So... What Do Climbing Grades Even Mean? | Climbing Daily Ep.889
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- Опубліковано 9 бер 2017
- www.epictv.com
On today's Friday Gear Show we're taking a look at some of the different climbing grading systems that are used around the world. We're going to be de-coding the numbers, and explaining why different countries use different grades. We're also going to be giving away a prize, so make sure you comment below the episode.
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So... What Do Climbing Grades Even Mean? | Climbing Daily Ep.889
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I use my own grading system It goes like this from easiest to hardest
Yep
Give it a go
Nope
What do you guys think? Comment below...
^^This
patrick baranowski This works...
How does it work? I kind of confuses me.
I would add one more category "I can do everything apart from the start"
So this bouldering problem (named Lil Ninja) has been around for about a year now. It was rated a v6 I'm not that great of a boulder and my best was a v4. My friends and I went out to check this out and has I started looking at it I noticed if you skipped 2 moves and made a long reach instead it would be a lot easier. My friends did the route and they kept saying it was the hardest v6 they climbed. I came up skipped to holds and made it to the top with no problem. Turns out the route setter was there and saw what I did. Lil Ninja is now a v3 bouldering problem.
This is a great story
pretty sick
😂
Lol they were like, "well if this guy can do it"
@@vitamin9165 sad story! true story...
If there is one thing the French do well, it is to create decent units of measure. Kudos.
Ciro Santilli I would argue the Ewbanks system is best but I am biased
Their pretty good at running away
I measure everything by the the French grade... I learnt rock climbing in France after all, so it's what makes the most sense to me (even more so than the UIAA system used in Germany).
Say that to their numbers :')
Route to my school. Graded 1, it is the hardest thing in my life.
That indoor vs. outdoor bouldering comment is sooo true. I just sent my first V8 indoor, went outside and was struggling on V2/V3 lol, couldn't even finish a V4. Super humbling.
yeah a lot of gyms will grade stuff super light to give new climbers a sense of rapid progression to get them hooked, so most commercial gyms are super soft.
Kevin Farnand yeah I agree with you, most climbing gyms do that, but the climbing gyms near where I live ( I live in El Paso Texas) 95% of the time they have the grade right since we have hueco tanks just 20-35 min away
Wow you had a big down step, for me it was going from V5 indoor to V3-V4, but the routers close to me felt pretty good for me.
When I first went outside with climbing/bouldering, I went down quite a few grades because it takes a lot of time just to learn to see the holds. You're so used to these colorful holds on the wall that jut out making the route obvious, but outside it's a whole different thing. Once I figured out how to recognize holds on the rock, my climbing grade outdoors became much closer to my indoor.
I definitely agree. Bouldering is very different outdoors. Non-existent footholds, sharp painful crimp edges, awkward fall zones.
A V4 at one of our local gyms is nothing like a real V4 at the crag. I think I'm about V3 level but I'm yet to send one as I've only just sent some V2s and started trying some V3s and V4s.
But that being said, I'm loving outdoor bouldering so far regardless of how hard it is to me.
so you couldn't find any lighter color marker for that board of yours? XD
Alex Honnold is responsible for videos like this ending up in my recommended.
I realize that it’s hard to grade on the USA bouldering scale because you can’t get technical, but as someone who hasn’t climbed for very long I really like how broad the categories are. They make me try things I normally wouldn’t try if they were graded with a letter or a +/- after
"people that climbed for a couple of months should aim for the sixes"
... is really like that or is my gym incredibly biased with grades? Our 6a are pretty damn hard.
my gym just does:
green - 'i just started'
yellow - 'I've been working at it'
orange - 'i can sign up for the outdoor excursions finally'
red - 'hard'
... they just use the colors; i added the meaning; it works though
At my Gym it is:
Green: Ladder
Red: u have to pull
Blue: u have to pull harder
Grey: u have to pull like your life depends on it
Black: don't even look at it
My contention is that outdoor grades aren’t harder, but different. Because most new climbers start in the gym, where every climb is nothing like climbing outdoors from a technical perspective, then translating your skills outdoors is more difficult. That makes the same grade outside much harder. Usually a grade or two for most people.
