Sandy,
the online guidebook is right. Bandolier and Centerfire are both 11b and Recoil and Reciever are 11c. I am a firm believer that those routes were just randomly given a grade when they were first put up. If Centerfire is 11c, then I will eat my shorts.
Mj
...quitting drinking is kinda like washing your hands after you take a crap...why start now?
Bandolier is 11a, in both guides, and I think that's accurate. It only took me 3 goes where the rest are taking me many more than that (I think Centerfire took like 8 or something)... though that's just me so again we have the whole subjective sport rating deal. I do think that other than Bandolier, the other 3 routes on the 11 wall feel fairly similar in difficulty, though, but for different reasons.
"I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory." --Paul
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(Emails > PMs)
I will agree that Bandolier could be 11a, but it's the hardest 11a in the Red in my opinion. Everyone I have talked to said they would not argue if someone called it 11b. Speaking from limited experience, there is no way Centerfire is 11c though, especially if you de-pump in the hueco. Compare it to Spirit Fingers, Big Sinkin' and Minimum Creep. Those are 11c. The one to the left of CF is harder but like you said, not by much and Recoil is DEFINITELY not 11d and actually does feel similar to Receiver in difficulty. So I would say 11b/c for them. I think Johnny had the best idea when he suggested we pick the hardest and softest climb to represent a specific rating and let all the others compare to those. i.e., Vandalism is the easiest 11a (next to Green Horns at Solar) but it's still 11a. The hardest 11a? Well, Bandolier would fall into that category IF we decided to leave it at 11a. That's the great thing about this online guide is that you don't have just one person saying this is this and that is that. We can all come to an agreement and benefit from each other's knowledge.
Mj
...quitting drinking is kinda like washing your hands after you take a crap...why start now?
I was talking to Jeff Moll a few weeks ago at Torrent while we were climbing Bandolier, Centerfire, & Reciever. He said when he and Porter put them up they were calling them all 11a/b. He mentioned that everyone seems to do the routes from right to left so by the time you've done one and jump on the next, it seems a little harder. That's why the grades have gone up since the FA.
I've had this theory rolling around in my head for a while now - grading is based on consensus, right? To look at it in a mathematical or statistical way, I'll bet that there would be a bell curve distribution if people voted on how hard they thought a given route is. Most votes would be about the same (+/- one letter grade) but a few would be much higer or lower. (I onsighted Vandalism and guessed that it was a 10b that I had a hard time on - great, but I haven't repeated it cleanly since! 11a sounds OK to me now) In the same way, routes of a given grade will feel like they are spread out over a bell curve to a given climber - most will feel about right, but some will be outliers at the soft and hard ends.
Well, so what? Essentially, any route's grade will sound way off to a few people. (You can't please everyone!) I think that Johnny is right on in looking to identify low and high examples for a given grade as guidelines for reaching consensus on grades. Someday, an online guide like this can be used for collecting votes and running the statistical analysis to determine consensus grades, but for the time being, it seems that we're doing a good job in collecting feedback and refining grades as things go along!
......if Recoil is 11.d then Bare Metal Teen is 12.d. It is a least a whole number grade harder. Pumpier, harder, longer, harder clips, harder moves(already said that), you name it. HARDER. Harder than just a letter grade difference. But my vote is just leave the grades the way they are in John's book let's argue new routes, not the tired old B.S. you can hear every weekend under the eleven wall at torrent. My 2 cents. Cling Clang.
