As part of writing the guide I will have to spend a good bit of time thinking and talking about grades – whether I like it for not. Grades are a nessacary evil. Their purpose is to indicate problems  which one might have a reasonable chance of success or an entertaining failure. However they have become a proxy for a lot of other things.

What grade is a two armed pull up? Surely for such a  simple movement we could easliy reach a consensus and if we can’t what hope to we have for a boulder problem that requires multiple complex movements.

Gradewise I would say a two arm pull up is around 3+ and a one armer is around 7a. But its a pointless question really.

Maybe the more variables their is the more likely the grade is to be accurate. For example for a pullup no amount of technique or height will make it easier.  If a long problem has one move a bit harder than the rest this will have less effect on the overall difficulty than if this move was the only one.

Basically I’m just saying that grades are a load of  bollox.