Lets just switch to the french grading system???Scratch the old SA system.

Nic Le Maitre: Yes guidebooks are where the consensus grade should be stored, however they do get it wrong sometimes.

Knowing the correct grade is not always a big deal but can be important especially for trad routes and is a useful measure if you want to get onto a route or to an crag in the first place, but that is really a separate discussion.

I am mostly interested in the idea of grades being a consensus so why not use an aggregator to determine the grades. 8a.nu does seem to do this but not very well, ukclimbing.com is good but designed for the uk community.

Keith's idea is brilliant but i'm too lazy for that, or to busy relaxing after work, depends how you see it.

Actually the 8a.nu climbing database would be perfect for grading, you could estimate what the minimum number of points required for someone to onsight,flash or redpoint a route. And then that could become the "real grade". So 13 975 replaces 9a flash.

@Garron... Hmmm, that is Ondra's total score for this year. a 9a flash is 1353 points

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I hate this real world place... I'd be more than happy to live out there rather...

Anyone can load routes into the UKC database and once they are on there any repeaters can vote on difficulty.

Some SA Crags are already in there, just need a moderator to take charge (and get the spelling and geography sorted!)

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/? ... PE+GENERAL

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/? ... NG+GENERAL

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/? ... GA+GENERAL

(Sorry Durbanites, looks like no-one has bothered!)

this UK thing looks legit, bit better than 8a.nu, but once again the whole world uses 8a.nu, stop wining about grades and come climb

Ebert Nel
Fernkloof tomorrow and the day after

Problem with 8a.nu is they try and convert all grades (US, SA, UK Trad) into either French Sport or French boulder grades, often trying to muller a hexagonal peg into a triangular hole.

I could do with some fernkloof action right now, wanna pay for my flight

id love too, but u asking one of the 2 dirtbag bums of Gauteng to pay for something which would involve me having money, which i spent on entrance for choss.

Ebert Nel
stop complaining about grades if you cant even climb half of them

I quite like having a fairly inaccurate grading system! At least I can make the excuse when I suck on a route - "the grading on this route is completely wrong, there's no way that was a 21"