Hacker News Reader

> My guess is they switched footwear from boots with crampons to rock climbing shoes based on the conditions of the wall.

Just a nit, the grade is M7 AI5+ A0 and doesn't include a free climbing grade. I would assume they stayed in their boots the whole time and did a lot of mixed climbing.

would you mind elaborating or linking to this grading notation? not sure what to even look for

This is a mixed route, so the comment above cites three grading scales:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)

The Mixed Climbing, Alpine Ice, and Aid Climbing grade scales, respectively. I wish I could provide more detail into each than the Wikipedia article, but the reality is each grading scale could probably warrant a small book of history and local/regional ethics.

To build on this a little - M7 involves climbing a mix of ice and rock, but instead of using conventional fingers and rubber-soled climbing shoes, you'd do the rock-only parts by "dry-tooling" - using your ice axe and crampons on the bare rock. It's kind of a weird experience.

M7 is a mixed ice and rock grade and AI5+ is an alpine (permanent) ice grade. A0 is easy aid climbing, most likely hanging on hammered pitons or nuts.

The mixed and ice grade implies the rock climbing is around 5.11 (harder than most recreational climbers will climb in traditional style), likely with ice tools, and the ice climbing is technical yet with decent protection.

https://alaskaiceclimbing.com/climb-ratings/

It's worth mentioning the altitude. I climb several grades less at ~3000 meters (Colombia) than near sea level (Chattanooga, New England, etc). I cannot imagine what climbing at 6k meters+ feels like. And these guys are hauling gear with no margin for error.

Thanks for the reply.. the main picture in the article looks significantly harder than 5.9+ to my amateur climber eyes, I'm not sure if there person above realizes 5.9+ is a specific rating in some places and 5.9+ doesn't mean 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, etc..

Ice climbing is straight nuts no matter what, even if you don't do it at high altitudes with no O2.

Climbing sheer faces with no Oxygen at that height is just literally bonkers.. hard to believe anyone who doesn't climb can even fathom that.

This climb is so outrageously impressive compared to the silly "race to climb all the 8000M mountains but the Sherpas haul everything up and set up ropes for you and maybe pull you up the mountain" stuff that has been in the news lately.

Bit of a tangent: Around here, and likely in many other places that were developed before double-digit YDS grades were a thing, 5.9+ is a specific and notorious grade, that is usually closer to 5.11 than 5.9.

Does that explain why many outdoors top-rope and lead climbing routes in the US feel about two grades harder than equivalently graded indoor routes? Specifically east-coast but I've heard the same applies nationally.

I think that’s just gyms grading soft to be honest.

Gyms are just a different thing. There a few places where gym grades translate well onto real rock, but they are few and far between, and nowhere with mostly trad routes will translate. Smith Rock for instance probably translates fine. Yosemite does not.

the hell kind of gym are you at that Smith Rock grades feel comparable? that place is sandbagged as hell.

A moonboard!

gyms are typically softer to give their clientele a feeling of progress. this makes people feel better and want to come back. if you're stuck at v3 for several months you'd be more likely to give up telling yourself you're not cut out for climbing... at least that's my(and many others') theory behind soft gyms

outdoor climbing is also usually a completely different style. I've found that often outdoor routes have way more focus on leg work. and that find a good hand hold is way more determined by how well you can read the route rather than how good the holds are in practise. Also people making the routes outside are often way better climbers so they often don't have a good pulse on grading the lower grades. Plus adjusting a routes grade based on feedback isn't really a thing because lowering the grade of a route after it has been set is quite the insult to the credibility of the person who made the route.

Reinhold Messner (first guy to solo the Everest without oxygen and generally a insane alpinist) would say that the climbing part isn't what makes these high elevation mountains hard. It is the lack of oxygen which means your brain operates in a fog and the simplest of actions like tying your shoes will take forever. And that in an environment where a single wrong movement can kill you.

Messner and others keep harping on how the hardest part is mentally going forward in auch an environment. I would add: move yourself forward in such an environment and know when to cancel the thing so you won't die.

> you need strong skills in both rock climbing routes 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult)

Additional context: you will be surprised at the easiness 5.9 is in the gym. Don't make this mistake outside; a 5.9 will kick your ass.

If the rating was determined in 2017, you can expect the difficulty to resemble what you find in the gym. It's the 5.9's whose ratings were applied in 1975--back when there was no such thing as a 5.13--they will kick your ass because that 9 is a 9/10, not a 9/15c. We've been making the denominator bigger as we continue to invent harder grades, and it creates a skew problem.

While this is mostly true, I just want to point out that it's mostly the less traveled routes that have this problem. Someone with a modicum of crack technique and an unremarkable gym ability will be able to get up Nutcracker (famous old school Yosemite 5.9 climb) without it feeling like they're doing anything above gym 5.10.

Good to know, thanks.

A member of my crew likes to seek out off-the-beaten-path climbs. The rest of us are just happy that somebody has a plan. Maybe this has set me up with a bit of a bias.

