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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

grade compression 18-Jun-2005 At 6:12:27 PM Onsight

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Here's a good article re top end grading by Steve McClure from last year:
http://www.planetfear.com/article_detail.asp?a_id=110
He says…
>The problem with climbing at the cutting edge is that you don't really know how hard it is, except a bit harder than the last route you did. Or maybe it's miles harder, but is that a full grade, or 2 grades or just half a grade? You could compare by going on another cutting edge route, but knowing how long it takes to do these things the last thing you want to do is spend half you life on someone else's route half way round the world that probably won't suit you anyway! Not to worry, you won't go to jail for getting it wrong, just a bit of slap for over-grading especially if it's in Britain. One man's 9a will be another's 8c+ or 9a+. This makes for great arguments, which is of course, why grades were invented in the first place.