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trevor
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Apr 24, 2001, 10:30 PM
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Here is a question many people have asked me and I thought I would let all of you explain this. I am sure you\'ll do a better job than I can.
What or who determines when you increase the highest possible ranking in freeclimbing? In other words, when can a climb be rated above 5.14d...5.15a
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ozclimber
May 10, 2001, 9:22 AM
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As a climber from a differant country(australia) we may do things slightly different but i know here in oz our top grade is around 33. This is not the hardest a climb can be but the hardest that has currantly been done. As people climb harder the grades will rise. Our grading system is totally open ended meaning that in 10 years people could be climbing 40\'s. To open a new grade you must have first had alot of experince on hard routes and second get alot of other hard climbers to confirm your grade. Generally if somebody thought they had climbed a 34 they would still grade it 33 and wait for others to say it sould be up graded. Down here nobody wants to be the smart arse that opens a new grade for fear of having it down graded and looking stupid.
Trevor Allred wrote:
>Here is a question many people have asked me and I thought I would let all of you explain this. I am sure you\'ll do a better job than I can.
>
>What or who determines when you increase the highest possible ranking in freeclimbing? In other words, when can a climb be rated above 5.14d...5.15a
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fiend
May 29, 2001, 5:59 PM
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There is a whole big controversie surroundigng 'the 9th Grade' right now. [9a=5.14d, 9a+=5.15a, 9b=5.15b]
Akira, sent by Fred Rouhling had a proposed grade of 9b. Well, everyone thought this to be absurd so Fred Rouhling now gets almost no credit for his two 9a first ascents. When lists of the hardest climbs in the world are compiled his 9a's are generally not included. This is one of the reasons people will be hesitant about grading climbs higher than 5.14d. Sharma is a good example of this, not giving grades for his hardest problems. If the description of Akira is accurate then I believe it is 5.15b but then again, what the hell do I know?
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richo
Jun 13, 2001, 10:14 AM
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oz, do you know why the aussie system is different from us and others, it seems pretty stupid to me to have a seeminly universal system yet different countries have different systems. If you ask me, UIAA ratings should be internationally recognisable
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fiend
Jun 13, 2001, 10:41 PM
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I kind of like the french system as it applies to both routes and boulders, it is also widely recognized
-mark
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learnintoclimb
Jul 7, 2001, 4:46 AM
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The problem with the french grade comparing routes and boulders with the same grading system is you can't compare routes and boulders with the same grade. People have gotten close but you can't they are entirely different.
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wandt
Jul 7, 2001, 9:03 AM
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Actually, the French system is two different systems that use the same letters. It's actually the "French grade" for climbing and the "Font (fontainebleau) grade" for bouldering. For example, my conversion guide (in this Squamish guide book) tells me that 5.14+ YDS=8c+ French. But V12=5.14+=8a. Very confusing. Really only the French and the European magazines use the French Grade (everyone else over there uses UIAA), but all of Europe uses the Font grade.
The Font grade is interesting in that it factors in the height of the boulder, the landing, how scary it is, etc. as well as the physical difficulty. The V grades only showthe physical difficulty. I don;t know the criterea for the French grade.
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learnintoclimb
Jul 23, 2001, 8:00 PM
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With the Font grade I would think that it would be pretty cool if the V scale considered those factors like how scary it is, but on rating a boulder problem everyone's got different oppinions on it like how scary it is.
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climb512
Jul 23, 2001, 10:33 PM
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one grading system would be nice. as usual anything the french try ends up rather suspect
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ericontherocks
Jul 28, 2001, 4:25 PM
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at one time our scale seemed to be closed ended there was nothing beyond 5.9 because a 5.10 would be a 5.1 if you got rid of the zero at the end so for years there were a lot of tough 9's out there still in some spots climbing a 8 or 9 is like a 11
now that we have gone and broken into 10's up to 14's we are open ended and when someone climbs what is harder then a 14d there will be 15's
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congo
Aug 12, 2001, 2:10 PM
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hehe, i agree with 512..
..damn french, they wanna do everything different.
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howieehrlich
Nov 13, 2001, 3:51 AM
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Just a thought about the two so called "5.15"'s prior to Realization. Akira is in a bat filled cave and all the holds are drilled for the maker's (cant remember name) +7 inch ape index. and the other "5.15" in spain (forget name again) has a bolted on hold, it used to have four, but three were taken off. So therefore, Sharma's Realization is the first natural route of 5.15 stature. For sustained hard climbing and an estimated V12/13 crux after 70 feet of 5.14c climbing.
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puffpuffpass
Dec 25, 2001, 11:04 PM
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the thing you got to remember is just do it, before anyone had sent that strait through the higest rateing was 5.14c and just do it was one of the first confirmed 14d. climbers will always keep raising the bar and pushing them selves to achieve higher and higher goals. and akira like howee and joeblo said its manufactured and im not sure but i dont think there is any record of it seeing any other accents do to that.
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stickit
Jan 28, 2002, 4:14 AM
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Somehow cool things always manage to get wrapped up in a bureaucracy. I guess that because I haven't got the skill to get up a 5.14 I'm not too worried about rating 5.15's. A lot of the higher graded routes are the domain of the pros and therefore the gradings are contested and suspect amongst themselves. I'm not saying that there should or should not be a 5.15 rating. I just think that the majority of climbers are not at this level. And really, if we are not involved with an issue, we should stay clear.
[ This Message was edited by: stickit on 2002-01-27 20:15 ]
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fiend
Jan 28, 2002, 4:42 AM
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I'm not sure how accurate this is but I heard that Akira was not actually chipped although it shares moves with the climb next to it which was chipped previously. Thin line I know but still...
