UKC

My experience is that bouldering grades are the same, or easier, than in UK gyms (London gyms: Arch, ME, Westway, Castle). But route grading is either impossibly stiff, or I’ve lost all of my endurance.

Indoors in London I used to on-sight 6a+, 6b routes (French grading). Outdoors about the same, in multiple climbing areas (Portland, Italy, Spain..).

I did some top-rope at the Chelsea Piers in NYC yesterday and found 5.9 pretty hard. I couldn’t top-rope 5.10a… 5.9 should translate to 5+, 5.10a would be 6a.. I’m a little confused, we are supposed to be going on a trip to France in just over 1 week’s time, but if my endurance has really declined that much, I need to lower my expectations! We’ll be doing some multi-pitch, so I need to know quite well what grade I’m climbing at.

Your experience with gyms in NYC, and Chelsea Piers in particular? That is the only gym here where I climbed with a rope. I also bouldered at Chelsea Piers, New Rochelle and Brooklyn Boulders gyms.

In reply to alps_p:
Was looking for somewhere to climb when I was in NYC a couple of weeks back, but was put off by the ridiculous prices at Chelsea Piers. You must be minted if you're climbing there! Would love to comment on the grades but need to get a 100k job first!

In reply to The Ivanator: single-entry passes are ridiculously expensive (50$ I think?), but I use a 10-entry card which I think was around 250$. This works out to 25$, or just over 15.50pounds, per session - just a little more expensive than, say, Castle in London?
They also have 20-entry passes which work out even cheaper per visit.

In reply to alps_p: Take heart. From my very limited experience I'd definitely expect something graded 5.9 to feel way harder that 5+.

Most UK walls set routes below 6b without too much thought and the walls aren't that high. This means that whilst they are probably correctly graded in one sense they are fairly straight-forward to read the moves and generally don't feel too sustained.

The important thing about the US grading system is that if you take a 8 metre 5.9 and then add another 8 metres of 5.9 climbing on top of it, it will often still be graded 5.9. This means that if all the moves on a route are no harder than English 5b then you'll have something that is 5.9 even though it may feel way stiffer that your normal UK 5+. The same applies at 5.10a where you are likely to see sustained English 5b climbing with some 5c.

Add these two things together and it's perhaps not surprising that your experience of generally poor UK approximations to a European grading system compared to the Americans' own slightly idiosyncratic grades don't match with your expectations from some International comparison table.

In reply to Mark Stevenson: Very interesting. Thanks for this. I didn’t realize that US grading system was a different concept than the French system. From what you described, it’s more like the UK grading, where only the hardest move/section is graded, and it doesn’t really matter how sustained the routes are?

My bouldering grade (V3/V4) hasn’t really declined, in fact I managed to climb some V5 boulder problems and flash some V4 boulder problems here, something that I couldn’t do in London before. That means that I either improved, or that the grading was a touch soft here. Then again, I found some moves on 5.10 routes – and even on 5.9 routes – that took a while to figure out. I mean, I wouldn’t expect anything harder than V0/V1 on routes that are graded 5+/6a in Europe!

In reply to alps_p: The US and French grading system in theory are the same - grading for overall physical effort. It is more that the practical implementation varies especially around that grade range. The Yanks have lots of classic sustained 5.9/5.10 crack climbs to make grade comparisons with and there is an historical perspective that 5.9 and 5.10 are pretty hard route grades which skews things slightly.

From what you are saying I think it may also come done to more intricate US route setting than you are used to meaning that you are finding it hard to onsight the moves making the routes feel disproportionally harder.

The final thing is that you quickly realise that you don't necessarily climb the similar grades across all stills of climbing, rock types or route setting - I've sent overhanging crimpy Font 7a+ problems the same day I've failed on Font 5+ slabs.

Good luck on your climbing trip.

In reply to alps_p: I have climbed trained inside in New York, Washington DC, Philidelphia, San Diego, LA ... and I noticed that at all of the walls the boulder problems are over graded by a grade or two. I thought the routes were generally ok but generally endurance focused.

In reply to alps_p: I think it's highly gym dependent. I have only climbed indoors at Momentum in Salt Lake City, and felt grades were a little bit softer than what I am used to in Scandinavia, and probably about the same than London gyms. I've even done my best indoor onsight there, a long 5.11+ that felt like 6c at most.

In reply to alps_p:

I'd agree that it probably varies from gym to gym. My experience of the limited indoor climbing that I've done in the US, is that the routes are very technical. I remember using the tiniest chips for feet which felt very different from the blob to blob climbing I'm used to.

I've climbed at a gym on the west coast (Planet Granite, San Jose area), and found the grades a bit soft on the routes I climbed. Back then I had only just started out and back home I was struggling to climb 5+, which Rockfax says is 5.10a. Over there I managed to get up a couple of 5.10b and 5.10c routes.

I'm going back there soon, and will be interested to see how things pan out. At the moment 6b+ is about my limit, with the occasional 6c. Again, Rockfax says 6b+ is 5.11a, so I'll be interested to see if the grades there are soft in comparison, or whether it was just fluke.

I've heard the east coast grades harder than the west coast in general.