|
Forums:
Climbing Disciplines:
Bouldering:
Re: [jt512] Best Boulderer Ever:
Edit Log
|
|
fracture
Mar 17, 2007, 1:13 AM
Views: 3794
Registered: Jun 13, 2003
Posts: 1814
|
jt512 wrote: You've managed to use a whole lot of words to simply say that the rating should tell you how hard the route is. Of course grades tell you how hard something is, my point is that there are very good reasons to want to know that. This isn't academic: many of today's climbers who pretend they "don't care about numbers" have forgotten these other sources of utility.
In reply to: In reply to: The V-scale and (the modern) YDS both can and have done this successfully for bouldering. Right, because they are both ordinal scales. You could just as easily MCAT scores, (which just happen to be the integers from 1 to 15 -- ring a bell?). You can use any whole-picture, difficulty-only rock climbing rating system in the same way. Other systems can perhaps be used to rate the same climbs, but you would be rating different aspects of them. Really, the question is about what you are using the system to rate. If you treat the numbers from MCAT scores as a whole-picture, difficulty-only climbing grading scale, then yes, it can rate boulder problems. But then it wouldn't really be MCAT scores, it'd just be yet another face for the V/YDS/Font/French/Australian/UIAA/etc scales. Or maybe you agree with this? (In which case, I don't understand what you're trying to say.)
In reply to: In reply to: Far from "clearly", I think. It depends on the types of climbing in the area. If you do this in an area that primarily has both power-endurance ("long") boulder problems and power-endurance ("short") sport routes, you'll probably get different results. Furthermore, your results will easily be prone to misleading interpretations if you don't consider the need for people to adjust to the new protection system. Many rope-only climbers are afraid of bouldering falls, and vice versa. It's very difficult to discuss subjects with you when you insist on clouding the central issue with trivial side issues. This is not a side issue, it's my home crag and my favorite type of climbing! And as I keep stressing, power and power-endurance sport routes are not rare. Every crag I've ever been to has tons of them. (This includes "endurance" areas like Enchanted Tower, Last Chance Canyon, and El Potrero Chico.)
In reply to: It has everything to do with whether boulder problems and sport routes are difficult in the same way. On average, they are not, despite all the exceptions, outliers, and borderline cases you can and will state. This is our point of disagreement. Perhaps we need to go survey sport crags to see the exact distribution of routes which stress which energy systems. Maybe your area only has sport routes that stress local endurance, but even that I find doubtful, based on my experience at pretty much every other sport area I've climbed at.
In reply to: Your argument that since the YDS already applies to many different types of difficulty on routes justifies its extension to boulder problems is essentially arguing that two wrongs make a right. Since boulder problems are a more homogeneous set than boulder problems plus routes, giving boulder problems and routes separate rating scales improves the information relative to crating them on the same artificially one-dimensional scale. It's hard to see how that can be worse than extending the problems of the YDS to boulder problems. Far from two wrongs making a right: as used, the YDS works! It may not be objective or accurate in a scientific sense, and it may assign equivalent grades to routes that require vastly different skills (even when they stress the same energy systems, as you point out with slabs), but it still serves all the purposes I listed. So what's the Big Deal? It doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. The information loss is a feature, not a bug. A rating system has to abstract all those details (to some degree or another) in order to be useful. Especially if we want it to come out as a one-dimensional scale (which gives a host of useful properties contra the multi-dimensional systems).
In reply to: In reply to: In reply to: Say you rate a 10-bolt sport route 5.12a, and a 10-move boulder problem 5.12a, in what sense, if any, are they equally difficult? Why, in the same sense that a 10-move 5.12a sport route (and I've seen the like at every crag I've ever climbed at) and a 10-bolt 5.12a sport route are, of course. (And what exactly that sense is is certainly up for discussion.) Exactly. In what sense is that? It is very difficult to justify the same rating system for such disparate routes, let alone extending it to boulder problems. You probably cannot justify it based on any precise conception of what "climbing difficulty" means: rock climbing is likely too complex of an activity for that. But it is justifiable: by its real-world utility, which I think is readily apparent. Now, Curt has been arguing that the V-scale should not be applied to long boulder problems. And it is starting to sound like you are arguing that the YDS shouldn't be applied to short sport routes. Is that correct? Here's my simplistic (read: likely incorrect, but somewhat humorous) analysis of why: Curt primarily boulders on short, powerful problems. He doesn't want to grant the "bouldering" status to long problems because he thinks of it as a separate activity. You probably primarily enjoy long local endurance climbs, and similarly don't want to do the opposite. And me? I am a power-endurance specialist. I like to do somewhere around 12 or 15 moves before the "business" is over. So in a sense I'm in the middle, since there are both roped and unroped climbs that fit the bill. I see it all as one unified game, with differences in the details (and in the optimal protection system). Yes, some climbs require more power or more endurance, but some climbs also require more drop knees or better skill with dynos or greater strength on a given type of hand hold (and strength is position-specific, so we have as much a right to declare "5.12a crimping" unrateable by the same grading scale as "5.12a slopers" as we do for "power" and "endurance"). You could say, yes you're right, and those are all more "wrongs" that don't justify another one. But again, the justification is from the utility. If you split the YDS into a myriad of systems (YDS-power-slopers, YDS-power-endurance-to-dyno, YDS-local-endurance-crimping, YDS-gaston-sloper-power-endurance), you'd lose every advantage to having a unified (information-lossy) scale in the first place. We might as well just give up on all the useful aspects of grades and limit ourselves to the descriptions in plain English.
(This post was edited by fracture on Mar 17, 2007, 1:32 AM)
|
|
Edit Log:
|
Post edited by fracture
() on Mar 17, 2007, 1:22 AM
|
Post edited by fracture
() on Mar 17, 2007, 1:24 AM
|
Post edited by fracture
() on Mar 17, 2007, 1:25 AM
|
Post edited by fracture
() on Mar 17, 2007, 1:32 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|