French climbing grades to v scale reddit 9-5. x grades still take into account pump factor, rests, etc. BTW, V7 is 7A+ (7A is V6). They grade those problems. I wonder if you could also control for age began climbing- if you have age in the dataset, one way would be to simply subtract climbing years from age. V Scale. I also go to a gym with VB, V0-1 and V0-2 colours, which becomes accurate to outdoor grades around V2-3 so you're right it's definitely possible with V grades. 4a, 4b, 4c, 5a, 5b. Explanation. I agree, I honestly think gyms should have something like 3 pre V0 grades if they insist on assigning V grades to indoor gyms but honestly that would mentally suck for newer climbers, to feel like you haven’t even made it to the starting line. From V0 to V9, you have a 1:1 correspondence with YDS and V. 6b to V-scale That's not french 7a bouldering its a french 7a route grade. "Grades are subjective" - OK, that's out of the way. 9 was considered extremely difficult. . Now climbing 6B/6C boulders and sometimes even almost a full 7A sport climb. The UIAA "Scale of Overall Assessment" dropped its six Roman numbers in favor of the six adjectival grades of the French Alpine System (to avoid confusion with the "UIAA scale") and dominated alpine climbing grading, while the UIAA "Scale of Difficulty in Aided Climbing" – amended and expanded in Yosemite in the 1990s as "new-wave" grades We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. British grades do exactly that, the numbers at the end are much like French (on a different scale but expressed similarly). I was reading and watching a lot about the V5/V6 plateau that most intermediate climbers hit, and I was expecting this to be around the 6b on the french scale. The French scale certainly isn't perfect (I admit, it's stupidly confusing to explain to someone new to the sport), but in terms of providing a scale that allows gyms to meaningfully grade problems for the majority of their clientele, it's vastly better than the V scale. Each color tag indicates a range of two or three V grades. These are averages as every climbing gym is different but I went to some major climbing gyms (Innsbruck). So now im confused. It must be noted, this is an open-ended scale, so there could be harder grades in the future! Are bouldering grades harder than sport climbing grades? It is hard to compare! Even so, as a boulderer, I would lean towards saying, “yes”. There is some overlap, for example red might be V 1-3 while orange is V 2-4. I'm talking averages here. Climbing grades provide guidance, suggesting the length of time an experienced climber might take to complete the route: Grade I: A couple of hours; Grade II: Closer to four hours; Grade III: Four to six hours (most of the day) Grade IV: One very long day; Grade V: Two days (requires an overnight stay) Grade VI: Two-plus days no i didn’t grade it, yes it’s v7-10, no it’s not designed to be broken by a 6”2 guy, yes it’s supposed to be a slopey paddle dyno. French grade is used in most of Europe (all, not sure) there are a few more life South Africa and Australia grade systems to. but, fact is, if you're climbing at the beginner or lower-intermediate level, you're going to lose at least a grade if not two or three going from gym to outdoors. It’s not one for one. Convert a climbing grade with ease Climbing Grade Converter 馃 To convert grades, enter the grade into the input, select the grade system (french, yosemite, v-scale) and hit "convert" There are grade systems for bouldering, grade systems for sport climbing, grade systems for aid climbing and so on but even grade systems for the same style don’t always translate well between each other. You can have exact grades and know there will be V4s that are soft or hard, or may or may not suit your style. 7C+) Sep 16, 2021 路 V Scale & Font Scale: The 2 Most Common Bouldering Grading Scales in Use Today. It's way more info than you likely want, broken down by gender and age when people started climbing, but most relevant is figure 9 which says on average people improve about a Font grade per year (which is somewhat less than a v grade) for about 2. French grades start at 1, with that being very easy climbing. 10 5. If a problem has a low adjectival grade and a high technical grade. So my country uses the french scale for indoor sports climbing. In my eyes, that makes your chart way way sandbagged for the lower V grades, and way cruiser for the higher V grades. The lower bound of the scale is V0, and the current upper bound is V17. The subjective nature of grades does not go away though by adding a range. Bouldering grades: V scale and french grade conversion? Historically the US system made more sense. A single grade gives you a better idea of the difficulty than a vague range, which isn't much better than having no grade at all. 6C and 6C+ are V5 7A is V6 7A+ is V7 7B+ is V8 Source: 3 UK guides (Boulder Britain Volume 2, Churnet Bouldering, Parisellas guidebook) with conversion charts in each that I've checked from 3 different publishers. 7 in the sand bagged area. Learn more here (dont get french grade confused with font bouldering grade which uses uppper case letter. 