UKH

Just thought I would raise a concern that the historical record of E graded climbs may be at risk of being erased with the possible usage of an E grade only going forwards (as per E grader). I have noticed one online database retroactively 'disappearing' the tech grade from all climbs done over the last 70 years. 

Surely, climbing history is there to be preserved. Its one thing to decide to stop using tech grades going forwards and just use French or Font grades but quite another to erase the tech grades of historical climbs (e.g. Indian Face going from E9 6c to simply 'E9 trad'.) 

I would applaud UKC for keeping the humble tech grade in its database of E graded climbs. 

Just to clarify, I assume this

is a reference to my site https://climbing-history.org/ ? Or maybe Im being too presumptuous!

Tech grades are an interesting point, I've got a lot of sympathy for the view that we should record grades that have historically been suggested as, broadly speaking, I think nuance is lost if you try and translate things away from their original grade (e.g. Action Directe going from XI on the UIAA scale to 8c+/9a.)

To explain the usage (or lack of) tech grades for trad routes on ch:

• I think they're easily confused with french sport grades and font grades, especially for anyone outside the UK
• I think they're tricky to understand for people outside the UK who don't have direct experience with them
• I think they're too fuzzy, particularly in the upper end of the scale where a lot of the climbs on ch sit
• Grades are a tool to help people understand roughly how hard a climb is. In the context of ch, users probably want more of a broad sense of "how hard is this route", which the e grade on it's own does
• From a technical perspective they're a bit annoying to implement

I hope that doesn't come across as some sort of crusade against the UK tech grade, because it isn't! It's just that in the context of ch I think their utility is limited and time is better spent developing other areas of the site.

What is wrong with using both the E grade and the technical grade? 

It is surely up to foreign climbers to acquaint themselves with British grades. We have to get to know grades in other countries, after all. Not that this is relevant to me, as I don't climb that hard.

Isn't that precisely what he just carefully explained?

You may well disagree with his choice but you can't say he hasn't explained and justified his reasons for making it.

What I am saying, and I am not disregarding what has been said, is that other climbers can choose to just look at the E grade, whilst others can glean a little more information by taking on board the technical grade, if both are present.

What you actually said was that was "up to foreign climbers to acquaint themselves with British grades", which doesn't sit easily with your statement here.

What you seem to be choosing to ignore is remus's explanations as to why, notably that "they're easily confused with french sport grades and font grades", "they're tricky to understand for people outside the UK" and "they're a bit annoying to implement".

I completely understand the attraction of UK technical grades, especially in the popular 5a-6a range, but expecting every international site to support them is asking a lot.

Yes, it was in reference to your site. I don't disagree with your points regarding the usage of tech grades. 

What has not been addressed is the historical aspect of all this. In 10 years time, we will live in a world where the old paper guidebooks have been ushered out and have ended up being thrown out or are mouldering in peoples' lofts. It seems like the future of guidebooks may well be digital. 

How are people to know the history of climbing grades unless they are recorded in online databases? Regardless of how annoying or awkward or tricky to understand UK tech grades are, they are a quirky part of the character of UK climbing and for that reason worth preserving. I think its important for people to know that Supersonic was E5 6a originally or Right Wall was E5 6a and Lord of the Flies E6 6a. By all means use the French grade as well but the tech grade is only 2 more characters - surely we can spare that in any database?

Climbing history is worth preserving! 

Wasn't Supersonic E5 6c originally?

Yes it was, I was referring to the first 'settled' grade. 

I think it was 6c originally, but maybe I'm confusing that with a French grade.

https://images.app.goo.gl/EtJyeMYDDftRWXVA9

If I were writing a guidebook I would try and update the grading for everything E3ish upwards, or maybe E5ish upwards.

Using an E grade and french grade for sustained routes a e.g. Right Wall E5 F6c.

Using an E grade and font or v grade for bouldery routes, where the font/v grade applies to the hardest section e.g. Wasdale Roof E3 v3.

I'd not really have any objection to including the tech grade as well for historic reasons. E.g. Right Wall E5 6a F6c. Wasdale Roof E3 5c f6A+.

You could even go the whole hog and include everything! Gives us even more to argue about. E.g. Right Wall E5 6a F6c f6A+. Admittedly that's not very useful for a route like Right Wall, but maybe for some of the harder routes it would be? Certainly I would quite like it if all routes were graded as E0 F0a f0A, where E0 is the E grade as it is now, F0a is the overall french difficulty as for a sport route and f0A is the font grade for the difficulty of the crux.

I don't think anyone just wants Indian Face to be in a guidebook as E9 with no information on physical difficulty, but at least some people do want it to be in as E9 7b+, or E9 6c F7b+ (or whatever the correct french grade is).

I agree with this.

For clarification, UKC won't be getting rid of UK Tech Grades.

Excellent, thanks for clarifying! 

While I largely agree, it's also totally up to Remus how he prioritises his effort on his own website.

I think you overestimate the permanence of the internet. Websites and databases disappear everyday. Every paper book that is published in the UK is sent to legal deposit libraries where (such as the British Library) they are preserved in perpetuity and available to anyone who wants to go and see them. 

But you should introduce indicative voting on french grades for all trad routes to help begin collecting opinions on what they are.

(And indicative voting on the Adjective grade for all worldwide trad routes as a fantastic resource for travelling Brits)

Some good points, I don't have all the answers, I'm just raising a concern about the preservation of this information. That's true about the library but will many people be going there on a regular basis to look stuff up?

