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General Climbing Discussion

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Bouldering Grades 15-Oct-2007 At 12:42:18 PM Stuey

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Its kinda tough applying either Font or V grades to the stuff in the cave as it is quite unique and I don't reckon theres many other places in the world where you'd find a 72 move, 35m 'boulder problem'.

In Font grades they use french sport grades for traverses. For example Atomic Playboy at Buthiers is 8a+ one way and 8b+ if you do it to the finish and back again. Straight up Font grades represent the hardest moves found on the problem.

In V Grades are pretty much the same - Jade, at V15 and maybe the current standard for the grade would have a move on it much harder than and of the individual moves on TWOL but it gets a lower grade.

Another example is the Staminaband/Pump Up The Power link at Raven Tor (which Ben Moon tries to do in One Summer) its a link up of a many of moves and gets a bit high to boulder so after the initial traverse wearing a harness you then clip into a rope for the final section and its graded sport 8C+ or 34.

Bouldering has always been about the hardest individual moves and the grading systems are supposed to represent this. You can't do the hardest possible moves if you're already knackered when you get to them (I think Ben Moon or Jerry Moffat says this in one of the vids when asked why they like bouldering so much). When I was back in the UK there were murmors from visitors that some of the Cave problems were a bit 'soft' compared to similarly V graded straight ups because they tended to be power endurance problems rather than pure strength problems. I think because of the uniqueness of the Cave neither system can really be applied to the longer problems a route grade gives a better indication of the difficulties.

Anyway, a bit of a long winded waffle and just my two penneths worth.