UKH

You've probably heard the old 'Yorkshire VS - Peak E1' line again and again.

But what's the benchmark area? North Wales? Scotland? Northumb... No. F*ck that shit. 

And where is easy? The slate? Pembroke?

 Are these areas actually graded meaningfully different or is it just people not adapting their climbingly style / getting used to the way the rock forms.

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To me North Wales is benchmark, this probably has something to do with the numbers of climbers coming from other areas of the country to put up routes there meaning a consensus was reached about grading. Whereas places like Cornwall and Scotland had far less outsiders visiting and therefore ended up their own microcosm. And we all know Pembroke is only soft for wall bred and sport climbers  

Three Pebble Slab, obviously

This might be the first attempt at a TPS meme that doesn't quite work...

Wasn't The Sloth (HVS 5a) graded HS at one time?? Or at least considered to be HS by local climbers

I always thought of North Wales as generally soft compared to the Lakes or the Peak

Mountain crags have always (traditionally) been graded slightly softer than smaller lowland crags. I never noticed any difference between North Wales and Lakes grades.

This is something you could answer with UKC logbook stats. You'd be looking for crags where the user voted grade differs most significantly from the guidebook grade.

You may find that this varies per grade - for example, the Peak may have the largest proportion of "hard" HVSs.

That honour used to be Swanage IMO

All specific to the climber....

At my best I was a comfy E3 lead on grit but always had my are kicked on a HVS on limestone.

Mountain routes....I'd say lakes were the toughest grades....some VS routes in Cumbria are very tough climbs...

Yorkshire. All day long

Gordon, you must be the only person who didn't!

'Lakes soft touch' - a serious contender for the best climbing oxymoron.

Mick

Bowfell Buttress?
Moss Ghyll Grooves?
Hiatus?
Gimmer Crack?

Versus:

Ribstone Crack
Hiawatha
Ferdinand
Rift Wall

Im not sure about the old grade for the sloth, its certainly easier than hvs's at other local crags. 

OK, and thanks for that. I've led a load of HVS routes locally and all over the Peak, but I haven't done The Sloth (HVS 5a)

Haven't done Hiatus (I think) and did Ferdinand with hot aches - so no idea how hard it is/isn't.

Key word - 'traditionally...'

Agony - HVS for donkey's years. Now E2 in the UKC database.

Ted Cheasby - E2 for yonks. Now E3 in aforesaid database.

Post Mortem - E2 for yonks. Now E3 in aforesaid database. (E4 anyone?)

Gormenghast - HVS to E1.

Thirlmere Eliminate - E1 - now E2.

Rigor Mortis - more pokey that your average Welsh E2.

Triermain Eliminate - more pumpy (Whillans!) than your average Welsh E2.

Ghost - harder than your average Welsh E3.

If no-one's suggesting that the upgrades are wrong (Agony up from HVS to E2!!) than it would appear that the original grades were not only much stiffer than Welsh/benchmark grades but the difficulties of these routes were seriously undergraded.

Have led (or led alternate pitches) on all these routes and I'm not arguing about the upgrades.

Mick

You should be fine on it then. Its not hard. There are big hand holds amd plenty for your feet. No need to do any jamming. More of a mental challenge as it feels steep when you are on the pedestal. 

It is steep, certainally for hvs.... good all the same. 

My 2p worth is some places grade according to how much effort you put in, other places grade for what happens if you fluff it. Let's face it, sulky little boys, hvs 6c. Or v7, or whatever grade it now gets. Hvs 6c, that just says the heather is soft at the bottom and the top isn't far away. 

And that it's got a very hard move that I'll be unlikely to be able to do no matter how soft the heather or how near the top.

Well, I was talking about how grades were 'in the old days', pre about the mid 1990s. I thought Agony was very naughty at HVS, I must confess, but certainly not E2. It sounds as if many routes have been upgraded for no good reason. Probably because the present generation are used to very well protected leads and can't cope with less well protected ones so easily. I was also talking mostly about the V diff to E1 range, mostly in the 1970s--80s, and don't recall noticing much difference between the Lakes and N. Wales. It seems a bit weird to me that people seem to have much more trouble grading things than they used to. There really was so much less discussion of grades, much more about how good or not a route was. If you asked someone how hard a route was and they said, e.g. 'middle of the road HVS', you somehow knew where you were. The occasional sandbag though, particularly at Avon Gorge.

And in Yorkshire - Carnage (HVS), Wombat (HVS), Macabre (HVS), Ceiling Crack (VS), Propellor Wall (VS).

And in Scotland - Shibboleth (VS).

And in Northumberland...

And in Ireland...

And elsewhere, e.g. Tony Booth telling me that Hardd was HVS. My seconds didn't agree, as they lobbed into space.

Nowadays, sadly, so many people are obsessed with the grade rather than the character of a route. But if we're going to use grades at all, surely it's better that they're roughly right.

Mick

I don't think that's the correct way of expressing it. Surely it was more that mountain (overall) grades have to take more factors into account than smaller lowland crags (more remoteness, overall seriousness etc), so for a particular overall grade, the technical difficulty is on average be less.

I think it was more of an "in joke" amongst good climbers (not me then), because there's nothing technically harder than you might find on a HS on The Sloth (moves from the pedestal to the cheeseblock). Of course you do need the right headspace to not get fazed by the intimidating nature, and enough strength (or fitness) to be able to hang on long enough whilst getting across the roof.

Imagine if that roof was at low level, say the cheeseblock was 10' even 15' up. Wouldn't get HVS and would likely have got HS back in the 70's to be upgraded to VS in the 00's 😁

Thanks! Looks like a great route

"more of an "in joke" amongst good climbers", that's what I suspected... thanks a lot for your post and for the information

Spot on. It's the VS that thinks it's E2.

