Size matters

I'm over 190cm so I invariably get told by beginners (I don't blame them), but sometimes also by more advanced climbers (those guys should know better), that bouldering is easier for tall people. 

 Note to beginners - this is not true. I don't know about routes, but I can guarantee you that tall people have a harder time when it comes to bunched up sit-starts, barn-door swings, tricky mantels, etc. to name just a few examples. 

 So, the question is then...

 What is the optimal height for a climber? 

 Here's some recent data (as off July 2025) that, hopefully, should make people think twice.

Feedback on ascents and grades

The Second version of the Pedra Rubia guidebook has been published in June 2013. The first version was published the previous year (June 2012) but did not include a section about Portocelo.

If you’ve followed my blog, you might remember that I had climbed a few lines in Portocelo back in 2010.

At the time, I had looked for info everywhere, but had not found any either online or on paper. The only thing I knew was that it wasn’t a proper discovery. On a Galician forum, a guy called Luis Vigo had told me Portocelo boulders had been a climbing spot for the last 15 years and had even seen the first Galician bouldering comp in 1998.

So in an effort to share what I knew, I had post up some info online, via my own blog, YouTube, the web platform UKClimbing, Facebook and the likes.

Five years later, I find that some of ‘my’ problems (for more on ownership, see previous blog post) have been recorded in a guide book under different names and displaying different grades.

My first reaction was that of a six year old. I thought it was not fair. But after second thoughts, I realized that the people who had published the guidebook could hardly know about my FAs.

After all, my blog is written in English and only a handful of people reads it (thanks for your patience if you’re one of them), so I probably don’t rank very high in Google relevance charts.

Besides, 'my first ascents' were probably not proper FA anyway.

Nevertheless, it’s very interesting to compare the grades:

2010		César Alvarez, 2013		Difference of grades
El Zambulidor	6c	El Dragón	?	n/a
El Gigante verde	6a	Espantallo	6b+	+3
Super Tanker	7a+	Super Tanker	7a+	0
El pesa’o	6a	O Electronico	6b	+2
Techo izquierda	5+	Corner Ongui	6b	+3
La fisura del techo de Portocelo	6a	O Fendeteito	6c	+4
Techo derecha	6a	Corner Etorri	6b+	+3

Interestingly, some of the 2013 names are in Galician (the local language) rather than Spanish. While I can speak Spanish, my understanding of Galician is limited and I could have hardly found many problem names, so I’m actually quite glad these problems have proper local names.

Although some other lines also show striking similarity, the lines shown in the table above are all the exact same. This observation points towards the existence of 'natural' lines, i.e. problems that are not just the result of one person's imagination, but that seem obvious to people who have not been in contact at all. Do 'true' lines exist? I believe so.

Yet the grade difference is substantial. In all cases but one, the difference varies from 2 to 4 grades, the maximum difference being from 6a to 6c. Either I was sandbagging, or inflation is rampant in the 6 grade sector.

I doubt that I was completely off the mark though. I have climbed a lot of boulder problems in the 6 grade, on granite, in different places and countries including Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, and in various conditions, from bone dry windy days to miserable drizzly days, and from -5°C to +30°C. So while I could be wrong with 5s and 7s grades, I think I’m fairly accurate when it comes to 6s.

Another interesting fact - for social media addicts anyway - is that the only boulder problem that has the same name and the same grade (Super Tanker, 7a+) is also the only problem that I’ve named and graded on YouTube for this area, which would imply that YouTube is more visible that the other social media I used - but we all know that watching vids is easier than reading info, right?



In any case, I thought this really put in perspective the power of the Internet - It’s not sufficient to share info online, people have to be able to find it easily!

Also, we should not underestimate the power of languages. Not everyone speaks English. Or want to. The same goes for Spanish. Some people speak and use Galician for bouldering, which means this minority language is well and alive.

Route or boulder traverse?

There's a thin line between a boulder problem and a route.

In 1995, when the hardest grade ever climbed was still 8c+, cheeky Fred Rouhling announced he had climbed a 9b line in Les Eaux claires. Called Akira, the line followed the roof of a cave and finished through a very steep section of overhang.

Most Americans dismissed the grade. At that time, the strongest of them were struggling on 5.14b - roughly 8c? European climbers were stronger anyway. That same year, Swiss climber Elie Chevieux sent the first 8b+ on-sight. But even the Europeans weren't too inclined to believe Rouhling. 

