UKH

Hi
     I am hoping that the UKC collective can shed light on when (where, why) the concept of "the grade is for the onsight" appeared in UK trad climbing. I'd rather not to get into an discussion about what counts as an onsight, (the minutiae of whether seeing guidebook pictures or similar invalidates the onsight), nor whether you can grade a route that has never been onsighted, unless it is an important part of the history.

Throughout the history of UK climbing pre-practising climbs (or inspection) has been an appreciable part of climbing at the cutting edge, so when and why did the concept of the grade being for the onsight come into being? And was there significant disagreement about it being used as such?

Personally I can, at times, be quite puritan about avoiding beta, for example not looking at climbs if there are people on them, or keeping my hitlist to myself to avoid unwelcome beta. But I can't remember where this rigor came from, or pinpoint a time when I embraced it as a principle. I must have absorbed it from somewhere.

I have tried searching on UKC but haven't found anything that really talks about the history of this.

I look forward to hearing from the great and the good of UKC.

I wonder if the "grade is for the onsight" is actually quite old but may have been under a different guise. Obviously the early pioneers such as O G Jones, Haskett Smith etc. (early 1900's), wouldn't have known the grade of climbs before attempting them but the ones that followed, the grade would have been an important factor as the consequences for not being able to climb at a certain level could have dire results. 

I'd guess some time in the mid 80's?

I've just finished reading Brown and Whillians' autobiography and they both mentioned that top rope practice was seen as unethical. Although Don Whillians mentioned that they would top rope hard stuff in the rain?! 

from BMC article on ethics - CASE STUDY: THE INDIAN FACE

Clogwyn Du'r Arddu has long been a forcing ground of ethics, with The Indian Face (E9 6b/c) taking things to a new level in more ways than one. The first part was first climbed to an old bolt head by John Redhead in 1982. In 1983 Jerry Moffatt found a way past the bolt, which he removed, to create Masters Wall, and in 1986 Johnny Dawes rose to the challenge of the headwall to take a major leap forward for British climbing. The route had to wait eight years for this repeat by Nick Dixon in June 1994 after four sessions of practice and preplacement of most of the protection.

John Redhead, despite placing the original bolt was unhappy with pre-practice being employed. 10 years later the route has not seen another repeat. Nick Dixon went on to climb Face Mecca in 1989, also on Cloggy, coining the word headpoint for the pre-practiced approach used.

I'd guess that "the grade being for the onsight" mentality can only exist within the context/contrast of headpointing. Because all the OGs were ground up/onsighting every route. When extensive pre-practice becomes a thing, then there is going to be a discussion of whether this changes the grade and some people are going to believe "the grade is for the onsight"

Onsight is the guidebook grade so the style of first ascent wouldn't be relevant.

I'm guessing the argument came about when people started working routes on a top rope first (mid-80s?) and the ethical conundrum. It makes sense for me with trad, as generally routes were put up from the ground up and onsite, so were graded accordingly. When people worked harder routes on a toprope, they were generally graded to allow for practice. I think the cutoff is generally considered E6? That's why onsites/ground-ups above that are highly-prized (as they are often in better style than the first ascensionist). Knowing the moves and gear makes a massive difference to the overall grade. 

Would be interesting to know what some of the harder routes put up onsight/ground-up are?

I think it has always been accepted that some routes are easier with prior knowledge

Yes, it emerged as an explicit principle in response to headpointing in the 1990's.

Before that top rope inspection and pre-practise for first ascents had certainly happened all the way back to OG Jones with varying degrees of transparency about it, and at a more everyday performance level it was common enough to eg. go back and lead a route you'd previously seconded as a step up into a harder grade.

But headpointing tactics made such a huge difference it became unavoidable to be explicit about what style the grade was supposed to represent, and "onsight" was the eventual consensus, though for many cutting edge routes that was almost entirely notional (still no takers yet for an onsight of Indian Face!).

In a way it acted as a consolation to the old guard at that time that the older trad ethic wasn't entirely being chucked out with the bathwater - that an aspiration to onsighting as the "purest" style did still exist.