Monster holds... but what state's your head in?

Whillans: "Not too bad if you use your loaf."

Mick

Bowfell Buttress was a Diff way back when. First time I did it, solo in the rain, I thought my end had come! In the next guide they had the good grace to say "Difficult (hard) or V Diff in the wet". Talk about grade creep. I'd say in the wet it deserves Severe, perhaps more so nowadays with usage but I haven't done it in the last 40 years. 

Also, I don't find Gimmer Crack all that easy. I think it got Mild VS when Austin's 1967 guide came out but I didn't agree. I'll give you the other two though, as exceptions that prove the rule.

I remember how soft the grades seemed at Almscliffe after the N. Yorks Moors. Yorkshire and, er, Yorkshire. 

Good thread. Although its a frequent topic, there are some interesting perspectives here. As I was (am) mainly a Lakesman, I must say that I found my local grades somewhat easier (though I realise that such a generalisation opens up all sorts of discrepancies). My feeling is that where a physical space is in itself 'familiar' it breeds a sense of confidence, including knowledge of alternatives if things go awry. 'Alien' terrain - for me at least - can casts a seed of doubt...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/rock_talk/graded_list_of_crags-510620

Well I searched, but you can't blame me for not going ten years back.

It's easy if you use your loaf.

Wish I'd read the whole thread before posting an amusing reply....

Doesn't time fly 

Always worth doing though, was just having my say without typing it all out again. My view hasn't changed much. Still haven't done a trad route (or at least not with a rope on) in Northumberland. Have climbed at Swanage once and found it hard (and shit).

Shibboleth?

Sure it was vs in the original Glencoe guide but that was before E grades.

Even then there was a graded list at the back and it was only beaten by Carnivore.

There's still quite a variation on grades across Scotland. I'd say that Aberdonians were more parsimonious than most when came to handing out E numbers.

My entire inspiration for this thread was an HVS in northumberland (Great Wall (HVS 5b)) that spit me off unceremoniously. Into a ledge. My pride and confidence was so injured I didn't climb trad for almost a year.

I also recently visited crookrise; where I suspected some iffy grading as well - at least in comparison to other Yorkshire gritstone crags like Almscliffe and Brimham.

Yep Great wall is certainly a stern test at HVS, i remember trying really hard on this expecting an easy warm up, i was feeling particularly smug before i set off after doing my first E4 at back bowden the week before, normal service resumed, in reality the HVS was a sandbag and the E4 soft for the grade in comparison, swings and roundabouts.

But not before the XS grade.

The unwitting might believe that Shibboleth was (much) easier than Cenotaph Corner, for instance.

Mick

I think tough grades in Northumberland are as much to do with the style of the climbing as undergrading. 

Reiff. And some other NW outcrops.

From memory, XS was never used in an SMC guidebook, when I moved to Scotland (late 70s) the grades stopped at VS (but with a graded list), then HVS was added as the highest grade for a while before moving to today's E1, E2, etc in the 80s. But there were lists giving 'English' grades for Scottish classics in the magazines before the SMC caught up

It's the 'catching up' with which I have a problem - whether the SMC, the YMC, the NMC or whoever. I've never minded routes not being graded. Caveat emptor. However, once you grade something, you create an expectation. When there's a big gap between expectation and reality (particularly on serious routes), the stage may be set for potential tragedy.

I can remember heading up a route in the Mournes where you could have died. Asked someone at the bottom the grade. Can remember the quick smile that flickered across his face as he gave me the sandbag. I had grades in hand - but he didn't know that. I was more than wise to him - but he didn't know that.

That lad went on to become the guidebook writer and, I believe, a professor at the local Uni. Pillar of the establishment. Forgive me for remaining unimpressed.

Mickc

I have fond memories of my first visit to the Cairngorms as a 16 or 17 year old. I'd led a handfull of Welsh & Lakeland VSs but had only been climbing for a few months so had very little experience. After looking at the guidebook I headed over to the Shelterstone with a friend with even less experience than me thinking we'd try the Needle as it sounded good (this was before Hard Rock had been published). We got to the foot of the crag & felt very afraid. We went and climbed a Diff on Stag Rocks instead & even there we struggled with routefinding, not helped by a very short description for a route which was several hundred feet which included a line about about climbing two hundred feet to a belay as our rope wasn't that long.

Happy days although I wonder how I survived when I look back

Happy days indeed! We survived - but so many didn't. I look back and muse, "What could have been done differently?" and the answer is - "Pretty much everything!" 

I'm far more critical of some of my flawed decisions than I am of any guidebook writer of yore. It's great that people like Offwidth will diligently seek out historical sandbags and redress them. Progress!

The good old days were great - but the cost in lives was far too high. I don't want any more lives lost, just folk having fun in the sun - or making mature decisions about challenges. John Redhead's 'authentic desire'. For all the flak he gets, he poured so much wisdom into those two words.

Mick

Wombat (E2 5b) at the Roaches isn't actually much harder than The Sloth (although I think it's given E2 5b nowadays), and that's because 1) the roof is much closer to the ground so it feels less intimidating, and 2) you can totally scope out the handhold sequence across the roof from the ground so that it's dialled in when you get there.

There is however a technical boulder problem start.

One piece of beta, you want to save a medium size friend (can't remember exactly but think it's in the 2-2.5 range) for the vertical crack after the roof when you're just back on vertical - last piece of gear for a while although it's pretty easy going from there (approx real S/HS).