Climbing grades explained: every scale at a glance

A grade is an estimate, not a measurement

It starts with a proposal. Whoever climbs a route first gives it a grade — and is often wide of the mark, because the route suits them or does not. The grade only becomes binding through everyone who follows. If enough of them consider the proposal too high or too low, it moves. Climbing grades are therefore not a measurement but the result of a negotiation.

That also explains why the arguments never stop. The standard German-language account states explicitly that difficulty grades are always subjective and remain a matter of debate. The British governing body puts it even more directly for the gym: a grade depends on the person climbing as much as on the person setting and can hardly be standardised.

Knowing that, you read the number differently. It is good for tracking your own progression over months and for roughly ordering routes within one gym. It is poor for comparing yourself with someone climbing in a different area.

The five scales you will meet

There are more systems worldwide, but five are enough day to day. Two of them grade boulders, three grade roped routes — and that separation is the most important piece of information on this page. Bouldering and roped climbing grades cannot be converted into each other, because they describe different things: a boulder consists of a few extremely hard moves, a pitch of many easier ones in a row.

The full comparison tables are deliberately not here but in the climbing grade converter — where they can be used directly, instead of showing the same thing twice.

Where the scales come from

All five systems grew up regionally, each for a particular area and a particular way of climbing. Nobody coordinated them with each other. That is exactly where the inconsistencies plaguing every conversion table today come from.

The Alps: from Benesch via Welzenbach to the UIAA

The first known grading system dates from 1894. The Austrian Fritz Benesch introduced it in his Rax guide, with seven levels — and the other way round from today: the lowest number stood for the hardest. In 1923 the German mountaineer Willo Welzenbach reversed the order and consolidated the scale. Since then, what seems self-evident to us has applied: bigger number, harder route.

Not long after, this Welzenbach scale officially became the UIAA scale, named after the international federation of alpine clubs — the UIAA itself names 1967 for this, the German-language account 1968. It ended at the sixth grade, which was regarded as the limit of what was humanly possible. It was only opened at the top after climbers had long since exceeded that grade in practice. Exactly when is given differently by the sources: the German-language account names the years 1977 to 1979, the English-language one the year 1985. All agree that the opening followed climbing practice rather than the other way round. Today the UIAA lists its scale up to XI+ and states explicitly that it remains open at the top.

France: numbers instead of Roman numerals

At the end of the 1980s the French guidebook author François Labande published a numerical scale that replaced the UIAA’s Roman numerals with Arabic ones and subdivided them more finely with the lower-case letters a, b and c plus a plus sign. This scale grew with sport climbing, which was just then becoming a discipline of its own, and established itself internationally — today it is the most common system in European gyms and on sport crags.

North America: the Yosemite Decimal System

In 1936 the Sierra Club adopted a division into classes in which class 5 stands for terrain requiring a rope and belaying. In the 1950s Royal Robbins, Don Wilson and Chuck Wilts subdivided this fifth class into decimal steps: 5.0, 5.1 and so on up to 5.9. The system became known as the Yosemite Decimal System, although it did not originate in Yosemite but at Tahquitz Rock in Southern California.

5.9 was meant as an upper limit — the same misjudgement as with the UIAA’s sixth grade. As equipment and standards rose, the scale was subdivided further from 5.10 upwards with the suffixes a to d. Unlike the European systems, the YDS also carries protection ratings: R and X, introduced by Jim Erickson in 1980, warn of falls with serious consequences. That information is in none of the other four scales.

Bouldering: Fontainebleau and the V scale

People have been bouldering in the forest of Fontainebleau south of Paris for decades, long before bouldering was a discipline of its own. The scale from there can be traced back to at least 1960. From grade 6 upwards it subdivides with the capital letters A, B and C plus a plus sign. It is open-ended and currently reaches 9A.

The V scale is considerably younger. The American bouldering pioneer John “Verm” Sherman published it in 1991 in his climbing guide to Hueco Tanks in Texas. It starts at VB and V0, simply counts upwards and currently stands at V17. Its letter V goes back to Sherman’s own nickname.

