5.9 Ain't What it Once Was: An Exploration of Grade Inflation in the Yosemite Decimal System

The Yosemite Decimal System is a complicated entity fully worthy of dissertation-like exploration. But the YDS is an empirical system not a intellectual one, and any attempt to reduce it to research and discussion is bound to be flawed. If you are new to the Yosemite Decimal System, a good place to start is our article from January 2012 that provides a basic understanding of its history and of its general grade ratings.

A 5.10a sport climb in Colorado

There is much discussion, particularly between the older and younger generations, about a particular YDS phenomenon in the climbing and alpine world often called grade inflation. I work occasionally as a route setter at a local climbing wall. After designing and executing a project I was sure (and was confirmed by three other climbing friends, all of which can onsight 5.10 and one of which who can onsight 5.12) was 5.10b/c, a climber that was 48 years old and has several decades of climbing experience suggested 5.9+ as the rating. Surprised by this, I voiced my doubt and had him try another climb nearby which I originally rated 5.11a but after a few ascents downgraded to 5.10d. Again, this was confirmed by the same three friends. After struggling a bit but finishing the climb, this 48 year old climber suggested once again that this climb was 5.9+, only adding this time that it was "maybe" 5.10a. I was shocked, and this time I protested saying that this rating was simply impossible. After a lengthy discussion, at best I could convince him that it was at least 5.10b but he would concede no higher. While I was thinking "sandbagger," he suggested perhaps the difference was due to "a different generation" in a smug tone I interpreted as elitist.

While this encounter is not proof of anything other than the subjective nature of any grading scale in general and the Yosemite Decimal System here in particular, it got me wondering about the familiar theory of grade inflation all over again. Does it exist and why? Visit beta websites that allow users to vote for "consensus" ratings on routes such as Kor-Ingalls on Castleton Tower or The Mace near Sedona, Arizona that were established several decades ago or more and you often find that the new consensus is higher, sometimes considerably, than the original suggested rating. Is it that modern climbers, influenced by the safety of clip and go sport climbing, have been softened by the loss of "boldness" from the mainstream climbing realm? Or that many climbers climb for years and never learn to place a cam or a piton?

While considering this question, my research took me to a broad spectrum of places. In order to understand the issue of grade inflation, it seemed vital to understand its history. As noted in our history article, the YDS scale was invented at Tahquitz Rock as an extension of the Sierra Club's terrain rating scale that was used to grade alpine routes of all levels (class 1 being trail walking and class 5 being technical climbing). Ratings were established from 5.0 (easiest technical climb) to 5.9 (hardest technical climb at the time). The climbs at Tahquitz Rock, therefore, became the baseline routes by which all others would be compared. However, when you review the history of the rating at Tahquitz, you find a peculiar thing: the original ratings, the ones that were supposedly designed to anchor the entire system, have migrated slowly and steadily upward.

White Maiden's Walkaway on Tahquitz Rock's Maiden Buttress is an 800 foot multipitch trad route that was established in 1937 as one of the baseline routes at the 5.1 rating. Subsequent guidebooks over the years show that the rating has slowly risen to 5.3 then 5.4 and now some guidebooks list it 5.5. A survey of the consensus votes on one popular beta website reveals that one quarter of the climbers suggesting 5.6. Has the scale really bumped five number grades? Would that mean that modern 5.15 is simply what 5.10 was in 1937? The short answer is yes... and no.

The truth is the scale has inflated. As it has been refined, the higher grades have become more important and useful by modern standards. After all, many climbers today will lead their first climb at 5.6 or 5.7. The difference between 5.0 and 5.2 is almost indistinguishable. In truth, everything from 5.0 to 5.4 is a vague blur and often seems to overlap with class 4. In the days before the scale was opened to the mathematically illogical 5.10 rating (subverting the notion that class 6 climbing was aid climbing) in the early 1960's, when a climber encountered a climb that was at the very limit of the time it had to be rated 5.9. Sometimes the most devious of these would get a feeble 5.9+ modifier. That's not to say all 5.9's were the same, they just had no other rating to apply to these cutting edge climbs. When the scale finally opened, it was ultimately refined and slowly expanded as the sport advanced.

