UKC

For all you stats nerds out there. Stanage Popular just received it's 200,000th tick today! More than double the amount of ticks as it's closest rival, Burbage North.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/graphs.html

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

Presumably that includes DNFs and repeat ascents?

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

I did my first climb about 1981, so what I find interesting is max. grade progression over the 35 YEARS FROM 1981 TO 2016:
Bouldering V6 to V14
Alpine ED2 to ED4
Sport 7b+ to 9a+
Trad 5.14a to 5.14a

Obviously not scientific and presumably many less of the hard climbs done in 1981 will be logged compared to 2016, but still interesting statistics.

On a different tack, the 12 most climbed on crags are all gritstone but the most climbed on rock type is Limestone.

In reply to Martin Haworth:
That's interesting actually.

I'm pretty ignorant on climbing history, could anyone enlighten me on why the grades (sport and boulder especially) have gone up so much? There's a fair few climbers now who can climb v6 and 7b+, is this better shoes, better training or something else?

I can climb v6 now but I sure as hell wouldn't have been a world class climber if I'd been climbing in the 80s.

In reply to Greasy Prusiks:
I can imagine several reasons for increased maximum performance:
People now sponsored to climb "full time"
Indoor training facilities
Better understanding of training methods and nutrition
Better equipment
Increased media coverage leading to more focus on absolute performance
Increased communication between pros leading to training knowledge/beta sharing

That's just the easy ones, i'm sure there are many small things. The director of British Cycling said something to this effect when talking about the British performance at the 2016 olympics - We have done all the obvious things and now we focus on the many small things, each of which contributes a tiny amount but which add up overall.

In reply to Angrypenguin:

They're all good points.

I think part of it is the change in style of routes. Personally I think it's easier to get very strong and climb a steep v6 which is more of a modern style than climb a really technical slaby v6.

In reply to Angrypenguin:

I think you've missed the point of my post.
The grade increases are expected, the single statistic that stands out is the Trad grades.

In reply to Greasy Prusiks:

The bouldering max grade improvement is pretty meaningless, I was using it to leverage my point and to contrast it with the trad grade.
No one really logged their boulder problems then, so you have 105 ticked boulder problems from 1981, I expect there will be 100,000 by the end of 2016.

In reply to Greasy Prusiks:


I think the simplest answer is that the maximum grades shown are not the actual top grades at that time, but the top grades logged in any one particular year; otherwise they wouldn't be able to drop from one year to the next which you'll notice they sometimes do. Also, unlike the average grades, it only takes one outlier/joke/anomaly to completely skew the picture. Who actually logged sport 9a back in 1974, ie about two decades before that grade actually existed? I suspect that all the 5.14as derive from ascents of The Nose - that being its modern free grade - although in the absence of a very small handful of particular names in the database none of the logged ascents will have actually been free; I think the biggest US grades in 1981 were for things like The Phoenix and Cosmic Debris [5.13a and 5.13b], although as well as forgetting its name I can't remember when that thing at Sugarloaf [5.13c?] was first done, while I guess the hardest trad routes now are a notch or so above 5.14a. Midnight Lightning [V8+, I think] was done in the late 1970s, as were Jim Holloway's [generally harder] problems. I'm not sure what the highest sport grade would have been in 1981 - "sport" was only just emerging as a seperate entity and French grades didn't exist in the UK at the time - but probably about 8a.

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

0.5% of all stanage ticks (approx) are mine lol

In reply to Martin Haworth:


Sport climbers are more likely to be the strange obsessive sorts who log every failed redpoint and dogging session..

In reply to Lemony:


I don't log my dogging sessions in case my wife reads my logbook.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

That makes a lot more sense! Thanks.

In reply to Lemony:

Where as on trad- A DNF is usually an epic/injury.

In reply to Martin Haworth:


Science now surely demands to know whether sport climbers are more likely to have multiple partners in a single session.

In reply to Martin Haworth:


We could do with splitting out Trad into the separate grading systems to be honest like on the My Graph page. You might be able to progression in some grade types then.

In reply to Paul Phillips - UKC and UKH:

Is there anyway to identify what those 5.14a's (and the other hardest ascents) are? Would be interesting to know if they're genuine, upgrades, or jokes.

In reply to Ian Parsons:


I've hunted this one down, they did it on aid: Total Eclipse (8c+)

It gets 8c+ when shown on the climb page as that's the grade Rockfax gives it.

In reply to Jon Read:

I'll split the grade types out sometime. So under Trad, they'll be British, USA, French, Australian, Nordic and UIAA. It should make it easier to spot the anomalies. I've got a few ideas about how to show the actual top logbook ticks for each year.

In reply to zimpara:


What? I'm sure the vast majority of trad DNFs are just like most of mine, going "ohhhh, errrr, watch me!" before sitting on a solid nut or cam placed at nose level. The epics are the ones that are where your last bit of gear is actually below your harness, and you actually fall about 20 cms!

In reply to TobyA:

Don't think I've ever had a proper trad epic, but Dnfs? Pretty sure I have one of those every couple of weeks

In reply to Ian Parsons:

"that thing at Sugarloaf " - Grand Illusion 5.13b/c
https://www.mountainproject.com/v/grand-illusion/105875792

Steve

In reply to Steve Clegg:

'Morning Steve. Bingo - that's the one! 1979, eh? Possibly comes into the "outlier" category mentioned earlier. So too, I suspect, might some of Pete Cleveland's routes at Devil's Lake - 5.12 in the 1960s and 5.13 in the 1970s, by some accounts. I think that these local anomalies - Elbe/Czech sandstone being another - have tended to become scarcer as people travelled more and found out what sort of levels were being achieved elsewhere; once the performance bar is visible climbers in other areas tend to raise their own game to meet it.

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

Interesting that after decades of development of passive and active pro, brilliant climbing shoes and all year training facilities, average trad drops from VS to HS.

In reply to paul_in_cumbria:

These grades are the "average" of routes climbed. Not the same as average top grade of all climbers (another DB query for the other Paul!). With more sport routes, those who would have climbed more hard trad routes (had they been born one or two generations ago) probably climb a lot of sport routes instead.

Additionally, consider the selection bias. If you are logging your past climbs you may well still be a keen climber. People logging their recent climbs now may not be such committed climbers.

PS: To the other Paul, 48.1seconds - you could prob better optimise that query I'd have thought.