UKC

Hi,

Just a quick question about wall grades. What would the equivalent of a Fr4 on an indoor wall be in trad grades?

Cheers

A walk!

You can use this to convert https://rockfax.com/climbing-guides/grades/ 

Mod or Diff I'd say in terms of actual moves.

If pressed I would say severe/hard severe but it's not a sensible comparison. There are many severe's that have the potential for long serious falls.

Al

I would probably say Mod. Fr4 inside in my experience requires no real thought at all where as for a beginner outside (like me) some diffs can still be thought provoking. 

In terms of the strength/endurance required for the moves, probably about HS, but there's so much more to climbing trad than the strength that the comparison is utterly meaningless

Hmm, depends what the OP meant by 'equivalent'. I might use an indoor F4 as the first warmup route of a session, but I wouldn't treat an HS on a crag like that!

Which is why I said: If pressed I would say severe/hard severe but it's not a sensible comparison. There are many severe's that have the potential for long serious falls.

Forgetting all other factors, which of course it is impossible to do I would say that the moves on an F4 feel similar, physically, to the moves one would encounter on a Severe. A moderate is so easy I wouldn't even give it the stature of a rock climb. Indeed a setter would struggle to set a diff let alone a moderate on an indoor wall.

Agreed.  Although I posted the grade conversion table it's nonsense to convert sport grades to trad as there's a lot more going on than  just the difficulty of the moves and terrain.

Bit of a nonsense table too really - who has ever seen grade 3 and 4 sport climbs divided up into a,b and c?

I always find posts like this a bit concerning because I would not want to give the OP  the idea that because he can climb a specific sports grade he can translate that into trad.

To the OP: you may be fortunate and be able to but I think it highly unlikely.  Some years ago I knew a young lad who was climbing in the 7's and even made the UK team at one point.  Assuming he could make the transition directly nearly killed him and that was just on a VS.  It was many years before he ventured onto trad again.

Al

Anywhere between VD and HVS depending on how well protected it is! 

While F4 is equivalent to around a diff in English trad grades the chances of anyone finding a diff that equates to an indoor F4 are quite slim.

A F4 will, because of the limitations of indoor walls, likely be a jug ladder.

A diff could involve a range of move (such as back and footing and chimneying) which will be completely alien to the average F4 indoor climber and could well be entirely terrifying.  Mod / diff climbs we generally put up years ago by climbers using very different gear and often have a very different style to modern sports climbs using a range of weakness in the rock and climbing styles your indoor climber will never encounter.