...I do know that gunsmoke in j-tree pretty rough for a v2...although most of the moves are not that difficlult you have to be in real good shape..

hey curt, that is kind of the point. should long traverses be rated in the sport climb category? or bouldering or something new?

P.S. Superman could whip batman because superman is invincible

I don't think there is an exact answer to your question, but classic old school (i.e Gill, Holloway, etal.) boulder problems were rarely more than a half-dozen or so difficult, gymnastic type moves--and often had fewer moves than that. When endurance begins to be the determining factor for success, rather than power, I would say you have departed the realm of bouldering, as it was originally defined, and moved on to something else.

Famous quotes by iltrip:

"I have no clue....." Thu Sep 15, 2005

After a brief chuckle at the decent rope, we walked on down the gully Tue Sep 27, 2005

learn to spell you clueless gumby.

and sustained 5.10b climbing could be rated:

5.10 v5,7

This rating shows whether the route is a power or endurance route and better describes its difficulty.

Sorry, Ben. Your logic is a bit off. If V5 is 5.12, and V7 is 5.13, then how can a route be rated 5.10 V5,7? I'll assume that you type-o'd or were taking advantage of the new Denver measure.

As I said before - if V5 means 5.12, then why not just call it 5.12T,E, or P? If you need to feel original, reinvent your own identity. You don't need to reinvent things that already work perfectly well.

if V5 means 5.12, then why not just call it 5.12T,E, or P

Because V5 doesnt mean 5.12 - it means V5. They are two seperate scales and cannot be compared well (as evidenced by all the bickering that takes place on this site over Vscale/YDS conversions).

My logic elaborated: a 5.12 with a V5 crux would be a physical route with easy sustained climbing and one or two hard moves. If the 5.12 had a V2 crux, it would be more of an endurance route because the sustained climbing is harder. The hypothetical ratings for these two routes might be:
5.9 v5 and 5.11 v2

Because V5 doesnt mean 5.12 - it means V5. They are two seperate scales and cannot be compared well (as evidenced by all the bickering that takes place on this site over Vscale/YDS conversions).

My logic elaborated: a 5.12 with a V5 crux would be a physical route with easy sustained climbing and one or two hard moves. If the 5.12 had a V2 crux, it would be more of an endurance route because the sustained climbing is harder.

The reason I feel my system is better than yours (which is more or less the same)? Mine is more descriptive...

V5 is considerably harder than 5.9,10, or 11, so a 5.9 V5 would be illogical

The above looks exactly like Vscale/YDS conversions to me....

Additional description about a route can be done in English, like it always has been (e.g., "That one-move-wonder 5.12 over there"). And your system leaves us doing math in our head to figure out if a given 5.7 V2,7 is as hard as that 5.11+ V5 over there---when both would just be rated 5.13a today.

Person sees in their guidebook that the route they are looking at is rated 5.11 V2. The person sees this rating and thinks "I am a good endurance climber and can pull down on V2...should be cake". Then he sees a route rated 5.8 V5 and thinks "I have no problem with sustained 5.8, but I often get whipped on V5 - this might be impossible for me at the time." In a YDS guidebook he would just see two routes rated 5.12, and have no idea which one his time would be better spent on.

That seems like a pretty simple train of thought. That wouldn't confuse you too much, would it? I hope not...

If there was any hint of a YDS conversion there, there would be no need to seperate the two ratings would there?

The point of my system can be demonstrated as follows.

Person sees in their guidebook that the route they are looking at is rated 5.11 V2. The person sees this rating and thinks "I am a good endurance climber and can pull down on V2...should be cake". Then he sees a route rated 5.8 V5 and thinks "I have no problem with sustained 5.8, but I often get whipped on V5 - this might be impossible for me at the time." In a YDS guidebook he would just see two routes rated 5.12, and have no idea which one his time would be better spent on.

That seems like a pretty simple train of thought.

The route is either 5.12 T,E, or P.

I'd argue it is fine to simply call it "5.12". Details about whether it is a power route, an endurance route, a crack, short, tall, or whatever else, can easily be described in plain English. I don't think you can bring everything down to three categories of "technique", "endurance", and "power" (especially since what people ambiguously refer to "technique" is a huge part of both endurance and power), and don't think there are major gains in any of the areas where rating systems are useful that can be made by attempting to do so.

(I agree with a lot of the rest of your post though.)

...were rated like routes - by the hardest move or sequence of moves.

There is a climb that is listed as a 5.11 finger crack but in the descripton of the route it says no move is harder than 5.10.

Rating routes by the hardest move in my opinion is not helpful at all and is not really done in any system (at least ones I am familiar with) except the YDS, at least how it was originally devised. I presume the YDS as applied today is more of an overall measure not just the hardest moves. I'm guessing this from fracture's posts and also comments like this from another thread,

Having never climbed in the US and therefore never used your system I have no idea. Is this normally how the YDS is applied?

I don't think there is an exact answer to your question, but classic old school (i.e Gill, Holloway, etal.) boulder problems were rarely more than a half-dozen or so difficult, gymnastic type moves--and often had fewer moves than that. When endurance begins to be the determining factor for success, rather than power, I would say you have departed the realm of bouldering, as it was originally defined, and moved on to something else.

Curt

... it just says "Monsieur Lefrog en La Va A Le Blahblah"

You can't claim they are completely uncomparable at the same time as you make such comparisons and expect it to make any real sense

Calling a 5.12 5.8 V5 is a perfect way to mislead most 5.8 climbers into thinking that a 5.12 route is somehow 5.8. What you are suggesting is that routes be rated by their easiest moves and an extra rating be added for the crux - basically putting the cart before the horse.

...I can easily rate every problem that I've ever done by the YDS system. The way to make that complete would be to add either a T (technical), E (Endurance), P (power), or any combination of the three to it, e.g. 12E+, 14P, 15TE-, etc. It's that simple, and then you could relate it to roped climbing. You would know that 12E had no 5.12 moves, but that the lengthy sequence equaled that, and 14P would easily represent a 5.14 move or short sequence - just like on routes...

No you really don't get it.

The YDS part of my rating is the rating of the sustained climbing sections not the easiest move - do you even understand what sustained climbing is?

Oh, and anybody saying that YDS grades are based solely on the hardest move of the route is full of s---.

Example: to bolt or not to be, the first 5.14 established in america, which doesn't have a single move harder than V4/5

Alright. I see this is going nowhere - no need for us to keep arguing.

I know I came off as (quite) acidic in my posts, but I don't mean you any personal disrespect - I've just been in a bad mood for the past couple because of my workload. I do not doubt your climbing prowess, I was just getting frustrated with the argument at hand...