Most downgraded and upgraded routes.

Here's to good ratings, Glowering.

I m surprised no one mentionned Akira...

Fabien Mwrote:

I m surprised no one mentionned Akira...

Where is that route at? I searched in on here and there are a few with that name. which one are you referring to, and could you give us the backstory?

Shaun Johnsonwrote:

Where is that route at? I searched in on here and there are a few with that name. which one are you referring to, and could you give us the backstory?

This video is great, 

Shaun Johnsonwrote:

Where is that route at? I searched in on here and there are a few with that name. which one are you referring to, and could you give us the backstory?

Of course, here it is: https://www.planetmountain.com/en/news/climbing/fred-rouhling-akira-finally-repeated-after-25-years-sebastien-bouin-lucien-martinez.html

It was a pretty big deal back in the day when 9b was proposed (9a was barely starting to exist...)

Anything at Granite Mt mid 80's and older! Original grades.

Kris Hampton just did a good podcast on Akira

Man that 5.6 pitch off the ledge on Royal Arches is at least 5.8....dagburn sandbaggery.

I think they were trying to bag Ricardo Cassin. But he stood on a pin and sent.

inb4 who in tarnation is Ricardo Cassin?

Dang whippersnappers!

And YES I humped the rotten log!

Figure it out!

bruce lellawrote:

Anything at Granite Mt mid 80's and older! Original grades.

I assume you mean the Granite Mountain near Prescott, Arizona? If so, I very much agree.

Colonel Mustardwrote:

By virtue of a wide margin of consensus grade voting for The Dangler being aligned against him, it would appear that Mountain Project users have collectively determined one Nick Budka to be a sand bagger. Better luck next time, Nick, the line between fighting grade creep and ego spraying is indeed thin and treacherous. Thank you, and good night.

I will never concede that calling the dangler 5.8+ is ego spraying any more than suggesting any grade is ego spraying. It is just a really weird style. If you have a 15’ route that is 5.8 jugs the whole way, can it be called 5.10? I don’t think so. Doublissima, tetonia, lost city crack and fickle fingers aren’t just one letter harder.  Grades are 100% an ego game if it matters to you (which it seems to, this thread exists and we are here). care about them, and report them as you like, if you think its 5.10, it was a 5.10 level achievement to you (kinda like how creek climbers might suck at a particular size or style so much that 5.11 is an epic but send 5.13 in another) But suggesting it brags about it being a 5.10 send and opens it up to my downgrading sandbaggery, if you gonna play the ego game, play by the rules. That said, hold your achievements in your heart as significantly as you want to, I’m just a keyboard warrior at the moment, and the best climber is the one who is having the most fun, regardless of what they are climbing and the grade.

Edit: i just checked people’s opinions, the same number of folks suggesting 5.11 as 5.8 and someone giving this  pg13 for gear???? Holy smokes. Yeah, I’m not gonna trust the community consensus off mtnproj with takes that extreme from some folks, especially with a historic consensus at 5.8+. maybe if you are climbing a historic trad moderate in a historic climbing area like the gunks or dacks, expect to be humbled. 

Nick Budkawrote:

maybe if you are climbing a historic trad moderate in a historic climbing area like the gunks or dacks, expect to be humbled. 

So true. I have noticed this many time. Some People call it "grade creep." 

I always take a few things into consideration. 

1) how old is the route? Almost guarantied that an older route will be harder for the grade than a new route.

2) Historic areas tend to be more stiff. This probably has a lot to do with 5.10 being considered the hardest climbs in the world, during the creation of the classic areas.

3) Rock type also plays a big role. I personally found that granite areas have stiff grades.

4) From traveling a lot I have noticed that different regions have a noticeable difference in grading. For example I lived in Leavenworth and would have to project the same grades I could onsight at places like Red Rocks. (Leavenworth plays into numbers 1-3.

Artem Vee wrote:

Grades aren’t real and should be generally ignored 

Terrible take and should be ignored. It's actually wild how closely grades can prepare us for the workload ahead of us, and what kind of holds/technique might be required. In a world without grades, people wouldn't know what route to get on, and serve a useful function, despite how rowdy the climbing world can get (+/- a few grades at most). People complain about grades not being what they wanted in situations where it's still in the ballpark, but are experiencing either an ego bump or humble pie. 

To answer OP's question, they have been inflating Buster Brown for years so nobody retroactively loses their first thirteen. Easy stuff compared to routes of lesser grade on the same cliff. 

