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General Climbing Discussion

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Sport grades 'higher' than trad? 4-Nov-2011 At 2:58:42 PM Andrew_M

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On 4/11/2011 mikllaw wrote:
>I find that most trad routes are not only harder to climb than the same
>grade sportas route, they often have hadrer moves (at least in the 18 to
>22 zone)

Mikl, interesting to hear you say this - I've had a few discussions with folks about exactly this recently and the gradings of some of your recent sport creations have been the main subject.

High teens/(really) low 20s is roughly my leading zone and it's really noticeable that in NSW at least, there's a big discrepancy between old school trad grades and newer sport grades. A lot of sport climbs are sometimes several grades easier than the local trad climbs with an equivalent grade....even if the trad line has been put up recently.

Just one example that pops into my head is Bunny Bucket Buttress - headwall pitches would be 13 or 14 instead of 18 (compare gr 18 hand traverse to the gr 14, but harder, traverse on Ivory Tower at Kangaroo corner). The lower pitches might be 16/17 for a couple of moves if they were at piddington or the wolgan. Don't get me wrong...had a great day and glad it was easier that I expected but just kinda curious, when you graded it how did you arrive at the numbers? Did you put a big weight on exposure? Shouldn't the grade go down if there's no gear to place? etc