RRC Archives

Did a quick search of 5 star rated sport routes (5.0 average by users).

10 of them were 13d or harder.
18 of them were 13a or harder.
The remaining 2 were 12d.

Why so heavily biased towards the hard climbs? Is it ego that if you can climb that hard, it has to be good? Or are the best lines only on really hard routes?

Sampling bias... "5.0 average by users" means the route can't have a single vote of less than 5 stars, so the high-quality harder routes are statistically more likely to achieve this criteria simply by receiving fewer votes. As an example, Amarillo Sunset has a mean quality rating of 4.81 stars from 86 votes. To me this is just as if not more numerically impressive than Appalachian Spring having a 5.0 average from only 10 votes.

That said, I would argue that there are very, very few mid-11 or below sport routes in the Red worthy of 5 stars. There were a couple at Pocket Wall, but alas... the quality of rock simply begins to increase around a difficulty 12a or 12b.

Only the wisdom of Ray can lead us from this darkness...

Also your search parameters seem flawed. What about Nicoderm, Bush League, Fresh Baked, and Signed in Blood? All less than 12d (albeit with very few votes, so you were right to exclude them, intentionally or not).

Bored much

work sucks

Weird, I did advanced search and just did 5 star routes. Then tried again using a different option for finding routes between x stars to y stars (5 to 5) and it came up with 32 routes. Hmmm, time for some analysis.

Edit to add:

Ok, updated: 27 of the 32 routes are 12d or harder. The other 5 are 12b/c's. Basically 5 star starts at 5.12d is the short of it

Is that sampling bias or just where really good climbing begins?

You're doing your search wrong. There are plenty of 5.11 lines and even some 5.10 w/5 stars. But yea, there are a lot more high quality lines in the harder grades because the movement gets cooler.

Sorry Ian, just realized you were going by user ratings. I can't speak for others. Dustin is correct though. A single non-5 star vote will take it down. You'll notice though that the 5 star lines in the guide will usually have around 4.8 stars or higher on here.

remember this is the internet, the more people who think something the less likely it is to be true.

If a hard guy does a 5.11 and has fun on it, he'll probably go for 4 stars. That'll drag you off your 5 average right there.