What's the story of the 'South Africa' Ewbank grades?

A few countries go by the Ewbank route grading system (which starts at 1 and goes up in integer increments so that the current limit is around 40). Somewhere along the line, someone decided that the grades had diverged enough (SA being ~1 ewbank grade higher for the same difficulty than Australia/NZ) that the two are now split on international grade conversion charts. When did that happen, and how did it become so standardized?

Can you imagine if the next edition of some guidebook had a 'Kentucky YDS' conversion where a few letter grades were added to every route to convert it to 'RRG standard' grading?

I had never heard of the Ewbank system before.  Seems interesting, but looking at how it compares to YDS it seems just as problematic [5.0 is equivalent to a 4 and a 5.6 to a 14, whereas going from a 5.11a to a 5.12a only moves the needle from 22 to 25.

 I wish rock grades were as easy as skii grades: green, blue, black, double black.  That's all most of us mere mortals need and why The Bird's system always made the most sense to me:

-No Big Deal

-Not Too Bad

-Pretty Darn Hard

-Don't Fuck Up

Exiled Michigander wrote:

I had never heard of the Ewbank system before.  Seems interesting, but looking at how it compares to YDS it seems just as problematic [5.0 is equivalent to a 4 and a 5.6 to a 14, whereas going from a 5.11a to a 5.12a only moves the needle from 22 to 25.

 I wish rock grades were as easy as skii grades: green, blue, black, double black.  That's all most of us mere mortals need and why The Bird's system always made the most sense to me:

-No Big Deal

-Not Too Bad

-Pretty Darn Hard

-Don't Fuck Up

I kind of like the ski hill idea. Up to 5.9 = green (easy), 5.10- to 5.12+ = blue (moderate), 5.13- to 5.14 = black (hard), 5.14+ and up = double black (expert). Certainly would make quibbling about grades obsolete. 

There was a genius post on here a while ago that solved the whole grade issue: mountainproject.com/forum/t…

Eric Roe wrote:

There was a genius post on here a while ago that solved the whole grade issue: mountainproject.com/forum/t…

No

MattH wrote:

A few countries go by the Ewbank route grading system (which starts at 1 and goes up in integer increments so that the current limit is around 40). Somewhere along the line, someone decided that the grades had diverged enough (SA being ~1 ewbank grade higher for the same difficulty than Australia/NZ) that the two are now split on international grade conversion charts. When did that happen, and how did it become so standardized?

This goes back 30 years or so. At the time a group of S African climbers decided that they preferred the Australian grading system to an older home-grown S African system, except they thought the Australian system could do with some tweaking (they thought it was too coarse in the 5.8/5.9 range and too fine in the 5.10/5.11 range). The climbers involved were big fish in a small pond and their views carried the day. Here's a 1984 article they wrote for a local mountaineering journal – in retrospect it comes across as quite arrogant. Originally the two systems were supposed to re-converge at grade 26 (5.12a) but somehow that fell by the wayside.

One of these climbers now lives in the Boulder area. I could reach out to him if you're curious to know more.

Here is the guy who invented the Eubank grading system- John Ewbank,  circa 1969, on one of his routes in the Blue Mtns., outside Sydney, Australia.  

Looks a lot like 10-,10, 10+ etc as far as separation goes. 

Martin le Roux wrote:

This goes back 30 years or so. At the time a group of S African climbers decided that they preferred the Australian grading system to an older home-grown S African system, except they thought the Australian system could do with some tweaking (they thought it was too coarse in the 5.8/5.9 range and too fine in the 5.10/5.11 range). The climbers involved were big fish in a small pond and their views carried the day. Here's a 1984 article they wrote for a local mountaineering journal – in retrospect it comes across as quite arrogant. Originally the two systems were supposed to re-converge at grade 26 (5.12a) but somehow that fell by the wayside.

One of these climbers now lives in the Boulder area. I could reach out to him if you're curious to know more.

This is exactly what I wanted to learn. Thank you! Man, sometimes these forums are a mess but there’s some real pearls sometimes.

Martin le Roux wrote:

This goes back 30 years or so. At the time a group of S African climbers decided that they preferred the Australian grading system to an older home-grown S African system, except they thought the Australian system could do with some tweaking (they thought it was too coarse in the 5.8/5.9 range and too fine in the 5.10/5.11 range). The climbers involved were big fish in a small pond and their views carried the day. Here's a 1984 article they wrote for a local mountaineering journal – in retrospect it comes across as quite arrogant. Originally the two systems were supposed to re-converge at grade 26 (5.12a) but somehow that fell by the wayside.

One of these climbers now lives in the Boulder area. I could reach out to him if you're curious to know more.

This is a super interesting piece of history, thanks for sharing! My main observation with the authors’ grade table is that it is a gross misrepresentation of the current Australian Ewbanks scale as compared to the YDS. Grade 24/25 is widely understood to equate to 5.12a/b, whereas grade 30 is equivalent to 5.13c. So, it seems they may have based their adaptation of the Ewbanks scale to the Natal system on faulty information.