Why is there a separate bouldering scale?

I've asked a lot of climbers this, and no one has been able to explain it to me.  I get non-answers like, "because they're different sports."

I've climbed on routes that are (say) 5.8 to a roof, then 5.12a to pull the roof.  The route is graded 5.12a.  But if the roof itself were close to the ground, this would be a V4 boulder problem.  And in each case, you have to give it a YDS grade (for the route) or a V-grade (for the boulder problem).  So it seems like the determining factor is that 50' of 5.8 before the roof?  That really changes things?

Is it the length that determines whether something gets a V-grade or a YDS-grade?  What about long boulder problems like The Wheel of Life?  This is given V15, but has over 60 moves which is longer than a lot of sport routes that have a YDS grade.

I'm not trying to argue a point here... I'm genuinely curious as to why we need two scales?  I'm not a good enough boulderer to know how it differs from route climbing, so I'm hoping someone here who does a lot of both can put into words how the difference necessitates two difficulty scales.  Maybe an example of a boulder problem that could never have a YDS rating?

It's not length. It's whether it's typically climbed roped or unroped. There's obviously some overlap and gray area. You could very well give either grade to both, although it seems more reasonable to me to give YDS grades to boulders rather than vice versa. They seem pretty distinct to me though as disciplines, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to have multiple grading scales for them. 

You might consider trying to ask John Sherman, the inventor of the V grading scale. A lot of old boulders were graded with route grades. I seem to remember hearing someone talking about the problems on the Birthday Boulder in Bishop being 5.10's back in the day before Sherman rolled though and started giving them V grades.

A lot of people boulder quite hard relative to their sport climbing grades, simply because they don't rope up very often. So in a practical, communicative sense it seems reasonable to have different grades since it automatically specifies what someone is talking about, roped versus unroped. Otherwise someone could talk about a 5.13a boulder (V6) versus a 5.13a rope climb which are often times two very different things.

Sure I can pull v4 right off the ground easily, but a v4 crux 60 feet up after I'm already pumped and worried if that last piece is really bomber...thats a totally different game.

This answers your question

http://peripheralscrutiny.blogspot.com/2011/06/landscape-new-look-at-route-grades.html?m=1

The real question is why trad is on the same grade scale as sport...

Ted Pinson wrote: The real question is why trad is on the same grade scale as sport...

That's definitely not a real question.

My friend has climbed multi V8s but has fallen trying to lead a 60ft 5.10b. So it is a different style of climbing. All about long moderate endurance with 1 crux move vs pulling 1-2 crux moves and being done most of the time.

Ted Pinson wrote: The real question is why trad is on the same grade scale as sport...

IIUC, in the UK, sport routes are given french grades.

I think there would be less trad hostility towards sport climbing if we had done the same here in the US.

And for US bouldering grades, it's worth listening to the latest Power Company podcast.

http://www.powercompanyclimbing.com/blog/2018/5/23/episode-94-bouldering-through-a-different-lens-with-john-sherman

V grades were invented to sell the first Hueco guidebook.

Mark E Dixon wrote:

IIUC, in the UK, sport routes are given french grades.

I think there would be less trad hostility towards sport climbing if we had done the same here in the US.

And for US bouldering grades, it's worth listening to the latest Power Company podcast.

http://www.powercompanyclimbing.com/blog/2018/5/23/episode-94-bouldering-through-a-different-lens-with-john-sherman

V grades were invented to sell the first Hueco guidebook.

Technically v grades were invented because "Fuck John Gill".

(To be fair, this paraphrase is in spirit. As far as I know, Sherman never actually said it in so many words. Well, never in so few words, in publication...)

I would claim that most bouldering is closer to a high-end sport route than it is to (say) an upside-down offwidth trad route.  

Yet the boulder problem has its own grading system, but the sport route uses the same scale as the upside-down offwidth.

Bouldering uses a different grading scale  because boulder problems are generally much shorter than routes. It's that simple. Offwidth vs sport vs trad really has absolutely nothing to do with it. One handy use of bouldering grades is that subsections of a route can be graded. This makes the relationship between route and boulder grades a little complex, but allows climbers to accurately describe the difficulty of crux sections on routes. For example that ridiculous Ondra 5.15d is approximately 40 ft of 13d into a V15 boulder problem. This is followed by three more boulder problems at V13, V9, and V5.

