My Community

Trish - lots of people talk about grades, including you, and grades are used all over the world.  I do know that somebody like Ayton with his long arms and joho with his not-so-tall stature are going to find things slightly different but with a number of ascents, the level of difficulty should/might become clearer.  So it is not whether grades are subjective/objective, there is a clearly a degree of subjectivity, it's about trying to be objective.  If you want to not use this system, that's fine and don't use it, stick to climb/can't climb or doable/doable with effort/will never do.  These are actually grading systems too, albeit personal and relative.

In my opinion, a benchmark problem is a well travelled problem where a number of people can give their 'opinion' on the difficulty.  For problems with one or two ascents, the ascentionist sets the grade but it can hardly be considered as benchmark.  I agree with most of yours Dave apart from one or two.  Notably, all of these are pretty close to the grades suggested by the guide.

Dark Angle Sit - 6c/6c+ (it's a big pull from the ground?)
Quality Control - 6c
Jiggery Pokery - 6c
Blind stick - 6c+
Rythem and Stealth - 7a
Fuck all left - 7a
Andy's arete - 7a +
Loco - 7a+
Pascals - 7b   
The funk - 7b+
Sow your wild oats - 7b+

Think that'd be the northside coop consensus...

Yes, grades are subjective, this is obvious, but when grading we can try and be as objective as possible.  For example, in Glendalough, and with a few exceptions and morphos, grades are settling down across a relative scale, these are generally based upon benchmark problem/grades.  More traffic has promoted this and at the moment, many areas in Ireland do not have enough traffic to promote a consensus on the benchmark problems/grades but this will change over time.   

Nope, a good few were done on other days - afro, egg, groove and a good few more, I think.

Hey Mr Rooney,

Having been on it both ways, I'd suggest for the new beta - 7a+/low-end 7b.  The previous method was far harder and probably justified the grade given in the guide - 7c I think.

Barry