Artem Vee wrote:

I used to share this perspective, but then I’ve spent my time climbing routes that couldn’t be captured by a detailed grade - i.e. beyond simple dry rock routes at a single crag or a collection of crags that share the same character.

I can think of so many routes that share the same highly specific grade that are wildly different in terms of experience and difficulty in between the type of rock, the crag, the routes near it, how polished is it, who is the person who put it up, how chossy is the rock/ice/snice, what type of pro it takes, how heavy is the typical required kit, what is the weather of the area, how much sun does it get, how sustained are the moves on the pitch, how sustained is the wall, how windy is it usually, what is the overall character of the wall in question, what is the time of year it’s climbed, what is the style of climbing, what is the approach like, what is the descent like, etc etc etc. Grades are often inconsistent in just a single area - and totally lose touch with reality when we try to apply them globally across too many variables. It will never be an exact science, or anything close to that.

I feel like the Brits and South Americans have it the most right - keep it as a broad general suggestion and be ready for the unexpected… the more specific grades get the more bullshit they tend to be imo. You could probably split grades into ten categories or less and honestly have that be good enough (i.e. - telling the climber that it’s generally “this” hard, but YMMV). 

Not worth getting highly invested into them - they tend to be limiting and misleading when they are treated as something exact, in my experience - rather than being helpful. Though they are an endless source of entertainment/drama. I certainly love sandbagging things into the realm of unreasonableness as much as anybody else. But treating grades as some kind of objective universal truth that applies across all routes is a big mistake too many climbers will make time and time again…

Then why didn't you say that instead of "Grades aren't real and should generally be ignored?" After all, you're right - nobody would disagree that there are specific examples where "10 pitch 5.11b Grade III" is meaningless without broader context of location, the hike difficulty, how remote, rock/ice quality, etc. But saying "generally should be ignored" means ignore the 5.10b on a single-pitch route on a day cragging, that exemplifies 90% of climbing. Imagine showing up to the crag and somebody says "Okay we have 10 hard routes, 5 easy and 8 moderate", what would you get on first? Grades act as a guide of what one should climb, and how they might be progressing.  

José Flovinwrote:

Then why didn't you say that instead of "Grades aren't real and should generally be ignored?" After all, you're right - nobody would disagree that there are specific examples where "10 pitch 5.11b Grade III" is meaningless without broader context of location, the hike difficulty, how remote, rock/ice quality, etc. But saying "generally should be ignored" means ignore the 5.10b on a single-pitch route on a day cragging, that exemplifies 90% of climbing. Imagine showing up to the crag and somebody says "Okay we have 10 hard routes, 5 easy and 8 moderate", what would you get on first? Grades act as a guide of what one should climb, and how they might be progressing.  

Grades in YDS, font, v grades and French are an ego game (they are essentially the same scale), but there is utility. They aren’t meaningless but they don’t mean anything if you aren’t having a good time or a meaningful experience and don’t correlate to significance of achievement necessarily, just a rough guide to whether you are good enough to do it. Now me calling grades an ego game isn’t saying the ego game is bad, it is a ton of fun. But it is a game and there are rules, be a good sport. Purest experience on a route is to climb onsite with no knowledge of or care for grades, and just enjoy the climbing and no need to brag, the memory is yours forever. But grinding something out for a while and suggesting a high grade when its done is a ton of fun and fulfilling, and worthy of letting people know, you deserve to stroke your ego a bit after doing something that hard. And all upgrades and downgrades are is people saying you ought to have a bigger ego or a smaller one, thats basically the rules of the game. Or at least how I see it. 

Meant to get back to this sooner..... up thread....

Nick Budka wrote:
The dangler is totally 5.8 all day long,...

I responded:

Marc801 C wrote:
 

Utter nonsense; quit spraying.

To which...

Nick Budkawrote:

Nah, climb it again. Hella jugs, 3 pieces of gear protects it fine for the second after your feet leave the ground, modern times is way harder at 5.8+. For that matter so is Arrow.

Gear doesn't determine difficulty. The size of holds is only part of the equation. I've never encountered a 5.8 anywhere in the country that requires multiple left-foot heel hooks followed by dropping the feet and switching to a right-foot heel hook for a few more moves then a beached whale move or whatever it is to get onto the ledge. And to suggest that Arrow is more difficult is ridiculous.