There would simply be no way to describe that route so clearly without the two scales. The same is true of less superhuman routes, as the chart from the linked blog post shows. The relationship is very direct for short routes, but not so much for longer ones.

Ted Pinson wrote: The real question is why trad is on the same grade scale as sport...

It’s common for people to climb at different levels on slab vs vertical crimpy routes vs steep juggy  routes within sport climbing and most people are able to accept that climbing say 5.11 in one style doesn’t mean you can climb 5.11 in all styles. I don’t feel that trad climbing is any different. 

At one point I think I would have felt differently about this, but as I have started to focus on climbing harder grades (mainly on sport) the gap has seemed to narrow between trad and sport.

will ar wrote:

It’s common for people to climb at different levels on slab vs vertical crimpy routes vs steep juggy  routes within sport climbing and most people are able to accept that climbing say 5.11 in one style doesn’t mean you can climb 5.11 in all styles. I don’t feel that trad climbing is any different. 

At one point I think I would have felt differently about this, but as I have started to focus on climbing harder grades (mainly on sport) the gap has seemed to narrow between trad and sport.

Couldn’t this logic apply to bouldering as well?

Top rope is the purest form of climbing. Rarely is there any mental fear of a fall while top roping.
Bouldering is probably second purest form. Alot more common to have some mental fear of falling on routes.
Sport next.
Trad after that.
Free soloing after that.

Alexander Blum wrote: Bouldering uses a different grading scale  because boulder problems are generally much shorter than routes. It's that simple. Offwidth vs sport vs trad really has absolutely nothing to do with it. One handy use of bouldering grades is that subsections of a route can be graded. This makes the relationship between route and boulder grades a little complex, but allows climbers to accurately describe the difficulty of crux sections on routes. For example that ridiculous Ondra 5.15d is approximately 40 ft of 13d into a V15 boulder problem. This is followed by three more boulder problems at V13, V9, and V5.

There would simply be no way to describe that route so clearly without the two scales. The same is true of less superhuman routes, as the chart from the linked blog post shows. The relationship is very direct for short routes, but not so much for longer ones.

I agree with the first part: that the different scale is capturing the difference between short boulder problems (which typically do not have much of an endurance requirement) and longer roped routes.  But another respondent above said it was not about length, so opinions do vary.

And when I was a kid, you'd see a topo saying "5.12 move --->" on it, indicating that there was a single hard move.  These days maybe it would say "V5 move--->" instead, but I'm not sure what the difference is?!

-----
Me answering my own question:

I think boulder problems often have very tricky highly-technical beta (at least if they're near your limit) and feel like puzzles (ergo the word "problem").  And they're situated near the ground, allowing for hundreds of attempts without too much pain.  This often feels a lot like a different sport altogether from roped climbing where the main challenge is often just holding on for the ride.

That means when a highly beta-dependent technical crux appears on a route, people will often rate it with a V-grade because it "feels like a boulder problem."

-----

I'm not sure that necessitates a separate grade, but I think maybe that's why it feels like a different sport.  But given that, a lot of climbing variants feel like a different sport (trad, cracks, slab, etc) because they require vastly different techniques.

ViperScale . wrote: Top rope is the purest form of climbing. Rarely is there any mental fear of a fall while top roping.
Bouldering is probably second purest form. Alot more common to have some mental fear of falling on routes.
Sport next.
Trad after that.
Free soloing after that.

Viper: what do you mean by "purest form?"  And how does free-soloing rank as the least pure form?!  I'm missing something...

Edit: Oh, I think you mean "pure" as in "free from fear and able to focus on climbing"?

John RB wrote:

I agree with the first part: that the different scale is capturing the difference between short boulder problems (which typically do not have much of an endurance requirement) and longer roped routes.  But another respondent above said it was not about length, so opinions do vary.