Today, the YDS and other scales are continuing to expand together. The YDS and the French scale, for example, have locked in step progressing at identical increments as a small group of international climbers establishes and confirms new futuristic climbs. As the grades expand slowly, one letter increment at a time, and benchmark routes are established at the new grades, the scale(s) have become more refined than in the older days. The aforementioned grade inflation does not seem to occur at these higher grades, and certain routes that have been held up as examples of certain grades have rarely changed over the years. If anything they tend to get downgraded as the beta develops and more ascents are made.

The author on a 5.12 (or is it 5.9+?)
sport climb in western Colorado

What all of this seems to mean is that modern climbers are not soft compared to their predecessors, despite the explosion of popularity in the safer mode of sport climbing. What the sport climbing explosion has allowed for is climbers to focus on pure difficulty, and people are sending routes that those who established the YDS scale could never have imagined 80 years ago. While the lower end of the scale might be softer than it was decades ago, the upper end of the scale has now been pushed higher than ever in all aspects of the sport, not just in bolt protected sport climbing. The so-called world's hardest off-width, The Century Crack (5.14b), was free climbed in Canyonlands National Park in Utah in 2011, as well as the hardest trad line in famed Indian Creek: Carbondale Short Bus (5.14- PG-13). Bold alpine first ascents have occurred in the Ruth Gorge in Alaska and elsewhere across the world. Alex Honnold soloed Half Dome, El Cap, and Mt. Watkins in a single day. While the sport has gone mainstream and become safer in many ways, boldness is still very much alive and rewarded. Though grade inflation has occurred notably over the decades in the lower grades, the higher grades have remained relatively stable, only expanding as new generations are able to push the sport further and further into the future.

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Single Hardest Move vs. Route as a Whole: The Great Ratings Debate

INTRODUCTION

I was a paddler long before I was a climber, so I am used to the idea of rating difficulty in terms of the total problem not the single hardest move. In whitewater, when grading the difficulty of a rapid you factor in everything from technical difficulty to length and consequences. A very short rapid with a large, safe pool at the bottom would get a lower rating then a rapid that was just as difficult but is backed up by a long, dangerous runout. A long series of moves at the same difficulty would get a higher rating than any of individual moves on their own.

I became a rock climber through mountaineering. It started with an ascent of our local mountain Mt. Sopris (12,953’). Needless to say that after that first, fateful climb an addiction to the high country ensued and I found myself spending nearly all of my free time researching and climbing as many mountains as I could. Time that would have been better spent studying for finals and writing papers was instead spent studying topos and researching mountaineering history. I climbed many easy (class 2 or lower) Colorado peaks and tiptoed into class 3 with routes such as East Slopes of Snowmass Mountain, and the Sawtooth. Soon I was drawn into the class 4 mountains and, feeling strong, I couldn’t help but dream of what lie beyond.

Arriving at Longs Peak near the end of a twenty-fourteener summer to attempt the Keyhole Route, I couldn’t help but look at the amazing cliffs and bastions of the north and east faces and dream of ascending it by a technical route. Kiener’s route on Longs Peak beckoned to me with a siren call. I had to learn technical climbing skills so I could climb these high peaks.

Today I have become just as addicted to rock climbing as its own pursuit as I am with mountaineering and alpine. I will always be a climber with a lust for something bigger than the crag, but I also love the relaxing simplicity of cragging at any of the climbing walls near my home in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

THE RATING GAME

The Diamond on Longs Peak

One of the things that fascinates me about both rock and mountain climbing is grading terrain. At once rating terrain is both amazingly subjective and intricately precise. How can it be both of these things?

In the United States we are stuck, for better or worse, with the Yosemite Decimal System. It might be useful to review a little YDS history. The YDS system started when the Sierra Club needed a way to grade various hikes and climbs in the Sierra Nevadas. They created five “classes” from class 1 (trail walking) to class 5 (technical rock climbing). A few years later, climbers at Tahquitz Rock found it necessary to subdivide the 5th class grade which encompassed a very large range of possible difficulty. The climbers of the era devised a decimal-based scale that went from 5.0 to 5.9. To abridge a very long saga, as climbers advanced and technology increased there came a need to open the scale. As of now the scale has been pushed to 5.15b. Only an elite and highly exclusive group of climbers have ever climbed at this level.