A small mistake. There are no minuses in the french sport grading system.
Not anymore it seems. I never really payed attention to it but i realised that they are not found on any of the walls in my local Climbing gym anymore. A 6B- is simply just called a 6a+ now.
@@welkijken 6b- is 6a+... there je only + and no-
Exactly. They used to around here but they figured it's kinda redundent.
The most misrated climb is the one i have to beat every single morning ... my alarm says 5:00 and i have to leave my warm and comfy bed and go to work ... its 5 minutes by foot but it feels like i'm in the hardest 9b+ in the world!!
Do the Adam Ondra screams while you go to work. I hear that helps with 9b+ :)
Indoor Vs Outdoor:
I find indoor climbs that use more volumes as opposed to bolt ons, tend to mirror the outdoor movements more closely. Its great to see more indoor gyms adapting to this model also. It means you can get rock fit not plastic fit.
As someone who's now climbed outdoors a fair bit, I find them spot on.
I m french so i mostly use the french system xD
Fontainebleau boulders are actually harder than they look, its just super slopery holds, impossible to hold for an indoor climber like me (indoor I climb 7a and at fontainebleau 5c)
Sry for my bad english :)
Useful vid anyway 👍
Use darker marker plz
finally, been searching for a video like this for ages
thanks, ive always wondered about the other grading systems. im from southern Texas so its the V scale over here though you do see the Yosemite scale every once in a while.
indoor versus outdoor is hilarious! I make sure I knock 3 number grades off my indoor grade and I'm super happy if I can send anything outside. I feel amazing after sending V1 in Yosemite...
I made a new grading system. The 8 different difficulties are:
Literally walking
Easy
Possible
Interesting
Unreasonable
Masochistic
Impossible
Adam Ondra
Adam Ondra isn't that good I think
Mine is
V0
V1
V2
V3
BEYOND HARD
ULTRA DIFFICULT
V6
ONDRA
V8
Rube Tornabene you must be new to climbing.
@@rubetornabene8543 You haven't been paying attention man.
Im a wrestler, I haven't climbed a day in my life so I probably shouldn't talk, who are the best around?
Just trying out V6s in the bouldering gym indoors at the moment. Have yet to climb outdoors, but when we eventually go out to Fontainebleau, I'm anticipating starting all over again on V1s, 2s, and 3s just because it will be so different.
Will also be lots of fun :D
The gyms in my area, Florida USA, use a combo of Hueco and US. Usually Hueco for bouldering and US for lead climbing.
Wish my the two gyms near me would use grades. It's all colors from blue, white, green, orange, red, black. It's just nice to see how you can progressive when you're using grading.
Either way it's how someone feels. There's no science behind any of it. This one feels hard I'll give it a 6 this one's harder it's a 7 this one's harder but not as much harder only like .546 rocks harder so 6.546
That bloody 6b at my gym. I SWEAR THAT THING IS A 8c+!!!!!!
At my local crag there's a route called "dynamo" VIII-(6c+) back from the early eightys, back when dynamic climbing wasn't a thing. The route revolves around basically one move that is a bit further between two good jugs. Something a lot of people do when they visit the bouldering for the first or second time.
The V system on boulders seems crazy to me. I can do V5s in one gym and struggle with V2s in another. It is very easy to get in your own head with climbing. I am trying to get better about looking at a route or boulder and saying, that looks fun, I'm gonna try it and ignoring the grade.
manasculpting most commercial gyms are softer than tissue. You probably climb like hard 3
The americans want to climb a lot of grades early. The french system is much more divided in the early grades.
Silence was climbed after Matt made this; Ondra gave it 9c (or 5.15d) making it the current hardest sport route in the world. Next will be a 9c+ then a 10a! (But I can already climb 10a, so yeah...)
