UKH

About a month ago i did a 2 week trip to El Chorro,  despite ariving in el chorro not having climbed for the previous four months i Seemed to be climbing routes with ease i would normally have struggled on even when at my very fittest.  Since leaving EL Chorro I have climbed lots in the U.K, indoor and out,  my climbing grade seems to have dropped 1-3 grades despite me presumably getting fitter.  I knew the grades at El Chorro were soft before i went there, but having experienced the place i think soft is the wrong term, they seem pure wrong, and in need of correction?   i would guess on average they are at least three grades softer than most crags in france and probably 2 below crags in England.  Or did the stars just align and i was in super duper shape for my 2 week el chorro trip?  BTW i was using the grades from the new rockfax guidebook. Ben

It depends which crags and which grade range you're referring to. When I went a few years ago I thought the routes in the low 7's were about right.

Something you have to bear in mind is that the style there is totally different to the UK. 40m on steep jugs is a totally different prospect to 10m on rat crimps. Stuff can be soft in Chorro but that's mostly cleared itself up from what I understand with the newer guides. You'll probably find the UK style suits redpointing a lot better due to the more technical nature of the climbing. 

hmm i climbed there for 2 weeks so I went to a lot of different crags.  Yeah the style of climbing is steeper longer and more pumpy at El chorro than the uk. but that should be similar to indoor climbing, at my 2 local indoor gyms i haven't managed to onsight 7a since returning (quite normal for me) but in el chorro i didnt fall of anything below 7a+ in two weeks.  Basically, i cant believe the grades in el chorro are correct. Ben

How tall are you out of interest and what’s your ape index? 

I’d be interested to know where has a 30 to 40 meter indoor wall in the U.K.  Is everyone down South keeping secrets?

El Chorro is certainly not the hardest graded spot but probably not as soft as Kalymnos or Chulilla. 

The latest Rockfax guide has a few re-grades and is almost certainly the hardest graded guidebook for the area. We were aware that the area was a bit soft when we were working on it so tended towards lower grades when there was some debate. Even then I knew we were getting grades that would be a couple of notches out at some older crags.

The thing is though, you can't go to an area and downgrade everything by one or two grades. Firstly, it is pretty disrespectful to local climbers, and secondly, you will almost certainly make a complete mess of the grading since there is a lot of variation even in soft areas and a blanket re-grade would mess this up.

As others have pointed out, there is also a question of style. When I first went to El Chorro we all used to get ridiculously pumped because we weren't used to anything longer than 12m. Modern walls have softened that aspect. 

I am glad that you think El Chorro is soft though. Usually people go the other way and come back from Kalymnos/El Chorro/etc. saying that Chee Dale/Malham/Buoux/Verdon are all under-graded. Let's not forget that the sport grade was invented and applied initially in those latter four and it is other more recent areas where the upwards grade-drift has occurred.

Alan

i'm 177 and my ape Index is 180.   

no we dont have 30-40 metre walls but nearly all indoor routes are set to be continuous from start to finish so you can have 15  of absolutely sustained climbing.  Even 30 m routes outdoor rarely have more than 15m truly continuous climbing without rests, at least when climbing below 7c anyway.

thanks for the reply Alan, I love the new book by the way!  My only slight disagreement with you is with your comment that downgrading is disrespectful to the local climbers.  I don't feel that trying to correct grades should be seen as disrespectful and any climber who gets upset because there route got downgraded should ask themselves some serious questions as to their priorities.    Overall i think climbers worldwide have done a pretty bad job of keeping grades to a consistent scale and i think it would be easy and a positive step to improve this. 

anyway i've had my rant and ill move on to something new now.

maybe i'm just pissed because i've started falling of everything recently!

I’ve got a theory above average heights of Northern Europeans compared to those from Mediterranean counties, Spain, Greek and Italy and grades, so was just interested. 

It was partly a joke but I’m going to take your word for it as I don’t often climb indoors. I guess with the accessibility of bouldering people don’t want or need to get on a rope to get shut down on the crux getting to the anchor.

i actually think my ape index is below average, i very rarely see people with negative index so i think the average is someway  above 1.   quick look on google shows

The guys at Mountain Project asked their forum members about their height and armspan. About 50 people answered (all of them climbers). The average Ape Index was 1.0311 (Index 1) / 2.2 inches (Index 2

David Epstein in his book The Sports Gene devoted a chapter to "The Vitruvian NBA Player" and therein noted "The average arm-span-to-height ratio [i.e., ape index] of an NBA player is 1.063."[10] Having an ape index of less than 1 is very rare among NBA players; only two players in the NBA 2010–11 season had one.[10]

Thanks, that’s quite insightful.

