Difficulty ratings in outdoor rock-climbing Common across all types of climbing are the following features of grades:
A subjective difficulty assessment of the climb, by the first person to climb it, is used for them to “propose” a grade.
Other people to manage the same climb may suggest a different grade. Often the grade of a climb will not be agreed upon in the community until several ascents have been made.
Climbing guidebooks publish grades, typically based on the authors’ opinion of current consensus, though some online platforms where people can vote on grades exist.
Grades can change even after a consensus has appeared stable. This might be due to a hold breaking, however it may also be due to a new sequence being discovered.
Grades tend to approach a single stable point, even though body shape and size (particularly height and armspam) can make a large difference to difficulty.
There are many different grading systems for different types of climb, a good overview is here. Some differences of interest:
While most systems grade the overall difficulty of the entire climb, British trad climbs have two grades, niether of which purely map to overall difficulty. The first describes a combination of overall difficulty and safety (so an unsafe, but easy climb, may have a higher rating than a safe), the second describes the difficulty only of the hardest move or short sequence (which can be very different from the overall difficulty, as endurance is a factor).
Aid climbs, which allow climbers to use ropes to aid their movement rather than only for protection, are graded seperately. However other technology is not considered “aid”. In particular, climbing grades have steadily increased over time, at least in part due to development of better shoe technology. More recently, the development of rubberised kneepads has lead to several notable downgrades of hard boulders and routes, as the kneepads make much longer rests possible.
I think climbing grading is interesting as the grades emerge out of a complex set of social interactions, and despite most climbers frequently saying things like “grades are subjective”, and “grades don’t really matter”, they in general remain remarkably stable, and important to many climbers.
Difficulty ratings in outdoor rock-climbing
Common across all types of climbing are the following features of grades:
A subjective difficulty assessment of the climb, by the first person to climb it, is used for them to “propose” a grade.
Other people to manage the same climb may suggest a different grade. Often the grade of a climb will not be agreed upon in the community until several ascents have been made.
Climbing guidebooks publish grades, typically based on the authors’ opinion of current consensus, though some online platforms where people can vote on grades exist.
Grades can change even after a consensus has appeared stable. This might be due to a hold breaking, however it may also be due to a new sequence being discovered.
Grades tend to approach a single stable point, even though body shape and size (particularly height and armspam) can make a large difference to difficulty.
There are many different grading systems for different types of climb, a good overview is here. Some differences of interest:
While most systems grade the overall difficulty of the entire climb, British trad climbs have two grades, niether of which purely map to overall difficulty. The first describes a combination of overall difficulty and safety (so an unsafe, but easy climb, may have a higher rating than a safe), the second describes the difficulty only of the hardest move or short sequence (which can be very different from the overall difficulty, as endurance is a factor).
Aid climbs, which allow climbers to use ropes to aid their movement rather than only for protection, are graded seperately. However other technology is not considered “aid”. In particular, climbing grades have steadily increased over time, at least in part due to development of better shoe technology. More recently, the development of rubberised kneepads has lead to several notable downgrades of hard boulders and routes, as the kneepads make much longer rests possible.
I think climbing grading is interesting as the grades emerge out of a complex set of social interactions, and despite most climbers frequently saying things like “grades are subjective”, and “grades don’t really matter”, they in general remain remarkably stable, and important to many climbers.