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Do you think a person should be able to rate a route if they haven't been able to do it yet?

For example, you're working on Ale-8-One. You hang a couple of times and walk away thinking "The moves didn't feel that bad. I just ran out of steam. I'll be able to send it next weekend for sure."

Then you go send Buff the Wood but it feels way harder. You leave the cliff thinking to yourself..."Ain't no way Ale-8-One is .12b. The moves on Buff the Wood are SO much harder!"

You come home, log onto redriverclimbing.com and proceed to give Ale-8-One a rating of 5.12a instead of 5.12b because Buff the Wood felt so much harder. The thing is.........you didn't send Ale-8-One.

Waddya think?

SCIN wrote:Do you think a person should be able to rate a route if they haven't been able to do it yet?

...

You come home, log onto redriverclimbing.com and proceed to give Ale-8-One a rating of 5.12a instead of 5.12b because Buff the Wood felt so much harder. The thing is.........you didn't send Ale-8-One.

I didn't think that you allowed rating if you didn't tick it.

To give the most honest opinion you should have sent.

Giving the style of climbing at the Red, endurance/power endurance, I have to say no you can't rate a climb unless you've climbed it clean to the anchors. Only then will you have an idea how hard the moves are when fully pumped. The process I go through when working a climb at my limit is: bolt to bolt learning all the moves, then linking bolts and relearning the moves with better beta because of the pump, then finally making redpoint attempts. I am working on Shanghai and Herd Mentality at the DS and SC, if I were to rate them based on individual moves, Herd would be rated harder than Shanghai but throw in the pump and Shanghai is a letter grade(or two) harder than Herd Mentality.


PS everyone knows Buff and Stain are 12c not 12b....lol

I find it really hard to tell how a route plays out until I've actually sent it. The pump just seems to play such a role that's its hard to gauge.

by sending, do you mean leading or TR 'cause again there's a big difference there too, just look at Synchronicity

I feel a pattern forming in this thread...... and it's a familiar one!

Very true, haas...
I thought Syncronicity was a 5.10 sport climb....until I lead it. That thing worked the hell out of me and I definitely agree with the 5.11 grade after leading it.

rhunt said it right on.

Yep, I agree with rhunt/ac. You've got to lead it, and send it to know the grade and be able to rate it.

I thought this was going to be a thread about whether somone can give a climb a rating if it hasn't been done yet, and in that case I would say yes. Then when someone does it they can revise the grade to what they think.