Have you considered that you are just better at climbing outdoors than indoors? Able to rest and recover on route plus a number of other factors? 

I’m somewhat in the same boat as you in that indoors I have to work to onsight anything above 7a, where as outdoors I’ll climb multiple in a day, the vast majority of the time onsight and have done for the past 6 or 7 years in a good variety of places.

Again I put this down to being able to rest, read rock and also climb rock differently and to my strengths rather than the one or two or few ways a indoor route has been set. 

*an indoor route has been set. 

I wouldn't use indoor grades as a benchmark for anything. Too unreliable in my experience.

I went to El Chorro a few years ago and found the routes easy to onsight compared to the UK, but nothing like 2 or 3 grades out.

Maybe it's British grades which are out?

I agree with your last statement, and a few years ago I would also have agreed with your first statement. Ideally it would be the job of guidebook writers to try and standardise grades however there are a few things that conspire against this in a big way.

Firstly you have the local politics. Local developments are usually document by local climbers and they will almost always grade based on the known local grades. Discrepancies quickly appear and you get drift occurring. Sometimes, as in Kalymnos and Chulilla, it is a deliberate policy to create soft grades since soft grades means happy climbers, means a more popular destination. It is basic tourism. We tried to fight against this with our PDF Kalymnos guide way back in 2003 but our grades were widely rejected, not by the locals, but by disappointed climbers. This is the confirmation grade effect. If someone gives a route a grade, and it is in fact easier, people always go for the harder grade. That is why we strongly object to FAs painting grades on the route since they often get it wrong yet the grade is set in paint and it becomes very difficult to change after that.

One of the most interesting phenomena I have experienced in recent years is 'reverse grade creep' which occurs at some of the Dutch climbing walls I go to. It is the route setters playing a machismo game against each other that forces the grades back down - "oh, did you think it was 6b, it only felt 6a+ to me". Here reverse grade drift is easy since most of the clientele in these walls have little idea about grades across Europe since they are mostly indoor climbers on the very same walls. Believe me, there are walls in Holland where I have found 6a+ routes that are as hard as 7a elsewhere.

The other factor which makes overall grade consistency impossible is that of climbing style. I can assure you that a continental sport climber will have a torrid time on The Unprintable (E1 5b) at Stanage. Yet at E1 5b it should translate as a sport difficulty level of 6a or 6a+ at most. It will stop 7a leaders who haven't jammed steep gritstone cracks. Does that mean it isn't E1? You can also find the same happening on the Elbesanstein area in Germany and Czech. The style here is bizarre and unique and the grades appear to be bizarre and unique as well to outsiders, but make sense to the locals. These are extreme, but this occurs to a small degree in all areas - pocket-climbing, sustained tufas, rounded holds - many areas have their own style and if you climb there a lot then you find the routes easier.  Steep limestone sport is less variable across many and also fits with modern climbing walls so we almost all find ourselves pretty good at that style.

There are a load of other things that make major grade changes across and area hard but the disrespectful point is significant. They are their routes. In many areas they are already pissed off enough that someone from outside has written a guidebook. If we downgraded all their party pieces as well then it isn't going to make the guidebook publishers more popular.

Alan. 

It's not about being out. Grades vary. Which isn't that surprising.

And it depends whether you consider grades to be redpoint, which is mostly the case for sport, or at least harder sport. In which case some styles of climbing will be easier to onsight at a given grade.

I'm with you, I think British sport grades are a joke.  Every other country I've climbed in seems to have softer sport grades than uk crags, yet we're calling them soft?

I have a friend who spent a year travelling the world and climbing, so he's climbed sport in more countries than most, and he doesn't think that that the grades in Kalymnos or Spain or anywhere in Europe are soft compared to the rest of the world... 

Interesting post, thanks for that!

This bit though:

is that a fact that you've been told by the people who originally graded the routes or a something you've heard / a theory / accepted wisdom?  Genuine question, not trying to have a go at you!

True, although over the last couple of editions of of the Kalymnos guide the grades have been standardised somewhat. Still definitely on the friendly side of normal, but a lot of the really blatant giveaways are no more.

Ask him if he has climbed in Buoux, Verdon, Finale Liguria, Saussois, Cimai, St. Victoire or other areas that were developed in the mid-80s? 

These are the areas where sport grades were originally developed, and Peak Limestone as well. These areas certainly make a lot of UK sport areas look a bit soft.

