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Mick Ryan
Trad climber
The Peaks
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jan 30, 2012 - 08:49am PT
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I've read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29
But one question on the UKClimbing.com forums is:
Is the YDS 5.10a, 5.11d, 5.12a etc...a grade for the overall difficulty of the climb or a grade for the hardest move?
Also who introduced the letter grades, 5.10a, 5.10b etc
And who introduced the protection rating: R, R/X, R etc
Mick
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Vulcan
Sport climber
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:10am PT
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and is it for the on-sight?
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Srbphoto
climber
Kennewick wa
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:21am PT
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Beware! If, let's say, 20 people reply to this you are going to have at least 23 answers.
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:24am PT
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Oy... YDS ratings...where do we start? ;(
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:40am PT
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OK. I'll give one a shot. It's true you will get a lot of differing opinions though.
Is the YDS 5.10a, 5.11d, 5.12a etc...a grade for the overall difficulty of the climb or a grade for the hardest move?
*Generally* (but not always), this grade is for the hardest move, not a reflection of overall difficulty. A climb can have one 5.9 move, or every move is 5.9 and it's still 5.9. (Kinda dumb IMO BTW). Problem is that ratings are subject to regional and subjective interpretation. PG/R/X ratings are indications of danger-levels - if there is lack of protection or ground-fall potential.
I can't remember who started adding R/X ratings and the a/b/c/d/thing. Maybe someone else knows.
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Gene
climber
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:41am PT
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Is the YDS 5.10a, 5.11d, 5.12a etc...a grade for the overall difficulty of the climb or a grade for the hardest move?
Trick question!!!
5.10a, 5.11d, 5.12a etc... are ratings. Grades are I through VI.
Real answer - See Roper's Climber's Guide to Yosemite, Page 21.
My $0.02 - Originally the ratings were meant to describe the most difficult move on a pitch. The trend now reflects the overall difficulty of the pitch.
5.9 is often much more difficult than 5.10.
Bridwell created the first four letters of the alphabet.
g
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rincon
Trad climber
SoCal
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Jan 30, 2012 - 09:43am PT
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Hardest move.
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handsome B
Gym climber
SL,UT
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Jan 30, 2012 - 10:03am PT
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If you think hardest move, then Indian Creek guides need to be republished with French ratings.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 30, 2012 - 10:42am PT
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Gene, just upstream here, is absolutely right on all three points.
The YDS rating system began for the hardest move but has now grown to encompass more than that, if not entirely clearly. Obviously a pitch with all 5.9 moves is not 5.9 nor has it ever been rated 5.9, actually, but much higher. There is a kind of theory implicit in the system posing "what does the hardest move feel like in the midst of the lead"?. Really modern climbs have proved to usually be far more sustained than the old trad lines of forty years ago and so the problem for the leader in the midst of a highly sustained pitch is being addressed by this change in the original definition the YDS was using of single hardest move.
Reeds triple direct second pitch is obviously not 5.9 anywhere in particular but is a 5.9 lead in the context of all those zillions of 5.6-5.7-ish moves all linked together--- the lead grows in difficulty as all those awkward-leaning moves add up. It can spit out a 5.10 leader even sometimes and yet in the analysis, doesn't even have any real 5.9 in it.
Crack-a-go-go is known as a sandbag at 5.11b (sometimes rated 5.11c) because there are in fact true-blue 5.11b or c single moves on it, especially the lower crux, but meanwhile there are loads of only slightly easier moves surrounding those real honest-to-goodness 5.11b/c moves, forming a much more formidable problem for the ground-up leader. The two distinct cruxes are both zones of very hard moves and spots where there are specific very hard moves within---tricky and unique moves. Climbers who can climb at this rating often do not make this climb without hang dogging or maybe even lamer tactics. It might be 5.11c in specific difficulty but as a lead might well be approaching 5.12. It might be wiser to up its rating.
