I had a day of running up some easy routes at the Popular End of Stanage yesterday and was struck by what seemed to be a discrepancy to me.
We first did Black Hawk Hell Crack, S 4a. I thought there were two distinct crux moves, both of which felt middling 4a, both of which had a fantastic runner at head height. Looking at the logbook voting I see that it's regarded as a middling 4a, and fairly graded at Severe. All good.
Then we did Sociology, S 4a. The initial moves felt like tough 4b to me, but I figured that they were only the ground moves and not terribly significant. But then the move to get up in reach of the mantleshelf also felt really sketchy - easily 4b, and significantly harder than anything on BHHC - and the gear at this point was some way below my feet. And yet, the logbook voting is mostly for mid Sev (with a few votes for high Sev or low HS) and mid 4a.
Am I missing something? Are lots of people using the big ledge to the right to make the upper moves easier (I'd thought that ledge was for the next route, Anatomy)? I can't square these two routes being, on paper, the same grade.
And whilst I'm asking- has something happened to the upper section of Grotto Slab? There's a fairly new looking scar. I last did it years ago, and seemed to remember the upper part being a bit out of character with the lower slab, but not terribly difficult. I wonder if the broken piece has taken both a gear placement and a critical hand hold - that move onto the ledge now feels too hard for Mod.