We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
A grade that is an opinion.
Also known as: Alpine grading system, Overall route grade
The graded scale describing the overall difficulty and seriousness of a mountain route.
Describes the overall difficulty and seriousness of an alpine route in a single graded term.
Contexts: Navigation
Combines several unrelated things — technical difficulty, length, exposure to falling rock, difficulty of retreat — into one figure, so two routes of the same grade can be hard in entirely different ways.
Contexts: Navigation
Consensual rather than measured: grades are agreed by usage, differ between regions and drift over decades, and no record here presents one as a quantity.
Grades are consensual agreements, not measurements.
Contexts: Navigation
A short abbreviation or numeral written beside a route name in a guidebook, combining difficulty, length, objective danger and commitment into one figure.