brazilian grading systems

[scd]

• [ ] brazil has a grading system which looks like a fork from French which has diverged, similar to how south african diverged from australian. See #1139. This needs a whole new system, plus a whole new country context for brazil. Making matters worse it looks like they use the font 5A system for bouldering as well as the V grade. brazil is quite a mess, but with only 420 routes it's not a mess at scale and we should try to get things right here before the data grows too much more.
• [ ] some south american countries should be use either the Brazilian grades or French grade, specifically: argentina, peru, but the waters are muddy because those two systems / contexts overlap. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29#Brazilian

Cannot implement until we find more explicit resource (this one is a little vague) and an explicit conversion table

[brendanheywood]

Found this which might do the job:

http://www.mountain.ru/eng/climb/2004/grade/

[mbrubake]

I have some scans from a local guidebook which may be more reliable than that table or the table on Wikipedia. See here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8J67LsbfCvKUTlMOFNiMmZPbms/edit?usp=sharing Of note is that people use Roman numerals as well as the arabic numerals and the + (or sup) notation is used for grades up to 6. I.E., 4+ is sometimes 4sup of IVsup.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8J67LsbfCvKNFJxcHFyb1hPNVk/edit?usp=sharing is a description of the system in general. (Sorry for the crappy photo quality...)

[brendanheywood]

A heaps better source:

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cota%C3%A7%C3%A3o_%28montanha%29#Tabela_comparativa

[scd]

Some other subtleties. Example grade: "5sup VIIb E3 D3"

The first grade refers to the general grade for the route, while the second grade is the crux, which is harder then the first grade.

E1-E5 refers to how serious/dangerous the route is.

 D1: A few hours of climbing
 D2: Half day of climbing.
 D3: Almost a full day of climbing.
 D4: A long day of climbing.
 D5: Requires a night on the wall. Very fast climbers can repeat it in one day.
 D6: Two full days or more climbing. Typically includes long and complicated stretches of aid climbing.
 D7: Expeditions to remote access sites with long approach and many days of climbing.

They also had something similar in the Yosemite NP but I don't remember how it was used there.

[henrique]

Hi guys, I got some feedback from other climbers for the grades below VIIa and apparently: 6b/+ == VI sup 6a/+ == VI 5c/+ == V sup 5b/+ == V

and perhaps: 5a/+ == IV sup 4c/+ == IV

but I couldn't really find anyone that could convert anything below that from experience. Your table (on the dev site) looks good from VIIa onwards. Thanks again for supporting it.

[henrique]

Here is the link to the official description for the grading system: http://www.femerj.org/montanhismo-e-escalada/graduacao-de-escalada The google translation should be readable but you can let me know if you need any help with it. It also describes the grades for aid climbing and the general grade for the route, which should use ordinals and cannot be subdivided. Therefore the grade I gave as an example above is actually wrong and should be instead "5° VIIb E3 D3"

To be clear, this extended grade is only used on multi-pitches, and single pitch routes will only show their crux difficulty, e.g. "VIIb"

[scd]

The Dx and Ex are called Duration and Exposure grades according to the article.

Are these two system just used in Brazil, or do they have wider use?

[henrique]

Hi Simon, The article says they were were based on an "international" system. I believe the Dx is pretty much taken from the YDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29#Length_of_route The Ex might have been adapted and branched from the English system in the 70s?

To try to answer your question, I think they might have ended up a bit distinct from their international sources.

ps.: Here two examples, a complete grading of a multi-pitch: http://www.companhiadaescalada.com.br/pt/mais/croquis/croqui-atalho-do-diabo/ 8º Xa E2 D4, 300m (8º means 8th, as for 8th grade) and a sport topo (using arabic numerals): http://naokiarima.com/croquis_i_mg_cipo.html

[scd]

This is mostly done - all the systems. Implementing the degrees was a little bit irritating in our system, on account of how the symbol is handled with character encoding. It took hours to make sure files and configuration was saved and read in using the right encoding, and it was difficult to track down because degrees works in both latin and utf8 (I have got my rant off my chest now). Here is an example from simon's dev.

Couple of questions:

• The document referenced above implied that 8º can be written as just 8 or VIII. Is this correct?
• Do people ever write 8th Xa E2 D4 (ie 8th instead of 8º)? I currently have not allowed for this, but it should be fairly simple.
• I have no idea about the conversions of the Degree component of the rating system (eg what is 8º equivalent to).
• What is the current hardest degree component of the rating system?

Note it may be a couple of days before this is ready for testing in the public dev. I need to rebuild the public dev database for it to work.

[henrique]

Hi Simon, That's awesome, thanks heaps for all your effort!

I'll keep the example as before: 8º Xa E2 D4, 300m consisting of: general grade 8º crux/maximal grade Xa expo E2 duration D4 and length 300 metres

1- writing VIII would be wrong by the definition but if you want to leave it to make it more flexible I think it should be ok. Although there is a definition, a lot of people do not follow it properly.