But what about those ratings? How do we define them? The challenges in creating a rating system for something as complex as rock difficulty are so numerous that at times the whole endeavor seems ridiculous. On the other hand, while you encounter discrepancies, regional interpretations, differences in rock type, differences in climbing discipline, the YDS has proven to be useful not only as a guide for us to climbs that properly challenge our abilities but also as a tool for measuring our own improvement as well as for comparing ourselves against others.

In a previous article, I attempted to broadly define the various levels of the YDS system. All sorts of interesting feedback, both positive and negative, flooded in in response. In this article I seek not to share my own opinion about a single, specific YDS topic, but to explore two different schools of thought when grading rock and terrain.

THE DEBATE

 I originally learned the YDS under the impression that the system rated the technical difficulty of the single hardest move. I found this method faulty, because although two routes might be the same in technical difficulty one inevitably be harder for any number of various reasons (i.e. it is much longer). On the other hand it comes closer to removing subjectivity than the other option, the route as a whole, which somehow has to account not only with a climber’s technical ability but also their physical conditioning.

For years, I believed wholeheartedly that YDS adhered to the single hardest move philosophy. You knew what an .11b move felt like and if you encountered one on any point of a climb than that was what the climb was rated. Even if the entire climb was 5.7 with a single 5.11b move it would be rated 5.11b. If another climb was stacked with hard moves one after the other with no rests but no single move was harder than 5.11b than the climb would also be rated 5.11b. There is the problem with this method. But still, as a climber, I feel better knowing that the climb will never be any harder than 5.11b (my current redpoint limit) and if I cant pull the route it simply means I need to train harder to build endurance for the more sustained 5.11b.

Recently, however, I was discussing ratings with a good friend and a much more experienced climber than myself (he climbed the Diamond at age 16, has bagged numerous big wall routes and committing trad/alpine routes, and currently enjoys redpointing 5.13c in Rifle Mountain Park) talked about how some 5.12a routes in Rifle don’t have any moves harder than 5.11b but are so long and pumpy that they get the 5.12a rating. Clearly this is a route as a whole mentality. In some ways I find this encouraging, because I know I am physically capable of pulling a 5.11b move. In theory, then, if I trained hard enough I should be able to climb this 5.12a. But if I climbed a 5.12a route wouldn’t that mean that I could pull a 5.12a “move”? Or can we not rate the difficulty of a single move? Must we have a series of moves before we are able to generate a rating? The confusion endures….

I’ve often heard people say things like, “It’s basically a juggy 5.7 to a V2 boulder problem with some more 5.7 above that.” Does this mean that the Sherman V-scale is better for rating a single move? But I have never believed this to be true either, for I have heard some of the best boulderers quoted after applying ratings like V14 or V15 saying “there is no single move harder than V13 but since it is a link-up of so many hard moves, I believe it is V15”. I always believed that the V-scale was designed to look at the boulder problem as a whole and YDS looked at the single hardest move. That same friend led a trad climb of his own at a local crag which he had rated 5.12c. The route was about 30 feet of 5.10c-ish climbing to a crux bulge with easier climbing above that. The crux was only about 3 moves. My friend described it as a V6 boulder problem and claimed to have had a very difficult time rating this climb. He was sure it was V6 but couldn’t for the life of him settle on a YDS equivalent. It was “too hard to rate just a couple of moves” he claimed.

With so many factors when it comes to rating a climb, it is amazing that we can even come to a general consensus at all. Still YDS is not without its uses. Although it seems like there is a huge variation at times in different people’s opinions about the difficulty of a climb, there is also a general consensus on many routes. 

CONCLUSION

I have always looked at the rating of a route based on its single hardest move. How positive is the hold? How big of a reach? What positions do you have to put your body in to make it? All of these factors make up the difficulty of any given move. I liked the single hardest move philosophy because in my mind it made it easier to pin down the given technicality of a specific grade and it eliminates a level of subjectivity about physical conditioning. Recently, however, I have been starting to wonder if this idea is erroneous and that the route as a whole is truly the more accurate way to evaluate a route’s difficulty. I hope here now, to get feedback and see what you all think.

