French/English Grading for Southern Sandstone

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Rockfax lists routes on Southern Sandstone with French grades whereas most other guidebooks list the English grades. Bit confusing at times. Why is this? Or why wouldn't rock fax list both the French and English grade for each route?

 elliptic 24 Jun 2019
In reply to climberclimber321:

Errr.... but the book *does* show both French route grades and UK technical grades (for the hardest move).

Historically southern sandstone routes used to just get a tech grade, because full UK trad grades don't really apply to routes which are mainly toproped or soloed. In fact tech grades were originally invented on the sandstone for exactly that reason (inspired by Font bouldering grades) and then spread out later into general use. But the tech grade doesn't capture sustained-ness and nowadays the French sport grade works pretty well as a measure of sustained safe difficulty that most people are familiar with, so it makes sense to add that as well.

Post edited at 18:18
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In reply to climberclimber321:

*rockfax app

 Brown 24 Jun 2019
In reply to elliptic:

The French grades given to the routes are slightly undermined by appearing to be based on guesswork.

Sandstorm (7a) is such a long way from the French grade in the book I can only conclude it was based on wild conjecture.

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 Daimon - Rockfax Global Crag Moderator 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Brown:

Hi

Could you add your grade suggestion to the climb when you get a chance? Grading sandstone is not a straight forward process so offering your suggestion would be a great help.

Cheers

 Brown 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Daimon - Rockfax:

I think that producing a guidebook entirely filled with guessed grades is so unacceptable I don't wish to provide any assistance to it at all.

I'm happy to critique grades on here and often do so. I think however that making up french grades to the whole of southern sandstone without bothering to climb the routes is the action of total chancers.

16
removed user 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Brown:

I think the sandstone should be given bouldering grades. it's short, hard and balancey. It feels closer to bouldering than anything else. 

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 Brown 27 Jun 2019
In reply to removed user:

I'd agree, it seems crazy to give french grades to "routes" shorter than bouldering!

2
 Daimon - Rockfax Global Crag Moderator 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Brown:

Thanks for your kind words, though I feel it's not a good use of my time to respond in full to a comment and accusation like that. I wish I had guessed all the grades, but sadly not. Maybe as you say, I'll get out and actually climb on sandstone someday and try some of the routes.

On a more positive note, I hope you manage to get to Harrison's soon. Perhaps enjoy some of the climbs I have installed new anchors on. 22 in total. There to assist climbers when setting up and also help reduce erosion. 

 Brown 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Daimon - Rockfax:

Please forgive my bluntness. I was amazed when I saw the guide you produced had french grades for all routes.

This seemed a stunning amount of work as the grades of routes is generally arrived at by consensus over time. Having not climbed on the sandstone for the best part of twenty years I was interested to see how the grades stacked up.

Having now climbed down there a few times recently I felt the book french grades had little relationship to the routes. It felt as though they had been assigned through the use of a grade comparison table. As such I felt they were less than useless.

If the majority grades have each been arrived at though an informed process I apologise completely. The routes I climbed felt so arbitrary i got a different impression.

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In reply to Brown:

> "I think that producing a guidebook entirely filled with guessed grades is so unacceptable I don't wish to provide any assistance to it at all."

> "It felt as though they had been assigned through the use of a grade comparison table. As such I felt they were less than useless."

> "I think however that making up french grades to the whole of southern sandstone without bothering to climb the routes is the action of total chancers."

> "I'd agree, it seems crazy to give french grades to "routes" shorter than bouldering!"

I can't recall a more offensive, unhelpful, ridiculously exaggerated and utterly stupid collection of statements from a UKC poster in recent times.

The amount of effort put in by Daimon to this book would put many guidebook writers to shame. It was a huge project over a period of five years (at least, probably a lifetime in reality) with countless trips to the area, accompanied with a small army of other climber friends. We spent many hours discussing the grade decision and laid out the reasons for this decision clearly in the book which was based mainly on the wild variation of difficulty in the harder grades from the distorted and inflexible old UK Tech grade system. When making such a change there are bound to initially be discrepancies since it is impossible to climb every route and, even if you did, you would only have the opinion of one person.

You judge all the grades as being "less than worthless" based presumably on a few grades you disagree with, and then compound that with a statement about grades being achieved by consensus, followed by removing yourself from contributing to actually establishing any consensus.

And all this in a guidebook that gave you the UK Tech Grade you wanted anyway so you could so easily just ignore the Sport Grade and proceed as you always had done.

Alan

Post edited at 19:01
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 Brown 27 Jun 2019
In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Was the grade of sandstorm a guess?

3
In reply to Brown:

I don't know, I haven't done it. What do you think it is?

And how did our 'less than useless' conversion algorithm come up with this?

Zugabe (7a)

The Thing (7b)

 Mr S. Man 28 Jun 2019
In reply to climberclimber321:

I understand the amount of effort put into this and I'm not echoing the commenters who say it has been a lazy process, but (from memory, I've been away from the sand for a while) it does seem interesting trying to translate some of the cruxier routes into French vs the more sustained ones. For instance, to have Lionheart at Under Rockes only one grade harder than Slim Finger Crack at Harrisons to me doesn't reflect the significant difference in proposition between the two (and I'm just picking out two random three star classics).

Edit: Incidentally, why is most of Under Rockes marked not climbable?

Post edited at 01:04
In reply to Mr S. Man:

> I understand the amount of effort put into this and I'm not echoing the commenters who say it has been a lazy process, but (from memory, I've been away from the sand for a while) it does seem interesting trying to translate some of the cruxier routes into French vs the more sustained ones. For instance, to have Lionheart at Under Rockes only one grade harder than Slim Finger Crack at Harrisons to me doesn't reflect the significant difference in proposition between the two (and I'm just picking out two random three star classics).

As I said above, this is an ongoing process and a major change like this is bound to take some time. I would be very interested to hear your proposed sport grades for the routes you mention.

Of course the situation you suggest of ‘sustained verses cruxy’ is a problem with any single value grade and arguably much worse with the old UK tech grade where 6a and 6b spanned a vast range of difficulty. The sport grade also doesn’t show this difference and it is a well know limitation when applying to sport routes. The only way to show that would be to use a two part grade system - perhaps a bit like E-grade and tech grade, however that becomes a problem for routes that are only top-roped since it is more usually associated with danger and protection.

> Edit: Incidentally, why is most of Under Rockes marked not climbable?

Not sure what you mean here. I’ll let Daimon answer.

Alan

Post edited at 08:56
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 Daimon - Rockfax Global Crag Moderator 28 Jun 2019

> Edit: Incidentally, why is most of Under Rockes marked not climbable?

Mmm, not sure what happened there. Will take a look.

 Daimon - Rockfax Global Crag Moderator 28 Jun 2019
In reply to Daimon - Rockfax:

Fixed.


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