So, yes the YDS has some paradoxes to it but has served tremendously well. The hope in both rating for the hardest move and meanwhile somewhat contradictorily rating overall lead-pitch difficulty, is to both to warn the unsuspecting of real inherent problems in the lead context while bestowing on the lead its defining rating ---a two-pronged approach that at times may seem misplaced or in error.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Jan 30, 2012 - 11:04am PT
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Rating usually reflects the hardest move...
unless that move can be cheated or glossed over,which sometimes occurs.
eg. If route is 5.4 with one 5.9 move it might be a 5.6.
This is somewhat rare but can occur.
Sometimes a route might be a long stretch of 5.9 in which case a description might also contain the word "sustained" as modifier.
A face climb might be 5.11a which you can climb at your highest level if your balance and finger crimping skills are good.
However the same climber may not be able to get up a 5.9 crack which requires much more forearm and calf strength.
Europe should just switch over to YDS. It would be easier... for us.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Jan 30, 2012 - 11:07am PT
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You can go back and read what Roper put in the old guidebook (was there another with fifth class climbs that detailed the YDS including 5.10 or harder climbs before Roper?), the "standards" for the grade, etc., and that would be accurate for routes that referenced that standard and inaccurate for routes that used a different one.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Jan 30, 2012 - 11:23am PT
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This should help you pasty dwellers of the sodden isle:
5.8 = Not that severe, nor hard.
5.9 = Hard enough to put a fair lady in distress, but rarely severe
5.10a = Very very severe, might upset your delicate constitution, guvner.
5.10d = So severe your avg queen's subject wishes they'd stayed at the chips shop.
5.11b = Hard as nails
5.11d = EXTREEEEEMMM, but only level 1 EXTREEEM.
5.12c = E12, harder and more severe than a 1970s houligan on matchday on the high road headed to White Hart Lane
5.13c = Does it matter? You limey wankers ain't gettin up this anytime soon, and it you did it would be rated E17 and you would pretend this 17' gritstone glorified boulder problem was R/X.
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yo
climber
Mudcat Spire
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Jan 30, 2012 - 11:41am PT
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lol @ elcap
American grades tend to feel sandbagged due to the lack of any decent blood sausage in these pissant American "supermarkets."
Also, I've done Cenotaph Corner and thought it pretty light, really no more than E4 17m ≠ C3PO. And that's wet.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 30, 2012 - 11:44am PT
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as with any climbing rating system, the YDS is subjective and based on consensus, at this point probably most similar to the Australian "open" rating system.
The history is important, and the fact that climbing is something like 40+ years along since the most recent changes to the system had been made might indicate a time to reflect on what it has become.
In general, the question that is most often asked when grading an FA is "how hard is that pitch compared with ..." where a number of candidate pitches are offered up in comparison. Now the definition of "hard" depends on the FA team at that time, for instance, when Eric and I first did Dream Easy we rated it 5.8 (for all but the final pitch, which we didn't do on that first outing). Perhaps we had had a good year and this climb, at the end of a good year, didn't seem that difficult to us. I've gone back and decided it was harder than I remember, and Eric, based on his own evaluation on climbing it again, and the many voices of those who have climbed it, upgraded it to 5.9.
Those "many voices" are important as they are a part of the consensus, but the many voices who established the current ratings are a part of the pitch comparison.
As far as a technical grade the consensus rating may overlook the fact, as Peter and JTM point out above, that the climb may not have any single move at the consensus rating. ECiYA has pointed out in other threads that a climb like Ahab has a technical singularity to it that nearly defies rating, so it is hard to obtain a consensus, Roger Breedlove pointed out that Frank Sacherer, of the FFA of Ahab, rated it at the top of the grade at that time, 5.9, which it is certainly harder than, but how to rate a climb with an OW sequence that is not found elsewhere?
In the Valley, this brings up another important historical note, that the maximum rating of 5.9 that persisted through the middle 1960s capped the ratings of many climbs that were more difficult. Sacherer's FFAs were all rated 5.9 when he did them, that was a project completed in 1964 or so... when modern ratings were suggested for many of these climbs (e.g. the second pitch of Reed's Direct), in the 1970s, the community of Valley climbers objected to the "upgrading" mostly on the basis of tradition. Even with that reluctance, those climbs span the rating system from 5.9 to 5.10d, and even at the high end might have pushed into 5.11a except that Sacherer probably didn't have 5.11 technique.
