UKC

I've recently had my first go on the speed climbing route, standard route throughout the world, or so I'm told.

It's graded at the wall I tried it on as 6b, while I can climb 6b I'm not usually fast unless I'm running out of steam and I need to get a shift on.

I've just looked up the grade elsewhere and https://headrushtech.com/blogs/what-is-speed-climbing/ has it as "no official grade for the standardized speed climbing route, it is estimated to be around a 5.10a to 5.10c"

Apart from some of the moves being a bit reachy, I'm 5'10" (in old money) I'd have graded this about 5c - 6a max.

This is at Warwick where the old wall was a bit of a soft touch, but is now a bit harder, we thought the increase in grade was due to the speed climb being a reference as it were, so a 6c would compare to the speed wall, but now we've tried it, we were obviously wrong.

Has anyone else tried one of these routes? If so what do you think grading-wise?

PS I don't think it's climbing, though it's good fun competing with my mate.

What is it, then? 

When they had a grade on it at Ratho a few years ago I think it was 6b or maybe 6b+.

I think it feels much harder before you learn it enough to get some momentum.  If you do it statically, without having learned where the sweet spots are on the holds, it is pumpy because you are moving slowly and it's overhanging the whole way.  There are a couple of big moves and it might be at the easy end of 6b.   If you watch the wall at Ratho 6a/6a+ climbers who haven't tried it before usually fall off.

Once you get it dialled in, it feels much easier.

On the other hand, if you are trying to grade the sequence that the really fast guys use there are some huge dynos and it would be way more than 6b+.

gymnastics, may be. Probably just showing off

I was talking about on-sighting, it took me a while, about 3-4 meters to realise the holds were all the same, and where the good holds were, but nearly all of our group managed it and some of them are struggling on 6a.

The ones that fell off were on the short side and didn't, as most of us didn't, do it very dynamically, first go around.

Anyhow, thanks for the input, I'll see if I can get a few other up it ext time to see. It might be it suits most of our styles, rather than smooth and delicate

I found it surprisingly hard! Like kinda might flow a bit more if you run up it like they do.