Let's not forget there is also the spectrum between 'abseil inspection' and 'headpoint'.

With respect to Indian Face: according to one Jonny it was the former, the other Jonny said it was most certainly the latter.

I think the distinction is not made so much these days, there is less shame associated with the full headpoint, even on new routes.

I think a legend of the extent of traditional ethics grew in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Pre-practice and various forms of cheating have occurred as long as climbing existed. As for the no beta aspect of the onsight, the early guidebooks sometimes tell you exactly how to climb crux sections.

All trad climbs should be graded for the nominal onsight/ ground-up for climbers with the nominal skill set expected of the moves and rock type at that grade. On top end routes that haven't been climbed as onsights it's just a best guess. I'd argue that many popular route grades are still distorted as too many climber struggle with the detachment or sensitivity to grade well. A lot of cruxy but well protected non-sustained routes still get VS 4b  that should be HS 4b as an example. More seriously lots of less well known bold routes get sandbag grade views because some climbers struggle to recognise risk in bold sections that are technically easy for them. UK trad grading is a wonderful system in theory but is still too often abused.

There are other complications, like where routes are unpopular and get lichenous or plant growth, grades becomes suspect (hence the YMC hollow star, as grading for being dirty is daft, as it will feel way easier after a clean); or where protection changes (especially reliance on increasingly rusty pegs).

On the hard headpoint argument I'd prefer a sport/bouldering grade and a film/P rating. Headpoints are OK if climbers want to lead a particular route but it's delusional for just chasing E grades applicable to bold onsights.

I've always wondered if most people make the distinction for the wrong reasons.

For me grading is just a way of ordering routes by difficulty, based on various factors. In trad it seems preferable to base this order on onsight ascents, since that's what most people will be doing, but also because that's the style that needs the information. You want to know if you'll be able to do it safely (leaving aside arguments over whether our system really does that).

That ordering of routes won't change much if you grade for headpointing. All routes will be easier to headpoint than onsight, some might be a lot easier if there are awkward runners or hidden holds, but for the most part they'll be exceptions. The thing is, at this point it doesn't matter. You already had enough info from the onsight grade to know whether it was worth attempting the route, and made a judgment that you didn't want to onsight it. Now you'll be gathering plenty of information about the route for yourself, why do you need a new grade? It will tell you less than you could work out for yourself.

I think the key part fo the confusion is that we often treat grades like a reward. People "claim" a grade, and then other people get upset that they feel they've cheated to claim a higher reward. It's a very weird way of looking at it really.

I think that's true, and also in parallel was a steady increase in fudging and glossing over what had actually gone on in many cases through those years!

One of the reasons the headpoint ethic caught on so rapidly in the 90s was the same as redpointing in sport climbing - simple clarity that the final clean lead was all that mattered.

(Of course another was you could climb harder routes with more impressive sounding grades...)

Thanks for all the contributions so far. Would I be right in thinking that it was the guidebook writers who first "wrote down" the idea so that they could standardise the grades.

Kern Knotts Crack (HVS 4c) FA 28.4.1897 was, I believe, practised on a top rope by OG Jones prior to the first ascent.

It was thrashed out more broadly than that, largely in magazine news/opinion columns (no internet forums in the early 90s!) though certainly with an overlap between "opinion formers" and subsequent guidebook writers. I don't think there were many examples of grades being radically adjusted as a result, it was more of a post-facto justification for grades that had already been claimed by first ascentionists.

(Central Buttress (E1 5b) on Scafell is another classic example of pre-WW1 top-rope practice, by the way.)

A lot of that was gamesmanship or one-upmanship between "competing" climbers or groups of climbers; e.g. Yorkshire climbers tying to make everything look piss easy at Almscliffe if Lancs climbers came over the border - there's a well known article about this but I can't remember who by, probably in Games Climbers Play.

All our yesterday’s by Al Manson.