In reply to Probablylost, yes I agree. Climbing has changed a lot since the days of Climbing Club guidebooks -  it is to be hoped that a workable long term solution to the preservation of climbing history can be found. 

Not sure you meant to reply to me? I agree that Remus can do what ever he wants with his own website!

personally I think switching to font grades would be more useful than french grades as the E grade should already account for the sustained or not nature of the route and grading the crux sequence as a boulder problem makes more sense than the hardest single move. 

More likely XS 6c in mid-1976. E grades didn't really start appearing until the following year - and the Peak District was a late adopter.

Edit: ....and then XS 5c+ in Bancroft's 1977 Recent Developments Peak Supplement.

For example if we look at the three routes in your profile, 7a to 8a, all of them are English tech 6b as 'a single hardest move'?.

E grade plus a useful grade please.  

In all likelihood no, but the point is the information will be there. If in 100 years British tech grades have fallen out of everyday use, that's fine, things change. Those who are interested in climbing history will be able to go and do the research.

I speak as someone who has done an awful lot of historical research (at the BL and other places) about things that have ceased to remain relevant to most people. 

I think there is a wide gulf between information being lost to history and that information having to be printed in every instance.

OK, that is reassuring. I suppose my query would be to what extent do we owe it to the climbing public to present information like Indian Face being graded E9 6c in 1986 in the guidebook they would take to Cloggy? To me, such historical detail can only enhance a day out even if English 6c tech may be falling out of favour with trad new routers these days (or already phased out as per E Grader). 

True but I think people may predominantly be using their phones as climbing guidebooks in the next 10 years instead of paper.

There are a lot of E graded trad climbs in the UK, all currently with tech grades. I would hope we can do better than simply erasing the information completely. 

Interesting thread, great to hear a range of opinions. In the context of climbing-history.org, I think it's worth distinguishing between the grade a climb gets now and the grades it's received in the past.

Per my original post, I don't think there's a huge amount of value in adding UK tech grades in for the grades a climb currently gets on ch. Some kind of 'grade history' for a climb could be pretty interesting though e.g for Supersonic you might have

1. 1976, XS 6c, Ron Fawcett
2. 1980, E5 6c, guidebook a
3. 1989, E5 6a, guidbook b
4. 2001, E5 6a, guidebook c

It's a lot of info to collect though so I worry it'd be too time consuming to fill in with any consistency.

The site sort of has a limited version of this at the mo, where if an ascentionist suggests a grade for something then that can be recorded (e.g. https://climbing-history.org/climb/825/sleepwalker ), but that misses out any grade suggestion that hasn't come from an individual. It also doesn't include a UK tech grade for trad routes so some information is lost there.

The whole point of the UK tech grade is to indicate the difficulty of the hardest single move (https://www.thebmc.co.uk/a-brief-explanation-of-uk-traditional-climbing-gra...). So adding the boulder grade is, in theory, duplication.

However, the problem is that above E5 6a the whole UK grade thing becomes so compressed as to be effectively unusable, unless more context is given.

(My personal favourite system is to use the American R/X style with a French twist, and combine the sport grade with the run-out potential, e.g. Right Wall F6c R, Indian Face F7c X etc). It'll never take off though!)

I think you're perhaps underselling digital archives a little, though obviously I'm biased. A digital archive has the potential to be incredibly accessible in a way that a physical location like the British Library never can be.

Digital archives also have the potential to store orders of magnitude more material e.g. https://archive.org/ which currently stores copies of around 860 billion web pages. Obviously it's hard to compare directly to the British Library, but I think it's safe to say that's a lot of information compared to the BL's ~170 million items.

Of course, you're free to do as you see fit with your site, however I would advocate that every E graded trad climb should have its technical grade consistently preserved, just like UKC are doing. This is in the interests of preserving the richness of UK climbing history. 

I'm not suggesting a slavish recording of every change of grade. Supersonic is in a tiny minority of climbs where the tech grade has changed. The vast majority of climbs have only ever had one Tech grade e.g. Right Wall has always been E5 6a. This could appear alongside the E grade. 

Since we seem to be using F6a to denote french grades why can't international data-bases use UK6a/Trad6a or some such. 

its not quite a duplication the font grade would cover the whole crux sequence rather than individual moves. which when you have sequences of 5-10 moves between good holds makes a lot more sense.  also allows for where uk tech grades have got too broad. 

It was my understanding that Supersonic was given 6c initially because an interpretation at the time by a few climbers of technical grades was that a sustained sequence of 6a moves would feel as hard as one 6c move so should be given 6c

I think that English tech grades are considered  fine and not questioned below 6b ish and that it is only for routes above E3 ish that there seems to be an ask for a sport grade and/or a Font grade too. i.e. this discussion doesn't affect 90% ish of climbs or climbers

Maybe, maybe not. You're right that digital archives are very useful, but most people don't understand the difference and conflate the internet with permanence.

I'm afraid I don't know much about your website, but to give it the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming you have the long term funding to keep your information hosted in perpetuity. I would also assume that when you and your colleagues die you will have successors to keep the project going?

I've personally deposited dozens of project archives with the Archaeology Data Service, a digital archive hosted by the University of York. They charge hundreds of pounds (minimum) for each project because they have to account for the long term costs of storing ever increasing amounts of data. They also have very strict requirements around file types, metadata, documentation etc. to give the data the best chance of actually being usable in the future. 