The other poster is not correct. There are exceptions that are easy enough to point out, like Wheel of Life or Witness the Fitness - but that boulder problem could be accurately graded using the YDS scale if you wanted to. Why would "rope vs no rope" affect it?

And when I was a kid, you'd see a topo saying "5.12 move --->" on it, indicating that there was a single hard move.  These days maybe it would say "V5 move--->" instead, but I'm not sure what the difference is?!
-----

The difference is that the upward march of grades and the increased commonality of power endurance routes has changed the way grades are used. There are 5.12d routes where the hardest move is V6, and 5.14c routes where the hardest move is V6. So a topo of Southern Smoke (14c) would just say "5.12 move" over and over - this clearly breaks down as a descriptive system.

Me answering my own question:
I think boulder problems often have very tricky highly-technical beta (at least if they're near your limit) and feel like puzzles (ergo the word "problem").  And they're situated near the ground, allowing for hundreds of attempts without too much pain.  This often feels a lot like a different sport altogether from roped climbing where the main challenge is often just holding on for the ride.

That means when a highly beta-dependent technical crux appears on a route, people will often rate it with a V-grade because it "feels like a boulder problem."
-----
I'm not sure that necessitates a separate grade, but I think maybe that's why it feels like a different sport.  But given that, a lot of climbing variants feel like a different sport (trad, cracks, slab, etc) because they require vastly different techniques.

Difficult routes also have highly technical beta. The cruxes on hard routes feel like boulder problems because they are boulder problems. The different grading system isn't necessary per se, it's just extremely useful. We have one grading system for short sequences of moves, and one system for longer sequences of moves. Using them together allows for detailed description of harder routes.

Alexander Stathis wrote: It's not length. It's whether it's typically climbed roped or unroped.

Seconded. Case in point: there's a high ball V5 John Gill boulder problem on Castle Rock in Boulder Canyon. It's a finger crack though and could be easily protected. The guidebook in fact lists the same route twice, once in the bouldering section, and again in the trad/sport roped climbing section. In the latter it gets a 5.12a. It's the exact same route. I'd venture to say there's no reason for two different systems. 

Ted Pinson wrote:

Couldn’t this logic apply to bouldering as well?

In theory yes, and I believe they rate boulder problems this way in some parts of Europe. If viewing from the prospective of a roped climber who sometimes boulders in the gym it might seem pretty reasonable. If you boulder a lot outside maybe not so much. People love to point out the outlier boulder problem that has more moves than some routes, but a power endurance 12a vs a typical v5 is a much bigger difference than 12a on bolts vs gear

John RB wrote:

Viper: what do you mean by "purest form?"  And how does free-soloing rank as the least pure form?!  I'm missing something...

Edit: Oh, I think you mean "pure" as in "free from fear and able to focus on climbing"?

Top roping is basically just can you physically climb something. There is the least amount of mental aspect to it. All the other forms have fear or placing protection that make it harder to climb than just can you physically make the move. The most difficult climb can be done on top rope. If you can't climb it on top rope you can't free solo or lead climb it.

When I started climbing, my local bouldering area had problems rated with the YDS up to 5.11d, then the Gill scale above that. Getting a B1 back in the day felt like a real accomplishment. B2 probably meant everyone knew your name... No one did the B2+'s. And only Yabo had done the B3's.

There's an obvious limitation to the scale as it stood back in those days (that guidebook was from 1992, IIRC). Obviously, what happened with the YDS after people started climbing harder than 5.9 was going to happen to bouldering, and it was going to happen soon.

John Sherman invented the V Scale, not to sell books, but because his publisher demanded a rating system for the problems in the guidebook. The V Scale grew from a joke rating system that Verm and his friends used to rate their FAs. It was the first rating system created to be open-ended, a key feature for a sport like bouldering. The YDS was originally meant to end with 5.9. The V-Scale had no end. As one can see from the history of bouldering over the past 50 years, the top keeps getting pushed off of the rating scale, so having an open-ended rating system is a good thing.

So, blame Organic Big Pads (and their Cordless forebears), Climb On skin salve, training, and social media. V17 just sounds better than 5.16, doesn't it?