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A Guide to the Yosemite Decimal System

INTRODUCTION

I am often asked by friends new to mountaineering or climbing just what the grade numbers mean. What is the difference between class 3 and class 4? What is the difference between a 5.7 climb and a 5.10 climb? Just what is a 5.15? And what about those letters? Is it really possible to accurately and effectively subdivide a grade like 5.10 into four, lettered subgrades? Not to mention Aid and protection ratings and the vague Roman numeral grades. This article is an attempt explore a very complex and dynamic grade scale that is the Yosemite Decimal System for grading terrain.

You hear a lot of numbers thrown around in discussions of route difficulty. It's important to remember that any attempt to reduce something as complex as a mountaineering route to a few numbers is bound to be flawed. Any class rating is an oversimplification at best and is certainly not capable of telling the full story about the route you will experience. Attitude, body shape, climbing style, etc, will play major factors in a route's perceived difficulty. Difficulty ratings also don't incorporate other issues, such as protection, rock quality, belay/rappel anchors, weather conditions, rock conditions, etc. Difficulty ratings are also subject to local interpretation, and you might here terms like "soft" or "sandbagged" applied to certain crags. In my backyard, Rifle Mountain Park--a famous limestone sport climbing area--is often called "sandbagged", meaning that the grades climb harder here than other places.

It is also important to note the difference between gym, sport, traditional (trad), and alpine climbing. A person comfortable at 5.10 on bolts or at the gym may panic on a 5.7 trad climb. Alpine routes especially bring their own unique difficulties, and even low 5th class (which I have labeled as "easy") can be quite advanced considering the length of these routes and the objective hazards of a mountain environment. Always seek as much information as you can before attempting a route. Consult locals, buy route guidebooks, and surf your favorite web-beta climbing site to maximize safety.

That being said, difficulty projections are useful to gain a rough idea of the technical demands a given route will entail. A knowledge of the scale, therefore, is important. Consider the following article as a rough guideline to understanding the current system for grading terrain in the United States. Bear in mind two things about my opinion of these grades: I have a Western Colorado bias, which might compare to your local understanding in different ways. Our climbs might be rated harder than yours, or they might be easier. It is hard to say. The truth is, however, that the only way to really understand a grading system such as the Yosemite Decimal System is to experience the rock and subsequent ratings for yourself.

Class 1	Class 2	Class 3	Class 4	Class 5

HISTORY

The original Yosemite Class System was created by the Sierra Club in the 1930's to taxonomize the difficulty of various hikes in the Sierra Nevadas. Class 1 was simple  trail walking, and class 5 was considered technical climbing. It was soon discovered that class 5 encompassed such a large group of rock that it was sub-divided into a decimal system. This decimal extension was created and developed in Southern California to classify the difficulty of various routes at Tahquitz and Suicide Rocks. The "old-school" scale started at 5.0 was capped at 5.9. As climbers and their gear got better, even harder climbs were being sent, and the need arose to open the scale. The YDS scale has now been pushed to 5.15c, though only a handful of such routes exist in the world.

YDS CLASS

General terrain difficulty grading system (U.S.):

Difficulty Level	Type	Description	Alpine Examples
Class 1	Trail walking	This includes everything from paved concrete at the easier end of the level to very steep but well-defined alpine trails. Using your hands for balance even occasionally is usually not necessary.	Mt. Elbert, Northeast Ridge;
Class 2	Off-trail hiking	Uneven terrain or very rough trails that require considerable attention to footwork. Hands are possibly used on occasion for balance but not relied upon for significant periods.	Torreys Peak, South Slopes; Holy Cross North Ridge
Class 3	Scrambling	Hands are now used for upward movement continuously. Holds may be selected and tested but are plentiful and very easy to grip. Third-class terrain is probably never fully vertical. Most people do not need a rope to ascend class 3. An indicator of class 3 is that most people can downclimb it facing outward.	Longs Peak, Keyhole Route; Mt. Evans, The Sawtooth
Class 4	Hard scrambling/easy climbing	Hands used continuously for upward movement. Class 4 is sometimes close to vertical but has very good and abundant holds. Some people may want a rope on class 4 terrain but most will not. A key difference between class 3 and 4 is that many people feel the need to downclimb class 4 facing inward.	Capitol Peak, Northeast Ridge; Pyramid Peak, Northeast Ridge
Class 5	Technical climbing	Requires considerable knowledge of ropework, knots, and protection to climb. Although "free-soloing", or climbing without a rope, is admired and even revered by some as the purest form of climbing, it is a rare sort of person that enjoys climbing significant class 5 pitches without a rope. Most people will want rappel, not downclimb, a class 5 pitch, especially if it is of significant length.	Longs Peak, North Face; Vestal Peak, Wham Ridge