At those altitudes and temps I don’t really see how one could wear rock climbing shoes without being in severe pain from cold, or worse.

As other, far more well-informed posters have pointed out, you do not do these routes in climbing shoes.

There's a great short video of this kind of high-altitude mixed rock & ice climbing from a somewhat similar route on Shivling, whose summit is 1000 meters lower. Fairly bonkers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVcugATR8d4

> 5.9+(grading for rock climbing, this being very difficult)

can you provide more context on this? this just seems a bit odd to me as a casual indoor climber. a 5.9 route isn't the easiest, but most of the holds are jugs and you can do the whole thing statically. a generally athletic person could probably climb a 5.9 in their first few visits to the gym.

I can definitely imagine that climbing a very long 5.9 route in full weather gear would be exhausting, but I wouldn't expect a world class mountaineer to find it technically challenging.

5.9 in the gym and 5.9 outdoors are wildly different levels of difficulty. Depending on location an outdoor 5.9 could be the equivalent of anything from a 5.11a to a 5.12 and in addition you’re on lead which adds another significant level of difficulty.

I climb the same in the gym on lead as outside. I think this is being exaggerated in this thread or its something specific to bay area or something.

Sport vs trad grades outdoors are very different animals.

Sure. Most of my experience is in California, but I've found the grading differences from region to region to be just large as from out of state or international.

I climb 5.11c+ comfortably in the gym. I can barely lead a short Yosemite 5.8 outdoors; it's terrifyingly more difficult. That's a bit on the high side of a delta, but still typical.

I would say the difference is 75%+ in the scales simply not being the same. For the same grade, the holds would be far smaller, positions much more technical, often far more sustained, etc. The other ~25% is the environment is much more challenging, even with perfect weather at sea level: route finding is harder, you have to manage gear, leading is scary, etc.

I've done a few high Sierra climbs. Grades there are little softer, and my limit is probably ~5.7

For what it’s worth, there is also a wide variance in grading between different indoor gyms and different outdoor climbing areas.

Yosemite grades are notoriously hard; the most popular gym chain in California (which I love!) grades are notoriously soft. YMMV at other gyms and at other outdoor crags.

At the end of the day it’s a subjective guide, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers.

There's also the factor for people who climb inside a lot that they have very inefficient movements outside.

Because the grips aren't as obvious, a lot of effort is wasted looking for placements that would be immediate indoors.

"Grips"? I guess you mean "holds" (indoors). "Placements"? That's where you place gear, not your fingers, and you don't place gear in climbing gyms. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but pretending to have knowledge of something you know nothing about is a real problem on HN (and the internet in general). Best to say nothing than make a fool of yourself – something I'm still learning.

Alternatively, they speak a different language with different terminology and are translating. I know a few climbing terms in French and they're quite different.

What would be helpful is commenting on whether their assertion is correct or not w.r.t efficiency.

It’s definitely true. The high visibility of holds in the gym makes it easy to move quickly, even your first time up it, which saves a lot of energy.

Outside, the good and bad holds are probably the same color, and may be oriented in weird ways that require some feeling around to find the best way to grip them or stand on them.

Over time, climbers outside can learn to read the rock and make very good guesses about how to reach or step for the next usable hold. But it takes time to learn, and is somewhat location-specific because of the widely varying geology of climbable rock.

> Best to say nothing than make a fool of yourself – something I'm still learning.

I love seeing people plumb the depths of irony this way.

This difference is mostly about the rock and the technique. Granite is very different from limestone and Yosemite cracks are very very different from a gym. (And Tuolumne domes are yet another thing.) If you spent a summer climbing in Yosemite you'd get comfortable with the style and the grades and they'd make more sense to you.

Conversely if you took a trip to Smith Rock or Owens River Gorge you'd get a much closer correspondence between gym ratings and rock ratings.

5.9+ doesn't mean "harder than 5.9," it's a specific grade of indeterminate difficulty. YDS used to top out at 5.9 before 10a and the gang were added. Any climb that's graded 5.9+ pre-dates the extension of YDS beyond 5.9.

Unfortunately, some gyms are now using 5.9+ to mean a grade between 5.9 and 5.10a, which is very different than the traditional meaning of 5.9+.

I've climbed v6 in the gym and 11c sport routes outside. There are 5.6 granite pitches that absolutely kick my ass. The sandbagged grades are very real in the mountains, and the style of climbing is totally different from whatever you see in the gym (flaring offwidth cracks are my weakness, the only ''gym'' I saw that had anything like it was a shed owned by a guy who made first ascents in Li Ming).

What's a 5.6 route you've felt challenged on? And was it the runout that did it, or the actual physical difficulty of the moves? I ask because I've done a lot of climbing outside and I never ran across something that was graded 5.6 but that was as physically demanding as a V6. I have climbed long, highly runout 5.6 that required good mental fortitude.