The legendary bite of some Valley 5.9's has to do with this transition from a grading system which was capped at 5.9, and the one that replaced it, with no upper bound. All the difficult climbs done up to that time had to be re-rated into the new system, and it probably wasn't quite done accurately, as the community of climbers able to actually accomplish those climbs was limited.
A guide book like Meyer's "Yellow Guide" took the list from Bridwell's important article (which introduced the letter sub-grades) and provided suggested examples of routes "at grade." In my mind that is a very important, I'd say crucial, part of any guidebook. It introduces the newly arrived climber to the local grades and provides a way of directly explaining the local rating system in the only meaningful way, by example.
Any other intellectual logic to the system is really moot, the list provides a Rosetta Stone that translates the local ratings directly into climber experience.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 30, 2012 - 01:24pm PT
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First of all, isn't it the TDS - Tahquitz Decimal System - not the YDS? As it was mostly invented in Tahquitz.
Second, it's a riddle, inside a mystery, inside an enigma.
Third, yer gonna die!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 30, 2012 - 01:45pm PT
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Second, it's a riddle, inside a mystery, inside an enigma. Wrapped in butcher paper.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Jan 30, 2012 - 01:54pm PT
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...and tied with a bowline.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Jan 30, 2012 - 01:56pm PT
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Like the various German, French, Spanish, Italian and UIAA grading scales, the YDS system is ultimately derived from Wilo Welzenbach's I-VI system popularized in the interwar years. The I-VI was adopted from period public school grading systems.
Immigrants from Europe, Americans climbing abroad, and imported instruction manuals all helped to give American climbers a vague sense of grading in Europe. The Welzenbach system worked pretty well for the kinds of rock (mostly limestones) then serving as the proving ground for the cutting edge of alpinism in the Tirol and South Tirol. The system translated poorly to Sierra granite, though.
For the most part, Sierra granite simply doesn't offer the sort of formation you can find in the Dolomites, with hundreds or even thousands of feet of steep, heavily featured routes. Sierra granite tended to resolve into broken, scrappy buttresses or else steep, clean sweeps of chunks with crack systems. The Sierras just dont have many of the kinds of long Dolomite classics that helped to make the Welzenbach system work. (You can find long, steep classic 5.3 jug hauls in the Dolos and Kaisergebirge-- a long route of that difficulty in the Sierra is usually a friction slab.)
Sierra climbers used the system differently-- Where the Euros used "I" to describe climbing involving actual technical movement, for the Californians, "I" referred simply to walking, while "VI" came to refer to anything involving what we now call direct aid. That left "III," "IV" and "V" to cover the span of difficulty represented by I-VI in the European systems. In practice, 3 meant climbes done ropeless, 4 meant climbs done with ropes and anchors but not much in the way of running belays, and 5 meant climbs difficult enough to demand a fair bit of pitoncraft. ( It's not entirely clear why the Californians adapted the system like that-- difference in rock type doubtless has some effect. My guess, though, is that it was driven by the needs of the Sierra Club High Camp and similar mass outing systems in which organizers felt a need to differentiate outing objectives in ways that included simple hikers.)
Of course, by the end of WW2, it was pretty clear that three grades weren't enough to describe differences between the easiest and hardest technical rock climbs. It was the folks at Tahquitz, mostly from local SIerra Club Sections, who went ahead and subdivided the "V" grade into decimals: 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, etc. From the beginning, the move/enduro difficulty question was built into the system. The "hardest" route then at Tahquitz, The Open Book (5.9), probably did not (and doesn't) have a move on it that is 5.9. The difficulty reflected the demands of piecing together a series of easier but strenuous layback moves while hammering in pitons for pro.