At my gym in Atlanta (USA) uses the V point and YSD. We use grade ranges for bouldering(V0-1, V2-3, V4-5, V6-7 etc), but myself and other coaches often use the V point system to identify the difficulty of a crux on a sport climb, or how sustained it is. For example, we might say an easy 5.12 felt like mostly V2 climbing, with a V4-5 crux.
once my friends and i were out climbing at this climbing gym in San Antonio and towards the end of our session, we decided to try this V4 that included a strong push that was borderline a dyno off to the side. our problem with this is that we were still fairly new but this route was so difficult that the guy working agreed it should have been set as a V6, well out of our climbing skill.
Thanks! This was extremely helpful😊
Hey,
thanks fpr this explanation! Very good!
Now to you question of bouldering outdoor is more diffucult then indoor.
For me, it is exactly different. I come from Sportclimbing outdoor and indoor and a bit indoor bouldering (max FB 6c, 6c+ (many tries)).
After 5 years of sportclimbing I was last year the first time bouldering outdoor and could send a 7a in the 2nd try and a 6c+ Flash, some 6cs also.
So for me Sportclimbing and bouldering outdoor is easier, cause I do it a lot, I think.
Indoor, I am weaker, then outdoor.
A common grading addition in the US:
G - Good protection
PG - Pretty good protection
R - Run out
X - all but free solo.
Modern Times in the Gunks. Rated 5.8+ some folks call it 5.10b/c
Jaws V0 at Rogers Park in Belton, Texas. 15' Dihedral, sit starts with a Limestone finger crack up to two finger pockets and finishes with a huge dyno and a scary top out! Not to mention a notoriously bad landing with a tree root sticking a foot out of the ground. Most people who are visiting Rogers Park climb this problem first due to the grade being so low. But sure enough after a few burner goes someone ends up with a tweaked ankle or two. If not a broken ankle or shin. Multiple pads are a must.
Climbed the birthing canal in Niagara Glen, Ontario. Supposedly a V3, but it felt like a V0 / VB
I've been working on a orobkem at my local gym that begins with a pretty big dyno, then goes across the ceiling. The holds are pretty simple but overall it seems pretty tough, and yet it is rated v3. All the other v3s in the gym seem a lot easier!
I must say, the boulders in Joshua Tree all feel very sandbagged. I can do about V4/V5 indoors and V2/V3 outdoors and the very best that I could do at JT, even with a lot of effort, was a V0. It's a different style of climbing (a lot more friction), so one grade difference is fine, but 2-3 grades seems ridiculous to me.
i usually climb indoors in stockholm, sweden and i pretty much only use the french and the fountain bleu (?) system on a regular bases.
As for misgraded route, I'd have to say that Left Martini (V10) in Hueco is it for me. When compared to something like Theater of the Absurd (also V10), the moves and holds are much easier. I think Left Martini gets grade points for the incredibly difficult beta to figure out (which shouldn't really be part of the grade) rather than the actual individual moves.
The gym i go to (uruguay) uses the V scale.. currently at V2-3 as i've been bouldering only for about 2 months
I feel like in certain area's (outdoors) of France the grades can be more or less mitigated by the exposure. My biggest, yet very modest, success so far is in Gorges du Tarn. It is called "Couilles au cul". It is rated 7a. It did not feel that difficult, however the exposure is somewhat high. Falling while clipping the relay could bring you just a couple of meters from the ground and the route itself is 30-35 meters ... Beautiful line though :)
That name is worth a high grade by itself!
In Saxony, Germany, we use a grading system of ine through twelve using roman numerals. From seven onwards we also have a, b, c. Many routes also feature unofficial markings such as a ring that indicates above-average safety or one to three stars that indicate the experience one will have climbing. A 7b with a ring and two stars might be perceived to be as easy as a 6 in some cases.
Corkscrew, 5.8 at Delaware Water Gap, NJ. Old school grade, route is definitely at LEAST 10a-10b. Really bad gear on the second pitch, with micro nuts and a really scary friction traverse.
i usually boulder a V7 indoor and boulder V4-5 outdoor. usually u drop 2 to 3 grades.
