UKC

Shining Cliff

How can I tell which routes are bolted sport climbs and which are trad routes?

Say for example this one, which I found by searching for 'Sport' in climbing type, I feel like it's not listing sport climbs as in 'bolted sport climbs' which is what I thought sport meant...?

If there are letters like HVS 5a, that's not the same as at the indoor climbing wall when you see a 5a is it?

Is that a trad grade?

But if there is one that says f6a, is that the same as when an indoor wall says '6a'? Is that a sport grade or is it not that simple?

Any help would be hugely appreciated as I feel it's all in another language atm.

Thanks

In reply to elliot.baker:
Grades given with an adjective grade ie severe, HVS, E1 then a tech grade 4a, 5b etc will be traditionally protected. Sport climbs are denoted just by a tech grade of the french system ie 6a, 6b+ etc. Bouldering where the grades are provided will either be in Font grades i.e. F7a or V grades, i.e. V4 etc.

Check out a grade conversion table to see comparisons, but beware a 6a at the wall will be a lot different from a E1 5a in feel, difficulty and seriousness.

Hope this helps

In reply to Nordie_matt:

Thank you!

In reply to elliot.baker:

If you have 10 mins to spare, read this:

http://people.bath.ac.uk/dac33/high/17AppendixGrades.htm

In reply to elliot.baker:

Yup.

And just to make this bit extra clear: "British tech grades" -- the number-and-letter after an adjectival grade -- are not the same as French/sport grades, and they don't match up, despite looking the same.


It could be a sport grade, but confusingly it could also be a bouldering grade -- the "f" can stand for "Font" as well as "French".

Sometimes, it's clarified by putting the bouldering grade in all capitals -- "6A" rather than "6a", but not always.

In the case of Shining Cliff, it looks like these are describing boulder problems (there aren't bolted sport climbs on gritstone anyway).

The Rockfax conversion table seems decent:

http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades/

In reply to elliot.baker:

Thank you all, one more question, what do the asterisk's mean on the logbooks? Sometimes there are several like ***

In reply to elliot.baker:

That denotes if a route has 1 star, 2 stars or 3 Stars - The more stars the more likely the quality of the route (Although this is subjective, I have climbed some 3* routes I hated, and some routes without any stars that were fantastic )

In reply to elliot.baker:

It lets you know how polished a route is. The more stars the more polish.

In reply to elliot.baker:

Just had a squiz at where you live. If it's Notts wall then it's a bit chaotic at the mo. They all used to be UK tech but are changing to F. Some climbs are one, some other and there's debate whether some without the 'f' on the paper are F or UK tech!


....and don't even get me on whether the aretes are in! Still more fun than you can shake a stick at!

In reply to elliot.baker:

You might also note that a British trad grade of say, HVS 5a means that the hardest move is 5a. A French bolted grade of say 6a is a grade for the whole route, not the hardest move.

In reply to elliot.baker:


If the logbook on UKC says f6a then it should be a boulder problem with f for Font, whereas a sport climb would be F6a, F for French or simply 6a.

In reply to winhill:

I'm reasonably sure you've got the upper and lower case the wrong way around...

In reply to elliot.baker:

You might like this article:

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/a-brief-explanation-of-uk-traditional-climbing-gra...

In reply to elliot.baker:

As no-one else has talked about the crag: Shining Cliff has no sports routes. This is the most common situation on Britsh crags, with the history here of the 'traditional ethic' (where the lead climber places their own protection, for instance as they climb by putting metal wedges in cracks and clipping these to the rope or similar for sling loops around trees or spikes or wedged rocks, and the second climber removes these as they subsequently follow). There is a bolted route at Shining Cliff but its an old 'aid route' (climber's clipped a bolt with a sling and pulled and stood up in this and then clipped the next, and repeated the proccess, rather than climbing using only the rock for hands and feet): such aid climbing has gone out of fashion and the bolts on this route are old and rusty so the tricky modern lead climb that follows them is anything but a sport route.

In reply to Dandan:


Nope...

In reply to winhill:

You did on one of the numbers though if we are being pedantic?