8C+ is needed to take us further

8C+ and 9A are needed to take us further

Everything has been said, but not by everyone. And maybe I feel the persistent discussion around bouldering grades deserves another statement. In the hope it adds a new perspective. This new perspective shall be a mix of irony, sarcasm and a provocative call for the top boulderers in the world to take responsibility for developing our sport. And yes, I am passionate about bouldering as it is just a fantastic way of life.

My justification to write this? Well I’m old, rich, have a beautiful wife, my personal best is 7B+ in an area which feels totally over-graded, so you can safely assume I have no personal interest in any boulder being particularly graded.

My going-in position is rooted in the following beliefs:

1)       Grades do matter. Let’s stop this fake ‘it is not important but …’ and simply be honest: At least for everyone who develops a minimum ambition in sports there is a desire to compare/rate performance. It is a trivial fact of human beings, look at all the runners who track themselves with smartphone apps or similar. And look at all the amount of discussion going on about grades in climbing forums/magazines.

2)      Grades are subjective. Another trivial fact as the physiognomy of people is different. Size, weight, genetic disposition for finger strength etc. all lead to one specific boulder feeling very hard for one person and rather easy for another.

3)      Bouldering grades is an open scale. No-one ever defined a climbing scale with an absolute top end. We are pole-vaulting, not running 100 meter races. Means better performance achieves a higher score (a new height like in pole-vaulting), whilst we do this on changing objects (different from the never-changing 100 meter scale).

4)      Evolution takes place. Training methods evolve, shoe rubber evolves, an increase in sport popularity reaches a larger gene pool with able climbers etc. What was the top end 10 / 20 years ago is today warm-up for the top athletes.

5)      Downgrading is more likely than upgrading. Psychology biases us; when I downgrade, I essentially say ‘I am stronger than the one who gave the original grade’. Upgrading is the opposite statement of feeling apparently weaker. Hence we should not wonder why we see mostly downgrades.

6)      Bouldering grades will always have a higher error rate than rope climbing grades. Talking about the ‘average’, and yes, you can easily find the exemptions to this ‘rule’, subjective predispositions for the ability to do certain moves tend to matter more in 4 move problems than in 40 movers where endurance weighs in more for the assessment of the difficulty.

What are the implications from the above?

1)       I believe attempts by Dave, Nalle or others to define ‘the’ standard 8C must fail. We might think of a set of problems, and when you sent all these you can call yourself an ‘Accomplished Climber on the 8C level’. This is the legendary AC8C status! So, do we need to award this? No. You can safely assume that ‘the community knows its heroes’ and we can differentiate between an 8C boulderer who did one (and might have had a lucky go on the perfect-fit problem) and another who did several and in different styles and areas.

2)      When you, by whatever community-accepted scale, reach AC8C, what do you do with this? You most likely try to make a living out of it and feed the community with videos of your latest sent. With the bonus of added important messages to the world in the range of ‘I’m so psyched, my hardest problem so far, cool line’. If you think the last statement is ironic, you are right.

3)      As a ‘customer’ to this, do I care? Well, if I like you, the early news are news, then it becomes the no-surprise standard and after some years I start to wonder if you have done any progress at all.

4)      There is no obligation, but I really believe if you are gifted by your genes etc. to achieve AC8C, it comes with the chance and responsibility to take the sport further. Why? Because any sport can only be taken further by the top athletes. Ok, let’s rule out doctors and doping in this equation.

5)      Taking the sport further does not lie in the ‘downgrading game’. Why? If the top guys ‘decide/agree/feel’ that the (current) top end can only be 8C but still progress, they implicitly  introduce (temporarily) a closed-end scale to bouldering. And this means every downgrade of a particular 8C to an 8B+ has a carry-over effect to the relative ranking of other boulders. Essentially to not only possibly 20 affected other problems in the 8B+ range, but all boulders out there in the world. But as there is no human being able and interested to derive this theoretical list of absolute truth, the top end downgrading ‘breaks’ somewhere in the grade range where the top boulderers do not care anymore (let’s say 7C) and effectively destroys the consistency of the bouldering grade scale for the whole community.

6)      I sometimes get the impression that the top boulderers are locked in a game ‘I do not want to be the first to propose 9A and then being called off by the others to have over-rated it’. And this is a bit strange. What could happen? Let’s say Daniel claims 9A. Big news. Sure the others will soon attempt to repeat it. Let’s assume the first repeater gives it 8C. So? Will the reputation of Daniel suffer? Most likely not. Fred Nicole has never been called a weak jerk despite several of his problems have been downgraded. His name rightfully stands out as one of the top boulderers who actually took the sport further. 

7)      And finally, I believe (and this is only rooted in an optimistic state of mind) progress in bouldering beyond 8C is possible. With a sport just at the verge of becoming popular, with a just beginning inflow of money, professionalized training and a larger gene pool access should bring about people who can simply boulder harder than before. It is unlikely that we have reached the limits of human performance in our sport already.

To sum it up, this is a call for Dave, Nalle, Daniel, Jan, Paul and all the others I actually have never met to go out there and find and grade a 9A boulder. Actually not one, many! And have the confidence that if some of you proposes 9A and this gets downgraded by your ‘colleagues’ to 8C, we, the ordinary climbing news feed readers, will still love and admire you and continue watching your videos.