In reply to stp:
> Writing guidebooks is a business. Most guidebooks are commercial these days and there primary purpose to make money. There is also considerable investment into creating a guide: thousands of pounds, probably tens of thousands in fact. So just like any business the chief concern of people who have invested all that money is getting it back and turning a profit. In business there is the saying "the customer is always right". Which is not meant to be taken literally. What it really means is simply act as if the customer is always right and your business will do better that way.
Bit late to this party but...
This is such rubbish. The understanding shown here of the commercial reality of running a small publishing business is laughable.
However, on the more pertinent point of grade inflation to sell guidebooks, Steve couldn't be more wrong. We actually do exactly the opposite and have been consistently putting the break on grade inflation for many years.
UKC Logbook is the best guidebook writing aid ever created and it consistently delivers good consensus opinions on grades. Yes, the voting system is flawed but when the numbers are significant, then the results are clear. We are well aware that people are more likely to vote up something they have had a hard time on, rather than vote down a soft touch, and we use this in our assessment at each new guide. Routes really need to have at least 2/3 grade consensus for an upgrade to get carried through, whereas we are much less strict for downgrades.
This isn't to say that grade inflation isn't a thing. I haven't read this thread in full so apologies if this point has been made already. The reason for grade inflation is that climbers travel further, experience different styles and different rock types and climb a lot indoors. We are all aware of the fact that transferring an indoor grade high point to outdoors is usually a humbling experience. Curiously the opposite can happen at the end of the summer when good grade performance outdoors gets a rude awakening indoors. New to an area with different rock and everything feels hard. Have you ever watched a solid high 7s sport climber try and get up The Unprintable (E1 5b) at Stanage? Of course that doesn't mean that The Unprintable should be E5, it just is a good illustration that different rock types and styles are hard if you don't climb there often. Because we use grade systems with conversions it can feel like it is the grade system that is wrong rather than our lack of familiarity.
Back in the 70s and 80s we had trad climbing outdoors, now we have indoors, outdoors, sport trad and we all travel more. This is the cause of grade creep and it is the responsibility of guidebook writers to keep a lid on it and, most of them do, There are some exceptions and these tend to have been caught out - Kalymnos and Chullila, for example, are known as soft touch areas and in both places the locals have started rationalising their over-grades.
As a final example - I made a fuss a few years ago when Scoop Wall (E2 5c) was given E3 by the (notionally non-commercial) BMC guidebook. I was ridiculed a bit at the time and the point I was making got lost. What I was trying to say was that Scoop Wall was a benchmark route and if you tinker with that then you tinker with every E1, E2, E3 limestone route in the Peak District by creating a huge set of anomalies. As guidebook writers, we know which routes these are and we need to hang onto them and keep them static. Ironically of course, Scoop Wall was given E1 when the system was first applied back in the 1970s! The BMC gave it E2 in 1987 and we have kept it at E2 ever since and will continue to do so.
Three Pebble Slab anyone?
Alan
Post edited at 10:42