3 range, they were more like what would be rated 5. Standards vary among climbing areas. Even if they consistently climb the same grade. For example, grade IV is a full day. I mean the colors map out to a v-range of course. The Bouldering V Scale (a. To my surprise V5 converts to 7b and V6 to 7c in the french scale. The font scale developed as a natural extension to scrambling/mountaineering ratings, whereas the V scale was unusual in that John Shermans publisher allegedly required him to make it up in order to publish his Hueco Tanks guidebook (before then, the "B" scale was used which wasn't particularly useful). Boulder werden normalerweise nach ihren schwersten Stellen bewertet, wohingegen beim Routenklettern sowohl die Ausdauerkomponente als auch der Anspruch durch das Einhängen der Zwischensicherungen wie Expressschlingen, Klemmkeile oder Friends eine große Rolle spielen können. Then it would be easier to compare sport climbing and bouldering grades. Been there and other bpumps around Tokyo. Today there exist multiple bouldering grading scales, but you are most likely to encounter two: V Scale; Font Scale; Let’s look at each. I had a hard time finding a chart online that converts the Sherman V-grade system for bouldering into the Yosemite Decimal… Mar 17, 2023 路 5 (font) to V-scale. Whatever. The way it looks now doesn't do the boulderers justice! When I recently did some outdoor climbs that were rated in the 5. S. Routes may feel substantially harder than their grade indicates depending on the weather, the length of the route, the type of rock, the whims of the first ascensionist, any number of factors. I’d say it’s an exponential increase in difficulty as you move up. The hardest grade currently is the V17 (9a), this is the top end of the sport and it is very rarely achieved. There are other ones, like the B-Scale, the P-Scale, the Joshua Tree Scale, and a few others, but you don’t really need to know those as they are not really used. This means that there isn’t one YDS grade per V Scale grade. Just have fun and watch out for the toilet paper! :-D If you're into spelunking they have that too. I’m sure it exists but…. a v4 is a v4. Mar 24, 2022 路 The V-grades and French Fontainebleau grades that are today’s gold standards took time to disseminate, with other scales proposed along the way. Grade-wise, for bouldering, I'd say around 6a-6b (V3-V4) indoors in most European gyms is intermediate, or in France the equivalent of red circuits in Fontainebleau (which are acutally graded around 5 so V1, but labeled as "very hard"). With the V scale, gyms either have to deliver a brutal message that hurts Often there's a chart somewhere relating the 1-X to Font grades. That's when they started to use exponents in grade 5. My gym often puts up no hands climbs on the slab wall. Depending on the grade, 3kyu could translate between v2-v4, 1st kyu V5-v6. This is where there is an obvious change in style and grade. Its french grade, sorry should have mentioned in the title that 9b+ is equivalent to 5. Grades feel a little harder in Europe overall, but some harder climbers I know say a few areas in Spain are "soft". However, they may differ between regions. I've been to one gym that uses font grades and it's more accurate than other gyms. In the 70's, due to the sport climbing revolution, climbers felt a need to differentiate between climbs at the limit, so they started adding letters after the numbers on the top end. Great analysis! I think this is a wonderful reference for people who take climbing seriously, ie the 8a. Both 6a and 6a+ graded boulders in the font system convert into a V3 bouldering grade in the North American V-scale. But as climbers techniques evolved they needed higher grades for harder routes. The other option is making higher grades easier, that would boost the ego of a lot of people and probably increasing the chances of becoming a long V grades aren’t a range…. I don't know if I agree with chart. See full list on guidedolomiti. i mean this is why many gyms don't use v grades and just go with tape colours, or number of dots, hexs etc. Feb 6, 2016 路 The French climbing grades system is numerical, starting at 1, and each grade is subdivided with letters e. This is based on my climbing experience over the last 10 years. After a year and a half of climbing, I've just recently broken into the blue tags, which I believe are V It's far from a perfect system and areas are known to be sand bagged, such that if you're used to climbing 5. 5, for example, was a hike that included a fair amount Font grades are very special and in my experience it takes a few days or even trips until you get used to how bouldering in Font works. Climbing grades are inherently subjective[1] - they are the opinion of one or a few climbers, often the first ascentionist or the author(s) of a guidebook. g. America and many European countries: roped climbing has little variation (I’ll climb the same comfy grade, projecting will differ) bouldering depends hugely on gym. A brief history of climbing grades. Less often, it's an internal system and a routsetter can tell you. 1. We have a multitude of indoor gyms and a google search (use "+singapore") for the following names will return their pages Kinetics Climbing (this is a bouldering only gym) Climber's Laboratory Climb Asia Safra Yishun Climbing Dec 9, 2024 路 Kann ich Boulder-Schwierigkeitsgrade aufs Klettern übertragen? Die Antwort lautet: Nur bedingt. For alpine climbing/mountaineering and big wall climbing, you'll also see grade levels in roman numerals which represent the typical length of time it takes to complete a route. Oct 12, 2020 路 This is because the grades are rated using the same number of intervals. Just my opinion though YDS ran up to 5, with 5 being the hardest moves known at that point. They use the japan Dan-kyu rating. If V1 is somewhat equivalent to 5. 