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Camahoo
Trad climber
Shaver Springs
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 16, 2014 - 03:17pm PT
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Back in the day 5.9 was the sh_t, now we are putting up 5.15c. However, as the top end get higher it seems like the lower end of the rating system get softer. Moby Dick when I first climbed it was (Roper's Guide) 5.9. When I was 14 it was my first lead climb in the valley. A few years ago I revisited (32 years later) this classic climb, it still felt like a 5.9 but has the rating of 5.10a.
I think what may be happening is that, as new climbs go up by folks that can climb at or near the top end have a real hard time with the average guy/gal ratings of 5.9 - 5.11b.
I am just wondering if this is the dumbing down of the mid grades. We all know of routes that are under rated or just wrong.
I'm just putting this out there to see if this is a trend with new routes or old classics in your areas.
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Texplorer
Trad climber
Sacramento
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Oct 16, 2014 - 03:29pm PT
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Yes, my generation is inflating your old skool grades. . . and then we free solo them. Mwhahahahaha
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Oct 16, 2014 - 03:42pm PT
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Not at my gym.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Oct 16, 2014 - 03:49pm PT
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It's been a log hard road from The Open Book at Tahquitz to the Stronghold in NE LA.
Not even the same kind of sport.
At the gym you know it's hard but the holds are there.
Out in the wild, you don't even know where the hold is or if it's still there. Huge difference.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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Oct 16, 2014 - 04:00pm PT
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When you come from the hinterlands Yosemite grades feel a bit soft.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 16, 2014 - 04:09pm PT
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I mean what's the difference between 5.9 and 10a? Might be just a question of how humid it is on a particular day. The thing about M.D. is try it with pair of Robbins blue shoes or Kronhoffers and stoppers and hexes instead of cams. Equipment and safety are so much improved now ratings take on a whole different meaning.
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kev
climber
A pile of dirt.
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Oct 16, 2014 - 04:21pm PT
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Old school 5.8 = new school 10a
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Gene
climber
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Oct 16, 2014 - 04:32pm PT
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I'm sure Norman Clyde would agree with the OP.
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Barbarian
climber
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Oct 16, 2014 - 04:56pm PT
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Old school 5.8 = new school 10a
Cool! I'm becoming a better climber just by sitting in the office. Pretty good trick at my age...
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Oct 16, 2014 - 06:14pm PT
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Not at Granite Mountain....
Holy F#$$#
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mynameismud
climber
backseat
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Oct 16, 2014 - 06:20pm PT
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in general yes, especially at the gym.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Oct 16, 2014 - 08:01pm PT
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Beware Granite Mountain 5.8+!
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Oct 16, 2014 - 08:16pm PT
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Grade creep?? It's very real.
This never would have happened if u guys would have done a better job defending the world from sport climbing BITD.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Oct 16, 2014 - 08:20pm PT
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Seems to me each area stays fairly consistent but can be divergent from other areas. I'd say anything rated in the Gallatin Canyon MT is suspect, that place makes me feel weak.
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
extraordinaire
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Oct 16, 2014 - 09:19pm PT
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Aside from sandbagging etc there is no softening of grades.
Even Ondra/ Sharma doing V16s are looking for a consensus on what the actual rating is.
If anything, grades are getting more accurate.
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MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Oct 16, 2014 - 09:26pm PT
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Are ratings going soft.
I think what may be happening is that, as new climbs go up by folks that can climb at or near the top end have a real hard time with the average guy/gal ratings of 5.9 - 5.11b.
Pay a visit to some of the "new-school" stuff at Waterfall Wall in Oak Creek Canyon to refresh your perspective.
Enjoy the grip...
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coolrockclimberguy69
climber
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Oct 16, 2014 - 09:29pm PT
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The only thing stupider than applying a subjective number to a rockclimb is the person who actually nitpicks about them.
