Mountain 134 (July August 1990) | Magazine

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British Rock Climbing Grades - Time For Change?

The advent of totally safe bolt protected climbs on some British limestone crags has called into question the whole issue of grading. Originally, E grades where introduced to subdivide the adjectival Extremely Severe grade which had become overcrowded. Combined with the numerical technical grade, originally conceived to give an objective assessment of the difficulty of the hardest move reduced to ground level, this system seemed ideally suited to British Style climbing.

However, on the new sport climbs where all objective dangers have been removed, the difficulty of the hardest move is now assessed numerically in the context of how many difficult moves have proceeded it, thus giving a grade for the overall technical difficulty of the pitch. This is why French grades are applied to such climbs. E grades have become meaningless for this style of climb - effectively linked boulder problems - as has grading for an on sight ascent - these routes are always "worked". Perhaps the time has come to separate "sport" climbing from "real climbing" and end the numbers game. - B.C.N