How about just grading accurately...?

I hear it all the time, "Yosemite is graded hard because it is a hardman place,“ “gym grades are soft on purpose,”“ I always grade one letter grade below my true opinion."

This got me thinking. I believe rock climbing is the only activity with some sort of difficulty scale in which participants intentionally voice false opinions on the grades. When is the last time you heard a race official say "this track is actually 9.1k, but fuck it, the runners here are girlscouts so we are going to call this a 10k?" Likewise, I dont see the Olympics running fast clocks on the 200m freestyle because Michael Phelps needs more of a challenge, and because the Olympics is for hardmen only.

20 kN wrote:I hear it all the time, "Yosemite is graded hard because it is a hardman place,“ “gym grades are soft on purpose,”“ I always grade one letter grade below my true opinion." This got me thinking. I believe rock climbing is the only activity with some sort of difficulty scale in which participants intentionally voice false opinions on the grades. When is the last time you heard a race official say "this track is actually 9.1k, but fuck it, the runners here are girlscouts so we are going to call this a 10k?" Likewise, I dont see the Olympics running fast clocks on the 200m freestyle because Michael Phelps needs more of a challenge, and because the Olympics is for hardmen only.

It's easy to measure distance. What's the benchmark for climbing grades? There's no subjectivity in races.

Ryan Nevius wrote: There's no subjectivity in races.

There is no subjectivity in a climber's opinion relative to his own perspective either. If a climber thinks a route is 5.12a, then the climber thinks the route is 5.12a, end of story. This thread is about those climbers who send a line and think "this feels about .12a" and then they get down and tell everyone the line is .11c, or .12c because "it's in a gym," or "I always grade harder than I think the route is." It begs the question, what is the point in a rating system if people are intentionally skewing it by failing to give their true opinion?

I agree completely.

While it is hard to actually grade climbs, if you believe a route is a 12a, you say it. You don't call it an 11a just cuz.

This DOES happen, and it drives me nuts.

I remember I climbed a top-rope-only problem once outside, and it was rated 5.5. There is no universe in which it was anything other than a 5.9+ or 10a. And yet some dipstick decided to call it a 5.5, presumably because it was short and un-leadable? Lame. Whoever rated this didn't think it was a 5.5: their rating was a lie. It wasn't even that old of a climb, so there was no confusion about which generation of YDS it came from.

The trouble is, we all honor these dipsticks. Once Joe Dipstick calls said problem a 5.5, all too often we all follow along, and call it a "hard 5.5," when in reality we all know that's BS.

I also think people forget, or worse just don't care, that ratings have consequences. Whlie I am always responsible for my own safety, if you tell me that 5.11 is only a 5.9, I'm far more likely to end up in over over my head. I'm not saying that's the fault of the guy who lied about the rating, but it sure as hell makes him an ass.

On the other hand, if I tell you that 5.9 is a 5.11, and you were looking for a 5.11 because that's where you challenge is, I just wasted your highly limited climbing time.

C'mon, everyone knows that if the book says V5 and it feels like V3, it is V3; if the book says V3 and it feels like V5, it is maybe V3+.

Keep calm and sandbag on.

well it seems this happens most in well established areas, correct? take Yosemite for example. 90% of the routes that are up in Yosemite right now were put up when 5.10 was the hardest rating we gave a climb, and at that point there were no letter grades at all. A lot of the "sandbagged" climbs are that way, because, in comparison to the ratings at the time, it WAS accurate. but in the age of 5.15c-/+
it def, becomes a little harder to make a universal measurement of a route when there's soooo many options. I mean think about it, the difference between 9+ and 10d is pretty significant now, but back then it was 9 or 10, and it was a fucking 9 or it was a fucking 10. same applies to bouldering obviously. before I went to Yosemite i was bouldering confidently in the v5-v6 range, upon arrival in Yosemite i was crushed by the ratings. i did one v4 the entire time i was there. but this back when v9 and shit was unheard of.