A 5.12a sport climb in Colorado

5.8+ dihedral in Colorado National Monument

5.7 trad near Carbondale

A breakdown of the YDS 5th class subgrades:

Difficulty Level	Type	Description	Examples
5.0-5.4	Easy climbing	Face: Very good and plentiful holds. This is generally considered "easy" climbing. Usually less than vertical with large jug holds or many otherwise positive holds. Sometimes there seems to be some overlap with easy class 5 climbs and harder class 4 climbs. Short sections of low class 5 are often soloed by experienced climbers. Crack: It is hard to find a crack that is sub 5.6. If there is such a thing it is almost assuredly sub-vertical and accompanied by numerous face holds.	Longs Peak, North Face; Vestal Peak, Wham Ridge
5.5-5.6	Easy moderate	Face: Getting a little more challenging now. Often vertical with very good and plentiful holds or slabs with easy-to-find edges. Holds are abundant for climbers of any height and almost ladder-like in quality. Crack: Probably sub-vertical and likely with plentiful accompanying face holds. Solid comfortable, jams throughout and very little "awkward" places.	Spearhead, North Ridge; Lumpy Ridge, Batman and Robin
5.7-5.9	Moderate	This is probably the most popular range and the domain of the weekend warrior. Reasonably athletic, first-time climbers with no experience can sometimes climb at this level on top rope, especially 5.7s and 5.8s. In the alpine realm, however, these routes can be quite advanced. Face: Plentiful holds that are mostly positive. Climbs of this range can be fully vertical but are almost never overhanging. Some 5.9s could possibly be overhanging for very short sections. Crack: Just sub-vertical to vertical cracks in the good sizes, espcially thin to perfect hands. Sometimes fingers, espcially if face holds present.	Petit Grepon, South Face; Crestone Needle, Ellingwood Arete; Independence Monument, Otto's Route
5.10-5.12	Advanced	Rock of this level requires considerable technique and skill. Many climbers never achieve this level, 5.12 in particular. Usually requires considerable time investment to acquire. Routes rated 5.10 or above are usually subdivided into letter grades a, b, c, and d. Though there is often much debate over these letter grades, there is a noticeable difference between a 5.10a and a 5.10b. This is an elite level for trad climbing, as many people climb one or two number grades lower when placing gear. Face: Requires use of very small holds, crimps, side-pulls, gastons, underclings stemming, etc, a great deal. 5.10s can be overhanging with very good holds. 5.12s are often overhanging with technical movement like dropped knees, etc. 5.12 slabs are very blank. Cracks: Very difficult cracks with the bare minimum of accompanying face holds. 5.12 cracks are often in the ringlock size or in a better size but overhanging.	Longs Peak, Casual Route; Sunlight Spire, Standard Route;Eldorado Canyon, The Naked Edge
5.13-5.14	Elite	Let's face it, climbing at this level is for the very best. Poor holds, monster overhangs, little rest, gymnastic ability, all qualities you are likely to find on a route at this level. Climbing 5.13s and 5.14s requires many hours of dedicated perseverance and considerable natural ability. Face: This is hard for me to say, I have never climbed at this level, though I have seen a lot of 5.13 and some 5.14 climbs. They are almost always overhanging and requiring amazing use of body position to utilize angled sloper grips. A 5.13 slab is extremely rare. Crack: Gnarly tips cracks, possibly overhanging, no face holds. There really arent a ton of cracks of this level out there. Overhanging off-widths can get this rating, like Belly Full of Bad Berries in Indian Creek. Recently, the supposed "hardest off-width in the world" was put up in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. Dubbed "The Century Crack" it is a heinously long, flat overhanging off-width that was freed and given a 5.14b rating. Check out this video of Mason Earle tackling Squamish's Cobra Crack, one of the most famous 5.14 trad climbs in the world.	Rifle Mountain Park, Zulu; Clear Creek Canyon, Prime Time to Shine
5.15	Virtuoso	Very few climbers in the world have ever achieved this level and all are essentially household names. Chris Sharma, Tommy Caldwell, Dave Graham, Adam Ondra, and a handful of others complete the list. Though Tommy Caldwell never graded it officially, Flex Luthor, a sport climb in Colorado, was generally considered the first 5.15 in the United States. Caldwell redpointed the route in 2003, and only commented that it was "significantly harder than [neighboring] Kryptonite", which was the first route in the U.S. graded 5.14d. Luthor has yet to be repeated and thus the rating un-confirmed. Here is a video of Chris Sharma and Adam Ondra working what is now known as the hardest climb in the world.	Fortress of Solitude, Flex Luthor, La Dura Dura, Spain

