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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 30, 2009 - 07:26pm PT
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BITD, a grade guess seemed to my small mind just a way of telling your pals what to expect. ok, sandbags were a different kind of humor -- but rarely if ever done at the true extremes. sure, the best were competitive and pushing it. yet grades were still a form of _communication_
these daze, it seems something different. last summer i did a 25' teeny finger crack that was definitely 5.17 -- or so said i as none of my pals could tag it just then. which makes me the best climber in the world, no? yeah, right...
i miss grades as _communication_ -- not intimidation, or self-promotiation.
^,,^
[easy on the math, dudes. all that nonlinear stuff gives me _such_ a headache]
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Mar 30, 2009 - 08:00pm PT
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Man, its hard to agree that the elite are remotely close, even by a factor of two, to the weekend warriors or mortal dedicated guys like me.
I mean, there is such a huge difference between climbing the Nose in a week (or failing at it) for guys who have worked and worked even to get that far, and doing it in a day, or mostly free.
How much greater is it to free the Nose completely, or climb it in 2 1/2 hours?! and that's only taking us to the low 5.14 level to free the Nose.
Climbing is insane!
Peace
Karl
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Mar 30, 2009 - 09:42pm PT
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Nobody will ever onsight that thing, it is such a monster, the first time you get under it, wow, my neck is still sore.
plus, the route finding, good luck.
i think the shoes made the ratings jump by a quantum leap, then no new equipment for the body came along, so only talent could raise the bar.
i tried going up some sandstone in my sneakers, and i could not even get started on a route that i can almost walk up with the shoes.
i am working on these gloves with many tiny barbless fish hooks in them.
has anybody tried this yet?
could be dangerous.
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Broken
climber
Texas
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Mar 30, 2009 - 10:13pm PT
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Karl spoke about the possibility that the difference between the grades is not necessarily constant.
I've heard others argue the same; I think I recall reading a Randy Leavitt quote that said that the difference between 14b and 14c was ridiculous.
I think that this is a mistake brought on by the fact that the higher in the grading scale you get, the greater number of people there are who are reaching their limits.
A group of climbers who had to struggle for years to advance from 13c to 14a (and then couldn't reach 14b) would probably argue that the grades get harder to move through there.
Yet, if this is the case, why do we see relatively constant gaps between people's onsight limits and their redpoint limits? i.e. most folks are 3-5 letter grades apart, whether that is 11b/12b or 14a/15a. If the gap between grades grew as one advanced into the higher grades, then we would expect to see the gap between OS and RP to shrink. Since we don't see that, I'll venture to say that the steps between grades are at least relatively constant.
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Broken
climber
Texas
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Mar 30, 2009 - 10:51pm PT
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Curt, there are some very hard modern boulder problems that aren't endurance affairs. However, there might be something to your argument that the hardest single move hasn't advanced much. Of course, shorter problems might suffer even more from the subjective nature of grading.
Bernd Zangerl has several very short problems (3-4 moves) that are in the V14-V15 range. I'd guess they have a move in the V12-V13 range. In this interview (http://www.climbandmore.com/climbing,328,0,1,interviews.html); Zangerl discusses "some" V13's that he knows of with "two or three moves."
The problem Jade in Colorado is referred to as having a "V13 move", which would make it a contender, I believe, for hardest single move.
How hard was Holloway's hardest single move? Tough to say. His problem finally repeated (though not exactly as he did it?) was given hard V12. I don't know what the hardest single move on it was... but I would guess at least V11. (http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/triceasnice/);
If this is true, it means that the hardest single move has, theoretically, only advanced from V11ish to V13ish in 30 years.
So maybe not much, but enough to lead me to believe that there has been SOME "advancement".
And Ed, I like your attempt at projecting into the future. Regrettably, I don't have the skills to provide my own hard evidence based projection.
