dual bouldering grade display order

[scd]

What should the order be for dual bouldering grades? eg "25 V7" or "V7 25"

The system currently works by defining a display order.

David Nott has recommended doing it based on difficulty?

[davidnn5]

Yeah the difficulty is also how you manage aid vs routes, because of the 'free vs aid' issue.

Route X can be 20 M5, which means it's got some grade 20 moves plus some hardish aid. This should be listed as the M5 grade, because it's harder (i presume, i'm never aiding in my life if i can avoid it). Or it could be listed as 20 M5 but mean (20 or M5) so it goes free at 20 but you can aid it at M5 (unlikely, but bear with me). This one is difficult. Technically probably the free grade should predominate. Or... It could be 20M5 but 26 free. In this case, again, the free grade should probably be considered the most important.

That one's going to be difficult - boulders are simple in comparison!

I think what it suggests is that in some cases you will need to put up with 3 grades being assigned to a climb.

Perhaps it also suggests a few rules, first being 'highest grade is default' and second overriding rule is 'free grade defaults over aid grade unless we know it's unfreed' (which you should be able to determine based on gear style).

[brendanheywood]

I'd suggest that as this is generally a fringe case, that the grade shown is the most common grade. The second or third grade we could tack on somewhere else but showing 3 grades into the coloured box will probably screw up the layout in a bunch of places.

So a route could be in theory be:

V5 / 20 M4 / 26

but I'd only ever show one.

Ideally I'd choose the grade based on what most people have actually ascended it via, if most people do the route as an aid route then show that, likewise for boulder or free. If that is a not worth the implementation time on a fringe case then just choose the hardest or least safe option so people don't get over their head.

I still think in this case it could just as easily be modelled without database changes as two separate climbs, the boulder with a jump off, and a route which continues to the top. In Armidale we have a few staunch high balls boulder problems with bolts for toproping but I've never considered them routes. You can always solo any route, even a multi pitch, but that doesn't make it a boulder problem.

With the route grade changing over history, what you generally see is something like this:

26 Some hard climb  30m 7 bolts

Up the face.

FA: 1960 Fred, at grade 20 M3
FA: 1970 Bob, at grade 22 M1
FFA: 1980 Ted, at grade 26

Ie as the grade becomes more 'pure' then the old aid grades get relegated to history but are still there for info purposes.

[davidnn5]

Hmm.... A good example is 'Seventh Pillar'.

This climb has been freed. However the grade is still often quoted as 18 M2, because many people climb it to aid it. It's too hard for most.

There is a grey area, in the Canberra/granite context at least, once you hit a certain height but before a definitive route height. If you look through the routes you'll see quite a few that are 5-10 metres tall, particularly around Legoland. My personal view is that anything over 6 metres is quite dicey, particularly if you have to mantel (because if you screw it up completely you can fling yourself off the top and fall on your back and require surgery and all that fun stuff). But... with enough mats it's easy enough to boulder some pretty high stuff.

In this case, when you add some mantels to the steep downhill nature of this particular crag, that makes even a 5 metre climb feel like you want a bunch of pro! In terms of limpy, it actually does take a bunch of small pro, so you definitely could do it on gear and it will be a nut-cracking gear route, if short.

Anyhow, my argument would be to allow two grades (boulder/route, route/aid), but not necessarily 3. The third grade could easily be put in the description. And I still think the harder should be the default, though perhaps rather than a rule there should be a pop-up 'this climb has two grades and you have selected 18 M2, are you sure you want to take that grade for your ascent'?