I think these flaws in ratings, not all the time but most, can be hacked up to a simpler generation of climbers that didn't treat ratings as milestones for their climbing ability but a way of letting you know what you were up against on this wall. the fact that they had a more basic rating system at the time the problem was established is more often the reason to for a sandbagged rating. of course you do occasionally have the asshole 13d climber set a 10a thats really 11c and feels that's appropriate.

The problem is primarily ego. No one wants to upgrade routes/problems, because that would be admitting they thought it was harder than the FA presumably did. On the flip side, lots of people want to downgrade whenever possible so they can make themselves look better.

Of course the other problem is that the scale is kind of meaningless. Take the boulder problem example. If I get on a V3, but it feels V5, am I going to declare that the grade is wrong? What is the objective difference between the two? It could just be that I'm doing it wrong and with the right beta it would feel V3. Or maybe it's one of those scrunchy weird problems that's harder for me because of my height.

On the flip side of that one, there are plenty of boulder problems that are way easier for me because I'm 6'3". One that comes to mind is a V3 where I can dyno from a good hold to the finishing jug, but just barely. If I was any shorter or had any less vert, I'd have to use this awful intermediate and do a few more tenuous moves that are IMO, *at least* V3. So how do I rate that one? V0 if you can stick the dyno, V4 for the static?

Personally, I just look at ratings as falling within a range rather than a precise measurement. There's a *range* of grades in my V-warmup / V-flash zone, another *range* in the V-probably-gonna-take-a-few-goes zone, some more in the V-project zone, and of course most things land in the V-not-gonna-happen zone. Sometimes those "warm ups " will take a few goes and sometimes those " projects" will go down faster than I thought but I'm not going to go busting balls about a single v-grade discrepancy.

Just my 2c.

It seems to me that as more and more grades become valid, it kind of squishes the lower grades just a little, so over time grades naturally sandbag. I don't believe that 5.9 today is as hard as 5.9 was 50 years ago. An old 5.9 might be a solid mid to hard 5.10 by today's standard.

//My conjecture

the idea of "Grading accurately" is about as wishful as us all speaking english exactly the same with no accents. Things vary too much from place to place.

20 kN wrote:I hear it all the time, "Yosemite is graded hard because it is a hardman place,“ “gym grades are soft on purpose,”

As a point of clarification the rating system we use in the US is called the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), so by definition grades in Yosemite are correct and any variation at other areas is an error.

And grades are totally subjective. In theory they are comparing difficulty to climbs in Yosemite of a given grade with long established consensus as to their difficulty. In reality many climbers don't travel that much so grading is done in relation to local climbs and any error in the initial grading of those climbs is propagated out to the new climbs.

George Marsden wrote: As a point of clarification the rating system we use in the US is called the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), so by definition grades in Yosemite are correct and any variation at other areas is an error. And grades are totally subjective. In theory they are comparing difficulty to climbs in Yosemite of a given grade with long established consensus as to their difficulty. In reality many climbers don't travel that much so grading is done in relation to local climbs and any error in the initial grading of those climbs is propagated out to the new climbs.

But didn't they come up with the system in Tahquitz? So technically that should be the basis? ;-)

If someone was thinking, take 200 random routes outside of Yos on this database that have at least 30 unique grades posted by users, mean that, and then just do t-tests and see where the FA grades are at. Then do the something similar to Yos, and compare that.

How can you rate routes accurately when the current perception is constantly changing?

Constantly adapt the ratings seems most reasonable.

Tough when modern gym-training climbers can easily dispatch overhung face routes that used to be super hard, and are completely dumbfounded by pure friction 5.9 slab.

As a start, you could do away with 5.0-5.6 ratings, and lump them all as 5.6 (at least out west, I understand that they actually mean something out east). And Sierra 4th class peaks need to be rerated from 4th class to 5.7/8 depending on peak.