" . . . . since the days of Climbing Club guidebooks . . . "

Implies you're under the impression club guide books are no longer being produced. I hope you're wrong - I've just paid in advance for the next to be published Fell and Rock Climbing Club guide book !!

The Climber's Club continues to fulfil its traditional "duty" to the climbing public with guides to North and South Wales. The SMC are still doing the bizz up there with a super new guide to The Lowland Outcrops their latest offering.

Needless to say they're packed with grades we understand and love.

Wake up Teddy it was all just a terrible nightmare!

Why are you so concerned about something that isn't happening? UKC and therefore Rockfax have said they have no intention of getting rid of tech grades, which app based guides have you seen using just E grades?

Remus' site isn't a climbing guide, it's just a wiki for climbing ascents it doesn't need to hold all the info for every climb, there are much better sites for that with massive existing databases.

Have you talked to the climbers club's publications sub-committee? I think there is some work ongoing to enter info from previous editions of CC guides which will facilitate an understanding of grading history in CC guidebooks. Whether or not they would allow public access is of course a different matter.

That‘s exactly what I was going to write but thought well, I‘m not really qualified to take part in this facet of the discussion. But 3 UK tech grades covering a range of 11 French grades does seem to be rather unsatisfactory.

Hmm. See Al's comment here, and the one about selling magazines accompanying the linked photo:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/rock_talk/supersonic-371638?v=1#x5394870

Thanks for the tip-off Spenser! I wasn't aware, don't suppose you know who would be a good person to talk to about it? If you do know someone would you be able to drop me their details via the email in my profile?

As you say I suspect they'd be keen to keep the info private, but I'm always interested in discussing these things.

It would be Val Hennelly who is Publications Sub-committee Chair who would know best what is going on with it.

Hyperlink under her name on here should take you to a web form to email her:

https://www.climbers-club.co.uk/cms/meet-the-climbers-club-committee/

If I may be permitted a rare moment of pedantry [!] the first settled grade would presumably have been the one that appeared in the definitive guide that first included the route: BMC Derwent Valley 1981 - Supersonic E4 6a.

Not sure there’s a real issue with this. UK guidebooks will continue to provide the tech grade for historical reasons. It would be good to see sport and / or bouldering grades added where appropriate but that’s a separate debate. Also I don’t think we’ll see the demise of paper guidebooks any time soon, at least not the select ones or comprehensives for popular areas. 

I think the biggest possibility for confusion are French and Font grades,  being an identical system, but incomparable.

UK tech. grades predate the French system and the E grade gives the information required to assess so called trad. routes.

I thought the English tech grade was originally copied from the French system, from Font and via southern ss, where adjectival grades aren't very relevant.  So it's OK up to 6a, (~top grade at the time) and then suffered from a stunted development 

Maybe I'm overreacting. Its good to hear that UKC and Rockfax are keeping the UK tech grade.

I suppose my worry was learning about E Grader's plans for the UK tech grade which I don't agree with at all. E Grader is phasing out the tech grade from their algorithm. By all means incorporate French and Font grades into the E grade but don't use this to bump off the tech grade in the process. 

Here is a link to some concerns with the E Grader https://cursedclimbing.substack.com/p/the-hostile-takeover-of-british-trad 

OK, sounds good. Long may it continue! 

Slightly off topic, but the Welsh Winter Wiki disappeared from the internet. I really wish I had printed it all off, because I fear some routes, done between the publication of the last guide (2010) and the wiki provider closing down last year, will have been lost. 

I don't really have a strong opinion on tech grades of E climbs, but this link made me check out your website. I hadn't seen it before, but it looks like a really interesting resource. From what I saw it looked like an elegant way to display info about hard climbs across the world.  Nice one for taking the time to make it. It seems to me that you've done a good job of making the history of hard climbing accessible to a wide number of people.

Happy to be corrected 

I've now read that through - it's really hard to know whether they are being serious or not? Just when I think they are, then I think no, noone could be that uptight and conspiratorial about something so unimportant and ridiculous on a global scale. So then I'm back to it's all a big tongue in cheek parody, puncturing the pomposity of the obsessed few. 

I haven't read all of it myself. Does seem a little OTT in places. I'm mainly interested in the changes to grades proposed. I think there are real problems with sacking off UK technical grades and carrying on with E grades with French/ Font grades only in their place as the tech grades were the foundation of the whole thing originally. 

Thanks for the kind words, always nice to hear when people are enjoying it.

Did Supersonic ever make 6c in a guidebook?

The Crags cover was:

1. Mr Birtles being a tad provocative with the grade as was his want
2. The undecided (at the time) way to assign technical grades, IIRC Ron might have been using some kind of cumulative measure which gave the "difficulty of the hardest move when you got there" rather than the (now established) "difficulty of the hardest move in isolation".

In hindsight, it's now fairly obvious that the UK climbing "establishment" jumped the wrong way on that one.

I don't have a problem with tech grades disappearing for routes of a standard that never get onsighted. With stuff that hard, as everyone acknowledges, it's of limited value anyway. So Indian Face E9 7b+, I can't see anyone thinking there's important infomation missing there. For more normal grades, certainly everything up to E5, let's keep things as they are.

Or not.

That websites an elaborate pisstake right.... right? I mean no one is that up themselves.

Anyway any fule no the the entire purpose of of egrader is to justify lexicon being e11😉

I suppose it could have some use for someone unsure what to grade their latest super-route. Though they'd be better off just comparing it with other routes they'd done. Or repeaters will do that, and consensus will emerge anyway

The internet never forgets. There are websites that have content caches but how to find that content is another question.  

