Flutterby™! : Climbing grades 2003-10-28 16:37:19.991366+00

Climbing grades

2003-10-28 16:37:19.991366+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

So yesterday's mention of "Class 3" in relation to hiking brought me to description of the Sierra Club System and Yosemite Decimal System, which says, among other things:

Class 5
: Rock climbing. A roped belay is a must. Class 5 is further broken down from 5.0 through 5.14

And I got a little confused 'cause back when I spent time on rope we didn't bother clipping in at all 'til it got to 5.6 or so. Well, okay, that's a little hubris, but now I know where the silly "5" came from...

#Comment Re: Climbing grades made: 2003-10-28 19:02:40.955144+00 by: meuon

I've wondered where the 5.x came from. Thanks. Caving's rating systems is: Horizontal (yea, right.. no vertical gear required, but you might want to bring some rope anyway) and Vertical (vertical gear, ropes, etc required) and then there is a casual system of 'bats'.

1 bat = easy,
2 bats = harder
3 bats = hard
Uncontrollable Weeping = self explainatory

#Comment Re: Climbing grades made: 2003-10-28 19:23:39.081371+00 by: Dan Lyke

Is there any scale for tightness? I know I've done at least one crawl where ... well... if someone hadn't had a light in front of me I'd have wigged. And on the way out the leader suggested we douse our lights and do it in the dark. That was freaky.

Back to climbing: It's especially weird because they use "6" for aid climbing, and the scales I remember were all "A" and a number.

#Comment Re: Climbing grades made: 2003-10-29 06:08:02.0083+00 by: topspin

Since I'm claustrophobic and still try to cave, I have an informal system for judging the tightness:

Seriously, cave maps kinda show the width of the cave and often list the height also. There's other hints too. Some passages have names; for instance, Ann recently visited a cave with passages called "The Grim Crawl of Death" and "The Birth Canal."

#Comment Re: Climbing grades made: 2003-10-29 14:54:51.262012+00 by: meuon