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i'm gumby dammit
Sport climber
da ow
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Oct 16, 2014 - 10:10pm PT
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yeah but I heard your gym is soft...
it might not be the new climbers that are blowing the curve, maybe it's the old climbers. when 5.9 was the hardest grade it would include anything harder than 5.8, regardless of how much harder it was.
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Laine
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Oct 16, 2014 - 10:51pm PT
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Ratings aren't soft, they are only numbers people assign to soften the adventure of the unknown. Categorizing, classifying constructs of personal subjectivity. Oh and moby dick is one of the most sand bagged climbs, even at 10a.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Oct 16, 2014 - 10:58pm PT
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5.9 ... if you're tall enough to skip the first move...
I think that's only Joshua Tree.
Curt
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MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Oct 16, 2014 - 11:34pm PT
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Stzzo! ^^^NOOOO!
It's real Man! Sh1t is going downhill...hell in a handbasket...everything is getting comfortized, over-bolted, up-graded, manufactued, chipped, chopped, cleaned, beta-sprayed, topo-analyzed, sprayed about on MP, over-processed on RC.com, and ridiculed on UK Climbers.
WTF, Dude?
;)
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Travis Haussener
Trad climber
Salt Lake City
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Oct 17, 2014 - 08:33am PT
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Grade creep aka adjusting climbs to their actual grade based on a number of factual data points instead of one old fart and a couple of his younger companions sandbagging it for the general populace to seem badass and bold.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Oct 17, 2014 - 10:01am PT
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Back in the 1950s 5.9 was a challenge not to be taken lightly. In the mid 1950s as I was moving up from noobie, I asked Yvon Chouinard what constituted a 5.9. His answer was "A 5.9 is usually an unrelenting sequence of 5.8 moves."
So 5.8 is really where it's at.
;>\
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Camahoo
Trad climber
Shaver Springs
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 17, 2014 - 11:15am PT
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I will agree that a classic valley climb rated 5.8 is still a way hard route. The class 3 and 4 climber trails to some climbs are wild and should be in the mid 5th class. There were some bold souls pulling down rock. If we look to new areas and routes, we start to see the grade spread.
In recent years I have enjoyed climbing steep faces and and cracks at a new area with routes put up by off the couch 5.12 climbers and end of season 5.11 climbers. The difference between these groups are night and day. 5.9 and 5.10 should have a distinct feel just like 5.10c and 5.11.
I can only talk smack when it comes to slabs " friends don't let friends climb slabs". I have always broke it down like this. 5.9 is the last of powering though a section and the beginning of working though the crux using power, control and exact movement. This is not always true. However, with slabs it was how I would come to a rating for a route or what I might expect on a route. How long was the crux, how long between rest, and so on.
I understand every style of climbing and every area has there deviations on the ratings. My issue is that 5.9 that feels 5.9 next to that 5.10b that feels 5.8, what gives?
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Oct 17, 2014 - 08:37pm PT
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The main problem is that we began with a system that had a maximum grade (5.9), and the first correction to 5.10 still assumed a closed-ended system. Like a train running into a stone wall, the grades crumpled up at the the then-current top levels, but the compression damage also backed up through some of the lower grades (like 5.8). The system got seriously out of whack early on.
Then a second phenomenon happened: the side-effects of local inferiority complexes. The Yosemite climbers of the fifties and sixties convinced the rest of the country that Yosemite climbers were better than everyone else. This was not entirely false, but it wasn't nearly as true as it was taken to be. Add this psychological effect to the relative isolation of climbing areas compared to today and you had a perfect situation for inferiority-complex downgrading. Folks didn't think they were good enough to be climbing at a certain level and so adjusted their grades downwards. The so-called "sandbagging" of entire areas was in fact a reflection of the assumed unworthiness of the locals.