Aren't you mixing up two things here - 'grades at the cutting' (probable worked/pre-practised/frigged to death) and 'grading for the onsight' (climbed with no/minor prior knowledge?

Chris

I guess so, but at some point first ascensionists must have switched to grading for the onsight when proposing a grade, even though as elliptic points out this may not change the actual grade much.

Because that basically how 99% of trad ascents are climbed right? Most routes up to around e5 maybe e6 are onsights, and so the info you get from the guide should reflect this. Some descriptions even include info like hidden crucial rock 2 out left etc which I think is all fair game because it’s much better going for the ‘onsight’ knowing you need to get that rock 2 otherwise you might have a massive crash. If you’re really that pure don’t read the guide. 
 

e5/e6 and above, routes are after practiced, or at least ab’d and cleaned, a trad grade helps but often you now get the sport grade too so you can kind of work out how hard a route is physically, and the trad grade compared to this should also help you work out if it’s mega bold or not. These grades are helpful in the Pembroke book for example. 
 

Well put. That's why I never can see the point in 'H' grades when they get suggested from time to time.

Thank you - that's the one.

Why are routes graded for the onsight?

Think about it. The whole point in grading is to give an indication of whether one should attempt a route or not, which is down to one's ability and experience. Some routes don't have a lot of gear or the gear may require a lot of skill/fitness to place well, so could be dangerous propositions for someone who doesn't have the necessary ability. 

Generally when we go climbing we rock up at the crag/mountain and set off on the route we've chosen 'onsight'; in other words we see it and then we try it! (Over time it became clear that taking the odd rest on gear was not meeting the full challenge of a route, and the term nowadays has evolved to mean a clean ascent.) So this is what we grade for.

Sensible post.

In a nutshell: the grade is for before you climb, not after. 

That's a good way to put it.

I was a reasonably prolific new router about 10-15yrs ago on the far North Coast of Scotland and all of my routes were put up "onsight and ground up". When I brought my second up we would discuss the grade and he would always be slightly lower than me (because he seconded so didn't get the head f**k). We also then played the game that when he put up a route I would undergrade it, just to piss him off . When these routes went into the guidebook they were simply taken at the grade we gave them. I don't think we ever gave much thought to how any second or subsequent ascent might grade the route.

I enjoy the challenge of onsighting at my moderate grade so am happy that the UK trad grade plus some experience gives me a lot of information before I set out. However I also think that a lot of people (myself included) like to bathe in the glow of satisfaction of achieving a certain grade, (as well as climbing the route itself) so it is also a reward and the style of achieving that counts a lot to me. For example at the end of a season I would count the number of E1's I had done and compare with previous seasons to see if I was keeping to my own self-imposed standard.

Actually the lowest grade you can find for a climb is for before you climb and the highest one for after.

Yes of course. I'm not saying the grade stops existing after the climb - but the warm glow or competitive resentment or whatever is not what the grade is for​​​​. It's for letting you know what level of difficulty to expect from a climb you haven't done.

As others have said, the grade is for the onsight because a) that's how most UK trad climbing happens and b) it's the style in which it matters most to know what to expect. It's not a matter of 'principle', as you put it in the OP, it just makes sense. 

Ah no, I'm very hard on myself so usually it's the other way round

I guess what I was trying to get over was that it has become a kind of principle for me in that I do not "claim/tick" the grade for a route I have not onsighted, and I avoid beta as much as possible. But I wonder how on earth did I come by this - I can't recall where it came from. Did I read it somewhere or maybe someone whispered to me that I can't claim the grade unless I onsight it.

Grades are not absolute, they're purely relative. On average E3 will feel harder than E2, which will feel harder than E1. This applies regardless of the style in which they're climbed, as long as they're all approached similarly.

There is a tempting but fallacious reasoning which suggests that, for example, headpointing an E5 may actually 'be' E2. For many people the level of overall challenge may indeed be similar to onsighting an E2 but the route itself hasn't changed, and therefore neither has the grade.