I hate it...where is the room for ambiguity, enabling fierce arguments,  when useless UK tech grades of 6b and above are replaced by something much more accurate and useful.

Not any in a certain infamous grit supplement then?

You've got me there Steve, I'm afraid! Any what? And which supplement?

A correct reading of an early grit supplement shows that 5c is hard and 6b is, by definition the maximum, 11 on the dial. Has anyone seen Steve Bancroft and Nigel Tufnel in the same room? Well have they? I rest my case...

Supersonic was never actually graded 6C. Geoff Birtles featured a pic of the first ascent on the front cover of Crags and asked “is this Britains first 6C” It wasn’t.

"My personal favorite system is to use the American R/X style"

I've been surprised to see people advocating for this on UKC recently.
As the writer of 6 US guidebooks, I've had to wrestle with the R/X system for many years. I've experimented with applying it a great deal and have come to believe that it's worse than useless most of the time.

He certainly knew how to start an ever-ongoing debate though 😁

Didn‘t he do the same with Ron’s 1st free ascent of The Prow - Is this Britain‘s first 7a/ the hardest climb in the world? (or similar)?

Brilliant!

Mick 

Yes, I was being a bit tongue in cheek.  A bonus point to anyone who can identify the other climber so obviously typexed out of the photo.  Apart from the person themselves, who has already contributed to this thread!

Have you put UK grades in any of your guidebooks?

Was it Phil or Geraldine?

Fair enough, your experience of the system is much greater than mine! I'd be interested to hear your reasons why though.

I think it makes sense to inform the climber if a route is either run-out or dangerous. The UK system only gets halfway there e.g. while E3 5b is clearly going to be very bold, E3 5c could either be a sustained but safe, or easier and bold (e.g. Space Cadet (E3 5c) vs Chalkstorm (E3 5c).

So on paper, the R/X system makes sense to me. Though I have very little experience of actually using it, so maybe it's rubbish, as you suggest!

But I think you'd be able to tell which of those E3 5c routes is "sustained but safe" and which is "easier and bold" (*) before you set foot on rock.

I do think the visual "which is which" might fall down on multi-pitch routes where it's not all obvious from the ground but that's where the route description (or route symbols) comes in. No grading system tells you everything about the route.

(*) "easier" isn't correct because they're both the same grade - "less physically demanding" would be more correct.

[and I bet there's an E3 5b out there that's sustained but safe but I can't think of one offhand]

Nope

.The Cull (E3 5b)?

Which is pretty obvious what is going to be involed from below.

Ocean Boulevard and The Cull as noted above. 

FTFY 😉

I could just imagine Birtles heading home after an evening in The Byron and sitting down to write his next tabloid style headline. They were great days for the climbing press.

The "Hardest climb in the world" headline was certainly used in High Magazine, although The Prow wasn't the first outing for the 7a grade. During the previous couple of years Strawberries, Atomic Hot Rod, Piranha, and Little Plum were all recorded in print at 7a, with the first two making it into subsequent guidebooks at that grade. 7a was originally suggested for Bananas but had been reduced to 6c by the time it was put on record, and 6b in the subsequent guide. Tequila was recorded in High at E6 7b, with Strawberries appearing at that grade atop a list of "North Wales' hardest". I expect there were others not mentioned here.

I wonder whether Steve was referring to Desroy's 1980 [Yorkshire] New Grit supplement. I've no idea whether it was infamous or not but it only appears to include three overall/adjectival grades - VS, HVS and XS; although there is a solitary HVS!, whatever that means.

Might mean you still get to live, if you fall off? Yorkshire, innit!

Mind you, falling off Tabula Rosa, at HVS (eminently likely, as it's collapsing faster than even the boldest leader's spirits) would definitely be an exception to the rule. 

At least the graveyard's conveniently situated...

Mick 

Absolutely. Chuckling all the way to the bank. 

And the cheeky monkey had the gall to tell me, "There's something of the Sun columnist about you..." 

Mick 

Just noticed all southern sandstone routes no longer have tech grades on ukc this year. Bit sad, was such a big moment to get your first 6a when I started climbing.

This is always what I heard… first claim the superiority of the grading system… then add that read the route descriptions… almost any grade system would actually give the same amount of details.

for historical reasons, I do understand the whole E grade thing… after all E9 6C sounds a lot cooler than 7b+ X…

but indeed the latter gives you a lot more info (even without reading any text)… simply that you need to be confident at climbing a 7b+ route, where a fall would be rather unwise. So the amount of physical skills, and also your risk tolerance.

And this would also work for multipitch, and indeed some topos split the pitches into shorter sections and again assign the R/X per that pitch or section (together with the physical ”grade”). This means that you pretty much newer need to even think… if the easier 6c pitch is runout, deadly or a pure 50m solo.

On the same note: I always thought the idea of just giving tech grades and not E grades to individual pitches of MP routes was just stupid!

Indeed, a route's E grade may be harder than that of any one of its pitches! I always thought that of The Scoop (E7 6b), the hardest pitch of which is probably E6. Another example I'd say was The Naked Edge (5.11b), which I thought deserved E5 overall despite having only E4 pitches.

Edit: Can you tell I'm bored at work today!

No it doesn't. It is just different information. Whether an individual finds it more or less useful is another matter.

Yes, this is colossally stupid.

I’ve heard Geoff called some names, all of them stronger than ‘Cheeky Monkey’. 