Alan

It was sort of known back in 2003 in Kaly. It was ridiculous there at the time and things have improved a bit since but it still has a long way to go. I have climbed at Chulilla and found everything incredible soft so assumed that was the case. I put it to Pedro Pons in the refuge and he smiled and said, " easy grades, happy climbers", or such like back to me.

Alan

As it happens we're both off to Finale tomorrow so I won't need to ask him about that one

Must admit, the older, 80's crags I've climbed on in Europe are always a bit toughly graded, and have some worrying run outs! 

Maybe it's a trend of all grades getting softer over the years and some of the soft places people have highlighted are more recently developed so are therefore softer.  Sounds plausible to me... 

So that's a no then...

How can it be a no when you gave two alternative questions?

I was involved in Kalymnos before the first guide came out and the grades were all over the place reflecting the abilities of the various FA's, old-school Italians don't give ticks away! Then everything was reduced to the lowest common denominator so as to make it attractive to "holiday climbers". This has been partly corrected (I'm told) but compared with older areas still probably on the friendly side. I climb in the Frankenjura so everywhere else is soft anyway

I could have added the Frankenjura to my list of classic 80s venues where the grades are as they are when the system was invented.

Alan

Considering what you've said it could we'll be your physical profile that's to blame. If you're onsighting well on 30-40m routes but not on 12-15m sustained routes you probably have great aerobic capacity and poorer power endurance, so on steady moves with rests you're fine but sustained harder movement kicks you off. Just a thought.  

For what it's worth I spent three weeks in Verdon last year onsighting and redpointing at my hardest ever and wondering what the fuss was about, so maybe it comes down to style and preference as well. 

As a side note, go to Verdon. It's freaking awesome and barely any climbers in peak season. Unbelievable. 

I‘m based a little south of Jim, and find the grades in a lot of Bavarian & Austrian alpine sport climbing areas way harsher than the Frankenjura. Iirc the Gesäuse is the only place I‘ve ever cried on a UIAA VI-

Try Schwäbische Alb....

Or Pfalz....

Actually I reckoned the Schwabische Alb okay and the Pfalz is what I was expecting really, the Southern Frankenjura or Austria, now that's honest grading!

Not only recent... I quite remember a vertical route with 5 mm crimps graded 4c in Arque!

The grades are subjected to what I define as Ego-gravity. Routes normally get polished, some holds may fall off and they still get downgraded, hardly ever are grades regraded and pushed back up the grading scale. Here in Margalef, the 5s and 6s can be as hard as some 7s and although Margalef had once a reputation of being soft, even called Regalef by some locals at some point. This is simply not true any more, 6s in particular, can be hard as nails.

El Chorro is a lot softer, although one may find an odd exception, 6s and 7s are very friendly indeed. Cahorros in Granada and Montanejos used to be grade wise desperate areas, a Cahorros 7b is still an 8a elsewhere.

The question is, what do you use as a measurement standard and does it really matter anyway. Grade homogeneity in a given area, on the other hand is important, since you would normally want to warm up on the easier routes. 

Interesting!

I have never climbed in southern FJ, but quite a bit in north FJ. Most of it was graded OK, some of the classics were tough. I climbed a little bit in Tirol, was also OK.

Pfalz has the magnificent Lagerweg: Schon 60 Jahre 6+, und so bleibt es...

The Alb depends also seriously on where you are

Sorry for digging up an older thread, but having just got back from Finale I thought you'd be interested to hear what I found?!

As anticipated the grades were quite stiff, especially on the older crags where a level of polish on some of the routes added to the difficulty level of some already really quite stiff routes for their grades. 

We figured if you added a grade partitions (sometimes even too) onto these crags' routes, that gives you more or less what you'd find in Kalymnos/Margalef/Chulilla etc i.e. 6a > 6b/6b+ We met a lot of other climbers out there and all seemed to think the same.

That said, I think that those who find, bolt and maintain these crags have started to cotton on that the area is out of step with many other destinations.  New crags are being bolted all the time and the grading is much softer than the older crags (well according to a guy in the shop who gave us some new topos) and the bolting is much friendlier than the older crags too.  Some of the older crags have also been rebolted and they seem to have been a little more generous in their bolting.

it also looks like some of the grades have been changed in the guidebook, with harder grades being shown in the drawing than they are in the description (or was it vice versa?).

However whatever the grading, it was actually a really good holiday as you could just forget all about grades as it's no indication anyway, just go have a look at something you think looks good, give it a go and take your satisfaction for getting up something that felt hard, rather than was given a hard grade in the book!

I'm sure you've been, but would really recommend it as a destination, perhaps an updated destination article would be a good idea (the one over here is over 10 years old now)?