With surprisingly few exceptions, the correlation between relative onsight difficulty and relative headpoint difficulty seems remarkably strong, rarely differing by more than one grade or so for any particular route pair. We therefore can be reasonably confident in assigning grades by comparing them to other routes we've done in similar style.

The result is that we have grades that aren't strictly "for the onsight", neither are they "for the headpoint." They're simply indicators of where the expected difficulty is to be found along the scale of overall challenge as compared to all of the other routes approached in similar style.

As such there's no 'cut-off at E6', there's no difference between trad and sport, nor between hard sport and easy sport. At most there will be relatively few exceptions for which the relative difficulty of an onsight notably differs from that of a headpoint/redpoint in relation to other similarly graded routes.

Yes. If an E2 climber headpoints an E5 then what have they done? They've headpointed an E5. Obviously they haven't climbed the route in the purest style imaginable and should be under no illusions about that, but it's hard to imagine how they could think otherwise! I'm sure they wouldn't.

The route originally got the grade through either the FA onsighting it, or assessing the difficulty after a flawed ascent and judging it as E5 for an onsighter as this is the most important consideration. It then remains that grade whatever happens, unless the consensus among onsighters is that it is harder/easier than originally suggested.

I think it stems from the fact that you wouldn't have met the full challenge of the route and that the experience is so markedly different for an onsight as for a headpoint. You could of course still claim to have climbed an E5 (or whatever), but this would be potentially misleading without the added caveat "but I headpointed it".

My point was that the grade could equally have been established by the FA headpointing it and judging it notably harder than the E4s s/he's headpointed. In few cases would it really make any difference what style the FA climbed it in, nor indeed whether the FA considered their ascent to be "flawed" or even had any interest in guessing what it may be like as an onsight.

The style is, to a large extent, independent of the grade.

I think maybe the issue is the way you're thinking about 'claiming', because again, that's not what the grade is for.

You've done whatever you've done - climbed a route in whatever style you climbed it - and that route has a grade attached to it, which reflects an approximate level of difficulty for someone to climb the route on-sight. If you climbed something in a different style, it doesn't make sense for the grade to change in order for you to quantify what you've done. If you headpoint an E3, you've headpointed an E3. Maybe that's roughly equivalent to onsighting an E1, or flashing an E2 with the gear in. Even within the bounds of what we call onsight, on certain routes there can be a huge difference between trying something that is well chalked and something that isn't - possibly more than a grade's worth of difficulty. There are too many permutations of style in trad climbing for a 'claim' to a grade to mean much without some qualification.

Is it not. I have not done much new routing but it was not presinspected and setting off up a crag, with just my gear and my skill, was probably one of the most thrilling experiences of my life, certainly of my climbing life, if I had abbed down it would not have been so thrilling.

Apologies if I misunderstood you.

Pat Littlejohn's routes were mostly onsight, lots of E5...I think Alien E6 6b, at Gogarth, was 'onsight, free, and chalkless'....

I know what you are getting at in correlation terms but your statement is illogical for what adjectival grades actually measure. The adjectival grade is by definition for the onsight/ground-up style. The sport grade, boulder grade or the US trad grade are largely irrespective of style (but not conditions). I do agree that experience and the logic of grades  means UK adjectival grading can be pretty accurate irrespective of style. As an example: cleaning and checking a bold obscure route on a rope, graded HVS by the FA, which is discovered to have a hard and unusual 5a move at about 10m with a certain groundfall over a very poor landing, means the adjectival grade should probably be E2. Too many climbers don't get adjectival grading and grade too much for the physical feel of the difficulty (US trad style). 

I agree that the grade is primarily there to inform you before you set off, and the "claiming" is done after you have climbed it. In the latter case I would love to be able to claim Safety Net at the Roaches as my first E1 on grit (an excellent climb), but I fell of the very last move, and even though I climbed it second go I cannot "claim" it by my rules.

Also if you climb with someone new to you it is quite common to ask "what grade do you climb", meaning what grade have they climbed before. And if you are about to climb something onsight you hope that they mean that is their onsight level. So grades do have a life beyond just the specifics of the route.

