Bouldering Grade discernment

BOULDER GRADE ONLY

If you are being honest with yourself, how many levels could you break a grading scale into accurately? Personally, I don’t think I could really  break things down into more than about 6-7 categories with any real confidence.

For example:

For a V10 climber, can you really tell the difference between V2 and V4.

For a V6 climber, can you honestly tell the difference between V0 and V1?

Reference scale:

Piss Easy

Easy

Easy but need to engage a little

Engaged but not challenged

Engaged and challenged

Engaged and very challenge

maximum power

Edit: the 3 additions below are good. In my words I would put them as

Max power, links

Max power, no links

Max power, LOL

There’s at least three more: 

 - can’t quite do

- not even close

- how is that even possible?

John Clarkwrote:

For a V10 climber, can you really tell the difference between V2 and V4.

For a V6 climber, can you honestly tell the difference between V0 and V1?

EDIT NOTE: I posted this before John made it clear that this thread is boulder grade specific. Sorry for the thread derail into routes. I think there's still some relevant points here than can apply to boulders, so I'll leave it up.

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This is the idea that a 5.strong climber can't distinguish 5.easy from 5.easy+1 because both are just so easy for them. This is often true, but not necessarily. I've found that people get calibrated to the grades they climb on most. If you spend all your time on 5.11-5.13 and never climb 5.6, you won't be calibrated to the difference between 5.6 and 5.7. But if a 5.13 climber were to spend a lot of time on 5.6-5.8 they would be able to get calibrated to distinguish between those grades.

I say this because, anecdotally, that was my experience. The was a period some years ago where I was doing my own personal sport climbing (mostly in the 5.11+ to 5.13+ range), and also climbing a lot with my (new to climbing) girlfriend, leading 5.4-5.8 routes for her. I got very calibrated to both these grade ranges. I could be reasonably informed to debate if a route was 13a vs 13b, and also could reasonably tell the difference between 5.7 and 5.8 to identify climbing my girlfriend might do well on vs struggle on. 

But during this period I basically never climbed on 5.9-5.10 routes, and as a result I was not calibrated there. I couldn't readily identify 10a vs 10c. If I climbed two 5.10s back to back I might be able guess which was harder, but I would be able to give them a letter grade - I'd have no idea.

Summary: you get calibrated to the grade ranges you climb on most. If you only every climb within a narrow range of grades, you'll only be calibrated in that range. If you regularly climb on a wide range of grades, your grade calibration will be wider. This is also of course also area and style specific.

This is also more oriented to routes. The last few years I've been focused on bouldering, and the more I boulder the less I understand the V scale. I'd say I can identify grades on routes for a wider range and with better accuracy - but for the Vs I still have no idea.

JCMwrote:

This is the idea that a 5.strong climber can't distinguish 5.easy from 5.easy+1 because both are just so easy for them. This is often true, but not necessarily. I've found that people get calibrated to the grades they climb on most. If you spend all your time on 5.11-5.13 and never climb 5.6, you won't be calibrated to the difference between 5.6 and 5.7. But if a 5.13 climber were to spend a lot of time on 5.6-5.8 they would be able to get calibrated to distinguish between those grades.

I say this because, anecdotally, that was my experience. The was a period some years ago where I was doing my own personal sport climbing (mostly in the 5.11+ to 5.13+ range), and also climbing a lot with my (new to climbing) girlfriend, leading 5.4-5.8 routes for her. I got very calibrated to both these grade ranges. I could be reasonably informed to debate if a route was 13a vs 13b, and also could reasonably tell the difference between 5.7 and 5.8 to identify climbing my girlfriend might do well on vs struggle on. 

But during this period I basically never climbed on 5.9-5.10 routes, and as a result I was not calibrated there. I couldn't readily identify 10a vs 10c. If I climbed two 5.10s back to back I might be able guess which was harder, but I would be able to give them a letter grade - I'd have no idea.

