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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Bouldering circuits at arapiles 6-Apr-2008 At 5:58:00 AM mankrambler

Message

Wouldn't this be good?!

....a group of experienced local climbers/guide book authors could get together and carefully plan out a sequence of problems, moving from boulder to boulder, where all problems in a "circuit" are around the same grade. Each problem is located near the previous one; these circuits could move through the whole central gully region.

The model is Fontainbleau, where the circuits make the whole place MUCH better than it would be without them. Note that this system is very different to the three easy/medium/hard grading system suggested in the Arapiles boulder grade topics, becuase problems in a circuit are very close in grade to one another. The trad climbers in the Peak district UK, have also recently started to do this for the superb bouldering found at the base of their cliffs.

e.g. at Font, my initial guestimations of approximate Ewbank gradings for the colour coded circuits would be:
white: 10-13
yellow: 14-17
blue: 18-21
red: 21-24
(harder problems are not part of circuits, and are given bouldering grades)
(I realize that other colours exist at font too)

It may not be necessary to paint numbers on the boulders, if the guide book is good enough.