Well it does. It tells exactly How hard physically the climbing is going to be, and also What mind set is needed.

E grade unfortunately combined those into same thing, and then you have an imaginary hardest move there, then you start to pondering What it really means. And until you climbed it, you ain’t any wiser.

Well if you think half the information is imaginary...... Sorry, actually no point in wasting time time responding.

Yet, in conjunction with the guidebook description, I'm struggling to think of routes where I have actually found it an issue.

So you think E9 6C is good, yet you don’t know if it is 8a and runout, or 7b and death on a stick…  without additional information…

but 8a R and 7b X already tells all this, even without a single additional word.

Personal I don't understand the R and x thing, there's a pretty brod spectrum between safe, runout and death that 2 categories just don't cover. A numerical grade with 10+ increments however.....

Yup… safe (no mention), considerable runout (but safe) R and death on a stick X are perhaps a tad limited. Which is why on a lot of Alpine multipitch, they have a for tier system IIRC (a lot of Italian topos in from Versante Sud had those). And also my friends have again deviced something similar, when they started to develop a bunch of small outcrops near the coast some 20 years ago, https://www-jammi-net.translate.goog/kalliot/tietovakka/varmistettavuus.htm...

Yes, 8a 7b tells you it is 8a and 7b. Obviously.

And E9 6c tells you it is E9 and 6c. Equally obviously.

Just different information.

I think it is actually 4 categories: Nothing, PG, R, X.

I find it works quite well.

I've done quite a lot of routes with people who want to lead some of the pitches on a multipitch, but the lack of adjectival grade means they don't feel confident to do. E.g. I've been on an E5 6a, 6a, 6a, 5b, with a partner who wants to lead and can lead E3, I did the first three pitches and they did the top one, but actually it turned out the bottom pitch was E3 6a and they would have enjoyed doing it. Or I've been on E2's with 5a pitches and with a VS/HVS leader - they'd like to do the 5a pitches but don't want to find out it's a bold or sustained E1 5a halfway when they're halfway through the pitch. It's often unclear how sustained a multipitch is as as well, when E2 was my limit I'd look at an E2 5b, 5c, 5b and think, hmm not sure I can actually do that, whereas if it was E2: E1 5b, E2 5c, HVS 5b I'd think yeah I'll give that a go. Sometimes you can tell from the guidebook description, but often you can't.

This isn't the end of the world, but it is annoying. Mainly I think it's very frustrating because it would be relatively trivial to give the useful information!

That's really a problem with the tech grade uselessness (at higher grades at least) than any advantage of any R/X malarkey.

E9 F8a or E9 F7b would make it far clearer.

You're always going to be able to come up with examples, in a 2-grade system, where one of the (more than 2) factors isn't as clear as you'd like. Arguments along those lines have been going on since time immemorial. But at least we need to make sure the 2 grades we're choosing are helpful, which the tech grade above 6b most certainly isn't.

That's quite the rant! I'm semi sympathetic, but whoever wrote it needs to work on avoiding tedium and hysteria. 

I had a play with the eGrader when it first turned up. It told me my late 80s ascent of Heart of the Sun was E5. I laughed and closed the tab. 

I thought it was Bonington? 

Been reading some more of that substack. This made me laugh. 

https://open.substack.com/pub/cursedclimbing/p/what-is-the-point-of-climbin...

But who is behind it... Suspicions, suspicions... 

Utterly depressing to me: such cynicism, misrepresentation and simplification. Someone capable of referencing that well should have a better and more nuanced story to tell (or at least a more wicked sense of poking fun).

Well it certainly can't do any harm and if lots of people find it useful, then, I agree, may as well implement it. Likewise French grades for harder routes.

I believe it’s Mr Parsons, of this parish.

It's like so many things these days. Systems built up over many years through hard experience cast aside just to be different without offering anything else meaningfully better. I've never climbed in the high grades but always appreciated the system we have and the security it gives to the mind. For bolted routes I can see the benefit, it makes sense. 

The main thing that makes any grading system useful is that it's properly applied. And basically, that's where all the anti-tech grades arguments have started from. If there hadn't been the compression above 6a, then we would be having this discussion much less often.

There are problems with the PG, R, X system, but from what I've read it's poor application.

Theoretically, any two-part grading system will give you the same amount of information. With a multi-factored piece of information that's as vague as "how difficult is a climb" it's just a question of which factors you want directly, and which factors you want to infer.

There doesn't seem to be an ideal answer to which are the two best factors to have directly, mainly people's preference is tied up with their experience and familiarity of particular gradings systems which is hardly surprising.

The main benefit of all this is the amount of discussion it generates 😁

But hang on, granch grades give an overall grade with the most difficult move only being part of the equation. British tech grades only do one thing, rate the difficulty of the hardest move. So yes French 7a to 8a for a route with an English 6b move is fine, the French grade would be effected by the rest of the route. Its the same as the adjectival grade without the seriousness factor as sport is all the same.  

You’re almost right. For the two-tier systems to be informative, the two parts need to be independent of each other. Unfortunately the E plus Tech are not, the tech grade is already a part of What actually makes up the E portion. So in fact, the E plus Tech is actually just one grade (overall, or the E)… and the Tech is used to give more details to one of the three variables that make up the overall grade.

If you know that x+y=z, which two of x, y and z are independent of each other?