Could you use the same analogy for routes which are solo'd vs led or routes where fixed gear/side-runners can be used or not or where gear may be pre-placed even?

Guidebooks often change the grades in these cases for different styles. That's similar in my head to how headpointing can impact a grade. Rehearsing the gear and moves beforehand makes it less likely that you'll fall off (or hurt yourself if you do), so the overall route grade has to be impacted, as the route becomes safer. 

Indeed. A good example is Chalkstorm which used to be E4, well after sticky runner became common (in a generally tough graded area compared to national averages). It is probably harder now than it has even been due to tr traffic in poor style, and is currently given E3. With side-runners the current definitive guide gives it HVS to E2 depending on how high you place them. John is clearly muddling correlation with causeation.

Also, at his lofty ability, UK tech grades are so wide as to be almost meaningless (certainly so above 6b); such that the benefits of the trad combination of two grades doesn't really work anymore.

I mean, it's up to you how you want to think about it. The facts of what happened on the route don't change. It sounds like you want to be able to give a neat, definitive statement of what grade you climb, when the reality is often a bit grey. You'll probably have more fun climbing if you find a way to care a bit less!

I totally agree with Will's post. The main reason for the H grade is so you can give things lower grades and therefore grade them accurately, rather than having a split system in one grading regime. The problems come from people seeing grades as trophies and then wanting to be modest, which results in pre-practised routes getting undergraded for the eventual onsight.

On second thoughts,  maybe I don't totally agree with Will's post, as pre-practised routes won't integrate into the onsight system once they're onsighted, as standards improve. 

Ultimately we're talking about such a small number of routes, climbed by so few people, it probably doesn't matter too much. It is a bit of a curiosity though that the H grade is actually about preserving the E grade's function.

If you lowered to the ground, pulled the ropes and led it again clean it counts...a standard ground up onsight.

Maybe you should adopt Jim Erickson’s rule once you fall or fail on a climb, then you leave it alone for ever.

Mind he broke his own rules in order to free the NW face of Half Dome.

It doesn't really get in the way of my enjoyment - I guess it is kind of a way of reviewing my achievement in measureable ways. I enjoy the challenge of the onsight. If I fall I don't pull the ropes for the ground up, I'll just climb to the top and put it down as one that got away.

I wish. If I back off a climb it feels like "unfinished business" and if it wasn't for a good reason, like the gear being rubbish, then it nags me whenever I pass by. Sometimes if I succeed on cleaning up on one route I promptly fail on another soon after and so it goes on.

Not really, no, unless I'm mistaking your meaning. They're each very different to using pre-practice to aid an ascent (which has a generally very proportional effect on the difficulty of getting up it.)

In both cases, yes you're still climbing the same route, but the protectability (which is always a factor in assessing difficulty) could be vastly different. While some routes will be virtually the same when done solo or lead, most others will be very much different. This is notably true about side runners too, or there wouldn't be any advantage to using them! The close correlation between onsight and headpoint grades for routes would therefore no longer be seen and so in a great many cases the higher graded route wouldn't actually be harder to solo.

You can, of course, always specify a different grade for a route with/without side runners, just as you could theoretically give a route a grade for soloing it, but what you'd really be doing is grading a different route, given that the pro is a fundamental and essential part of the route that's being graded.

Do you wear a hair shirt as well while you are climbing. Your thought process sound a bit like flagellation.

I'm not sure how a HP doesn't potentially change the overall British trad grade of a route though?

What about a route with a crucial hidden wire slot? If you've had a Tommy Toprope on it beforehand, you cruise up to your placement, already have the nut on a QD on your harness, know exactly where it is and how it goes in - bosh, climb on.

Without having worked it all out before, you don't know where your next piece of gear is, your last could be marginal/miles away/non-existent. You're now on a wild hunt to find gear or push on, you're pumped, scared, and even if you find the gear then you have to work out the size, fiddle it in, etc. You might miss it completely and be in death-fall territory. I'm not talking about missing something obvious but more something that couldn't reasonably be expected to place on an onsight attempt. Some routes you see people with clustered bits already clipped and equalised, ready-to-go on their harness.    