The older Roman Numeral I-VI remained in place, but used now for categorizing overall length/seriousness of objectives-- VI was now reserved for multi-day technical climbs like The Nose or other new long routes, while 5-whatever categorized the technical difficulty. And in the seventies, Yosemite climbers (who shamelessly appropriated the Tahquitz system and called it their own) helped to pioneer the weird American opening of the closed system by using 5.10, 5.11, and then (Bridwell seems to have been the leader in this), further letter subdivisions: 10a, 10b, etc.
There was never anything like a resolution of the tension between move/enduro difficulties in assessing difficulty. Different areas worked out their own local habits. In many areas, for instance, if the hardest technical moves are at the beginning of the climb, they may not appear at all in the route's actual grade. A route with a single hard move, with overhead pro, with good rest before and after, may end up with a slightly easier grade than one with lots of sustained, easier moves.
And as protection systems changed, so did the means of differentiating routes. The old system for the Sierras was replaced by that generic decimal 5th class but with added seriousness ratings "PG, R, X) derived from the MPOA Ratings for commercial films.
The Euros had their own growing pains-- the French used one version of the Welzenbach for Fontainebleau and another for roped routes. The Germans used one system in Bavaria and another in Dresden. And Many areas by the 1960s had gone to open-ended and even subdivided variations (6a, 6b, etc.)
By the time Roper was writing his guidebooks, the basic history was so foggy and forgotten that he could write as if the UIAA system (a formal version of the original Welzenbach system) was a foreign object and the YDS system had sprung naturally from the California soil.
The Brits, of course, are in another world entirely, as so often is the case. The Brits had introduced a system back in the late 19th century, long before the Germans-- Hard, DIfficult, Very Difficult, Severe, etc. Obviously, that system was going to go anywhere in places that didn't speak English. But the Brits stuck with it, despite the obvious problems, until finally, around mid-century, feeling compelled to adapt still another (Francophile) variant of the Welzenbach system to create the lovely hybrid grading format that has become as inexplicable a part of British nationalism as French Fry sandwiches.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Jan 30, 2012 - 02:13pm PT
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Mick, the Bridwell article that Peter or Ed referenced is "The Innocent, the Ignorant, and the Insecure" and it marked the first occasion that the proposed adaptation of the a/b/c/d grades appeared in print. Seminal reading for anyone attempting to do what you're doing.
It was published in the 1973 ish of Ascent. I'm guessing the fact that it did apppear in print by '73 means it was already a functioning system under development in Yosemite by '71 or '72. There are plenty of people posting to this forum who were active in the Valley at this time who could probably expand on that.
The YDS has no mystery for me and makes perfect sense. I rarely feel sandbagged, and when you do run across a sandbag it's obvious and you take it with a chuckle. I think that across the planet, people understand perfectly whatever grading system they grew up with, and that any other system will remain inscrutable until they travel to Australia or Britan or France or wherever and experience the system firsthand. I've been scrutinizing the British "S/VS/HVS" stuff and the whole "E6 6c" or "E4 5b" or whatever thing and it's still a litle baffling, but I bet after a couple of weeks climbing British rock I'd have it dialed.
I think the biggest difference between the British system and the YDS is that we have dispensed with the E grade, and stuck with a single techinical grade like 5.7, 5.9, 5.10c, etc. For example, as was pointed out above, I bet if the second pitch of Reed's were it Britan it would have a simple tecnical grade, you know, 4c or 5a whatever, but an E grade higher than you would typically see on a 5a. Does that make sense? We just built the "extremity" of the pitch into our thinking: it's either gonna be really sustained, really technical, or both.
All those grade conversion charts are sorta hopeless. Especially ones that convert YDS grades into V Grades for bouldering.
What I know of the British system came from asking question of American climbers who'd done routes. It was like, Oh, Prophet of Doom is a really technical 11d" or "The Thing is a super burly 11b", stuff like that. Then I could start to grasp it.
Good luck!
EDIT: what Kerwin said. Kerwin, aren't you supposed to be grading papers or tongue-lashing undergrads or something? Frikken academia.
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Mick Ryan
Trad climber
The Peaks
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2012 - 02:46pm PT
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Did I have to email Chris to get someone to delete that idiot Lockers posts.
Thank you to all the thoughtful replys, just reading them.
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