Hang Dogging and Downgrading

I agree it's generally bad form to downrate a route you haven't led clean, and I wouldn't do it.
But bad form or not, you often have pretty good idea of how hard a route is when you dog it, sometimes completely so. Imagine a route that is easy or has a good rest up to a short crux, then is easy after that--you fail to do it first try, but you then do the crux from the hang--you really do know how hard the route is in that case. Other cases aren't so clear, but this isn't rocket science. If you can do all the sections of a route, you generally have a pretty good idea of its difficulty.

Good point. In your scenario, a hangdog run through could definitely be valid.

But a more sustained route with consistent 5.11- or 5.11 moves with little to no rests in between, will sometimes be attributed a harder rating, like 11+ or even 12- simply based on it's relentlessness. And that would be harder to fairly assess without linking it ground up.

It's all subjective anyhow. Just trying to help OP alleviate the irritation and resentment by way of ignoring the perpetrators.

pfwein wrote:I agree it's generally bad form to downrate a route you haven't led clean, and I wouldn't do it. But bad form or not, you often have pretty good idea of how hard a route is when you dog it, sometimes completely so.

Totally agree. It goes like this:

one hang, it's a 10c
2-3 hangs, it's a 10d
3-5 hangs, it's 11a
multiple hangs over 2 days, it's 11b
at least three dogging efforts over as many days, 11c for sure
no less than 4 doggin' days, 11d but no way it's a 12a you ego-stroking chufftard
etc

OTOH if I can onsight it, it's 5.7

Gunkiemike wrote: Totally agree. It goes like this: one hang, it's a 10c 2-3 hangs, it's a 10d 3-5 hangs, it's 11a multiple hangs over 2 days, it's 11b at least three dogging efforts over as many days, 11c for sure no less than 4 doggin' days, 11d but no way it's a 12a you ego-stroking chufftard etc OTOH if I can onsight it, it's 5.7

Yeah but you're a Gunkie. Everyone knows that 5.7 at the gunks is like 5.11 anywhere else.

Jon Zucco wrote: Yeah but you're a Gunkie. Everyone knows that 5.7 at the gunks is like 5.11 anywhere else.

But the gear on that Eldo 5.7 is WAY harder to place.

I can only climb 5.7 so if it wasn't for downgrading I wouldn't have anything to climb.

I see a lot of those Gunkie types. It is usually the same story. Just had one this past weekend at Jtree. Claimed to lead 5.8, and follow 5.9 and 10's no worries. Start on Colorado Crack (5.9). Said it was too hard even to follow. Moved over to Continuum (5.8) and quit at the half way point even though I had him top roped. Wanted me to lower him, but made him aid his way up to clean the anchor. Done for the day of course. Learned how to climb at the gunks and all that jazz. Maybe it is the sand getting in their shorts. Is that what they mean by "sandbagging"

People will deceive themselves in whatever way possible to make themselves feel better.

People who hung all over a route will say its rating is soft. Fit people will say their fitness is all about their incredible motivation, fat people will say their fatness is all about genetics. The person who joins some kind of cultlike religious or political faction for emotional reasons will convince himself it's because he's just that much smarter than everyone else.

I'm probably deceiving myself right now by telling myself that wasting time on the Internet doesn't affect or actually increases my productivity at work, whereas it's plainly obvious that if my boss sat right behind me, I'd probably get more done.

etc, etc, etc

It may be annoying, but it shouldn't come as a great surprise that people behave this way.

Christian wrote:I'm probably deceiving myself right now by telling myself that wasting time on the Internet doesn't affect or actually increases my productivity at work, whereas it's plainly obvious that if my boss sat right behind me, I'd probably get more done.

If my boss sat behind me I would probably get fired.

In one of his videos Dave Birkett said that your level of onsight was your level of climbing. Most of us would be humbled to face that truth.

Here's my favorite: When everyone sits around and laments on how tits soft something is, then goes ahead and takes all the points.