However, I do have two minor quibbles with your work:
1. I think there is a good comparison to be had in baseball, but I don't think it lies in career totals dependent on how one performs against other players (which varies based on rules of the time - higher mound, bigger parks, etc. Also, improvement of hitters and pitchers could cancel each other out). More topical for our discussion, I think:
Despite modern knowledge/training, the very hardest throwers do not appear to throw harder than they did 70 years ago - Bob Feller's fastball was measured with a motorcycle and stop action photos at 101-103mph. No one has thrown significantly harder (though quite a few have thrown in that range). Similarly, no one has hit a baseball significantly further than Mickey Mantle did (565 feet, I think) 50 years ago.
That being said, the average fastball is faster, just as the average hitter has more power. So the average (MLB average, that is) appears to have greatly benefitted from training, knowledge of mechanics, etc. But the top end hasn't changed much. That suggests, to me, that there are anatomical limits to throwing / hitting a baseball that we've pretty much already reached.
How close are we to that with finger strength in climbing?
2) Related to the previous point... Since we are searching for the human limit, I think we need to expand beyond Yosemite. For outliers like Gill and Holloway were doing extremely hard moves long ago (and who knows what Gill could have done if he'd had modern shoes and the motivation to try one problem 100 times). If you focus on the very hardest climbing done by anyone, anywhere, I think the curve would be much more conservative (after all, hard 5.11 was done in Dresden in the early 1900s, I believe?). And it seems as though Fred Rouhling might have really climbed 5.15 in 1995.
Of course, that would be more difficult data to compile...
Alternatively, I am curious what it would look like if we only included onsights (which levels the playing field a little bit across era's).
Anyway, I think we are closer to the limit than some think.
However, as Stannard suggests, grades will almost certainly continue to go up... Aside from positive personal feedback, there is a lot of money to be made in "progression", after all.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Mar 30, 2009 - 11:16pm PT
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Some fine contributions by Broken.
What has really bumped up the standards in climbing since the 60s has been changes in techniques, training and to some degree, equipment.
Guys like Harding and Robbins didn't train like fiends (Harding drank like one though)
The advent of sport climbing, hangdogging, rehearsing, and such, combined with modern techniques for training has made much, much more possible.
Combine that with the very real element of expanded vision and you have a sport where what was unimaginable 40 years ago happens all the time today. I think it's really true that you have to wrap your mind around a possibility to unlock future accomplishments.
Now that we have, by hard work, vision, and loose morals, unlocked dormant possibilities in hard climbing, big leaps in difficulty will be accomplished by mutant Mozart talents on some gifted person, particularly if they have the right angst and get dumped by the wrong woman.
Peace
Karl
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Broken
climber
Texas
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bump for climbing related thread...
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TYeary
climber
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Ed,
Has the increment of difficulty decreased along with the decrease in pace toward higher ratings? Just a thought, but I wonder how the difference between 5.8 and 5.9 compares with the difference between, say 5.13d and 5.14a? If the increment of difficulty decreases between ratings as the ratings get more difficult, then I would exspect the pace to reach climbs of higher and high degrees of difficulty to slow down as well.
Sorry if this seems a bit messy. Does this make sence?
Tony
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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The problem with rating climbs is the rating system is totally subjective. Every climb is unique. You can't break it down into, well the holds are so many milimeters wide, the holds are so far apart and the wall angles back at so many degrees. It comes down to folks figuring, well this climb seems about as hard as those other climbs, so it gets the same rating. When a route seems harder than anything else ever climbed, the ratings get bumped up.
Which isn't to say the rating system has no merrit, but it's an attempt to attach a numerical rating to something that doesn't have any formulas to come up with the number.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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bump
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MH2
climber
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The problem with rating climbs is the rating system is totally subjective.
Not totally.
Climbs can be ranked (ordered from easiest to hardest) objectively.
Take any large climbing competition. After the comp you should be able to rank the problems or routes from easiest to hardest according to which saw the most onsights to which saw the least.