Are routes at the top, top end graded to take onsight attempts into account? Maybe something like Rhapsody can, as you stick your last piece of gear in the crack and go. How can anyone grade most E9 or E10 for onsight when no one has climbed it in that style? To me, an overall grade can surely only be confirmed once someone has onsighted a climb?

I don't see it quite like that, but maybe you should ask my partners.

Pretty much every route is easier to headpoint than to onsight, and knowing the gear is very much part of that, but in general they get easier by roughly the same amount. I think the actual number of routes that have a difference in relative grade between onsighting and redpointing of more than a grade or so is pretty small, and your hypothetical example explains how it could come about in those few cases.

That's precisely why some people (myself included) have proposed the occasional use of H grades, particularly in cases where the nature of the gear is so specific that it would never be carried by anyone genuinely onsighting. Then you're left with trying to guess what climbing the route would be like without the specialist gear, or (more usefully) grading it as a headpoint but making it clear that's what you've done.

OK, but if we're talking about grades which the most common style to attempt the route is onsight, then it makes sense for the FA to consider the grade from the perspective of someone climbing into the unknown. Unless someone has done an absolute stack of headpointing around a certain grade, in which case I guess they could consider it in comparison to other headpoints, but more common probably at these grades is they've done something just a little harder than they'd usually onsight, so they would extrapolate that way, and for bold routes err on the side of caution.   

That's alright then! It was just that you described your approach as puritan, which doesn't sound that enjoyable.

I don't think I'm missing out on a bundle of fun by avoiding listening to people babble on about their experiences of a route I want to climb

Thanks for everyone's contributions it has been a very enlightening thread,

Not when you put it like that, but that's hardly the only alternative to how you do things now. But it seems like you're actually perfectly happy with your approach (I had the impression from the OP that you were dissatisfied with the strictness of the narrative), so that's fine.

A couple of reasons I think.

First off onsight in trad didn't used to mean the same as it does now. It used to mean what we now call ground up. The meaning changed in the 80s with the introduction of sport climbing and the accompanying influence of French ethics.

Secondly almost all trad routes are climbed onsight, at least to some degree. That is even if you fall off and yo-yo a route each new section of the route will be onsight, or new, to you when you get to it. So grading for onsight ascents is the only way to get a consensus grade since that what most, if not all are doing.

So that's what Jerry was talking about in the film 'Onsight'?

Me and the group I climb with just go with the grade is the grade, and just specify what style it was done in and play it by ear depending on conditions and area

Grades exist for two reasons:

(1) for guiding other climbers so they can attempt something commensurate with their ability and experience

(2) Bragging rights

As such their meaning and definition is largely irrelevant so long as they are in line with community expectations.  Since grades are defined and refined largely from the top down (eg the next E12 will be a subject of massive debate and likely revision before the consensus is reached) by the time the grades reach punter level it's pretty much understood what they mean in terms of (1) and (2).

So for low-mid grades my understanding is that a fairly capable and experienced climber (at the grade) should be able to turn up and with normal the guidebook blurb have an experience climbing the route "onsight" in line with the grade.

At the top end, where it is normal practice for climbs to be inspected, worked, discuss, analysed etc etc at length before they are climbed for the first time (and for most subsequent repeats) this obviously breaks down this grading ideal but the theory of the grade is it has to be consistent with the "onsight".

If this is followed to the logical conclusion it means that because, with knowledge of a route, we can all climb a little harder and the top end climbs are put up by people climbing a little below the top end grade.  So, arguably, Dave Mac puts up E11 but is "only" an E10 (onsight) climber. Someday an E11 onsight climber will turn up and onsight Rhapsody and they might go on to put up an E12 after 2 years of working.