By independent, I mean they are not measuring the same thing. 5.10 X has two conponents, one tells How physically demanding the climbing is going to be… the other component tells that What ever you are climbing, falling is not adviced. You can completely change either component and it will not affect the other.

with E plus Tech… this is not the case E5 6A will no longer be E5 If the sustained nature stays the same, as will the danger aspect… but the Tech is changed to 6B. So in this case, they are not independent of each other.

But 5.10 & X has told you 2 items of info and nothing about any other factors

E + tech has told you overall and 1 item, so overall take away tech tells you the sum of all the other factors

So which is telling you more useful information - it probably depends on the route itself and how much impact the other factors (that 5.10 & X don't tell you) have on the difficulty of that route. If they're small then 5.10 & X is more likely to be sufficient, if they're large then E + tech is likely to be telling you more.

Yes, it was clear what you meant, but sometimes a derived value is more useful than raw data. For example, I could have tide tables to tell me the ordinary water level in the estuary (sport grade), and then I could have rainfall figures to tell me how much extra water to expect (R/X), when what is actually most useful is how high the water will get (E grade) so I can assess the likelihood of flooding (failing).

Both approaches work in theory, both have their pros and cons and there's no definitive best way. But I'd argue strongly that a single measure of 'are more climbers likely to succeed in leading route x than route y?' is the most valuable comparator when grading the difficulty of lead climbing. The reasons why this might be the case, while also useful, are secondary.

I can see the logic (although I think people would quite quickly find their own cross-equivalence between say 6c, 6bR and 5X in terms of what they were happy to try), although if there was one thing I'd value most as an explicit variable it would be the danger component (and the single hardest move the thing I would value the least). If I can fail safely, it matters less to me precisely why I fail...

Kindly explain the components/factors that play a role in setting up the overall difficulty…

From my understanding they are How sustained and hard the climbing (both which are in the 5.10 portion)… and the mental fortitude required at said physical level (which the R/X portion covers).

So the E+Tech gives you a mess. Where as physical grade + quantity/quality of protection tells you exactly where you will be heading… and from these two independent variables you can deduct the overall grade. 

Presumably that will apply to Southern Sandstone? 

I tend to agree - right down to the last sentence. It would be relatively trivial if modern guidebook writers actually re-climbed all the routes. But we know they don't. BMC, Climbers Club and Fell and Rock (and similar) authors rely, to a greater or lesser extent, on the accumulated history of ascents recorded in previous editions. Rockfax (and similar) authors rely, to a greater or lesser extent on the same accumulated history - sometimes, sadly, without the fulsome acknowledgement the voluntary work deserves - together with the grades recorded in UKC.  In most cases, none of this data will assist in allocating an E grade to each pitch - you actually have to climb it!

Martin

PS: I've lots of thoughts on the more substantive issue being debated here which I've attempted to express on previous threads. In summary, I agree with John Arran.

This is a sad truth, the local South Eastern rockfax guidebook writer is on a mission to remove English grades from Southern Sandstone completely, despite most of us locals being vociferously against it! The new edition of the guidebook for example, no longer has UK tech grades at all (even though that's all we use), and has caused endless confusion for the last six years!  His justifications are bizarre, and worthy of a separate thread I believe. 

Yes that is a fair point. My point is more that it would have been relatively trivial to provide from the beginning. There are some routes for which the breakdown is already quite well known e.g. Positron is often suggested as being E3, E4, E4 for the first three pitches. Starting to include that information in guidebooks or on UKC would be a good step imo. Edit to add: providing that extra information would also give lots more opportunity for grade arguments, which after all is the whole point of climbing in the first place.

So judging the overall difficulty to be the proportion of climbers that can get up a route, I can think of the following factors, not all of equal importance - there are probably more

1. Physical difficulty of the moves between points where you can properly recover (for the next bit) - this basically covers overall strength & endurance
2. Difficulty of the hardest move when you get to that move - (almost the tech grade) this is basically a limiting factor
3. Perceived danger of the moves (not the actual danger which is not a factor in how hard you would find the route) - basically how badly you think you'll be injured if you came off 
4. Boldness - slightly different from the perceived danger, a long runout with a safe fall might be very bold but have low perceived danger (I'll be sh*t-scared but safe)
5. Quality of the rock - looseness - I think the trustworthiness of any placed gear is pretty much covered between this and point 3
6. Remoteness of the climb - a route that needs a 5 mile uphill hike will be harder than the same route roadside
7. Difficulty of access - often the same as remoteness but I'm thinking here more about things like maybe having to access a difficult starting location - maybe awkward abseils - example I can think of is Il Duce (E5 6a), would be easier if it was facing "inwards" with a path to the bottom
8. Likelihood of finding the route in perfect condition - routes are meant to be graded for perfect conditions but routes that are nearly always out of condition are likely to be graded for typical conditions - example might be The Black Cleft (E2 5c)

• 5.10 fully covers point 1, possibly gives an indication about point 2
• R/X covers point 3, gives an indication about point 4

• E grade covers the lot
• Tech grade basically covers 2 - but not perfectly

Considering a few different types of routes:

1. Roadside, solid rock - the factors missed by 5.10 + R/X not likely to be important
2. Loose sea cliff requiring abseil & tricky traverse to reach - 5.10 + R/X is totally missing 5&7 which are relevant factors in "will you be able to climb this", low tech grade for the E grade at least tells you there's some factor "missing" that might need consideration but doesn't tell you which factor(s) that might be
3. Mountain route, high up, remote, long walk in - 5.10 + R/X is totally missing 6&8 which are relevant factors, low tech grade for the E grade as above.

