UKH

I'm trying to find some new winter boots and I am being forced to look online as my local shops have a poor selection. I very much understand the B0-B3 rating for stiffness/crampon compatability but I've been finding a lot of companies/websites categorising their boots on a scale from A-D. There is of course explanations of this scale online but these still leave a fair amount of ambiguity. Is anyone able to give a good comparison between these two scales?

For me I'm interested in the B1 equivalent of the A-D scale as thats what I'm after. Flexible enough for comfortable all day winter walking but stiff enough for a C1 crampon and up to about a grade 1 route. I have B2 boots & C2 crampons if I want to do anything more technical but usually leave them at home as they're not required and pretty uncomfortable. 

https://www.meindl.co.uk/which-meindl-boot-should-i-choose/

Thanks. I did have a look at this guide already but uses terms like "some crampon compatability" which I find is not so helpful.

I seem to remember the Burma/Borneo boot was a C1 flexi crampon boot. Some of the higher end boots give a clue as to what crampons they will take from the notches in the heel and toe. The Himalaya seems to be a B2 from what I can see. I do like the fact that Meindl are using a lot of leather as they do seem to last longer for hill walking, I only stopped buying them after they changed the last a few years ago.

Category C boots have a heel welt but no toe welt, D boots have both. Anything under C doesn't have any. So B1 should correspond with the stiffer end of the weltless boots, meaning B-C.

There is definitely some variance in flexibility within these categories and there are some in-between ones, like C-D or B-C, which can make it a bit confusing but the described above will generally hold true. 

Thank you very much, this does help

Part of the problem is that no one outside of the UK uses the B rating system, which was a system devised by Ellis Brigham's quite a long time ago to distinguish between different types of boots. The system is clunky, and with the recent developments of mountain footwear, particularly in the 'B2' category, the system is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Some boots that are rated as a B2 by UK retailers, such as the La Sportiva Aequilibrium, are fairly soft and much lighter than some would come to expect in the B2 winter category. 

What I would recommend is perhaps travelling to a store with a good selection of boots, somewhere like Outside in the Peak, V12 in North Wales or various shops in the Lakes.