T-D Gap on the Cuillins - this is a scramble / climb cross. Recently given VS but it's often climbed in scrambling shoes.
Some Scrambling info would also be good here.
very true. im a v4-v5 indoor climber, but outside i get killed on v3s.. also might be my gym being light on the grading..
It was very interesting to hear about the Grades system! In Japan we are using unique grade system for bouldering, called "Dan/Kyu" which I think is super problematic. Cz, 1Dan covers two grades in French system. In addison, I felt much harder in Japan compare with Spanish boulder, although those boulders should be around the same grades. I would like to hear other opinions about the Japanese grade system!
I reckon the one that stands out right away would be La Marie Rose in Fontainbleau. Stated as a 6A but that was back when the feet weren't glas. I would even consider putting it up as 6C but 6B+ would be more accurate.
Good Onion, Damai Wall, 68100 Batu Caves, Selangor, Malaysia.
Sport climb, 78m, 3 slings, rated 6b (French rating system)
First clip is onto a sling (first of three) with sharpish rocks at the bottom. Lots of shape to the rock on the lower half giving you lots of options with large jugs and underclings. The upper half smoothens out a bit but stays easy as you transition to the lighter grey rock above..
All in all, it was quite a relaxing cruise to the top, and it is a little bit overrated. I would rate it a 5c+or a 6a.
They set new boulder problems at Klättercentret Telefonplan today and I have been climbing (french system) 6b+ to 6c and today I struggled on a 5+, and on the same wall I flashed a 6b. :) I didnt mind as the 5+ was a really nice problem.
Boulder - creeping tiger - Kochel - Bavaria - Germany - 7b+ - very low moves for about 5/6 of the boulder - hard to keep your legs up
there's this problem called the claw at a little place in new york state called ice pond, i believe it's a V9, but that thing is so sketchy in so many ways. it's not high, but you basically NEED to cut your ankles open on the starting moves shoved deep into a roof crack, and i think it's off by probably a good 2 grades AT LEAST
Great Video very interesting!
Just learned about the French grading, seems like a better system rating the entire climb. When gym climbing I have given up looking at ratings. They are incredibly inconsistent and subjective at best. Just happy we have some great local climbing opportunities with creative route setters!
I am a consistent V7-8 climber and there is a V1+ in Leavenworth Washington called Funhouse Stairway that took me 10 sessions....
At our local gym bouldering grades are WAAAY easier in gym. Outdoor they're much harder. But you've also got to remember that holds are often broken off outside AND you're much more concerned for your leg bones out at the crag!
In the McDowell mountains in Arizona Peaches and cream last time I checked was a 5.7, even though the first part of the climb is a terrible lie back while the entire crack system is insanely greasy.
There is a rout at Horse Pens 40 called "Sand Box" it is rated as a V2, but as someone who can project most V6 I have yet to top it...
Grades just differ very widely. There is a company running multiple gyms in my vicinity. In one of them I'm very close to several 6c+s while in the other 6b (+) is usually quite the fight or something to project. Funnily the two alleged 7as I did so far felt way easier than that. Some is personal style, but I think reaching the 7s is quite an accomplishment and not something everyone can do. At least in my experience it is.
I think like you said the outdoor bouldering compared to indoor bouldering grading has a large disconnect. my experiences are only in America but i find that either the peers who grade indoor are trying to boost your moral while outdoor take it more seriously or that there just needs to be a better way to differentiate in the USA. love your channel keep up the great work and climb on :)
I really enjoy this show
In my climbing gym they use the UIAA scale, and my bouldering gym has made up their own scale which kind of correlates to the french scale but is its own thing...
Mono E Mono in Joe's Valley (V5). I'm not a V5 climber and I did it on my 2nd try while I was slightly tipsy from drinking too much Fireball whiskey. V3 at most.