Neither system tells you everything, and which system is most helpful will (as I asserted previously) depend on the nature of the route. Regardless, one would hope that anything that's important that the grading system doesn't tell you is included in the route description.

Indeed, and in more detail (relevant for climbing) than E+tech.

Actually, IIRC E-grade should not take these into account either. Nor do any other climbing grade system... but a lot of them do actually mention this in the descriptions (be it for the route, or for the whole crack). And also quite often the actual topo mentions loose blocks/rocks (if they are spotty, instead of the whole crag). Albeit actually remoteness is actually a factor (third parameter) of the YDS, but for majority it is not used... IIRC it is I to IV, and takes indeed account how long and demanding the route is, plus how far from civilization...

Actually, IIRC E-grade should not take these into account either. Nor do any other climbing grade system... but a lot of them do actually mention this in the descriptions (be it for the route, or for the whole crack). Albeit actually remoteness is actually a factor (third parameter) of the YDS, but for majority it is not used... IIRC it is I to IV, and takes indeed account how long and demanding the route is, plus how far from civilization...

No system is perfect, that is given... But the best system would be one, that from a quick glance gives you a really good understanding of what you will be getting into... if you want to climb said line.

Nb. I was mostly thinking it in craggin' terms (omitting factors such as long glacier approach with objective dangers like seracs, etc.). As for the actual climbing they are irrelevant (once you are at the start of the climb). That kind of assessment and criteria do not change how the actual climb is going to feel (to be honest, not even high altitude, but I'd wager a guess that stuff like Eternal Flame or Space Cowboy on Great Trango Tower crux pitches might feel a tad easier where they at sea level.  So again, the route grade should reflect how hard the actual climbing is (in terms that are easy to understand and judge). Gettin' to the start of the climb, objective hazards on the approach (or the actual climb) or the descent and remoteness will certainly play a role why well even go there.... but adding them into the route "grade" makes things even more of a mess, since then you loose the critical aspect of what the actual climbing would involve. Stuff like Swiss route to top of O Sole Mio (so ~6a free climb) on Grand Capucin would be in the range of 6a (or 5.10a) PG, as the actual climb is pretty solid rock, and certainly well protected. And I would guess you could dub it perhaps at E1 5B (or perhaps E2 5B), but due to the altitude, and also mountain environment and glacier approach, you would need to upgrade the overall grade from E2 to E3... now and E2 5B would feel completely different than and E3 5B to climb... but that is not the case, as the actual climb is exactly the same... only the approach and environment have changed, not the actual climb.

Unless it's changed, adjectival grade is meant to take all factors such as looseness and difficulty of access into account. But the number of routes where this makes a whole grade difference is small, especially on popular routes.

Some of Mick Fowler's coastal XS routes would have a higher E grade because of those 2 factors but they're often not E graded because "Fowler XS" is a shorthand that tells everyone pretty much what kind of experience they'd get.

Top Rope routes are treated differently.

Absolutely agree.

It's worth thinking about how we got here. The adjectival grade is an overall grade of the entire route. In the beginning (back in the 1890s) route descriptions in the UK started being augmented by a set of four grades to give repeat ascentionists an understanding of the overall difficulty and skills required to climb a route. These grades were Easy, Moderate, Difficult and Very Difficult. It is a testament to how far we have come in gear and training that we have expanded the top end through a further 16 grades right through to E12. I doubt that the mental strength of the top climbers now is greater than it was in the 1890s.

What I am getting at is that the key point of a grade was that it was an augmentation to a route description. If you read a good route description, you get an understanding of not only where to go, but other important information such as boldness, loose rock, access difficulty, strenuousness etc.

It seems to me that many of the current complaints about the UK grading system start from a wish to replace a description with a grade. I'm not sure that this would either be a good thing, or would work well in practise.  

R.e. remoteness/difficulty of access, I agree that this is certainly how the E grade is used by lots of people and seems to be how it evolved. However, it is very annoying. I know where the route is, I have that concrete information, I do not need that information to be included in some nebulous undefined way into a grade that is otherwise quite useful!

E.g. on Pabbay and Mingulay there are lots of generously graded routes, people will often say they're given an extra E grade ish to account for the location (remote, no hospital nearby, big sea cliff etc.), but this is not useful! When I go to climb a route on Pabbay/Mingulay I know that I am there! I know I will have to ab into a big sea cliff. Somehow wrapping this information into the E grade is not helpful, how many extra E grades was the route given because of the location 0.5, 1, 2? I don't know. If they were just graded basically normally (whatever combination of difficulty, boldness/risk/danger, looseness is normally used to add up to an E grade at a relatively easy access crag) then I have a useful grade for the actual climbing bit. I can use my own brain and knowledge of where I am to worry about the remoteness/access to the route.

Don't disagree with you on that, remoteness and difficulty of access factors should be in the crag description.

It does make more sense for individuals to then decide how much that factor will affect their climbing; e.g. some might think "I'll be knackered after that 5 mile walk, no way I'll get up an E3" whilst others would think nothing of a 5 mile amble.

Similarly some might think "that diagonal abseil to the ledge at the bottom will likely freak me out a bit, won't be able to climb my normal grade "

I doubt anyone pushes up the grade because of the location, but people might feel a duty not to sandbag others and so give the benefit of the doubt to the higher grade when it is a toss up.

I agree with all of that - in theory.