Of course some routes may be easier for short or tall or other ways that individuals vary, but given enough people climbs can still be rated in an objective way, a way that depends only on whether you fall or not.
Whether we should care about that I'd rather not say.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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I wasn't sure what exactly was being plotted in Ed's graph (average FA-FFA rating or max rating?), so I made my own, using his data generously shared:
As others have noted, the YDS rating system is really ordinal instead of cardinal, so the linear scaling is arbitrary.
If anything, I'd say the graph indicates a relative lack of 5.12d climbs (an unpopular rating?).
I think you can see how climbs 5.10d-5.11 were limited to just 5 prior to 1971 (Perhaps, Twilight Zone, Slack Center, Serenity Crack, Swan Slab Aid Route), when EBs and the Stonemasters showed up.
Fires (sticky rubber) and Friends and helped make the jump to 5.12c and 5.13, but I'm not sure if the graph shows this (given the weird gap at 5.12d).
Trying to make a projection into the future seems difficult, based on the upper envelope of earliest climbs at each graph.
For one thing, any trend will be sensitive to ratings assigned to those climbs. Given that the Nose has been rated between 5.13c and 5.14b, and only a few people have freed it, the trend will be pretty noisy.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2009 - 02:05am PT
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I think I wrote out my methodology in a previous thread, basically I looked at the time dependence of route production at each grade and judged the grade "established" when roughly 10% or 20% of all the routes at that grade were completed... But your plot also shows the effect, that is, around the late 70's the exponential increase in grades with time rolls off... the increases in grade are much less frequent since then.
The shape could be anything, but if you hypothesize that the increase is limited by the supply of climbers capable of climbing very hard, then you would use a logistics curve, and the asymptote would be around 5.17d, the date would be something like 2040.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Thanks for explaining, Ed. I like that concept of "when the grade is well established." I'll try something like that - maybe the year when there are at least 5 climbs at that grade or higher.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Has anyone tried plotting difficulty against time for more mature climbing areas, such as Great Britain or Dresden? Oliver Perry-Smith was doing climbs in the 5.9 range in Dresden in the early 1900's. British climbing had that quaint idea that the leader must not fall, so its limits may have changed differently as attitudes toward protection changed.
If someone could point me toward sources for measuring difficulty of climbs in those areas, and a relatively new one with a different rating system, such as Australia, I'd be happy to start compiling the data and crunching the numbers (that is when I can find the time to stop doing that for money).
John
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Curt
Boulder climber
Gilbert, AZ
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"...Curt, there are some very hard modern boulder problems that aren't endurance affairs. However, there might be something to your argument that the hardest single move hasn't advanced much. Of course, shorter problems might suffer even more from the subjective nature of grading.
Bernd Zangerl has several very short problems (3-4 moves) that are in the V14-V15 range. I'd guess they have a move in the V12-V13 range. In this interview (http://www.climbandmore.com/climbing,328,0,1,interviews.html); Zangerl discusses "some" V13's that he knows of with "two or three moves."
The problem Jade in Colorado is referred to as having a "V13 move", which would make it a contender, I believe, for hardest single move.
How hard was Holloway's hardest single move? Tough to say. His problem finally repeated (though not exactly as he did it?) was given hard V12. I don't know what the hardest single move on it was... but I would guess at least V11. (http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/triceasnice/);
If this is true, it means that the hardest single move has, theoretically, only advanced from V11ish to V13ish in 30 years.
So maybe not much, but enough to lead me to believe that there has been SOME "advancement"...."
Could be, but I suspect if "AHR" or "Meathook" were repeated as Holloway originally did them, their ratings would be higher. By Holloway's own admission, "Slapshot" was his hardest problem--and it will likely never see a repeat. Of course (also by Holloway's own admission) this is the only one of his "Big Three" problems that was height dependent.
I'm certainly willing to agree that modern training methods have allowed more boulderers to pull single moves that are perhaps as hard as those done by Holloway back in the day, but I still doubt that many individual moves ever done on rock are truly harder.