Summary: you get calibrated to the grade ranges you climb on most. If you only every climb within a narrow range of grades, you'll only be calibrated in that range. If you regularly climb on a wide range of grades, your grade calibration will be wider. This is also of course also area and style specific.

So you would say 6-12? Routes i think are easier to grade due to having more factors of number of moves, pump, etc, hence why this is in the Bouldering forum 

John Clarkwrote:

So you would say 6-12?

At that time, I could probably claim reasonable familiarity at 5.5-5.8 (so that's 4 grades) and mid 5.11 to 5.13c or so (another 9-10 grades), so 13-14 in total (with a weird gap in the middle) if you count all the letter grades.

I'm not sure that counting every letter grade makes sense though. Could I confidently claim to know 12b vs 12c? Probably not. I don't think anyone can. Personally I like the +/- system a bit more, since that's the highest level of precision I'm ever confident in. I'm pretty comfortable saying 5.12- (a or b) mid 5.12 (b or c) and 5.12+ (c or d). But nailing down a single letter is harder. 

This might cut down the number of grade distinctions I was confident at that time to maybe 10-ish.

These days though I'm mostly bouldering in Tahoe and don't understand grades at all anymore.

JCMwrote:

At that time, I could probably claim reasonable familiarity at 5.5-5.8 (so that's 4 grades) and mid 5.11 to 5.13c or so (another 9-10 grades), so 13-14 in total (with a weird gap in the middle) if you count all the letter grades.

I'm not sure that counting every letter grade makes sense though. Could I confidently claim to know 12b vs 12c? Probably not. I don't think anyone can. Personally I like the +/- system a bit more, since that's the highest level of precision I'm ever confident in. I'm pretty comfortable saying 5.12- (a or b) mid 5.12 (b or c) and 5.12+ (c or d). But nailing down a single letter is harder. 

This might cut down the number of grade distinctions I was confident at that time to maybe 10-ish.

These days though I'm mostly bouldering in Tahoe and don't understand grades at all anymore.

Good clarification. As for assigning grades, the scale doesn’t matter, just the resolution that you can with certainty distinguish

John Clarkwrote:

 Routes i think are easier to grade due to having more factors of number of moves, pump, etc, hence why this is in the Bouldering forum 

I totally missed that this is in the Bouldering forum and is bouldering specific. Sorry for the thread derail. Completely agree that grading routes is easier. Boulder grades are mostly nonsense.  

I probably have about 5-6 levels I can clearly identify within bouldering, down from 10 or so in routes. And distinguishing between those levels my confidence and accuracy is lower than in routes (i.e. I get it "wrong" more often, or otherwise find the give grades to not make sense).

I grade boulder problems based on how difficult they are to read.

Therefore, my scale is as follows, from accessible to inscrutable:

- Hemingway

- Fitzgerald

- Austen

- Shakespeare (tragedies & comedies)

- Dante

- Melville

- Dickens

- Shakespeare (histories)

- Dostoevsky (only because every move has four different proper names)

- Faulkner

- Joyce

- Heidegger

F r i t zwrote:

I grade boulder problems based on how difficult they are to read.

Therefore, my scale is as follows, from accessible to inscrutable:

- Hemingway

- Fitzgerald

- Austen

- Shakespeare (tragedies & comedies)

- Dante

- Melville

- Dickens

- Shakespeare (histories)

- Dostoevsky (only because every move has four different proper names)

- Faulkner

- Joyce

- Heidegger

So Burden of dreams is like…Seuss?

John Clarkwrote:

So Burden of dreams is like…Seuss?

I reserve Seuss for discerning ice climbing grades because when I read them, the children are always asking WI.

As for your original thread prompt, I think people best can discern the grades that they are projecting or have just broken into. Too far below and the v-grades are indistinguishable. Too far above and the climber has no frame of reference.

John Clarkwrote:

So Burden of dreams is like…Seuss?

 Burden is a Basho haiku.