Keep the Decimal in the Yosemite Decimal System

With the invention of 5.10, climbing ruined the interpretation of the YDS as a numerical scale of difficulty. They should've just subdivided 5.9 into progressively smaller pieces;

5.91 = 5.10

5.92= 5.11

etc.

Once you reached a difficulty harder than 5.99 (if climbing ever got to what, in today's system, we'd call 5.20) you'd just add another decimal place: 5.991, 5.992, etc.

Serious question: was this idea ever discussed at the advent of the open-ended difficulty scale? Why even bother keeping the 5.___ at that point - just make climbing grades a clearly separate ordering like the Australian Ewbank system as opposed to lugging around a useless decimal place that implies an ordering that no longer makes sense.

MattH wrote:

With the invention of 5.10, climbing ruined the interpretation of the YDS as a numerical scale of difficulty. They should've just subdivided 5.9 into progressively smaller pieces;

5.91 = 5.10

5.92= 5.11

etc.

Once you reached a difficulty harder than 5.99 (if climbing ever got to what, in today's system, we'd call 5.20) you'd just add another decimal place: 5.991, 5.992, etc.

Serious question: was this idea ever discussed at the advent of the open-ended difficulty scale? Why even bother keeping the 5.___ at that point - just make climbing grades a clearly separate ordering like the Australian Ewbank system as opposed to lugging around a useless decimal place that implies an ordering that no longer makes sense.

This question has already been addressed. 5.0-5.9 is a grading scale that gets progressively more difficult with every .1 added. 5.9+ encompasses everything above that. That’s why when you climb a 5.9+ it’s usually 5.13. 

TIL I climb 5.9175 at the gym 

Climbing rating at best are a suggestion!!! please note not a standard!!! on belay climbing :-)

Because us climbers were busy establishing 5.10 in Yosemite living whole seasons on the wall and we missed that class where they explained decimals 

Been nibbling the crag poop?

Convert Yosemite Decimals to binary starting with 5.0 = 0. Then Astroman would be rated 10001 while Ondra's Silence would be a 100010. Climbers would be saying stuff like "lets go try that 10011 next to that 1001". Present day milestones like "your first 5.12" or "your first 5.13" would be come meaningless. 

José Flovin wrote:

Because us climbers were busy establishing 5.10 in Yosemite living whole seasons on the wall and we missed that class where they explained decimals 

Ha! Meanwhile, elsewhere in the US, math professor John Gill invents a bouldering scale with 3 grades: hard, harder, hardest.

I think my favorite has to be the alpine grading scale, which is literally: 'easy', 'a little hard', 'rather hard', 'hard', 'very hard', and 'extremely hard'. Everything you need to know, right there in the grade itself.

(A funny side effect of one single metric for technical difficulty, safety, and length is that massive all-day true alpine routes like the Italian ridge on the Matterhorn (5.6) are 'a little hard' while a 4 pitch 5.10+ sport climb accessed by cable car is rated 'very hard'. I guess what makes a climb 'hard' is all relative...)

This has been covered. A sliding scale needs to adopted, with 5.9+ currently equal to 5.15c. With  + and - added to the system, 5.0 is roughly 5.13b. Anything less that that is technical hiking. Perhaps, just to stroke fragile egos, current 5.10 grades could be 4th class -, while 5.12 grades could be 4th+. Sorry, but anything 5.9 and below is just 3rd class. 

This doesn’t hold up.

5.9, is 5.9.

5.91 is 5.10

5.92 is what? 10b?

So with your system, we’d definitely reach your 5.991

So all you are proposing is a different number system where the 5 is meaningless and ultimately dropped. And the numbers that are used are more confusing and less linear than US, French, or Australian.

I’d rate your system as neither Hard Severe or Pretty Damn Western.

Next.

highaltitudeflatulentexpulsion wrote:

This doesn’t hold up.

5.9, is 5.9.

5.91 is 5.10

5.92 is what? 10b?

So with your system, we’d definitely reach your 5.991

So all you are proposing is a different number system where the 5 is meaningless and ultimately dropped. And the numbers that are used are more confusing and less linear than US, French, or Australian.

I’d rate your system as neither Hard Severe or Pretty Damn Western.

Next.

Cmon now, think a little harder. What's between 5.91 (formerly 5.10) and 5.92 (formerly 5.11)? We've got the thousandths place to subdivide the hundredths place: 5.911, 5.912, 5.913, etc. 

5.10a/b/c/d now map to, roughly, 5.910,5.913,5.917, 5.919 (and the slash grades 5.10a/b, b/c, etc fit in between). You've got an infinite number of decimal places to subdivide your difficulty measurements to your heart's content.

The local climbing gym has graded their bouldering projects using Taco Bell hot sauce descriptions:

Mild

Hot

Fire

Diablo

As a climber that rarely boulders but occasionally eats at Taco Bell, I find this system much easier to understand.  

I vote we adopt this instead of the V system.

Gunks Jesse wrote:

The local climbing gym has graded their bouldering projects using Taco Bell hot sauce descriptions:

Mild

Hot

Fire

Diablo

As a climber that rarely boulders but occasionally eats at Taco Bell, I find this system much easier to understand.  

I vote we adopt this instead of the V system.

Nope, just go back to the B scale. V17 is B3. V16, perhaps V15 is B2. I’d say that anything less than V12 or so needs to be B0.
You are welcome. 

I propose changing it to the Yosemite Colon System. 5:1 through 5:15d and so on.

Problem solved.

Victor K wrote:

I propose changing it to the Yosemite Colon System. 5:1 through 5:15d and so on.

Problem solved.

Seems like the Manure Pile Buttress would be a good place to do the initial drop of the Yosemite Colon System

Matt Robinson wrote:

Seems like the Manure Pile Buttress would be a good place to do the initial drop of the Yosemite Colonoscopy System

Fixed. All the Yosemite legends probably rate the difficulty of a route relative to the prep for a colonoscopy. 5.9 stands for 9 cups of miralax.

In before Kevin says , " Kids these days they don't know what a good colon looks like, they think they can eat all these edibles and eat their own shit and it turns out okay. I will have you know that I get a colonosopy once a week because I take this shit serious, my colon is so clean I could shit a number 4 and not think twice about it. "