Man really went like "okay let's pick the LEAST contrasty colour to write on a whiteboard"
Most bouldering gyms in my city (Berlin) use colors to mark grades. Usually have 6 colors which carry a range of difficulties. The 5th and 6th color usually being pretty hard (6th only for a very select group, so they are sparse). Some also have a "Joker" color where the boulder grade can literally be anything (which invites more people to try out something they wouldn't necessarily try if they had normal gradings). There is one gym that sets with font grades, but they've recently really started sandbagging them eg: 3 months ago I would flash all 6a's as a warm up and now I'm having difficulties even flashing/sending some 5C's.
I have to say, I like the color system more, at least indoors. It makes me try out stuff I wouldn't have tried if it really had a grade.
As for the comp, can't say since I've only climbed indoors. Hoping that will change this spring/summer
Burden of Dreams V5 soft
Callum Jones ikr
Definitely a disconnect from indoor and outdoor bouldering. My buddy and I were doing v6 in the gym our first year and decided to head out to the big bend in Moab. We got wrecked and it was really dissapointing haha. I'll stick to sport.
Buttlips Chimney, Index, Washington - 5.8 sandbagged flarring chimney on polished fine grained granite
Indoor routes of identical grades are definitely easier if only because the callouses you build up indoors aren't sufficient for what you'll need outdoors with sharp rock. I think the moves themselves are roughly similar in difficulty, however.
La dura dura has been filmed up-side-down and is just a V1-V2 ladder
I'am a french young climber (16) the french climbing team and y do a 8a+ I was so happy !
Qui sera le prochain grand pâtissier?
The hardest 6A ever, being also the very first 6A ever ^^ La Marie Rose in Fontainebleau !
My first 6A outside beautiful boulder
My vote for most under-graded route goes to Flying Buttress HVD 4a at Stanage. I could have chosen from many UK HVS routes, but I chose this HVD because it's many people's first introduction to outdoor climbing. Maybe it used to be HVD 4a, but with all the traffic it gets, even gritstone gets polished eventually, and the crux is now too slippery and scary for first-timers.
Circus trick at Big Bend in Moab, hardest v4 NA.
in my gym they dont put up grades so we just have the the color leves from 1-5, and now someone has setted a level one boulder which requires absolutely too much energy and brain work :D it feels like level 3 so quite challenging
What do you use for Australian bouldering?
Please explain the colours and grades in UK indoor bouldering.
Yeah try using a darker maybe even black marker on the white board...
@epictv climbing daily American trad climbs also occasionally use G, PG, and PG-13 as well as R and X routes (G is the easiest, and this is also the system we use to rate movies). Also, go climb at Governor's Stable in Pennsylvania. Huge sandbagged boulders. I've hit V6 regularly in other areas but never got more than V2 there. Also, it's diabase rock. Super rare, feels like grip tape, destroys skin. Do an episode there!
there is a problem at nine corner lake in the Adirondacks (northern New York state) that is a V3. I have done V8 there and that problem punts me every time
Since I live in the northern part of germany I don't get to climb outdoors as much as I like so I'm mostly stuck at climbing on plastic - which is also fun and challanging in its own way I suppose.
Since I'm not that much into bouldering, the sport-grades are more important to me. My gym uses the french system as well as the german system (that someone mentioned down below) - Bouldering is graded by a set of 7 colors which gives the setters more room in terms of difficulty.
On another note - several months back our setters have started to not fill in the grades of new climbs for a week or so, which I believe is great because it invites everyone to try it. You look at a route and think "damn some moves look really nice - gonna try that" instead of looking at the line, checking the grade and think "that's almost an entire grade above what I can climb on good days and leave it at that.
I'm not going to mention any overrated/unterrated routes because I simply have not yet done enough routes to have a solid understanding. I'm just going to say that almost everything becomes easier if you do it the "intended" way.
You have got the BEST inserts
Marie Rose in Font. A quality classic but super polished for it's grade!
Oh man... just saw after I put my comment, that you think the Same way... didnt want to copy.