2- the degree symbol (e.g. 8º) is just how we write 8th in Portuguese, so writing 8th wouldn't make sense in Brazil.

3- this general grading (e.g. 8º) really just tell us that most of the climb doesn't go over that grade (which in this case would be something between VIIIa and VIIIc, therefore a 8th grade. The scale is the same!). It's similar to say in Australia that this mentioned route has some grade 30 moves but climbs mostly around mid 20's. For your ranking, you should only use the crux grade (i.e. Xa == AU 30) So converting to AU, to attempt this route in a day you should be used to climb 300m of mid 20's in that same timespan. (Which should be pretty damn hard! Maybe I should have used a less extreme example but I think you get it.) The article refers to the general grade as been an average grade for the whole route but it also takes the quality of protection into consideration and the maths are complicated, so I sometimes think on it as the grade between protections... This is obviously completely subjective, as it usually happens with grades.

4- As I said just before, this general grade uses the same scale as for the crux grade. I agree the mixture of arabics and roman numerals makes it really confusing! If you still have any doubts about it I can give you a call tomorrow any time.

[scd]

All good, it looks like I have got it all in. Based on your comments the only issue I can see is that I made the degree grading system go a little higher - to 12º. As it is open ended I see no need to remove the extra grades.

Maybe ready for testing on dev tomorrow?

[henrique]

no worries, I can have a look then Cheers!

[scd]

please test on dev.thecrag.com

[henrique]

cheers Simon, it's great but how do I find the Ex and Dx ? this is probably the most popular route in Rio: https://dev.thecrag.com/climbing/brazil/urca/route/14267383 By the way, why don't you show the grade system name on "Select Rating System" instead of those ugly codes? ;) Instead of "Brazilian degrees" I would translate it as "general grade" or something like that...

Thank you again!

ps.: Is there a way to convert all Brazilian routes at once? I could fix the grades after but it seems to be a pain to manually add the additional grade. hm... that might not be a good idea, but perhaps you know a better way to do this.

On 23 December 2014 at 08:53, Simon Dale notifications@github.com wrote:

please test on dev.thecrag.com

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/theCrag/website/issues/1139#issuecomment-67894808.

[scd]

Updating is a bit of a pain using the interface. Don't worry about it before the release, we can work it out as a post release followup. We can do an Excel extract, update the route grades in the excel cells and then reload.

Check list of things for me to fix:

• [x] Add distance grading systems (Dx) to list of gradings systems that should be avaliable in UI registered grade form
• [x] Currently the Ex grades do not form part of the registered grade. Document workflow for updating Ex (I think it means making your own grade contribution).
• [x] Turn Labels into full names in grade UX.
• [x] Change full title of Brazillian degrees to 'Brazillian general grade'.

[henrique]

+1

[scd]

Work flow for updating routes after next release:

Manual method:

• Create your own grade contribution with the full grade (edit route from route page). The Ex grades do not form part of the registered grade, but rather it picks the highest from the grade contributions.
• Update registered grade

Spreadsheet method:

• Get an excel extract from Simon
• Update registered grade rows and grade contribution row
• Send back to Simon, who tests on dev first then updates prod

[henrique]

the E1 worked just fine, cheers. I can have a look on https://dev.thecrag.com/climbing/brazil/minas-gerais/area/500912871 after the release Thank you

[scd]

@henrique I have released the brazilian grades now. Are you able to start the manual upgrades. If there are a painfully large number of routes to upgrade in an area then let me know and we can use the spreadsheet method.

When that is done, please spread the word.

[henrique]

@scd many thanks again! I don't know what is easier but if it's not too complicated could you export http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/brazil/minas-gerais/area/500912871 for me? I can have a look this week or the next and get the correct grades, at least for the routes already listed. Cheers

[henrique]

it looks like we have a encoding problem on "Please input the rating system grade details." > "* Range Limit" > "5°" At least on my firefox on Ubuntu, we normally advise strict use of UTF-8 for non-english support but whatever works for you. thx

[scd]

@henrique I have started another issue #1789 regarding the encoding.

BTW, it will take about half an hour of my time to do the spreadsheet method, so if let's see what other areas require changes first. I think that 21 might be easier to do using the painful online method.

[henrique]

Ok, no worries, I'll have a look on the bulk edit later on but can you guys at least change the "Local Grade Systems" of every route in brazil to your BRZ? thank you

[henrique]

Hi @scd The bulk edit doesn't seem to add the grading system even when selected "BRZ", I've edited most routes but nothing happens on the front page: http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/brazil/minas-gerais/area/500912871 Perhaps there is another way of doing it but editing each route manually requires a bunch of clicks per route which makes it impracticable.

[brendanheywood]

hi @henrique just a fyi that Simon is on holidays for a week so don't expect a quick reply.