http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humility

Your a great climber and have done stuff most of us would like to scratch at. While your peers are icons and legends in our culture you will remain a forgotten troll. I wish your legacy was more, curt, but you carved it yourself.

Meathook = reach problem
AHR = reach problem
Slapshot = reach problem

When you say "a bunch of cash" how much are we talkin here Curt, it may be worth it for me to put you in your place. Trust me Curt, I have climbed way harder than you in every genre except maybe aid, you are in too deep. At least I've gone from a fucktard to cupcake, kind of endearing.

...I wonder why Gill and Sherman refer to so many problems below that grade as "boulder problems?" Maybe you should straighten them out on that Curt, since you are such an authority.

The point I am trying to make is that it is pure illusion that there is one YDS scale. If there were, all I would need to know about a route to know how hard I will find it is the rating. This is not the case. 5.12a offwidth has nothing whatsoever in common with 5.12a slab. You can make no meaningful comparison of such routes. So, whether you consciously recognize it or not, you have here two different YDS scales: one for off-widths, another for slabs. That there is utility in using the same system (a "5." prefix, followed by an integer and possibly a letter) is an illusion.

[..] But it is pure illusion that the a 5.12a slab climb is any way the same difficulty as a 5.12a offwidth. There is no utility to rating them on the same scale.

If you still believe that there is utility in rating routes of completely different character using the same system (we can't say "same scale" because the similarity is just an artifact of the similar structure of the two scales), then explicitly state what that utility is, rather than just saying that there must be utility because the system is in use and so there must be utility.

This is a bit off topic but I wonder why we havn't seen a really strong boulderer who is really tall. I'm talking 6'4 and up.

To get back to the point I was trying to address, the question was whether it made more sense to give long, traversing boulder problems a YDS grade or a V-grade. If you think that the grade should mean something compared with other climbs rated on the same scale, then it makes more sense to give long boulder problems a YDS grade.

Attempting to give a long boulder problem a V-grade results in what? I don't know.

In what sense would a long endurance V6 be comparable in difficulty to a typical-length power-oriented V6? Please don't answer my question with another question. Just answer the question plainly if you can.

That makes no sense. For all intents and purposes, the YDS and the V-scale are the same scale, just with different spellings. They are used to subjectively measure the same things. (As you pointed out, you could even use MCAT numbers as one of these scales.) Comparing a route rated on the V-scale with a route rated on the YDS makes precisely the same amount of sense---and has the same "meaning", whatever that happens to be---as comparing one route rated on the YDS with another rated on the YDS.

I have not been claiming to know what that meaning is. However, it is indisputable that these scales are useful, even if they aren't meaningful.

Perhaps the meaning is some sort of theoretical utility (like a center of gravity or any other fictional but useful entity).

I can't, but it is an irrelevant question. As I keep pointing out, you have the same issues solely within the YDS, or within any of the other members of this class of grading scales. (And the length of the climb is not the only thing that raises these issues.)

That makes no sense. For all intents and purposes, the YDS and the V-scale are the same scale, just with different spellings. They are used to subjectively measure the same things...

Dave Graham nearly did Slapshot but was worried he would break one of holds off. I believe he said it was hard 12 or easy 13

He didn't do it because he did not want to break it. That is his choice. My point is that the moves have been repeated and are far from impossible.

He didn't do it because he did not want to break it. That is his choice. My point is that the moves have been repeated and are far from impossible.

You obviously have no personal knowledge of these problems. Neither Meathook nor AHR are reach problems. Please reference Chris Jones' comments on these problems in Pat Ament's book: The History of Free Climbing in America.
Curt

Please explain to me how AHR is not a reach problem.

Please explain to me how AHR is not a reach problem.

Because there are no long reaches on it. It starts in an undercling that a 4 foot pygmy could reach. The move to the first pocket is not far--nor is the reach to the crux pocket far. It's merely next to impossible to hold on to those incredibly bad pockets, when your feet cut loose.

I have tried the problem a few times. Believe me, I'm 5'11" and there is no reach on that thing that I would consider long. It certainly does not require a 6'4" boulderer to do it--just someone with strong enough fingers.

Curt

don't you think there must be a plausible reason why nobody has repeated these problems beyond the improbable idea that holloway is somehow better than climbers like woods and graham.

You are confused. Somewhere along the line you missed my main point: that bouldering difficulty is different than route difficulty. Thus a bouldering difficulty scale is inherently different than a route difficulty scale.

