Balkans Regrading Bonanza

On Sunday Tim, Steve and I spent a couple of hours up at the Frontline area at the Balkans. We all did some great problems, although the highlight for me was managing to send a strenuous V5 just as it started to get dark. Tim had sent it mere minutes before, and the final sequence was a culmination of an hour or so's work on the part of 8 or 9 boulderers, all working the problem together. Very social, and a great way to stay motivated on something that hard!

We also managed to crank up some other problems, including a thin V4 slab and an unlisted slab problem just to its left which was definitely harder.

What I found very interesting was having no point of reference for the grades of these problems. My gut feel is that they were all soft for the grade (after all, I've never managed anything harder than V1 or so before, and have been spat off numerous V3s at Sissy and at the Trenches area of the Balkans).

Using the rule "grade = 21 + V grade" gives 26 for the V5, and although a route with those moves on it might be worth 26, having them in a boulder problem with the hardest moves off the ground just doesn't compare.

My gut feel (being the notorious sandbagger and downgrader that I am! :) is that the V5 was more like V3, the V4 was V1 and the route just to its left was solid V1 or maybe easy V2. The last two were slabs though, and only really had one hard move, so again the grading of them is really difficult.

I probably should also mention that there was some discussion about a key foothold that we were using on the V5. Once everyone realised that the hold was usable, Tim got the problem on his next attempt, and I got it on my 2nd. On other visits I've almost always seen people attempting the problem facing the other direction and with a really high heelhook, which is bloody heinous and could easily be worth V5 (I could barely get off the ground doing it that way). Perhaps we'd "discovered" an easier variation...