After a bit of a hiatus Ethan Pringle is back with a mega blog detailing what he’s been up to the past few months since he left the U.S. Of particular note is his recent sending spree in Rocklands, South Africa that has a certain website pounding the keyboard about “personal grades” again.
Indeed, a peek at Pringle’s 8a scorecard reveals an impressive list of some 14 V12’s or harder (and counting), many of which he has registered at a lower grade than was previously common. Some highlights include a flash of Black Shadow (V12, previously thought of as V13), sends of Madiba (V12, previously V14) and Derailed (V12 with kneepad, previously V14) and so on.
There’s a lot that could be written about this topic I suppose, but I think Pringle frames the situation pretty nicely in his blog post:
Difficulty is a hard thing to gauge, huh? Is it an exact science? Is a climbs rating etched in stone at the bottom of the wall?
buy valtrex online https://galenapharm.com/pharmacy/valtrex.html no prescription
Thank goodness no! My opinion is that the difficulty of a rock climb really can’t be contained in a number with any amount of certainty- every piece of rock is so different, every person is different, and every day is different.
buy amitriptyline online https://galenapharm.com/pharmacy/amitriptyline.html no prescription
Beta evolves, the collective understanding of what’s possible, or even just hard, evolves, and conditions change from day to day. If grades were just a guide for people to know what to try when they go to an area, like they should be, people wouldn’t bicker over them so much. Grades for climbers are so much more than a guide- we let grades define us. I do it, you do it, we all do it and it can be fun and helpful. You can use grades to gauge your improvement and to set goals for yourself and when you achieve those goals, it’s feel good.[snip]
So all people have to go on is what I post to 8a, (mostly for my friends back home to see what I’m climbing) and there lies the problem. I’m a realist and when I post my climbs to the sprayDOTpoo, the grades I give them are just my own (brave and humble
opinion. Don’t take it so personally! I don’t just downgrade things, I grade them whatever grade I felt they were for ME, the day I climbed them. For instance, the other day I did Ray of Light, a climb that has been pretty solidified at V13, but I climbed through the lower moves, which most people consider to be the crux, first go and fell in the middle. I ended up doing the climb on my 3rd attempt and maybe it just suited me, maybe my fingers fit into those slots really well? But I never do V13 3rd go, so I rated it V12.
Now if only we could get Pringle to update his blog more than once a quarter…
Thanks for writing this. I really
feel as though I know so much more about this than I did before. Your blog
really brought some things to light that I never would have thought about
before reading it. The collective understanding of what’s possible, or even
just hard, evolves, and conditions change from day to day. If grades were just
a guide for people to know what to try when they go to an area, like they
should be, people wouldn’t bicker over them so much. Grades for climbers are so
much more than a guide- we let grades define us. You should continue this, I’m
sure most people would agree you’ve got a gift. Thanks for sharing…
Forklift training Toronto
loading...
Forklift training??? You mean you train for climbing using a forklift??….hey whatever works!!!
loading...
s/peak/peek/g
funny b/c i made the same typo myself this morning 😉
loading...
🙂
loading...
I feel that the flaw with personal grading is that humans are terrible at adjusting for things like increased fitness, strength, improved technique, better nutrition habits, etc.
Without a frame of reference (ie, one-shotting a project that took us months to send the previous season), our first inclination is to think “soft grade.”
Though, I’m sure Ethan Pringle has been climbing long enough to understand that sort of thing.
Right?
loading...
…or maybe ethan has fallen out of the limelight and needs some quick self-promotion
loading...