5.7 granite trad climb in Unaweep

5.10b overhang on the West Slope

SAFETY/PROTECTION RATINGS

Since the YDS system accounts only for the technical difficulty of the hardest move, a need arose to somehow quantify the quality of protection, and therefore safety, of a given route. Consequently, James Erickson developed a safety grade based on movie ratings. It is important to note, however, that these ratings are given with the assumption that the leader has placed gear perfectly as the route allows. In other words, in inexperienced hands ANY climb can get the most dangerous rating.

G: Good. Protection is more than adequate, with placements available to minimize the fall factor. A leader who places gear properly should never be in danger of hitting ledges or the ground in the event of a fall.

PG: Pretty good. Protection is considered adequate, although moments where there is ledge-fall potential may exist. It is rare to see either a G or PG rating attached to a climb, as it is only when a climb is PG-13 or higher is it noted in guidebooks.

PG-13: Moderate. Protection is generally good with perhaps a section where there is potential for a long, risky fall. This rating is often applied when protection for a climb is not totally adequate but not bad enough to merit a full R or X rating.

R: Runnout. Even with perfect gear placements there are long sections of unprotected rock where if a lead climber fell they would be subject to a long, dangerous fall likely resulting in serious injuries.

X: Extremely runnout. Similar to the R rating, only taken to an extreme. If a leader falls on an X-rated climb, death is a real possibility.

GRADE RATINGS

The American system also includes a Roman numeral "grade" that attempts to evaluate a climb in terms of both time required and technical difficulty. The grading system attempts to combine factors such as: length, commitment, routefinding, difficulty of hardest pitch, average pitch difficulty, number of technical pitches, and others.

Grade I: Short climb requiring a couple hours or less of any difficulty. Single or two-pitch climbs are usually graded I though the numeral is not usually included on the difficulty rating.

Grade II: Half a day to 3/4 of a day of any difficulty. Most 14er hikes in Colorado are graded as II. Otto's Route on Independence Monument near Grand Junction, Colorado is usually graded II.

Grade III: Most of a day with some technical climbing. Long semi-technical climbs such as Ellingwood Ridge on La Plata Peak in Colorado can also receive a Grade III rating.

Longs Peak's The Diamond

Grade IV: A full day of technical climbing with the hardest pitch being at least 5.7 in difficulty. The Casual Route on Longs Peak is Grade IV.

Grade V: Requires a day and a half with the hardest pitch being at least 5.8 in difficulty. Very long multi-pitch climbs often requiring aid climbing. The Yellow Wall on the Diamond is usually graded V.

Grade VI: Multi-day climb with many technical pitches requiring difficult free climbing and aid as well. Most of the famous routes on El Cap in Yosemite are Grade VI as well as climbs such as the Hallucinogen Wall in Black Canyon National Park and the North Face of Mt. Hooker in the Wind River Range.

Note: While the grading system specifically lists criteria such as "takes multiple days," advances in the sport have proven these factors as unreliable. Grade VI routes on Halfdome and El Cap, after all, have been climbed in a day or less by modern pioneers.