In 1963, Leigh Ortenburger made a bold and forward-looking attempt at promulgating a national climbing grading system. See http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1039859 for the original proposal and, of course, modern opinions. Unfortunately, Ortenburger committed the heresy of trying to combine some of the lower free-climbing grades, the decimal crowd rebelled, and the what survived was the aid grades A1 - A5 and the overall commitment grades I-VI. Meanwhile, folks overlooked the most intelligent aspect of Ortenburger's proposal, which was to define grades by lists of example climbs in areas all around the country. Had we been building on that for the past fifty years, we would have a far more useful and coherent grading system, but the opportunity passed, "local control" trumped national consensus, and we have...what we have.
Personally, I find the universal rejection of Ortenburger's idea of defining grades via standard example climbs astonishing; it seems like such a no-brainer. But it hasn't even happened on a local level. Guidebook writers, or the ones whose work I've seen, simply do not do this. Why?
Most of the "softening" of trad grades I'm aware of seems to make good sense, and is simply a correction of the "train wreck" effect of the early decimal system. How sport climbing has affected grading is not clear to me. I would have thought that the sport climber's acceptance of extensive "projecting" would have made grades more severe, but this does not seem to be what has happened.
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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Oct 17, 2014 - 09:29pm PT
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In all seriousness, I think ratings have been going soft ever since they were invented. Elders always scoff at the youth. Go back to Socrates and you can find a screed about the failings and all around unworthiness of the young people of his day.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Oct 18, 2014 - 06:38am PT
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Dingus, you might be right about Meyers, I have no idea what became of my copy, but if so he's the exception to the rule.
It is true that simply by assigning grades to climbs, one ought to be defining the standards for those assignments, but the perceived "softening" of grades, the contrary sense that some ratings are sandbagged, and the undeniable variation between different areas constitute a lack of consistency which I think is at least partially a result of no one giving specific examples of what each grade should represent.
In any case, my main point was that, in my experience, quite a lot of grade "softening" really is a sensible recalibration of an originally flawed system.
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rick d
climber
ol pueblo, az
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Oct 18, 2014 - 08:05am PT
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5.15 is pretty impressive, 5.5 cannot even be identified by a 5.15 climber.
Thus, 5.0 to 5.5 should be clumped into "5th class"
move it all down, compress the lower 5.6-5.9 grades and make 5.10 the B3 of yesteryear.
when it starts creeping again, do another reset.
Can any of you tell the difference between a 5.2 and 5.3?
(skill needed to get from toilet to refrigerator?)
Either that, or adopt Granite Mountain as the standard rating for grades see what shakes out.
Weeny Roast for 5.6
Hassyampa for 5.7
Easy Chair for 5.8
Reunion for 5.9
Jump Back Jack for 5.10
Sorcerer for 5.11
improbability drive for 5.12
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 18, 2014 - 06:41pm PT
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Personally, I find the universal rejection of Ortenburger's idea of defining grades via standard example climbs astonishing; it seems like such a no-brainer. But it hasn't even happened on a local level.
Actuality that did happen with Wilts invention of the Tahquitz decimal system that later became the YDS.
The definition of the grades was defined by a list of standard climbs in the introductory chapter in his guide books right from the start.
Almost all of the climbs up to 5.8 have been upgraded, often by two grades and as many as four in modern guidebooks,
My theory on the reason for this is that the small cadre that was then active at Tahquitz had repeated most of the routes multiple times and had them ruthlessly wired. The ratings were generally fairly established for the easiest, most efficient sequence, pulled on the first effort, with exposure or protection not factored in at all. The progression of that list is logical and other than maybe Frightful Variation at 5.1 (probably should be the easiest) and sequentially correct. Since these climbs are usually done by relative beginners it's rare that they hit the right combinations on the first try or even the find the most efficient routing.
Some of it is style also. A lot of present day climbers find the chimney on the first pitch of Angels Fright the most difficult part of the climb, but it ends at Litter ledge and that got it's name from the fact that the Stokes litter was tied to a tree there with the understanding that anyone that really needed to get it could easily solo up to retrieve it.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Oct 18, 2014 - 07:15pm PT
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I'll second the Granite Mountain scale!
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