Curt
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Here's a modified graph showing my definition of the year at which each grade was first established:
My way to explain the pattern of growth in established ratings is in terms of shoe technology, people, guidebooks, and training methods, but these might be driven by the number of active climbers as Ed suggested with his logistic growth curve. Maybe best would be to look at the climbs and people involved as each grade was established, but I'll try for a plainer story for now.
Here's my rather anectdotal explanation for periods when standards rose rapidly (2 years or less between grade increases):
 1962-64 (5.10a-10c) - Kronhofers, crome-moly pitons, Frank Sacherer, 1964 Roper guidebook, and the group synergy in Camp 4 as El Cap was tamed in the "golden age".
1971-76 (5.11a-12b) - EBs, the Stonemasters, first topo guidebooks (1974 Nicol, 1976 Meyers).
1986-88 (5.12d-13b) - establishment of sport climbing training, 1987 Meyers-Reid guidebook.
With recent grade increases, I don't see a levelling off, but a steady slow increase, perhaps due to the current group of sponsored full-time climbers.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2009 - 10:20am PT
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Thanks Clint... how the curve is interpreted, of course, is the issue. And my guess is that it's all good fun to think of how to interpret it.
Eric Horst in his book How to Climb 5.12 says that most people could climb at 5.12 if they applied standard training techniques. It is interesting that the inflection point on your plot (and mine) is around 5.12, which may be a hint that the "limits" model of climbing difficulty is operant.
But I won't press my case any more. Time will tell. When we have a discussion of limits here I always get the feeling that my point of view is limiting and negative, but I actually see it in the opposite, that by knowing the limitations it better prepares us to confront it.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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First, we can't simply assume that the limits to free climbing in Yosemite are the same as the limits to free climbing. There are way too many variables, and changes in preferred types of climb are one of the things we've seen correlated with periodic leaps in technical difficulty.
Second, I find it highly doubtful that the physical or mental challenges of training are closely correlated-- if they correlate at all --with physical limits to human athletic performance in climbing or any other sport I can think of. Martial athletes in antiquity trained at least as many hours (in environments far more "competitive," hehe), as modern athletes, yet we've seen substantial improvements in measurable performance.
Third, I can't imagine that we will quantify "climbing" as easily as we may certain track and field events, especially sprinting and long jump.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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"'...Curt, there are some very hard modern boulder problems that aren't endurance affairs. . . .How hard was Holloway's hardest single move? . . . I would guess at least V11.
If this is true, it means that the hardest single move has, theoretically, only advanced from V11ish to V13ish in 30 years.'
Could be, but I suspect if "AHR" or "Meathook" were repeated as Holloway originally did them, their ratings would be higher. By Holloway's own admission, "Slapshot" was his hardest problem--and it will likely never see a repeat. Of course (also by Holloway's own admission) this is the only one of his "Big Three" problems that was height dependent.
I'm certainly willing to agree that modern training methods have allowed more boulderers to pull single moves that are perhaps as hard as those done by Holloway back in the day, but I still doubt that many individual moves ever done on rock are truly harder."
Maybe, but I'm also willing to suggest that we don't know because we don't really have a proper metric for measuring such things. The real problem with individual moves (and we don't even have a single, universally accepted definition for what constitutes a "move") is that they are going to be so specific for body types. And climbing-- even bouldering--is still at a stage in which very different body types are performing at comparable levels.
You don't see that in Olympic sports. We haven't even reached the point at which climbing is so advanced that it demands a specific body type. (We may be getting there for comp plastic climbing, but that could also be an artifact of route setting.)
We've only had real climbing gyms for what, 25 years? And systematic training and coaching for youth age groups for what, 15? 20 at the outside? And mostly at fairly amateurish levels in comparison with the capital and expertise dumped into, say, football or baseball.
I don't believe that we can use data from primarily amateur, hobbyist epochs as a data set for projecting physical limits to a future in which climbing may (or may not be) radically professionalized.
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