When you grade a trad route, do you consider the added difficulty of placing runners or do you grade it purely based on the climbing ? Example: A steep crack that would be 6c or 6c+ as a sport climb/top rope, but when placing runners on lead it feels more like 7a or 7a+ What grade should i give it ?
To do a trad route you should place the runners as you climb and therefore, this difficulty should also be included in the grade. This means as you say that a trad route might be 6c on top rope but the official grade of it is 7a. In some very few cases it gets complicated because maybe the 7a grade is just because you have to place the runner in the crux and if you skip it, creating a dangerous situation, it might be 6c again. However, in this case I would anyhow grade it 7a. Further more, in UK they have another system where you actually both include the climbing difficulty and how dangerous it is and based on this combination they give it a E-grade. And to make it even more complicated, the E-grade is based on how it is to onsight the route. This system works just perfect for easier routes. In other parts of the world, the danger is graded separately based on a letter where R stands for Risk and X for death potential.
Grading a trad route