Then you could bump every slab route and offwidth up by a full number.

And you could bump squeeze chimneys by a couple letters at least.

And you could downrate any route that's really popular since climbers don't have to deal with loose rock.

Or maybe you could get stop using the YDS for sport routes and use the French (or better Aussie) rating systems.

Or you could start rating routes more "accurately" in guidebooks and get lines of enraged folks attacking you for daring to change the dumb little number. Really big lines when you bump the number up, very small lines when you lower it. It's shocking how much ego can be attached to a little number - particularly when the numbers in question tend to be MANY numbers below 5.15b/c.

You could rerate all the Joshua Tree classics to include the start of the route.

Or you could just leave it a big fat mess and call it a day.

P.S. By the way - "grading" accurately would be the grade of the route, which is a measure of the typical time to do a route - e.g. a 1 or 2 pitch route is Grade I (a couple hours), an all day multipitch Grade IV, and a big wall might be Grade VI (multiple days).

Which is even more meaningless than rating controversies…considering that some people can do the Nose in 2+ hours….

Greg Barnes wrote: P.S. By the way - "grading" accurately would be the grade of the route, which is a measure of the typical time to do a route - e.g. a 1 or 2 pitch route is Grade I (a couple hours), an all day multipitch Grade IV, and a big wall might be Grade VI (multiple days). Which is even more meaningless than rating controversies…considering that some people can do the Nose in 2+ hours….

That would be the commitment grade. I am referring to the difficulty grade, which is also a grade. People like to use the word "rating," but technically that word is less correct IMO. Consider the terms:

grade
grād/
noun
noun: grade; plural noun: grades

1.
a particular level of rank, quality, proficiency, intensity, or value.
"sea salt is usually available in coarse or fine grades"

rat·ing1
ˈrātiNG/
noun
noun: rating; plural noun: ratings

a classification or ranking of someone or something based on a comparative assessment of their quality, standard, or performance

As I read it, in order for something to be a rating, it has to be compared and stacked against other ratings such as in a competition. Grades can stand alone.

Interestingly enough, even in bouldering, where we have benchmark problems for a given grade at Hueco, the grades are all over the place.

20 kN wrote:I hear it all the time, "Yosemite is graded hard because it is a hardman place,“ “gym grades are soft on purpose,”“ I always grade one letter grade below my true opinion."

Actually, it's more like "Geez, it felt hard, but if I admit that this route felt a full number grade harder I'd look like a softie". Or "That felt in line, but I would rather act like a hardman and downgrade it a letter grade". Best of all, of course, "I did not lead it, but I'll say it's easier then the FA grade".

An honest statement, for example, would be "yup, I onsighted the Northcutt Start in Eldorado Canoyn, but it felt a letter grade or two harder then the stated 5.10d". Or "that boulder problem felt more like a V2, not a V4, probably because I found a better sequence".

PS. An easy fix for MP, of course, is to make grading process anonymous :D

Atlas

Enjoy.

Oh cool, the first thread i've ever seen about the subjectivity of route grades....im sure this one will be a lot different...

George Marsden wrote: As a point of clarification the rating system we use in the US is called the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), so by definition grades in Yosemite are correct and any variation at other areas is an error. And grades are totally subjective. In theory they are comparing difficulty to climbs in Yosemite of a given grade with long established consensus as to their difficulty. In reality many climbers don't travel that much so grading is done in relation to local climbs and any error in the initial grading of those climbs is propagated out to the new climbs.

As a point of clarification not a single sentence of that post is correct. Maybe "And grades are subjective" one, if you count that as a sentence.

I really bothers me that I can sometimes climb 5.12 in the gym and I cannot do the same thing on the desert towers of Utah and Arizona. I think there should be a law making all grades the same! This is very important. No one ever knows what areas have "stiff" ratings and what areas are "soft." No one, EVER! THIS IS A TRAVESTY! Stoya, please save us!

stoya