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lumineferusother
Nov 30, 2008, 11:03 AM
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Question, do French grades take into account the length/seriousness of the climb? I.e. a 7b that would be equated to a grade III or IV 5.11 or 5.12, could it also mean a Grade V or VI climb of a lesser difficulty like a 5.9 or 10? I hope that question makes sense, haha.
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crackmeup
Nov 30, 2008, 12:53 PM
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lumineferusother wrote: Question, do French grades take into account the length/seriousness of the climb?
No, every pitch will have its own grade. 7b is roughly equivalent to 5.12b (allowing for regional variations in grading, i.e. soft or hard). If someone says that a multi-pitch climb is 7b, they probably mean that at least one pitch is 7b.
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lumineferusother
Nov 30, 2008, 6:18 PM
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Oh ok. Does the French system use its own aid rating system as well?
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AlexCV
Nov 30, 2008, 7:38 PM
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They use the A-rating when they rate aid. If the route has been free climbed, you'll often find the grades stated as 7b (6c obli) when obli is short for obligatoire which means mandatory. In those case, it's understood that aid will be used but that you'll need to free climb 6c as well. When they do that, they rarely rate the aid and it could be anything from pulling on draws to more involved aid. The french are big on bolts though...
Commitment grades are getting popular and they use the same scale we use. They also use the french alpine difficulty grade which is an overall adjective rating from F (Facile, Easy) to ABO (Abominable, "Extremely Horrible") those grades take technical difficulty, retreat, length, objective danger, protection, etc. in account.
On T.A. (terrain d'aventure which isn't necessarily trad, more likely mixed or even bolted on popular routes, they have a big debate on the over-safing of T.A. routes) bolt spacing can be quite long (i.e 10-15m) so rating usually assume that you are very comfortable at the grade. Detailed topos usually mention what pro is needed, if at all. They will also have pitch by pitch breakdown of difficulty. For grades up to about 5, roman numerals are oftenly used. For very low grades (up to III or so) this is still common but otherwise it can mean the route was established a long time ago and it might be a bit sandbagged an old V+ might be up to 6b or so.
It's worth noting that a lot of the french rock is notorious for being fragile limestone. Most of the info above is due to too much lurking on camp2camp so caveat emptor.
Example of rating:
Falaise de Balme, Haut Giffre, Haute Savoie, France
Réalité non ordinaire ED / I / 7b (6c obli) 160m
Pitches: 6b+ / 7b / 7a+ / 6c+ / 6c / 6a+
Route is well bolted.
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