open all | close all

---

Stuck in someone's frames?
Free yourself!

Grading/Ice & Mixed

As is the case with rock climbing, also ice climbing covers a wide range of sub-genres ranging from short roadside waterfalls to large-scale expeditions. In additions, ice is extremely everchanging medium that highly depending on weather conditions, rating ice climbs is very difficult a task. Thus any ice climbing grade can only give a rough idea of the climb, they are substantially less trustworthy than rock grades. Like is the case with rock grading systems, there are also several different systems to grade ice climbs.

One way to indicate technical difficulty of ice and snow climbs is to indicate the steepness as inclination angle. This is often used on the mountain routes. The inclination may be given for the steepest part of the climb and/or as average steepness. Using both figures increases the information dramatically, as it makes a clear distinction between routes that have short steep section and moderate average angle and routes that have long steep sections. Most would agree that a route with 10 meter section with 70-80 degree and average angle of 50° is less demanding than a route with for example 1000m of fairly uniform 70 °. Inclination may be sufficient with moderate routes, but falls short when the climbing gets genuinely steep.

WI-grade (North-America and Europe)

1) Overall seriousness

Overall seriousness (or commitment) is indicated with roman number (Albi Sole Grade, scale 1-7). This grade considers things like length of the approach and route itself, objective hazards (seracs, rock fall, etc.), escape possibilities and descent.

2) Technical Difficulty

Technical difficulty consist of letters that describe the type of climb (as the medium of most difficult pitch). The type of ice is indicated with letters as follows:

It is followed by an arabic number indicating the difficulties encountered on the most difficult pitch. Scale runs from 1 to 7 (or sometimes 8) for pure ice routes and is open ended for mixed routes. Signs "+" and "-" are sometimes used to indicate minor differences.

The number should be comparable between different types of climbing, meaning climbs with WI5 and M5 should be technically equally hard. This obviously is subjective, some climbers may find M5 climbing generally easier than WI5 climbing while other climbers may have exactly opposite experience. Seracs aside, true alpine ice is seldom steeper than 70°. This is not to say that there wouldn't be plenty of steeper ice in an alpine surrounding, however it is usually result from freezing melt water and thus more like water ice than porous alpine ice.

a) pure ice routes

Note that technical grade grades the most difficult section, not the most difficult single move. On pure ice route, the technical difficulty grade is largely related to the length of vertical section. This approach makes grading short but technically difficult climbs somewhat difficult.

b) mixed routes

Unlike technical grade for pure ice climbs, technical grade of mixed routes is more concerned about the technical difficulty of the most difficult move or section with far less emphasis on the length of the section in question than is the case with pure ice routes. Thus the system is largely similar to many systems used used to grade rock climbs (such as Yosemite Decimal System or French system).

Sometimes mixed grades may be compared to rock grades. These comparisons normally try to communicate how hard the climb feels regarding necessary strength, ability and experience. Thus the suggested correspondence is not meant to be absolute. For example M5 is suggested to be as difficult French 5b or YDS 5.9. This means not, that M5 is f5b or YDS 5.9, but that it feels as hard.

Complete Grade

If the climb has significant difficulties on various terrain, several technical grades can be given, like M6, WI4.

Routes on thin ice and/or with long run outs can (or cannot) be marked with "R" and routes on especially or fragile ice formations may be cotated with "X". Even if the letters wouldn't be used, most grade 6 or harder ice climbs are either R or X.

The whole cotation is thus something like III/WI4. With more complex situation it could be V/M7,WI6,X. Interrelation between the two parts of grade can sometimes look quite odd. It is quite possible to find routes that offer moderate technical difficulties, but are very long and serious (such as Sentinelle Rouge on Mont Blanc). On the other hand, modern mixed climbs may be excellently protectable (thanks to bolts) and locate of roadside crags. However, they typically place extreme technical (and physical) demands for the climber.

Not to make things too simple, it is also possible that the technical part of the route is used alone. This is relatively common, when referring to waterfall ice-climbs that do not locate in an alpine setting. Excactly this is how ice-climbs in Finland are graded (if they are graded). Since all the climbs locate at non-alpine surrounding, the overall seriousness grade is omitted.

Route length is given as the length of the climb, not as altitude difference.

Examples

Following table gives examples of ice routes graded with WI-system. Heights are for the actual climb excluding approach.

In order to better grasp a wide range of different kinds of ice-climbs, the system used in most parts of North-America and Europe (often referred as water ice grade) consist of two parts: overall commitment or seriousness and technical difficulty. The meaning and deciding factors affecting the grades are discussed in detail in following chapters.

Scottish system

Scottish system was originally developed to grade winter climbs of Scotland. Originally the system uses Roman numbers to indicate difficulty of the route with no different separete grade for technical difficulty and overall commitment or seriousness. The system used to be (up until early 90s) closed-ended running from 1 to 6. So "old" grade 6 climbs may be considerably harder (anything between VI and VIII) than "new" grade 6's. Since grade VI was the upper end of the scale, it wasn't used too keenly, thus there may well be old grade V climbs, that are as hard as new grade VI or even VII.

Nowadays, the system has been made open ended and the grade has been split in two. The Roman number represents the overall difficulty as a balance of seriousness, length and how sustained climbing is. The latter part uses arabic number to indicate purely technical difficulties. No separate technical grade is given below grade IV.

The interrelation of tehnical and overall grades can give the idea of seriousness of a climb. For example, Point-Five Gulley (Ben Nevis) gets V,5 as the benchmark grade 5, whereas Zero Gully gets V,4 being technically easier, but just as serious due to poorer protection (runouts of almost full pitch at crux pitches). Conversely some of the modern mixed routes can be technically brutal, but due to the presence of lots of rock are much better protected, and so grades like IV,5 V,6 and even IV,6/7 are common.

Scottish grade has been (mis)used to grade ice fall climbs as well. The Scottish system is applied in Norway in it's older form to grade ice climbs. It is also sometimes used to indicate technical difficulties encountered on alpine routes. Note that in this case, Scottish grade is just technical grade, not the overall grade. Norwegian is not quite consistent though, at least Laerdal, Romsdal and Hemsedal are supposed to have stiffer grades than Rjukan (or the real Scottish ones, grading in those areas is rather similar to WI grades).

Scottish technical grades are somewhat milder than equivalent WI or M-grades-

In the following table examples of routes graded with Scottish system are given. Heights are for the actual climb excluding approach.

Other systems to grade Ice-climbs

The NEI (New England Ice) system is very similar than the system used in other parts of North America and in central Europe. However, seriousness grade refers only to the amount of time required to complete the climb. Besides that, the top of the technical scale is commonly 5+.

Most systems to grade ice climbs are closely related to each other. However, many people find Scottish grades to be slightly milder than technical grades of water ice system and conversely NEI grades to be slightly harder than technical grades of water ice system. Luckily ice grading seems to be moving towards universally adapted single system (WI-grade). At least NEI system seems to be dying out, also use of WI system is spreading to Norway as well.

Finally many longer ice-climbs (and some short ones, too) locate in alpine surroundings. Thus alpine grading system used in the area may well be the most relevant way to grade the route. That being said, WI grade, when used with commitment grade, is exellent alpine grade for pure snow/ice routes.

Links to ice climbing grades

Grading British winter climbs

By Ian Parnell at Planet-Climbing.com.

Grading system for ice climbing

At Planet Mountain.

Ice climbing FAQ, Part 1: ratings

By Quang-Tuan Luong at Terra Galleria.

Ice Climbing Grades

By Branko Ivanek at Mountain Experiences.