I've climbed at El Chorro twice - when I was pootling along at 6a, red-pointing 6b, and then two years later (i.e. 4 months ago) when I was bit out of shape but red-pointing 6c+. My experience is that it's pretty consistent with other places in Spain: Margalef, Costa Blanca, being the two I've been to most. It is comparable to Kalymnos, which I don't think is especially soft anymore, as over the past 5 years most things got upgraded so that the new Rockfax and last two Vertical Life guides all seem fairly consistent with what you get in Spain and in France (outside of alpine areas).

If you compare holiday sport climbing crags to places like Verdon, or anything near Alpine territory where lunatic-strong hardmen put up the route, or indeed to short technical bouldery-like routes on polished limestone in the Peak, then yeah they are going to feel soft. But my experience is that Portland (except the bastard Cuttings) and Winspit is comparable to Spain and Kalymnos, as are more recently developed Peak venues like Masson Lees, or some of the A55 stuff in North Wales. I climb the same grades with the same effort in each of these places, though I've been brutally shut down in Alpine locations.

FWIW, I spent last weekend climbing in Stockholm on some superb granite crags, and found the grades at the higher end but not wrong. So in sum: I don't think El Chorro (or Kalymnos) are waaaay off, though what may be true is that what would get e.g. (hard) 6b in some other places will sometimes get (low) 6b+ elsewhere, and so on. (Although the hardest 6a I've ever done is in Margalef!) There's variation, but it's not 3 grades out as the OP suggests - at least not in my experience.

(Also, friendly bolting, a relaxed holiday psyche, cumulative endurance improvement from climbing every day, learning to read Mediterranean limestone effectively, all help.)

Interesting to read your thoughts on Finale, it matches what I found: some (newer) crags having almost normal grading and some others being hilariously sandbaggy compared to my previous experience. We only climbed on crags with the best "equipment" rating in the guidebook and overall found it the friendliest bolting I've ever seen. It was definitely best to just ignore the grades and enjoy the climbing, pizza etc.

More generally...

Weirdly, I don't think there's much of a difference between peak limestone sport grades in the low 6s and Kalymnos grades. The softest 6a and 6b I've ever done are both in the peak. A Time and a Place (6a) and Moov Over (6b) This is despite having done many more sport routes on Kalymnos than in the Peak.

I think I found El Chorro closer to Finale grading than Kalymnos, and a bit harder than the peak generally. This might be because I went to El Chorro first as a beginner and then again when I was more ill than I've ever been before or since... it probably deserves another visit.

It's in the sub 6s that Kalymnos is ridiculous. A 5a or 5b at El Chorro or the Peak could be like VS or even soft HVS whereas on Kalymnos it's likely to be vdiff. This makes Kalymnos 5c the widest grade band in the universe since it has to get from just above scrambling level to solid HVS in a single letter...

I personally thought the sandbaggyest grades were at Portland but that was mainly because of not trusting the "rock" (compacted mud) and so being in soloing mindset even when right by a bolt. Doesn't explain why a friend who could top-rope Kalymnos 6b clean couldn't top-rope a Portland 4+ though. That one was just hard.

Agreed - we normally didn't go to crags with anything less than 4* bolting and found it to be some of the friendliest, safest bolting I've ever seen!  Bloody lot of rethreads though, would it kill them to put up a few 'biners up there?!

Like you say, forget the grades, enjoy the climbing, the pizza and the Aperol in the sun!

Interesting to hear your thoughts on Peak  and El Chorro as I've never been to either, so will have to check that out when I do.

Interesting thoughts on Portland - I think I find them sandbaggy as I've picked the wrong crag and ended up in a polished hell hole (the cuttings), shit rock (various) or been shitting myself as it's a sea cliff (I hate climbing on sea cliffs, even being near the sea freaks me out).  Hedbury and Winspit I've had good days out at though, they're alright, grades seem stiff but not massively so like the others I've mentioned...

I’d say Blacknor and Battleship have some of the finest sport climbs around. The Cuttings by contrast is a polished hell hole. It is what it is. 

Thinking about it, the peak can feel very variable based on the little bit of sport I've done here e.g. Horseshoe feels hard for me because of the style of climbing on polished sloping edges but I found some stuff at Masson Lees quite soft. I found El Chorro harder but my physical state at the time was poor.

I'm fairly sure I went to the wrong crags on Portland since I was either climbing on very poor, chalky cheese or glassy polish. The crazy hard 4c we did was the glassy polish type: Crazy Old Hippies (5b). It seemed particularly desperate compared to Kalymnos 6bs of the similar (but less slippy) style.