Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Sonnie Trotter Goes Down on Tasmania 23-Feb-2016 At 12:56:08 PM simey

Message

On 23/02/2016 Karl Bromelow wrote:
>Surely your assertion that grading boldness is more subjective than grading
>difficulty is in itself subjective. Personally I don't get on with the
>Ewbank system at all. I find numerous dicrepencies wherever I climb, even
>between individually graded pitches on multi pitch routes. That might be
>because of it's misuse or because it doesn't work or because I just don't
>get it. I wouldn't know but it is still largely alien to me. If you had
>lived your climbing life in the UK you would most probably be using the
>system they use there, you would understand it's strengths and it's weeknesses
>and you might even be defending it patriotically. I'm done, surf's up.
>Get off E grades and back to Mr Trotter.
>

Mr Trotter was only the starting point for a bigger discussion.

I have climbed a lot in the UK and so I am very familiar with the grading system, but in the end I still thought it had way too many weirdnesses... words, numbers, letters, the boldness and endurance elements wrapped up in the same part of the grade and then the hardest technical move as a separate number/letter combo. What a head fcuk! And then they ultimately use French grading when their own system fails!

As for trying to grade boldness... well the reason that it is more subjective is because there are more elements to take into consideration and those elements are subject to less real world testing ie. You don't fall off every metre of a route and yank on every suss block to test its relative safety (unless you are Eduardo), but you do (try to) climb every metre of a route which gives you a good indication of its difficulty relative to other climbs.