13-. I don't really care that much if you want to grade things ridiculously soft but I just think that it's good to have an idea of where your actual progress is at by comparing it to an incredibly concensus based standard for grading. There's only one outdoor crag, look for "Dairy Farm Natural Rock Climbing" on Facebook for betas and directions. No black routes back then but I expect v7+ looks about right. What do these grades translate to in V-grade and British system? Pure technical grade systems like the French and YDS 5. In fact, it was John Gill’s B-system, advanced over a half-century ago as Gill devoted himself almost exclusively to bouldering, that set the stage for today’s popular, open-ended V-system. 10d crux - and we're talking 1980's climbing using benchmarks from the 60's and 70's - V1 is not "beginner climber. We use the term 'current upper bound' because elite outdoor climbers continue to establish and send increasingly difficult climbs. The reason being that the width of grades on a specific scale are not comparable or that grades are not linear across the whole scale. 15c. i’ll take it 馃槑 comments sorted by Best Top New Controversial Q&A Add a Comment YDS grades initially topped out at 5. The YDS breaks down the difficulty of roped climbing routes into 31+ different levels of difficulty. Also bpump has a lot pretty large number of the Japanese climbing team training there, so they set a lot of competition style routes. Sep 28, 2021 路 As a result, climbing grades are usually pretty uniformly applied in a single region. After all, the same people are not climbing all the routes out there. 6a to V-scale. Dec 9, 2024 路 The V-scale was invented in the 1980s by John Sherman, nicknamed “Vermin,” hence the V. If we're assigning the lowest grades to things that require low-moderate skill, how do you grade easier climbs? If there were consistency in the lowest grades, it may make the higher grades more even. in the difficulty though. Didn't have time to check out Riglos, but if the climbing is as fun as Rodellar was, definitely go. The first recorded climbing grade system was introduced by the Austrian mountaineer Fritz Benesch in 1894. 41 votes, 26 comments. I remember purple being v3-4, Pink v3-5, red v4-5, white v5-v6, yellow v6+. Usually with 4's and 5's you can get away with not having strong strength if your technique is flawless (which most casual climbers also don't have), but to get past 6's (onto 7's) you need strong climbing strength IMO there's no reason to compare bouldering grades to sport route grades, because they're completely different disciplines of climbing. 8 in other areas you'd have a lot of trouble climbing a 5. I don’t typically see gyms have a climb graded with a v-range like v2-v4. I live in Europe, I started climbing in January 2019 (10 months). They describe the single (technical) hardest move on the route. So the french boulder grades are harder than the french route grades. Of course a grade looks easy when someone knows how to climb… that being said, my experience is from gyms in Asia, N. I remember white is V 7 and up. Even if they have the same grading system in mind. com Apr 27, 2025 路 What is the main difference between the V Scale and the French Scale? The V Scale, used to rate bouldering problems, mostly found in the U. Again, this is all based off my single experience at one gym in Japan, but if the grades at said gym were representative of the grades at gyms as a whole in Japanese gyms, then the grade you can climb at a Japanese gym you should also be able to climb at a boulder field most anywhere in the world, assuming it wasn't a boulder field that was Go to climbing View community ranking In the Top 1% of largest communities on Reddit. This is very cool. Mar 17, 2012 路 Bouldering is a bit different than some other forms of rock climbing and it has its own grades, the V-scale, for defining the difficulty of the climb. Then I kind of stopped climbing for 7 years because I moved to a region with virtually no climbing gyms, despite having a bunch of outdoor climbing. Newer boulders in the higher grades (around 6b and up) and less popular areas have a more common grading, while older parcours boulders I go bouldering at a gym in Norway and this is their grading system. Some provide rough conversions but some shy away from it entirely. e. As I started to rock climb I got confused by these different rating systems and their In the US at least I think many setters (and I do too) think of V6 as the first intermediate gym grade so there is sometimes just an actual jump from 5-6. Because the V scale was invented specifically to grade boulder problems that experienced climbers were doing. On average. This diversity allows gyms to tailor difficulty