By the time you or me get anywhere near a top end grade the consensus will back in line with the usual onsight experience due to revisions over the years.  Over the longer term these are subject to changing practice and style and since every ones egos are a little fragile a little bit of grade inflation. Luckily this is generally a slow process impeded by the presence of benchmark classics.

So if you happen to be talented enough to be in with a dream of a cutting edge grade or just interested in the debate you can justifiably worry about the details but if you just want to climb you should calibrate yourself against the guidebook grade and the ideal of turning up and climbing.

Sport climbing is a different game but the principle is the same, as long as the grading is consistent with community expectations it's fine.

You can, of course, change the rules but if you work an E4 to death and then do it you're probably not what the community thinks of as an E4 climber just a climber who has successfully worked an E4.  If you always onsight F7a you're probably (in the eyes of sport climbing community) climbing at a grade above F7a.

In the end none of this matters except in the case of (2) and here the guiding light is your conscience, honour and ethics and, to be honest, no one gives a shit unless you are at the cutting edge and trying to get away with a spectacular lie.

Or you're breaking in a new climbing partner...

Or you're foolish enough to bite off more than you can chew and get yourself into trouble...

(3) a measure of progress and sense of achievement

That's really the same as (2) only slightly more politely and disingenuously put!

Maybe it is for you, and I understand what you mean. But I find a deeper satisfaction achieving things when it's for myself, not because I want to tell somebody about it. Haven't you ever felt like that?

If that's the case then why does it matter what grade someone else has attached to it? Surely the only thing that matters is how hard you found it. 

Usually for me a harder grade means it is actually harder, it's a good barometer of progress and feels like a step up. Doing something with a high grade that doesn't feel hard is often disappointing.

Have you never done anything in climbing that you did for yourself?

I certainly do feel like that but it's not due to the grade usually but due to having climbed something well.  The best days when the world retreats and it's just me and the movement through the difficult sequence executed with perfect clarity.

Plus I do like a good view.

If I simply restricted my joy to having climbed a "new grade" joy would be thing on the ground and I suspect that the future belongs to "holding back the decline" rather then breaking new grades.

Sure but I only really use the grade as a means to decide whether I will be able to do it or not. If I have a 'mare on something that should be within my ability then I curse and call sandbaggery. If I find something amiable that's graded near my limit then I accept that it's probably soft or undergraded. I've had some great struggles on climbs at a grade I should be comfortable at, and I get more pleasure out of them than a box tick 'first E1 woooooooooo!'. 

Nobody mentioned any restrictions. They're only part of it and different to specific routes/problems. More of a long term, more objective measure of progress. A background to all the other challenges.

Indeed. The grade helps you select a line that inspires you and difficulty seems like you can manage it. 
 

so you climb the route for How it looks, resonates, inspires you. You rarely climb a route for the grade. 
 

Now for all the gradehunters will be out en force to dislike this post. But What ever 

I agree, the best experiences aren't grade related. But I still feel satisfied that I've improved over the years, and grades help give a more objective measure of that improvement.

Right I'm going to stick my head above the parapet and publicise this story from my website about the time I climbed Thin Wall Special.

errr Chris - this might be of interest to you as you appear to take a significant role!

https://theoldcodger.xyz/climb/thinwallspecial/intro.php

Ooops sorry - I forgot to mention "beta-alert", there is some beta in the story about Thin Wall Special.

Interesting that the BMC case study forgets to mention that Neil Gresham did the third ascent of Indian Face just after Nick Dixon in June 1994. Both Nick and Neil spent time together at the cliff prior to their ascents, both ascents were head pointed.  Indian Face has never had an ascent without some form of pre-practise, how much is up to the individual and how soon they feel they are ready to go for it. An onsight ascent of such an on/off route would be an extremely dangerous undertaking and would obviously be applauded but the consequences of failure would be unthinkable, and thus the climber would need to be climbing well within themselves.  I am only interested in that those who report routes are honest about their ascents and then if something can be improved upon in the future there is a little goal for others to do better. 

Didn't Redhead attempt it onsight? He ended up upside down quite a way down the wall and everyone was amazed that the gear held.