Chris Weidner Wicked Gravity
Chris Weidner Wicked Gravity (Chris Weidner / For the Camera)

"It's so obvious to me that the old routes are the hardest," said pro climber Jonathan Siegrist, of Boulder, when I interviewed him for a recent Rock and Ice magazine article.

Whether easy or extreme, traditional or sport, well-protected or dangerous — the older the climb, the harder it is in comparison to newer routes of exactly the same grade.

"You could compare the first 5.13a (five-thirteen-a) routes done in Colorado with the most recent and find the older ones are consistently harder," said Steve Levin, Front Range climber and author of the climbing guidebook to Eldorado Canyon.

"New-school 5.13s on the Front Range are more popular (than older 5.13s)," echoed pro climber Cedar Wright, of Boulder. "And frankly, they're less difficult."

This trend isn't limited to the Front Range either — it's all over the world.

Rock climbing grades are crucial to the sport because they're the critical measure that helps climbers see improvement, set goals, shape our training and direct us toward appropriate climbs. They fuel competition, serving the same purpose as a stopwatch does for runners.

But guess what? If grades are climbing's stopwatch, then that watch is missing its second hand.

Grades are one of the most divisive issues in climbing. Yet all the years of squabbling, hand-wringing and fist-fighting (not unheard of) over grades operates under the preposterous assumption that climbing ratings are, or even can be, exact.


"There has never been a consensus about how we rate or what ratings really mean," said Roger Briggs, a Front Range climbing pioneer since the 1960s. "We have what looks like really solid data, but the reality is a joke."

Wanna know how a climb is rated? It's like running a mile on a track with that jenky stopwatch. At the finish you're huffing and puffing, hands on your knees, and it reads: six minutes.

You think, 'That felt like six minutes and ... I don't know ... maybe 25 seconds.'

They don&#8217;t make 5.11s (five-elevens) like they used to. Roger Briggs enjoys a lap on Evangeline (5.11b) in Eldorado Canyon three weeks ago. Briggs
They don't make 5.11s (five-elevens) like they used to. Roger Briggs enjoys a lap on Evangeline (5.11b) in Eldorado Canyon three weeks ago. Briggs and Pat Ament made the first ascent of this pitch (with aid) back in 1967. It was free-climbed seven years later. (Chris Weidner / For the Camera)

And that's it!

Six-twenty-five goes into the record books, despite having only vague quantitative information. At best a few others will attempt the climb and suggest a rating, but the first ascensionist ultimately decides.

Ostensibly that person takes into account their personal strengths and weaknesses, the rock type, local grades, their hangover level, the moon phase, etc. But more often than not it's a snap judgment, and an attempt to force a "fact" in a laughably subjective arena.

The flimsy nature of climbing grades has allowed for a curious paradigm shift, which offers one explanation for the "softening" of recent routes.

"Route developers years back were more tentative to rate a climb at a harder level, fearing it would be down-rated," Levin said. The dreaded "down-rate" was, until recently, climbing's ultimate slap in the face.

Now it's the other way around: climbers err on the side of over-rating (aka "fluffing") their routes, barely flinching at the possibility of a down-rate.

"Back then it was ego-driven in one direction and now it's ego-driven in the opposite direction," said Justen Sjong, a climbing coach in Boulder.

One plausible, if not disconcerting, cause of this shift is that climbers in 2016 tend to be more concerned with instant social media response or pleasing sponsors than they are with longer-term ramifications.

"The media effect is substantial," said Peter Beal, influential Front Range climber and author of the provocative climbing blog, "With a relentlessly positive social media climate, climbers find it easier to take soft grades to gain approval from their peers without anyone calling them on it. Even if the grade dips down later, the media aura sticks.

"This is virtually impossible in other sports, where results are clearly quantifiable."

"Why call it 5.12d when you can call it 5.13a?" said Wright, sarcastically. "We've gotten soft and we tend to like the ego gratification of the bigger grade."

"I've spent far too much time thinking about ratings and getting frustrated over ratings to take it so seriously," Briggs said, laughing. "That's the joke."

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