AID RATINGS

The last component you are likely to see in a rating for a climb in the United States is an aid rating. Aid climbing occurs when terrain becomes too difficult for a leader to climb free and resorts to climbing on gear itself, rather than the rock. Pitons, gear grabbing, etriers, cam hooks, etc, are all components of aid climbing. Personally, I don't do a lot of aid climbing as of now, so the following descriptions are greatly in-debted to Mountaineering: The Freedom a the Hills, a book that anyone interested in alpine climbing should own, and several other sources.

A0: Fixed protection in place, such as a bolt ladder. Sometimes when a free climber pulls on a quickdraw or camalot they will say they did some "A0" on that particular climb.

A1: Easy aid placements, and almost every placement is capable of holding a fall.

A2: Generally good placements, but they may be difficult to place. Intermittent bad placements are also possible.

The Titan, home of the famous aid route Sundevil Chimeny (5.9 A 3)

A3: Hard aid. Requires active testing of placements. Each pitch takes a very long time to lead and there is potential for some very big falls, up to around 80 feet or so. Most falls, however, are not particularly hazardous.

A4: Serious aid. Big half-rope length falls with potential for grounding. The vast majority of placements are only capable of holding body weight. In a sense, this is almost like the "R" rating in the safety section.

A5: Placements hold only body weight for an entire pitch. Any lead fall for the entire pitch is going to be factor 2 (i.e. twice the length of the rope that is out) or the fall will directly ground the leader. Comparable to the "X" rating in the safety section.

A5+/A6: Occasionally people have proposed an A6 grade for several climbs, though many deny the possibility that such a grade can exist. Supposedly, and A6 climb is like an A5 with body weight placements for an entire pitch but with bad anchors as well.

Aid climbs can also be rated C0-C5 which means basically the same thing except that a route can be climbed without the use of pitons, bolts, or drilling. This category is called "clean aid". Once a route has gone clean it is expected that subsequent climbers will honor this style and not further mar the rock.

This article, written by Richard Jensen, is an intriguing read and will help provide an empirical understanding of aid climbing. Further investigation of climbing figures like Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, Jim Beyer, Layton Kor and others will help you understanding more about the sport of aid climbing in America and its illustrious history.

CONCLUSION

Clearly, the system for rating the difficulty of a climb is complicated and takes a long time to master. There is plenty of room for subjectivity and debate. One person's 5.7 is another's 5.9. While some people shun such ratings debates, I actually find them interesting, as long as people do not take them too seriously. True climbers wont waste too much time in rating's debates but instead will be out on the rock, having fun no matter what a climb is "rated". Still, after reading this article you can look at a rating such as IV 5.10c R A3 and have an idea of what to expect from such a climb.

APPENDIX A- Comparison chart for difference difficulty grades:

YDS	V-Scale	UIAA	French	Font.
5.0	--	II	--	--
5.1	--	III	1	--
5.2	--	III	2	--
5.3	--	IV	3	--
5.4	--	IV	4a	--
5.5	--	IV+	4b	--
5.6	VB-	V	4c	1
5.7	VB	V+	5a	2
5.8	VB+	VI-	5b	3
5.9	V0-	VI	5c	3+
5.10a	V0	VI	6a	4
5.10b	V0	VI+	6a	4
5.10c	V0+	VII	6a+	4+
5.10d	V1	VII	6b	5
5.11a	V1+	VII+	6b+	5
5.11b	V2	VII+	6c	5+
5.11c	V3	VIII-	6c+	6A
5.11d	V4	VIII	7a	6A+
5.12a	V4	VIII	7a+	6B
5.12b	V5	VIII+	7b	6C
5.12c	V6	IX-	7b+	6C+
5.12d	V6	IX	7c	7A
5.13a	V7	IX	7c+	7A+
5.13b	V8	IX+	8a	7B
5.13c	V9	X-	8a+	7C
5.13d	V9	X	8b	7C
5.14a	V10	X	8b+	7C+
5.14b	V11	X+	8c	8A
5.14c	V12	XI-	8c+	8A+
5.14d	V13	XI	9a	8B
5.15a	V14	XI+	9a+	8B+
5.15b	V15	XI+	9b	8C

FURTHER READS

-14ers are Dead!!!
-Hardest Move vs. The Route as a Whole: A Discussion of Grading Difficulty
-Ten Class 3 Colorado Classics
-Ten Class 5 Colorado Classics
-Five Hardest 14er Cruxes

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