Rock climbing is a sport that forces you into the moment. Everything else drops away, concentrating on the few square inches of your fingers and toes in contact with the rock. Your body trying to maintain balance as you move between holds, and walking the fine line between finesse and power. Laser focused eyes scanning the terrain ahead for subtle textures and clues that will allow you to find your way to the top. And then - success or failure - you are out of the moment, and you begin to process your climb, thinking about what you did well, or could have done better. And for many of us (especially if you are climbing with a bunch of friends) the next step is describing the climb - was it fun? What were the holds like? How hard did it feel? 


It is this last question - how hard? - that can find us on a slippery slope. Ratings can be a useful tool for comparing relative difficulty of problems and communicating about a climb, but too often clouds our view of a climb and what is important about the problem. Our ego may start to demand we seek out lines solely for the big numbers, and not for the aesthetics or experience. Ratings can be a way to measure your improvement as a climber, but we have to remember how subjective ratings can be. If we avoid those traps, using ratings to communicate to friends about favorite problems and ones they should check out is another useful piece of information about a climb, and can be particularly useful when visiting new areas and deciding on which boulders to spend your time at. 


With all that said, here is a brief background on bouldering ratings.


THE 'B' SCALE


The father of modern bouldering, John Gill, created a simple scale for judging the relative difficulty of his climbs, and those few other dedicated boulderers from his era. The B-scale, as it is known, had three grades - B1, B2 and B3. For a frame of reference, Gill thought a B1 would have moves equal to or a little harder  in difficulty as the hardest roped climbs of the day. So in the late 1950's, B1 would probably be equivalent to 5.10 (old school, traditional 5.10, at that). To be considered B2, a boulder problem would have to be a bit harder. B3 was reserved only for problems that were unrepeated, regardless of difficulty. Once a B3 was repeated, it became a B2 or a B1. Over time Gill's scale would be further divided, and people would begin to add a '+' or '-' to a problems rating to refine the grade. While there is a simple elegance to the B-scale, it closed-ended nature obviously had it's limitations for those with a more competitive and performance-driven nature.


THE 'V' SCALE


With the popularity of bouldering exploding in the 1980's and especially 1990's, a new rating system was devised at Hueco Tanks. Created by John "Verm" Sherman, the V-scale was intended to open up the scale, and spread the ratings out more. Originally created to help guide climbers to areas of the park where they could find problems more closely suited to their abilities, the scale became hugely popular and became the standard scale by which boulder problems are currently rated. The V-scale starts a V0, and currently extends up to V16 (but being an open-ended scale, some mutant kid could establish a V17 tomorrow). It is also common for people to use '+' or '-' grades to indicate if a climb is easier or harder for that particular grade. Another way problems can be graded is with 'slash' grades - V2/3 or V9/10, to indicate a problem falling between the two grades, or occasionally problems that are height dependent. 


TUCSON GRADES


Climbing ratings in Tucson have traditionally been on the conservative side, both for bouldering and for roped climbing, relative to other parts of the country.  I feel pretty certain that if you are solid at a grade in Tucson, you should be able to climb that grade just about anywhere (assuming you aren't horrible at a certain style of climbing you are attempting elsewhere). Even when I've gone back to places I feel the grades are pretty well rated, such as Southern Illinois, they feel soft relative to Tucson grades. And this September I bouldered a few sessions at the Big Bend Boulders outside of Moab, UT. Most everything I read about the place emphasized the heavily sandbagged nature of the grades there, but to me they felt either right on or even a little soft. And although I think grades in Tucson are a little stiff, they seem to be pretty consistent between our local bouldering areas, which is good. And for me personally, I like the fact that our ratings are a little old school and stiff, and when putting up problems in new areas I've tried to keep that practice alive.



One thing that would be interesting and possibly useful in keeping our bouldering ratings consistent, would be if we had 'benchmarks' for each grade on the V-scale. This would give us a way to compare the ratings of other problems, and possibly arrive at a consensus for many of the popular problems in Tucson. When John Sherman first published the V-scale in a guide for Hueco Tanks, he did this very thing. For example, he cited Full Service as the benchmark for V10, which is still considered one of the best problems in the country. I we had some benchmark climbs at various grades from around Tucson, it could help us keep ratings consistent as we establish new problems and attempt to assign V-ratings to older problems that are still rated wiith the B-scale. If anyone has any suggested benchmarks, I'd love to hear it, an will try to expand on this a little later.