That is a silly statement. Hopefully, it is not what you meant. Obviously, if the scale was meaningless it wouldn't be useful (in fact, it wouldn't be a scale).

Side note: center of gravity (mass) is well defined; I don't know why you call it fictional.

What I keep pointing out is that although the problem never goes away completely, the more homogeneous you make the set that the scale grades, the less the problem is.

A trip to our local gym will illustrate how poorly the V-scale performs for long problems. We have a long problem rated V3. It feels V3 to the boulderers, but lard-ass 5.10a route climbers, who can't boulder V1, can do this so-called V3 easily. Why? Because it has nothing in common with typical V3s and a lot in common with typical 5.10a's.

Sure, and a stopwatch is used to measure both 100 yard dashes and marathons. In practical terms, however, a stopwatch without a second hand (that would be largely useless in timing sprints) might be just be fine for timing marathons. In my opinion, it's a similar difference between bouldering and roped climbing that calls for the use of different rating systems.

If there was a rating scale for futility of an argument I'd give this thread a 7, though if it goes on much longer I may have to convert to the YDS scale...

There is far more variation between individual boulder problems or individual sport routes than there is between The Typical Boulder Problem and The Typical Sport Route.

If you were asked to identify exactly how bouldering difficulty is essentially different from climbing with a rope tied to you, what would you say? Stressed energy-production system(s) is not a good answer (it flies in the face of our empirical data: Burn Baby Burn, The Wheel of Life, power-endurance and power sport routes, etc).

"Bouldering" (contrary to Curt's prescriptions) just means you were close enough to the ground that a rope wasn't necessary.

Here's some other example scales which are meaningless in the sense I mean, but useful in practice.

"Fictional" because it only exists in a special metaphorical sense.

And if restricting the scale-usage based on the length of a boulder problem actually did that, maybe you'd have a point.

In particular, you (hopefully) must admit that it would be useful for those of us who are interested in power-endurance to not have to use separate rating systems (on similar climbs) based on a trivial detail like whether a rope is tied to our waist, right?

You cannot prove such a claim (no matter how many examples you give), but even if it is true, then you still make the scales more homogeneous (which can be proved mathematically) by rating long traversing boulder problems by using the YDS scale rather than the V-scale.

Right, but the purpose of the rating scale is to measure difficulty, so the question should not be (if you want to maximize the usefulness of the scales) how do bouldering and roped climbing differ by definition, but how does their difficulty differ.

No, center of mass (gravity) is well defined. In general it is the integral of the moments divided by total mass. For the special case of a two-dimensional object, it is the balance point of the object. There is nothing inherently metaphoric about it.

It does do it. I didn't say it made the scale completely homogeneous; I said it made it more homogeneous (and hence more useful).

That is precisely what I am arguing for long traversing bouldering problems.

In general, difficulty scales should be rating sets of things that have similar type of difficulty.

Ok. But making the scales more homogeneous is not a goal in and of itself.

Ok. So, how does the difficulty differ, then?

(Again, the set of energy-production systems that may be used is not different.)

Yes there is, and you're simply wrong (but it's okay: you're out of your field). As I mentioned: numbers are also well-defined. Numbers are also inherently metaphorical (along with many other things that you take to "exist", like thoughts, colors, algorithms, personalities, mp3 files or the empty set).

The use of a "two-dimensional object" is an ironic example, by the way. (It's another fictional-but-useful entity.)

But I dispute that more homogeneous implies more useful.

In fact, I think that is provably not the case, and I think I already showed how: the most "homogeneous" possible use of climbing rating scales would be if we had one rating system per route per climber.

...but it makes as much sense as comparison within the set of long traversing problems itself, which is also quite full of problematic variety.

Maybe you might consider articulating your proposed changes to the status quo a little more precisely, so I know exactly what I'm arguing about. For example, on what scale would you rate a long boulder problem that contained a series of power-endurance sections separated by no-hands knee-bars? What if it's the same, but some of them are power sections? What if we add a local endurance section at the end? What if the local endurance section is only 5.10a, but the power sections are V6? What if the local endurance is 13c and the power sections are V9? What if it's enduro 13c and the power is only V4?

You haven't given me enough information to answer these questions; it's very possible that I'm wasting some time by arguing against irrelevant bogeymen. On the other hand, if you find trouble answering these sorts of questions yourself, maybe you need to think about your position a little more carefully: the status quo (or a single universal rating system) both can handle these types of climbs successfully (under the criteria I gave earlier) without any trouble.