assessments to their unique community and create an inclusive environment where climbers can progressively challenge themselves. k. They are technical and balance dependent. The French Scale, which assigns grades such as 9a, is the international standard for sport climbing routes, particularly throughout Europe. Pink is the easiest, then red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black, white. I'm not the one gatekeeping, John Sherman is. Between V2 and V3, you can make the jump purely on upper body strength (even though that’s not advised) but once you get up into the V7-V10 range you’ll need to have excellent technique and strength to move up from V7 to V8. A 5+ (sometimes graded as 5b or 5c) can be converted into a V2 bouldering grade on the V-scale. More so than straight v grade. In the United States for sport climbing and other forms of rock climbing we use the Yosemite Decimal System. The French use this system for most things (apart from bouldering, for which they use the Font scale, and big Alpine routes, for which they use the UIAA scale, and mixed sport climbing, for which they use the M scale) and the British use it for sport climbing, where seriousness isn't a factor. Each of course measures difficulty differently. a 7b route is around 5. And it was linear, so a trail rated 4. a the Vermin Scale) The V-Scale is as follows: V0-V3: Beginner; V4-V6: Intermediate Back in the day the London one did give colours grades so I always still think of them like that. But in the V sistem before a V5 there's only 4 grades, so either gyms have to squeeze begginers in those same grades, that would translate into newbies "not making progress" and eventually quiting. a 5b+. 12b, whereas a 7B boulder equals V7, which is 5. But the point is ranges, in general, encourage people to try things they otherwise wouldn’t. 9. The beginning bit of the grade describes the overall difficulty (adjectival). I. A 5 Font bouldering grade converts to a V1 in the v scale. It was designed to rate hiking trails in general, not just climbing, 4 was the starting grade for a leisurely technical hike and 5 was the starting grade for a vertical surface that actually required climbing. Generally the whole thing has to be anchored to an absolute scale to keep each level reasonable/consistent. It's not always the single hardest move, it's the technical difficulty of the climb as a whole. nu set. Feb 14, 2024 路 Indoor climbing gyms embrace the practice of grading, employing familiar systems such as the V Scale, Font Scale, or even creating bespoke rating structures. I know I was fairly demoralized when I tried my first V1s outdoors and got shut down hard. eg. (See edit below) and for many years 5. Very interesting about years of climbing, averages, BMI, gender, and progressions. My gym uses as lowest grade a 2, which is a kiddie-route for birthdayparties. Basically the opposite of the campus board which is the explosive powerful side of climbing. While the V Scale breaks down the difficulty of boulder problems into 19 different levels of difficulty. Adds more climbing specific strength, and adds a bit more technique. The grades in a gym are just a subjective interpretation by the route setters, so difficulties varies a lot from gym to gym. 0-5. The V scale is an open-ended grading scale, meaning there is no top level of difficulty. 10 in my indoor gym. Sometimes a + symbol is also added to show a route that’s slightly harder than it’s grade but not tough enough for the next grade up e. It's logical to try and figure the relative difficulty of campus spacing. (In theory the bouldering grades have upper-case letters, and the route grades have lower-case letters, which the Rock Climbing table gets wrong). So really 7a is comparable to 11d, which seems to jibe with most of the conversions I've seen. Watching someone and actually climbing the route will give you a different feeling. Jun 5, 2023 路 The two most popular grading systems are the V-Scale and the Font-Scale. The V-system is the only bouldering system over-layed onto a route grading chart. I’m not sure if this is a bouldering system or a sport climbing system as the gym has both and I’ve not checked if the high wall has a separate system. What I'd really like to see is a 3-axis graph, with french sport grades on the left and V grades on the right. Then I moved to the US when I turned 30, and started going to a decent gym again. That's not to say there won't be individual problems indoors or out that are 3+ V-grades different; exceptions do exist. 5 years and then it drops off to about a quarter grade per year by five and near zero improvement I was wondering where people (on average) max out on their grade. But none of my new friends there were climbers, so when I did go climbing, I stuck to easy grades. Use this chart as a rough guide to compare climbing and bouldering grades in other parts of the world. " If the difference between a gym's grading and a boulder field's grading is greater than 1-2 V-grades then the gym or the boulder field is an outlier (or possibly both). Outdoor climbing is also way different than indoor, it's almost like a different scale in the technique you train. zrlzgngabyxdhyoijbupnwncogvzkosnfaspabubibgmuwtugjvphllzpxdjdqyovwrafbwxemu