UKC

25 year old American boulderer Katie Lamb has made the first female ascent of Box Therapy 8C+, in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA.

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This is awesome. Exciting news!

Amazing! 6 mile walk in at 3000mAOD sounds like a stern warm up. 

Well done to Katie, as climbing 8c+ is an outstanding achievement. The title is a bit odd though, as it seems to imply that 8c+ is the hardest ever climb by a woman. That may just be my reading of it though I guess?

(Several female climbers have climbed 9a and 9a+, including Emma Twyford and Hazel Findlay from the UK.)

(Edited to add - just checked and a few women have even climbed 9b in the last few years.)

8C+ is font grade, not french sport.

You're mixing up route grades with bouldering grades. Katie is the first woman to climb a boulder graded Font 8C+. The examples you quoted climbed routes with French sport grades in the 9s. Completely different grading systems.

Ah, that makes sense - thank you!

At first glance I thought exactly the same thing. I just figured an American climber doing an American climb would use the V grade for a boulder problem.

Kinda ironic that in the same newsletter you have a piece lamenting modern culture's obsession with numbers and the next is yet another announcement of someone achieving another number...🙃

She did report it as V16 in her Instagram post (linked in the article), so it's UKC that have translated to the Font grade.

Funnily enough I did consider this when selecting what went into this week's newsletter, but quite enjoyed that sense of irony. Different people like different things and UKC has always been a broad church. Long may that last...

It would have been helpful to put that in the title

FYI, the convention is boulder grades are in uppercase and sport grades in lowercase so it sort of is in the title.

That her achievement is in the field of bouldering should be apparent to anyone who reads the article.  She's described as a boulderer in the first line, there are photos of the boulder immediately afterwards, and the rest of the text repeatedly informs that she is a boulderer, who has climbed a hard boulder problem, previously climbed by other good boulderers. 

Yes, although most of us know that bouldering grades are upper case and sport routes are lower case, I think UKC might be surprised just how many folk were initially confused; it took me a wee while to work it out also. Any confusion would be easily avoided by just saying in the headline "first woman to boulder 8C+", and there'd be no further explanation necessary.

Did you think she was climbing a sport route in the photo?!

It was obvious to me. It wasn't obvious to the person upthread.

I think it's extremely cool that out of the 50 odd people in the world who have solved an 8C+ or harder, one of them is a woman.

That might seem small but how many physical disciplines have a woman in the combined top 50 in the world in terms of absolute metrics? Not many. Especially when looking at how ostensibly many more men are bouldering than women 

Inspiring stuff and a great ascent. Chapeau!

I didn't but I've seen shorter sport climbs than the boulder she appears to be only halfway up.

Quite a few of the freediving disciplines have at least one woman having performed, in competition conditions, at a level that rather fewer than 49 men have. At a guess, constant weight (depth with monofin and possibly with bi-fins) and dynamic (monofin and bi-fins and no fins). There may be a larger gap in some of the other depth disciplines. 

Which is great and all, but it's still a very rare thing

I didn't try to imply that it wasn't, Andrew. 

Congratulations to Katie on a very well deserved and landmark ascent. 

Regarding the reporting of the grade in the headline, considering that UKC has an international audience, it might be appropriate to report both grading systems in the headline in full so its clear e.g.:

Box Therapy V16/ Font 8C+

Seems best to use the V system as the first grade reported as its an American climb so that is their default grading system, followed by the Font system grade. Omitting the V grade for an American climb seems strange. Why would the V grade be unilaterally dropped, merely because UKC is based in Europe where V grades are not the default system? Surely, the better option is to report both grades, seeing that both systems are in common usage around the world. 

Also, suggest add 'Font' before the Font grade so its crystal clear that its not a sport route. Its confusing enough as it is that sport and boulder grades look similar even after the lower case/ upper case differences. Best to make it easy for people (and yes it is possible to deduce whether the climb is a boulder or route from pictures etc but why make it difficult?)

Or, you know, just read at least part of the article if the headline is intriguing but leaves you a little uncertain on the details. You'd soon be completely clear about the style and the grading.

Deliberately vague clickbait headlines are annoying but UKC hasn't ever really gone down that path and overly detailed headlines would also be annoying. What you're suggesting isn't exactly snappy.

Check this out, looks better to me:

https://www.climber.co.uk/news/katie-lamb-climbs-box-therapy-v16-font-8c/

I don't have a problem with that headline, but it does lose the context that it's the first ascent of the grade by a woman. You arguably need to be more in touch with bouldering to notice that aspect than to recognise a Font grade.

OK, how about 'Katie Lamb becomes the first woman to climb V16/ Font 8C+ with her ascent of Box Therapy'

Sure, you can cram everything in but it just gets a bit unwieldy. The headline they chose covered the most important element of what event had happened and why it was newsworthy, which is all a headline should do. If anyone was at all confused, they could click into the article itself which made it perfectly clear.

I see your point. It’s hardly cramming it in though, 3 extra words! 

Why don't they just put the letter in front of the number so it's C+8 and make that the system?

A novel suggestion! Makes my head hurt just looking at it though

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/ukc/climbing_has_succumbed_to_numbers-763...

Not sure about 'climbing', but 'climbers' seem to revel in arguing about grades. This thread seems to have lost the celebratory nature, and moved back to tedious arguing about grades. Again...

Whilst the specific arguments above are silly, this article wouldn't be news to 99% of people without the grade attached, so it's fair to argue about grades.

To be fair, it should be reported in the local grade which is V.  If someone wants to look up a conversion they can.  As we know it doesn't always translate.