Marc801 Cwrote:

Gear doesn't determine difficulty. The size of holds is only part of the equation. I've never encountered a 5.8 anywhere in the country that requires multiple left-foot heel hooks followed by dropping the feet and switching to a right-foot heel hook for a few more moves then a beached whale move or whatever it is to get onto the ledge. And to suggest that Arrow is more difficult is ridiculous.

If you’re using that beta, it’s obviously going to feel harder. The better beta is to bathang and slowly shuffle your feet over. If you are wearing pants, it’s 5.9. If you are soloing it butt naked on a December night (which everyone knows is sending conditions), it feels around 5.8. 

Marc801 Cwrote:

Meant to get back to this sooner..... up thread....

I responded:

To which...

Gear doesn't determine difficulty. The size of holds is only part of the equation. I've never encountered a 5.8 anywhere in the country that requires multiple left-foot heel hooks followed by dropping the feet and switching to a right-foot heel hook for a few more moves then a beached whale move or whatever it is to get onto the ledge. And to suggest that Arrow is more difficult is ridiculous.

Seconded; yeah the dangler might feel easy or in a particular style but we can’t pretend good holds make it automatically 5.8. Just because the beta is straight forward doesn’t make it 5.8. The easiest measure to instruct on how steepness affects difficulty: Burden of Dreams, the hardest boulder problem in the world, is a V2 when its replica is set to plum vertical. 

Long Rangerwrote:

The infamous James Pearson E12 to E9 of Walk of Life. Really tarnished Pearson's climbing career. Too bad, he seems like a really solid guy who can climb really really hard. He doesn't even grade his cutting edge trad climbs anymore, which is a pity, as he's at the top of his game.

I just watched a wide boyz video where Tom (who recently climbed WOL) mentions it being more like E10 and Dave's E9 rating being unreasonably harsh to bite back at James. Still a massive downgrade.

Eshan Kingwrote:

I just watched a wide boyz video where Tom (who recently climbed WOL) mentions it being more like E10 and Dave's E9 rating being unreasonably harsh to bite back at James. Still a massive downgrade.

It's too bad climbing grades become almost this political thing, tho I don't feel Dave was acting personally. It's more likely that Dave was strong AF at the time. To wit: not many of Dave's own FA's have been repeated, 'cause who does scary E10/E11 pitches in the middle of Ben Nevis?

Marc801 Cwrote:

Meant to get back to this sooner..... up thread....

I responded:

To which...

Gear doesn't determine difficulty. The size of holds is only part of the equation. I've never encountered a 5.8 anywhere in the country that requires multiple left-foot heel hooks followed by dropping the feet and switching to a right-foot heel hook for a few more moves then a beached whale move or whatever it is to get onto the ledge. And to suggest that Arrow is more difficult is ridiculous.

Imo, the move on arrow is harder than any move on the dangler. You really gotta trust that glassy crimp and some pretty thin feet. Different styles for sure but I’m in general better at vert/slab than steep jugs. If you compare the dangler to any soft 10a, its easier by a lot. if you just relax on it, it really should feel easy. Hella jugs, just breathe, no bad holds, no reason to be tense, no reason to think its harder than 5.9 if you just relax, which is the crux in such a dramatic position. There is pretty much no technique required aside from breathing and some core strength to float across that climb. I thought Jean at 5.9+ was way harder (although it was kinda hot when I did it), and BBB was a bit harder, but that one gets soft 5.9 in my book. And the classic 5.10 b’s in the area?  Woa, those are like 5.12 if the dangler was 5.10a, like I said before, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that doublissima is just one letter harder. the fastest gun at pokeomoonshine at 10a is easily 2 grades harder on every pitch and sustained, and that was originally a 5.9+ sandbag. If you can’t tell, I will die on this hill, I don’t think anyone who just sends the dangler has climbed gunks 5.10, nowhere near as impressive as doing modern times onsite and most people are sticking with 8+ on that one. Btw, I am 5’6” if you think I’m just some reachy sandbagger. May it be the hardest 5.8+ in the gunks? Your call, I thought modern times was harder and I’m not gonna give that an upgrade. Both are definitely stiff for 5.8, hence the +. But at this point it just seems we are trolling eachother. I can concur that if you climb the dangler poorly, never breathe, take your whole double rack up it, and have your arms and back tense the whole time, it probably feels like 5.11. All errors 5.8, 5.9 and 5.10- climbers in the gunks are likely to make.