Understanding rock climbing grades
The British have a unique grading system of rock climbing that can tell you a lot about the routes that no other grading system can do. The down side of this is the grading system can be hard to use and no where near straight forward as the other grading systems.
The British grading systems uses two different grades for each climb. The Technical grade tells you how difficult the hardest move of the route is and the Adjective grade give an overall picture of the route.
The Technical grade
This is a scale that starts at 1 and runs upwards, the harder the number - the harder the climb. Each number is further split into three sections, a,b and c. This means that the grades start at 1a then to 1b, followed by 1c. After 1c the next grade is a 2a, then a 2b and so on.
The Adjective grade
This gives an overall picture of the route, the scale starts at 'moderate' and continues upwards. The order of these are shown below.
- Moderate (mod)
- Difficult (diff)
- Very Difficult (V diff)
- Hard Very Difficult (HV Diff)
- Severe
- Hard Severe
- Very Severe (VS)
- Hard Very Severe (HVS)
- Extreme one (E1)
- Extreme two (E2)
There are a number of aspects that can make the adjective grade increase. The first is how hard the most difficult move is but the adjective grade can also be increased if there is more than one hard move. The grade will also be higher if there is little gear on the route and if the gear is hard to place. This means that the adjective grade is influenced by how hard the route is and how safe the route is.
Using the grading systems together
By comparing the two grades together you can tell if the route is safe and if the route has lots of hard moves.
Each adjective grade has a technical grade that is normally assigned to it. A Severe route is normally give a 4a technical grade, a VS is normally found with a 4c technical grade. Each adjective grade and its corresponding technical grade is given below.
- Severe - 4a
- Hard Severe - 4b
- Very Severe - 4c
- Hard Very Severe - 5a
- E1 - 5b
- E2 - 5c
If you come across a route that is a VS 4c there will be OK gear on the route so should be able to keep your self safe and there will be no moves out of character with the route. Yet if you come across a VS 4a the grade is telling you that the climbing is easy (for a VS) but the overall grade has not been reduced to a Severe. As the adjective grade has not been reduced you can assume that there are either many 4a moves or very little gear (protection) on the route. If you find a technical grade that is harder than normal for the adjective grade (like VS 5b) you can assume that the hard move is very safe and there is only going to be one hard section.