I understand that a high E-rating can reflect a safe but strenuous climb...just to confuse things that much more! Also, Yosemite grades now reflect the pitch as a whole for the most part, i.e. like the French system. The "hardest move" rating was for slabbier face climbs which most people don't do anymore.
The pink one in the corner
grapefruit juice (supposedly hs) at symonds yat has an unprotected super steep start. Particularly funky if you don't have boulder pads!
there was a 5.10c at a gym in MN I can climb 5.11bs and I got about half way up and just could not get any farther because of a weird dead point onto a small pinch
Le sphynix Plouasne (Bretagne, France) Its graded 6a+ but is a mental game all the way a up a slap with the tiniest crimps and you have to go over a lip on to some pretty horrible sloppers. All of this in about 8m, with 3 quick draws above a 50cm shelf for the belayer. Personnaly id say its a 6c ... But the grades are allway subjective. love xxx
I think it has to be james pearsons the walk of life, when it was put up in 2008 they graded it at E12 but I think has since been dropped to about E9
Haig Boulter I am not sure it is necessary to mention this, as even mr. Pearson himself has agreed for a long time now that he had graded these routes to high...
Pearson was talking bollocks. Walk of life was never E12.
I definitely agree with the difference between indoors and outdoors bouldering when you go outdoors you drop about a grade n a half like climbing 6a-c indoor you will climb 4b-5b outdoors, but then crack climbing is totally graded on the person because that comes down to how big your arms actually are.
Exactly right for me! I can send V4 fairly regularly and max out at V6 but outdoors V1 can be a challenge, and I max out around V3.
The different grading measures are so annoying! Leave it to America to come up with a different measuring system 😏
There is a V4 at the gym that i go to. It was set as a V1 (i still think that it is), but they changed it. They either just put the wrong note card on it, or just mixed it up with another problem.
Thanks that whiteboard was super helpful. You might as well just use a white marker next time.
i think that rockspor located in queensbury N.Y has the most sandbags roots all around. I am from a gym where I can constantly climb 5.10 and when I go there I can only get a 5.8 and its not just the gym I go to I have traveled my around going to gyms all over and I can get 5.10 but when I head to rock sport I can't touch some of the things they set there
I use the Yosemite decimal system, and much like the imperial system, it's the only system I use because it's basically the only one I've encountered.
Norway used the decimal system for a long time, with 6 defined as the hardest possible.
We had a bunch of "6+" climbs that had been put up around 1970 by the likes of Ulf Geir Hansen which everyone knew were "very hard indeed". 10-15 years later they all got regraded to 7 or even 7+.
Grades vary hugely depending on venue and culture. Also remember that nearly all grades were placed by your average male climber. This means that morphology often becomes a big issue for shorter males or females. In general, for climbers who are not your average male climbers height, grades begin to make less sense. For sure very adept shorter climbers may prevail but this is not a qualification of the grade but more an exception.
Bouldering Grades started prior to Sherman and and there were just 3 grades at that point.
The most sandbagged boulder problem I have ever tried is a problem in Font graded 5 at Bois Rond which more realistically would be around Font 7a+.
I hear what your saying regarding Strawberries at Curbar. I found this harder than Trackside 7a and Early Doors 7a. It certainly warrants 6b+ and not the 5+ it got when I did it many moons ago.
Just go to sectors that a lot of people go, such us Margalef (Spain). There you can find 6a which the start is so polished that can be even dangerous for someone that is supposed to climb that level, I would upgraded even 2 o 3 levels.
I think the WhiteRastafarian climb at Joshua Tree National Park is well under graded at v1+ considering some of the moves and the possibility of breaking your back on the rocks below :(
Yosemite system would be nice if the added something like british for amount of protection. I have to admit thats a nice addition in british system.
In my gym 6a 6a+ is very easy but the difference between 6a 6a+ and 6b 6b+ is huge all routes are 1/3 of a finger pad and when i look at 7a 7b they are the same just the distance between them is increased. I can not even start the climb on anything higher than 6a+. Recently they removed grades from the boldering area and i love it as all the grades gets in to your head.