"S" gear rating?

Not trying to sound like a complete gumby here, but being an east coast climber, I've never heard an "s" rating given to refer to the quality of gear on a route. I've only ever been exposed to the universal G, PG, PG-13, etc., however when browsing routes near Boulder, I found the former.

The only thing I can think of is "s" for "severe". Somebody let me know so I can hang my head in gumby shame.

The old Adk guidebook used "s" for "satisfactory", as in adequate pro. "d" was for "difficult" or maybe dangerous, and I can't recall the other term.
Old guidebooks for the Gunks used similar quixotic systems. All of these have become obsolete, in favor of the "movie" style ratings. And those are still questionable. Many PG rated climbs will hurt or kill you if you fall in the wrong place, for example.

I just found that too. The difference is, it seems "s" is being used to describe lines with runout or sketchy pro

Ex. "The guidebook gave the climb an S rating, but I don't believe this to be at all true. The gear was all there, I never felt unsafe"

The Bjornstad Desert Rock guides use an S to indicate serious climbs. Usually alongside an R or X rating. I'm still unsure exactly what the S means, however.

Dobson wrote:The Bjornstad Desert Rock guides use an S to indicate serious climbs. Usually alongside an R or X rating. I'm still unsure exactly what the S means, however.

Dobson pretty much nailed it. S=Severe

My understanding is s (serious) and vs (very serious) comes from Rossiter.

PG,R,X comes from Erickson.

Both are Boulder area climbers and guidebook authors. Rossiter describes the systems in the preface to his books.

Jay Harrison wrote:The old Adk guidebook used "s" for "satisfactory", as in adequate pro. "d" was for "difficult" or maybe dangerous, and I can't recall the other term. Old guidebooks for the Gunks used similar quixotic systems. All of these have become obsolete, in favor of the "movie" style ratings. And those are still questionable. Many PG rated climbs will hurt or kill you if you fall in the wrong place, for example.

I'm going to throw some more confusion out.. I too remember Don Mellor's red covered ADK guidebook using the letter "s" as a protection rating. "S" meant satisfactory

From Ron Brunckhorst's Big Sky Ice book, "In rock climbing and other ice guides an R is used and reserved for climbs that are typically always run out and/or require a great skill to place reliable gear. For further details on some known routes an S represents a forced run out of 15-30 feet above gear that took considerable knowledge to place. A VS is for very serious and a very long run out on questionable protection that will be required to complete the pitch. An X means no gear at all and falling would most likely end in death!"

I don't know if I'm right but I look at it like this.

If a route has bad or small gear but you'd be exceedingly unlikely to fall during the runout section, it probably doesn't deserve an R but they try to mention it somewhere. Thus the S rating.

I don't actually know if that's the definition. In Eldo, where I see it most often, this is usually the case. The cruxes protect fine and the gear will prevent injurious falls but you've got to be heads up on easier parts of the climb.

To me S doesn't make the climb any scarier it just prevents cam jugging. This could change regionally I'm sure.

Did you try and lookup what the 's' means, in the front of the guide book you read it in. Seems like a logical thing to do.

S = serious = R
VS = very serious = X

Jeff G. wrote:S = serious = R VS = very serious = X

I used to think that too. I don't think you can draw that conclusion.

S is often heads up G or PG climbing. Or it is G climbing with the right gear (rp's and shit) and the endurance to place it properly.

R isn't that. R pretty much means no pro or bad pro for significant sections of the climb.

I also think R is seriously overused. There used to be a PG-13 that pretty accurately described what people call R these days, I rarely hear that term anymore.

In Mellor's guidebooks, he uses these:

e: protection is excellent
s: protection is satisfactory
d: protection is poor or difficult to place
x: no protection; a solo

I'm not exactly sure where this nomenclature originated. Perhaps it's a legacy northeast thing like the NEI ice ratings, but it isn't very widespread. It has been replaced with the more modern "movie" ratings G/PG/R/X.

One could make a rough one-to-one replacement (e.g., e==G, s==PG, and so on), but that may not be entirely correct. I'm not sure if "difficult to place" is built into the movie ratings. I suppose it depends on the guidebook author.

Bill Kirby wrote: I'm going to throw some more confusion out.. I too remember Don Mellor's red covered ADK guidebook using the letter "s" as a protection rating. "S" meant satisfactory

Yup, page 45 in the maroon book.

S was "satisfactory", but it was morelike "only satisfactory". S did NOT equate to the modern G rating. S = PG. Mellor (and others??) used E for "excellent", the equivalent of today's G.

And R was D, and X was X.

Jeff G. wrote:S = serious = R VS = very serious = X

Jeff is correct for the Boulder area guidebooks. If you have any doubts, look in the front of the guidebook for the author's description!

Guy H. wrote: Jeff is correct for the Boulder area guidebooks. If you have any doubts, look in the front of the guidebook for the author's description!

If that is the case, and I think you are probably right, then the standard of R or S in the Boulder area has slipped to the point of being meaningless.

See the post from Ron Olsen in this thread:
mountainproject.com/v/prote…

Then there are these:
books.google.com/books?id=j…

coloradomountaineering.com/…
(Scroll down to the protection ratings section)

books.google.com/books?id=9…

My buddies and I always used "s" to mean SNAKE ON ROUTE!

We've had some fun with this...

A 5.8 PG "S""CH" would mean a very nice 5.8 well protected, but a copperhead lives somewhere up there. Kindof takes the fun out of the climb.

Yep, Mellor used the S rating. And Gunkie Mike covered it well.

S = serious

except where S = sport, which you can hopefully tell by context.

And if you started climbing in Tuolumne in the mid '90s, you got confused with guidebooks to other places, since PG = great pro:

Protection ratings from mid-90s Tuolumne guide.
But of course "excellent protection" in Tuolumne often equaled "seriously runout" in other places, so PG ended up working out fine to describe PG in other places!

Even more confusing for some people was the old Swain Red Rocks guide when the newer bouldering ratings (V-system) became popular. Swain used V1 and V2 to describe variations, so people would freak out when they thought that the 5.6 they wanted to do had either a V1 or V2 boulder problem crux pitch!

S = scary; then you can use it to rate climbs AND haunted houses during Halloween