Climbing grades: an overview

Outdoors, there are three main kinds of climbing: bouldering, sports and “trad” (or traditional). Bouldering involves climbing boulders (i.e., not too high, for some definition of “too high”), and people commonly use a bouldering mat on the ground to break a fall. Sports climbing involves clipping a rope into fixed protection (“bolts”) on the rock. Most Pinnacle Club members are involved in “trad” climbing, which involves taking “protection” of various kinds to fix temporarily into cracks and other features of the rock; the rope is fixed into the protection to limit the consequences of falling.

Typically, the first person to climb a new route will give it a grade to tell others how challenging it is. This helps other climbers to select routes that are going to be at an interesting level of difficulty for them: not impossible, but maybe not so easy that it is like a walk in the park.

Because grading systems developed in parallel across the world, different countries have different systems, and there are tables that translate between them. These translations are always approximate.

The UK is unusual in measuring two different aspects of a climb: how technically difficult the hardest move on the climb is and how challenging the climb is.

A climb might be challenging because it’s in a scary location (e.g., a sea cliff with an abseil approach and an exposed position) or because it’s hard for the lead climber to find places to put protective equipment to minimise the risks of a fall. A (sometimes convoluted) adjective is used to describe how challenging a climb is – for example: “Hard Very Difficult”. That one sounds impressive, but in practice, it’s not as difficult as Severe or Extreme. Difficult is commonly split into four separate categories: Difficult; Hard Difficult; Very Difficult: and (you guessed it) Hard Very Difficult. The same is true for Severe. However, for Extreme climbs, the qualifiers have been replaced by numbers: E1, E2… E12 is currently the hardest grade claimed, but there aren’t many other climbers who can check claims at that level, so probably not worth most of us worrying about.

Technical difficulty is measured numerically – but again, with qualifiers. Climbs where it’s sensible to use a rope for safety generally start at 3; routes at grade 3 are commonly “scrambles” that would be climbed in big boots (rather than technical rock shoes) in the 21st century. In practice, most people use technical rock shoes, ropes, and a substantial collection of protective gear for climbs above grade 4a. The numeric grades are generally split into a, b, c (no, we don’t know why either).

Up to a certain point, challenge and technical grades typically go up together (S-4a, HS-4b, VS-4c, HVS-5a, E1-5b), so if you encounter a climb with an unusual combination then whoever set the grade was making a particular point. For example, VS-4b means the route is challenging but not particularly technically hard whereas VS-5a means there’s a hard move, but the climb is not particularly challenging (for a climber who is able to make a 5a move). Most people for whom climbing is a weekend hobby climb around the Very Severe grade (VS4c, plus or minus a bit: some up to E1). You can assume that people who are climbing regularly above E3 will be training hard or climbing professionally.

Grades are always subjective: a move that might seem easy for someone who is light and flexible might seem much harder for someone who is heavier and more muscular, and the converse is equally true.

Inevitably, grades have changed over the years because advances in footwear and protective equipment have made possible climbs that would previously have been unthinkable. When everyone was climbing in big boots with only a hemp rope tied around their waist, modern ‘E’ grades were unimaginable. The achievements were just as great though.

Different grading systems have been developed for different styles of climbing. As noted above, bouldering involves climbing short routes without ropes; sports routes have “bolts” already placed into the rock, so that the lead climber doesn’t have to worry about placing gear, but just has to clip their rope into each bolt; and long mountaineering routes place demands on the team in terms of route-finding, anticipating the weather, and more general survival skills (as well as climbing skills).

There are many descriptions (e.g., Wikipedia) of different grading systems. When climbing in an unfamiliar environment, or on a new kind of rock, there is always more to learn: always a new adventure.