How rope grades work: French and YDS

Why ropes get their own scales

Once you tie into a rope and start climbing longer routes, the grade has a bigger job to do. A boulder is a handful of moves, so its grade mostly describes how hard the single toughest move is. A rope route might be twenty or thirty moves long, and the grade has to roll the whole thing into one number: the hard moves, how many there are, how pumped you get, and whether there is anywhere to rest.

That is why a route grade and a boulder grade are not the same currency. A route can earn a stiff grade not because any single move is desperate, but because it is sustained and there is nowhere to shake out. Two main systems are used for roped climbing, and like the boulder scales, they map onto each other only roughly.

The French scale

The French scale, sometimes called the sport grade, is the common system across Europe and much of the world for sport climbing. It uses numbers with letters, written in lower case to distinguish it from Font boulder grades, though the look is similar.

It runs through grades like 4, 5, 5+, 6a, 6a+, 6b, 6b+, 6c, 6c+, 7a and upwards. As with Font, from 6 onwards each number divides into a, b and c, and many divide again with a + sign. Higher is harder, and the scale keeps extending as harder routes are climbed.

A rough sense of the range: 4 and 5 are gentle, beginner-friendly routes. The 6s cover a wide span of intermediate climbing, where most people spend a lot of happy years. Reaching 7a is a genuine landmark for many climbers.

The Yosemite Decimal System

In the United States, roped climbing is graded with the Yosemite Decimal System, or YDS. For climbers, the part that matters is the fifth class, written as 5 followed by a full stop and another number, like 5.6 or 5.11.

It works like this. Easy roped climbing starts around 5.5 to 5.7. The numbers climb through 5.8, 5.9, 5.10 and beyond. From 5.10 up, each number splits into a, b, c and d to give finer steps, so the sequence runs 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.10c, 5.10d, then 5.11a, and so on. The decimal point can trip people up at first, but read it as a single grade label rather than a fraction and it falls into place.

Approximately, French 6a sits around 5.10a to 5.10b, and the two scales drift apart and back together as you go up. Any conversion chart is a guide, not a guarantee.

How rope grades differ from boulder grades

The most useful thing to understand is that you cannot simply translate your bouldering ability into a rope grade. They test different things. Someone who flashes V5 boulders might still find a sustained 6c+ route hard, because the route demands endurance and the head to keep moving while pumped, not just power for a few moves.

A few practical points:

• Routes reward stamina, boulders reward power. A strong boulderer often has to build a bigger engine before their rope grades catch up.
• The head game grows with height. Being thirty metres up, clipping bolts and trusting the rope, is a skill in itself, and it can hold your grade back long before your fingers do.
• Resting becomes a tactic. On a route, finding and using rests changes what you can climb. There is no equivalent on a short boulder.

As ever, grades are a rough map rather than a verdict on you. Use them to pick routes that stretch you and to track progress over time. Keep a record of what you climb in both systems, because reading 6a and 5.11 fluently, and knowing roughly where they sit, makes planning a trip or chatting at the crag a great deal easier.