've redpointed up to F7c but thats a different ballgame entirely. It's pretty hard to give a sport onsight 100% when you know that nothing bad will happen if you fall off/give up.

In reply to Stefan Kruger:


Or you're a very good trad climber!

In reply to henwardian:

That's the thing, innit. If you climb trad and sport 'equally hard' you're either treating your trad as sport (red/head pointing) or your sport as trad (onsighting).

In reply to henwardian:

It's not a very useful conversion, there's such a spread of F grades per E it just ends up meaningless even if you limit yourself to 'reasonably safe, homogeneous routes of reasonable length', take some E4s in that category for example: They start somewhere around the 6a mark (Break on Through, The Missing Link) and end up way into the 7s (Retroed stuff on York's/Peak Lime - old sandbags?).

Looking at your profile you must have noticed this and have a pretty good idea of what/how much work you need to do to move on a grade or two.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Hmm, not so much. I guess I know I have to have a great day to onsight at my limit but 1 or 2 grades up seem very far away and cloud cuckoo land (in that order). Previous grades never really looked so far away and I figured if I could step back by a degree and work out how strong I would need to be, it is an easier target to aim for. Gaining half grades on the french sport scale is a lot easier than trying to gain an E point on the trad scale and gives some sort of incremental advance to break the barrier down a bit. Hmm, that just sounds like wanky rubbish but I hope it sort of conveys what I am thinking.