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Comment by wetmore | 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.

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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.

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