Soft Setting at Gyms

Not sure anyone is going to try to change your mind. It's pretty obvious. This is why a lot of the newer gyms do a grading scale instead of being specific. 

I remember when I went to Yosemite for my first lead,  12 years ago. I walked up to a 5.7 and thought, "well I climb 10b in the gym, that should be a big enough safety margin..." HA! Took a small whipper in the first 15 feet. 

1/10

your trolling is bad and you should feel bad. Complaining about gyms is so 2012, bro. We are no longer in the age of complaining about gym climbers. Now we're in the age of "complaining didn't solve anything so now we actually have to do something about this problem because it's not going away". Hence all the gym-to-crag education efforts in the past several years. 

We could explore other points, like
Why indoor Bouldering grades are softer than indoor rope-route grades.
. . . (Which screws up guidelines, like how a roped climb at 5.12 typically has four V4 bouldering segments).

There are so many other more subtle biases in indoor terrain-design and route-setting done under the supervision of savvy business managers.
e.g. What range of height+reach to target easy/moderate routes. How far apart are the bolts on Lead routes, and how "friendly" the clipping stances. Proportion of pinches versus cracks.

Flow in the other direction . . .
Outdoor routes getting biased by influence from indoors.
Because some people who put in the substantial labor and time of preparing and bolting new outdoor routes do hope that more climbers will choose the results of their hard work.

So I heard that one prolific Euro developer (who also writes guidebooks) has been giving softer grades to one of his new outdoor areas.

Since so many outdoor climbers nowadays also climb indoors, this can influence spacing of bolts. And obvoiusly drives how "friendly" / convenient to design the top anchors / lower-offs. How close lines ought to be "squeezed" together.
Mechanical "smoothing" of sharp or abrasive hand-holds.

Selection of which outdoor crags or lines to choose to develop can be biased . . .
At first the idea might be to go for styles that will be similar to fun indoor routes.
But perhaps in the long run that will back-fire, so some developers will rather target lines and crags which are interesting in ways that are difficult to replicate indoors.

Ken

Anyway the indoor rating bias problem is very "solvable" --
in the same way that MountainProject "solves" the outdoor rating problem, by voting.
If you really care about difficulty ratings at some particular gym, carefully map out the terrain structures of the gym (with photos). Give different features and sectors names. Then give each new route a unique identifier (if the gym does not do this already) with photo if needed.

Then it's straightforward to use some phone app to vote for your own difficulty (and quality) ratings. Could use a completely different scale. Let other users also rate the raters. Filter to see only the ratings of your favorite raters.

Ken

Don't climb in gyms, then it won't be an issue. Glad I could help.

The gym I go to does a voting system after the new rope routes are set. The setters give it a range and then it’s left for a few days with a voting sheet. After a week or so, the grade is set by consensus. This doesn’t do much in terms of the comparing grades to outdoor as most people voting are indoor only Climbers, but I find it makes the grades more consistent within the gym. Similar to any outdoor crag where the grades are consistent locally but may not compare elsewhere. 

Vas Carmichael is so bad ass with his 56 k

Its time to build a wall around this website.....

Jeff B wrote: The gym I go to does a voting system after the new rope routes are set. The setters give it a range and then ignore the votes and put whatever the flip they want.

From the mouths of babes...

I'm curious what you guys think the average discrepancy between the gym and outdoors is. For my local gym and crag, it feels like about a grade and a half (yds).

Two letters

You mean a letter grade?  IE, a 5.10a outside would be a 10.c/d in the gym?  I’d say that’s about right, with some serious discrepancies based on the age of the crag/gym.  So a 10.c at a brand new west coast gym isn’t going to feel like a 10.a in Eldo or the Gunks, but it will feel pretty close to one in CCC or the Red.  A lot of this also comes from being able to (or not being able to) read the rock; some rock that is notoriously cryptic (Devil’s Lake quartzite) will feel significantly harder than it actually is once you work out the beta.

Ted Pinson wrote: You mean a letter grade?  IE, a 5.10a outside would be a 10.c/d in the gym?  I’d say that’s about right, with some serious discrepancies based on the age of the crag/gym.  So a 10.c at a brand new west coast gym isn’t going to feel like a 10.a in Eldo or the Gunks, but it will feel pretty close to one in CCC or the Red.  A lot of this also comes from being able to (or not being able to) read the rock; some rock that is notoriously cryptic (Devil’s Lake quartzite) will feel significantly harder than it actually is once you work out the beta.

I don't think the grading is softer in the gym, it's just the climbing style is different. Most people spend way more time climbing in gyms. They get really good at gym climbing. The grades seem soft in comparison to rock, simply because the style is different (where is the red hold????). 

Cory Brooks wrote: I don't think the grading is softer in the gym, it's just the climbing style is different. Most people spend way more time climbing in gyms. They get really good at gym climbing. The grades seem soft in comparison to rock, simply because the style is different (where is the red hold????). 

Agree. Everything is mapped out for you. no looking for holds no placing feet on sub optimal holds no thinking were is the next hold. I also think you climb enough its easy to know what each hold will feel like by looking. They have no surprises like "it looked like a jug but it wasn't" type holds like outside. A 10b outside feels like about a 10a/b inside once you know the beta when comparing my gym to the closest respectable crag.  

Perhaps what will eventually emerge is a new grading system for indoor walls. Instead of having, say 11 number grades, with the letters at the higher grades (e.g., 5.11c) to make a total of about 20 possible grades, there will be 50 or more grades.
Perhaps a psychologist could tell us if this will make most users happier (and thus generate more cash for the gyms).

When I started in the gym, I was a little bummed in the comparison to outdoor grades because I couldn't climb as high a grade indoors as out--the type of climbing was just too steep for me. But I agree with many of the replies in this post in that the grades in the gym now seem a little soft compared to outside. I now feel a little bummed when I visit a gym that doesn't have soft grading. So, a new grading system might not help in this case. Instead, one would have to find ways to make the grading system more objective, which seems like it could be nearly impossible except in the case of simple cracks (which most gym users seem to avoid).

 

Everyone loves an ego stroke!

Our routesetter.once said "It's not a bad thing if the customer leaves smiling".

Routesetters who are trying to stump people are doing it wrong and hurting the business.