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beyond_gravity
Jan 28, 2002, 5:33 AM
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5.15a is easy, i flashed it. all this hype is totally shit. It's just an advertising thing. Now, climbing is turning into a pitiful, media covered sport like Chess of Bolling.
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jt512
Mar 2, 2002, 4:32 AM
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While I am sure that absolutely nobody except me cares about this, I have got to get this off my chest: Trevor, you have a great website, but, please, you must learn the difference between a rating and a ranking.
Ok, I feel a little better already.
5.15a is a rating, not a ranking. Likewise, the votes, and their averages, on the photos are ratings, not rankings. Rankings are ordinal: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Ratings are not. Thus, climbs are rated from 5.0 to 5.whatever, not ranked. The photos are rated from 0 to 10, not ranked. If you gave us 10 pictures and asked us to put them in order from the one we liked the least to the one we liked the best, then we would be ranking them, but we're not. We're rating them on a 0-10 rating scale.
Thank you for your attention.
-Jay
[ This Message was edited by: jt512 on 2002-03-01 20:33 ]
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dontneedfeet
Mar 2, 2002, 6:22 AM
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Last thing I read about Akira - the route wasn't chipped, but some of the holds were glued. Looks like it was from 8a.nu news on 11/30/01.
That said, the info came from the guy who did the only ascent. So who knows...
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smithclimber
Mar 2, 2002, 8:17 AM
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Just for the record, Puffpuffpass, "Just Do It" was not the 1st 5.14d. "Action Direct" was the 1st route proposed the 9a (5.14d) rating. "Just Do It" was originally rated 5.14c. It was the 1st 5.14c in America, but not the world. That being the case, "Just Do It" has pretty much been downgraded to 5.14b. The handfull of climbers who have done both "Just Do It" and America's most famous other 5.14c "Necessary Evil" tend to agree that "Just Do It" is not as hard as "Necessary Evil" thus the reason for "Just Do It"'s downgrading.
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crux_clipper
Mar 2, 2002, 1:24 PM
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I saw all for the oz 'Ewbank System". What could be easier then a 1-33 grading system. the 5.XX system confuses me, but i suppose thats cos i'm an oz and am not used to it.
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caveclimber
Mar 4, 2002, 2:48 PM
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Better question is when is the scale going to stop growing and start shrinking? 10 years ago no one would have every thought it possible to climb the routes today, it all in the genes. A 5.11 climber 10 years ago has a child and teach him everything he knows and gets him climbing a age 9 and by the time he is 16 he can surpass his or her dad with ease. I say the scale should go down what was a 5.10 then is probably a 5.8 now and 5.8 then is a 5.6 just because we know more and we understand more and have more training than our forefathers. When is the scale going to start going backwards or comin into the new climbers scale.
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litedawg
Mar 4, 2002, 3:24 PM
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Here is my question, and please feel free to correct me and educate me where you see the need.
The Yosemite Decimal System actually starts with 1 not 5. a steep, well worn trail is something like a "class 3 or 4", it is not until the terrain reaches a "class 5" difficulty that they started breaking it down, 5.5, 5.10, 5.12a, ad nauseum.
If this is how the system was originally conceived then theoretically there could be a "class 6" terrain out there which would be harder than all "class 5" terrain.
Maybe 5.12 should be the highest class 5 grade and a 5.13a should be renamed 6.1
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camhead
Mar 4, 2002, 5:51 PM
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Hey litedawg,
This may be wrong, but seems as if somewhere I read that 6th class climbing covers aid.
ALL 5th class routes are whatever one can do free, but with a rope for security.
Trivia:
The rating for rapids on rivers in surprisingly similar to the YDS.
It is on a scale of I-V, I being easy, and V being the most difficult imaginable. An unrunnable rapid is VI, but when it is finally run it becomes a V.
Just as with climbing and 5.9s, however, people got better at running rapids, technology got better, and soon (back in the 80s), class V rapids could be almost anything from kind of difficult to WAY TOUGH.
Unlike the YDS, however, they have not really modified the whitewater scale.
Not much to do with climbing, but I thought it interesting.
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toshido
Mar 7, 2002, 7:13 AM
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Okay here some info I am stealign from "A Trailside Series Guide ROCK CLIMBING" By Don Mellor.
Climbing grades
1=Rough hiking
2=Steep scrambling
3=Steep, unroped, hazardous climbing
4=Roped in sections, often moving together over varied terrain. The rope is only employed on the tough parts.
5=The climber has a stationary belayer, and the climb is so hard that protection must be set between the climber and the belayer to reduce the potential fall.
6= Aid climbing
He goes on to further explain the different grades in the 5.XX range.
5.0-5.4 Easy
5.5-5.8 The general intermediate realm. Such routes require rock shoes someone with unusual athletic ability could climb a 5.8 first time out.
5.9-5.10 harder still. Requiring a thourough understanding if technique and good finger stength
5.11a-5.11d Some recreational climbers might be able to tope rope such a route after many tries.
5.12a-5.12d We are getting into the land of the elites (His words )
5.13a-5.13d Climbers here have devoted themselves to training and even the best usually spend many attempts in order to succeed.
5.14 Virtually one can get such a route first try. 5.14s are status routes that see many (often hundreds) of attempts before the very best climbers succeed.
5.15 It's coming....
This book is copyrighted in 1997. Really helps show how quickly the climb rates are going up.
What kinda confuses me is why they cap the letters at "d".
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apollodorus
Mar 7, 2002, 8:44 AM
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5.15a is whatever I can get up these days. Most of my climbs get downgraded.
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