Upper or lower case — more than two grades hang on it

Fontainebleau and the French sport climbing scale both originated in France and use the same numbers and letters. They are distinguished solely by capitalisation: 7A is a boulder, 7a a roped route. Anyone who misses that miscalculates by more than two grades — and systematically, not by chance.

This is the most common mistake when converting climbing grades, and it happens above all when copying from tables in which both systems stand side by side. The climbing grade converter on this site does not allow the confusion in the first place: it separates bouldering and roped climbing and does not calculate across that boundary.

Why conversions stay approximations

Because the systems grew independently, there is no exchange rate between them. Comparison tables are approximations; different publications arrive at matchings that can differ by several grades. A table giving exactly one counterpart for every grade fakes a precision that does not exist.

On top of that, the scales are graded with different fineness. Below 7C, Fontainebleau has intermediate steps for which the V scale has no grade of its own; from 7C or V9 upwards the two run practically in parallel. At such points a range is more honest than a rounded value — which is why the converter shows both neighbouring values there instead of picking one.

Gym and rock are two different yardsticks

Gyms use the same scales as rock: French for roped routes, Fontainebleau or the V scale for bouldering. But the grades are given differently. Outdoors the grade emerges over years from many ascents; in a gym it is set by the person who did the setting, and the route disappears again after a few months. Correction by the wider community does not happen.

Some gyms therefore drop individual grades altogether and sort their boulders into coloured groups, so-called circuits, each covering a band. That is not a simplification for beginners but the more honest statement: a range claims less than it can deliver.

For you that means above all one thing: changing gym, or the step out onto rock, shifts your familiar numbers without anything about your performance having changed. That is not a step backwards, but a different yardstick.

At the top the scale is open

Every closed climbing scale has so far been climbed past — the Benesch scale, the UIAA’s sixth grade, the Yosemite Decimal System’s 5.9. All systems in use today are therefore designed to be open at the top, and the UIAA states this explicitly for its own scale.

At present the highest grade awarded in roped climbing is 9c, 5.15d in the Yosemite Decimal System and XII+ in the UIAA scale. It concerns a handful of routes, none of which has so far been confirmed by a repeat — a grade without a second ascent is strictly speaking still a proposal. In bouldering the top stands at 9A or V17; the first boulder at that grade was “Burden of Dreams” in Lappnor, Finland.

Frequently asked questions

Which climbing scale is the right one?

The one used where you climb. In the Alps, roped routes often carry the UIAA scale; in sport climbing worldwide the French one; in North America the Yosemite Decimal System. In bouldering, Fontainebleau is widespread in Europe and the V scale in North America. None of the systems is more precise than the others; they grew up independently and describe the same thing in different notation.

Who decides what grade a route has?

First the person who made the first ascent — they propose a grade. It only becomes binding through the climbers who follow: if the majority consider the proposal too high or too low, it is corrected upwards or downwards. A climbing grade is therefore a consensus estimate and not a measurement. In a gym the person who set the route decides instead, and nobody corrects them.

Are Font 7A and French 7a the same?

No. Fontainebleau grades boulders and capitalises the letter; the French sport climbing scale grades roped routes and uses lower case. The two systems measure different things and are more than two grades apart at that point. Because bouldering and roped climbing scales cannot be equated in principle, the climbing grade converter separates the two disciplines and does not allow conversion between them at all.

How accurate are conversion tables between the scales?

They are approximations. Different publications arrive at different matchings that can differ by several grades. With the bouldering scales the picture is somewhat clearer: Fontainebleau and the V scale match exactly from 7C or V9 upwards; below that Fontainebleau is more finely graded and individual steps have no equivalent in the V scale.

Why does no scale stop at the top?

Because every closed scale was eventually climbed past. The UIAA scale originally ended at the sixth grade and had to be opened after climbers had exceeded that grade in practice. All systems in use today are therefore open-ended. At present the highest grade awarded in roped climbing is 9c or 5.15d, and in bouldering 9A or V17.

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