Richard M. Wright wrote:In one of his videos Dave Birkett said that your level of onsight was your level of climbing. Most of us would be humbled to face that truth.

I dont know Mr Birkett from a hole in my head but what he said is very true, just dont tell the spurt climbers cause they wont be sold on that

Honestly, I'd like to see whoever writes the code here change it so if you haven't actually successfully climbed the climb, you can grade it if you want, but your grade does not change the consensus.

I've seen the same thing the OP mentions, and it's stupid. I'm not going to try to learn who every single person is on here, to know who the regular downgraders are and try to figure out true grades by subtracting their grades!

The consensus grade is supposed to help me know how the route would feel for me - to make the grade more accurate. There are definitely climbs where the original grade was off, so consensus grades are useful. But if you get wankers who like to stroke their egos and downgrade a route they can't themselves get up, that just de-legitimizes the routes DB here.

GO

If only there were a way to write code that forces the user not to lie...

Richard M. Wright wrote:In one of his videos Dave Birkett said that your level of onsight was your level of climbing. Most of us would be humbled to face that truth.

I was once at Shelf Road climbing next to an older climber in his late 50's maybe 60's. He was from CO, but drove an RV around the US, and took lots of adventure climbing photos and videos. He had obviously been around when hard climbing in the 70's & 80's started to take off. I'm pretty sure he said he sold/gave his footage/pictures of Derek Hersey to Sender Films for the Front Range Freaks video. My point is he was a hell of a lot more of an authority figure on climbing than I'll ever be.

He told me the same thing. It was the first time I even thought about that. He was very adament when he said, "The grade at which you onsight is the grade at which you can climb. None of this hangdogging/projecting bullshit. That's not the grade at which you climb." It wasn't directed at me personally, but it was just and interesting thought he was passing on to me. I still think it's a valid & interesting point, but I'll be damned if my ego could ever handle that.

Jon Zucco wrote:If only there were a way to write code that forces the user not to lie...

That's not what I said, and not what I'm asking for.

GO

people are so obsessed with grades because it gives a benchmark to compare themselves to others. Because people are social everyone generally speaking wants to be "cool" or "unique". Some people indirectly miss other cool aspects of climbing while chasing the grades and talking crap about what other people have accomplished.

I downgrade routes that I think are soft because climbing grades creep up over time. When people correct soft grades, it helps keep them in check. A consensus (including downgrading) is the best way to rate rock climbs.

I have also downgraded routes that I didn't redpoint. You can get a sense for a route's difficulty even without redpointing. I took a fall on the Rainbow Wall but still gave feedback on it's grade on the MP page.

I'll posit that for the majority of climbs, you're not gonna know how hard clipping the chains is going to be on a redpoint if you haven't redpointed it in the first place. Yes, you may feel you can make an educated guess, but you're taking an already completely subjective grading system and making it even less credible. Why would you feel your opinion has any merit, especially to downgrade? And why the compulsion to get your measly opinion in there anyway (as I write on an internet forum...)?

OTOH, I've dealt with cruxes that would belie their sandbagged grades. Again, I wouldn't feel qualified to give a grade for the route, but would feel comfortable saying something like "this crux is way harder than the cruxes of other 12b's on the wall", or "I've onsighted other 11a's there and this one completely shut me down".

Richard M. Wright wrote:In one of his videos Dave Birkett said that your level of onsight was your level of climbing. Most of us would be humbled to face that truth.

I agree with this. Much as I might like to think of myself as a stronger climber, if I were to assign a grade at which I climb (which is admittedly a fools errand in the first place, but just for the sake of argument) I'd only really feel honest giving a grade that I stood a reasonable chance of onsighting, or at least flashing. Does that mean if you consider yourself a 5.12 climber you have to onsight every 5.12? No, of course not, many different styles of climbs and climbers and all that. But saying I climb at a grade that would require extensive projecting would feel to me like telling someone that "I can sink free throws from half court." It's not totally a lie, give me enough tries and I'll hit it eventually, but it would be misleading nonetheless.