But I suspect that in practice such factors might be influencing our grade perception without us being aware of it. Clearly not everyone will be more hesitant faced with a big runout on a remote island seacliff compared to on a roadside crag next door to the royal infirmary, but many may be, possibly even subconsciously. And this will affect how hard they perceive the route to have been, and therefore their proposed grade.

As with so many of these grade discussions, it comes down to whether grades tell you how hard routes are, or how hard people find them. The former is the engineer's approach, based on formulae and combinatorial logic (system 2 thinking). The latter is, I believe, what happens most of the time in practice (system 1 thinking). People decide a grade based not on combining its constituent parts but on their real time perception of the whole. The component parts then get analysed and argued over to justify the grade that's already decided! 🙂

Isn't the guidebook description going to tell you that?

Not always, especially in these modern times of less verbose guidebooks.

The problem is that you can't do this from home when planning a trip to a distant crag.

...which is why we need 'hardest move' and 'danger' grades in addition to an overall grade.  No current system tells you perfectly what a route is like.   The UK system would be perfect if a) tech grades of 6b and above were uncompressed, and b) a danger grade was added.  That way the adjectival grade would only need to tell you if a route was cruxy or sustained.

Given that French grades don't tell you how cruxy or serious a French trad route is, do they have massive grading arguments like we do?

Exactly my feelings about the 'island grades'. Usually one adjusts their grade accordingly anyway if it's a committing situation. Having the FA do this for you really doesn't make things any safer, as if you're like me you'll think hmmm, the grades are soft, let's get on something harder as the E4s are really E3. Then one turns out to be a proper E4 and you're at the bottom of a big sea cliff... 

It's something generally I think shouldn't be the case, but would agree there can be exceptions, e.g. when the line as a whole has an intimidation factor. The Cave of Destiny (E3 5c) I thought was perhaps three E2 pitches, but overall definitely felt like an E3.

Playing around with the Darth Grader I noticed that the overall route grade for a multipitch keeps increasing as you add more pitches. I entered '7a' for pitch 1 and the overall grade came up as 7a. Adding a second 7a pitch brought the overall grade up to soft 7b. A third 7a pitch - overall grade up a bit more. I stopped at ten consecutive 7a pitches - which apparently rated an overall route grade of 7c/+. So it's not a concept unique to our adjectival/E grades.

You virtually can for most of Snowdonia (or whatever its name in Welsh is), Google maps 3D, marvellous.

If only all climbing areas had proper 3D.

IIRC Darth Grader does not grade multipitch lines, instead you split a pitch into multple section, and perhaps give the cruxes as boulders. So 7a intro into 7A boulder to 6c top portion would perhaps result in 7c/+ pitch.

Recent innovations in grade science (UKC et al. 2023) mean that darth grader now has a multi pitch calculator https://darth-grader.net/Multipitch

No. It does multipitch; you have to select 'Multi-Pitch' from the options at the top. You've described what happens when you select the 'Route' option. With 'Multi-Pitch' selected it offers 'Pitch #1' for you to enter the grade; it logs this and reproduces it at the top as the 'Multi-Pitch Darth Grade'. 'Pitch #2' is then offered for entry; again, it logs the grade and, if appropriate, adjusts the Multi-Pitch Grade upwards. If you've just entered two 7a pitches the M-P Grade will now show '7b soft'. And so on. After doing the usual YDS to French conversion I was able to enter all 32 pitches of The Dawn Wall - 5.14d/F9a - which it awarded the Multi-Pitch Grade of F9b+. Don't tell me that's not a multipitch!

Edit. Of course one huge benefit with this is the realisation that when doing all that holiday multipitch bolt-clipping we were actually climbing harder than we realised. Costa Blanca (6c+)? Nope - 7a+. El navegante (7a)? Hardly; it shows '7a soft' before you even start the 7a pitch. I give you - soft 7b! And unlike grade creep you don't have to wait twenty years for it to kick in!

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The criticism of the UK method is that it doesn't give enough info when in fact it gives more than most and we shouldn't expect it to give every detail. Being able to climb a grade is about accepting a range of possible scenarios and being able to deal with them.

Just had a thought on this. the effectiveness of the E grades really depend on what we want a grade to achieve. using either french or YDS with a X/R suffix does give a reasonable description of what the route is like with certain limitations where as the E grade tells you where a route will fit in the overall ranking of difficulty where as giving a route 5:10d or 5:10a X doesn't tell you which route is the bigger challenge to a typical climber.  If you are an E1 climber you expect to be able to get up an E1 whether it is death on a stich E1 45 fr5a/b or a real fight at E1 5c fr6a+.  

It is the only grade for trad which indicates the correct bragging rights for a route. Let's not deny that this is important for many climbers.

of course it is. we all want to know if a route is harder (harder in every sense not just in an imaginary world where they're both bolted) than another route for a whole host of reasons this included. 

Exactly, and sort of what John Arran was saying about raw data vs interpreted data. It grades the most useful thing - whether it's a sensible objective, and who for.

If you're going kayaking, no doubt one could grade each drop 4m R or somesuch, but saying Grade 4 immediately tells you how sensible an idea it is for you to take on that river.

If that's what you're doing, I'd recommend one of the more verbose guidebooks, which will not only give you heads up about a crag being big and scary, tidal and/or accessible only by abseil, compact and lacking natural protection or steep and loose etc.

Often there will also be little hints about routes, like 'a serious pitch' or 'desperate but safe' or 'unrelentingly steep' in addition to the grade.