French man Jibé Tribout, who was competing with Ben Spoon and Gerry the Muppet for the unofficial title of world's top climber, was no particular friend of Rouhling. But he went on to try Akira. He said he found it to be a very dangerous line because "you hang at three or four meters off the ground and with some of the moves, you take the risk to land flat on your back". He thought it was a quick step from 8c+ to 9b, but reckoned that Akira was nevertheless much harder than anything that had been climbed before (read his interview in On the Edge n°102 if you can find it).

There was also an excellent article by Pete Ward and Tim Kemple in Climbing Magazine, featuring a discussion with Alexander Huber where he questions Rouhling's track record : 

Huber gestures with his hand: “If Rouhling’s level is here,” he says, holding his hand at chest level, “and then with Akira it is here” — he holds his hand at his forehead — “then there should be many other routes around here.” The hand is level with his nose. “Where is this track record?” Huber asks. The hand moves to the side of his head, palm up. “Why hasn’t he done many other hard routes soon after Akira?”

 Tim leans into the table and says, “Because he couldn’t climb for almost two years.”

 “Why is this?” Huber asks.

 “Because he had two kids, and his wife had brain surgery and almost died.”

Well since then, Rouhling has actually repeated a few other routes, including Fred Nicole's Bain de sang, 9a, though Dave Graham, who has also climbed it, thought it was easier than Wolfang Güllich's Action Directe (first established 9a). But Akira, on the other hand, hasn't been repeated ; neither by Huber, nor by anyone else.

What if Akira was a boulder problem?

What's interesting in all that debate is that everyone defines Akira as a route. But on the Youtube video, Rouhling uses no rope, no harness, no quickdraw. What if it was a boulder problem? 

Its 9b grade would correspond more or less to an 8c+ in bouldering money. What else is available at that grade? Tonino 78 (Meschia, Italy, 15 moves, FA Mauro Calibani 2004), The Wheel of Life (Grampians, Australia, 60 moves, FA Koyamada 2004), Terremer (Hueco Tanks, USA, 11 moves, FA Fred Nicole 2006)? 

The 60 moves of The Wheel of Life are actually considered to be a boulder line (the original grade being V16). What would make it harder than Akira then?

Grading traverses I

Converting bouldering grades

From what I can read on the Short Span's message board Glendo has been fairly busy for the new year. A new area has been developed and documented: the Holiday boulders are located about 10 mins beyond the Fin area until the path levels off and a big sandpile can be seen. The area is downstream from the sand pile on the opposite side of the river just off the old miners track. There are 9 problems documented by Dave Ayton, included the very good looking Hugh.

Michael Duffy seems to have been there too. Although some of us expected some news soon enough about the Big Squeeze, he apparently focused on another line: Leftism is the full line of Rhythm and Stealth. Michael says: "It’s a really really good link up (16 moves) with a tricky section at the bottom into the airy and fluffable top section above. Start sitting in the cave with your bum on the little bloc at the obvious big layaway. Pull on and trend leftwards and up the arete to finish. 3 stars, lovely moves and pumpy." I would not be surprised if that came as a warm-up.

I personally feel sorry to have missed these interesting looking sessions but I also have been busy preparing my moving to Scotland and I hadn't got much time for bouldering since November. Surprisingly enough, I felt much stronger during every session that I had since the beginning of December. Maybe this is a sign that I am on that famous "peak" of the training curve. Maybe this is a sign that the conditions have never been that good. Maybe I have been going for Quality rather than Quantity. Anyway this was particularly enjoyable on Stephen's day, as I managed to send two of my own projects.

The French Connection II
I have been trying that line nearly every time I was in Clare since last January. It's a loop traverse around the roof of the Toit du cul de Clare. None of the moves is harder than 6c but this requires a little stamina for the boulderer that I am: true, the full line is approximately 40 moves, enough to constitute a route on its own. It starts with a cool deadpoint that leads to the lip of the roof and then traverses that lip on rather good jugs till it reaches the other side of the roof: there one must drop down to the mantelshelf/ledge below using a couple of crimps. This is awkward, particularly after a few tries, but if one manages to get a foot on the ledge below then it gets easier. The finish is an easy traverse of that ledge to link back to the deadpoint start of Cold Turkey.


I recently got another traverse link in Portrane ( I also wanted to call it the French Connection, but I later found out that Michael O'Dwyer had got the first ascent) that made me ask the same grading question: how can a 40 moves link traverse be graded the same way as a 1 move wonder? Well, I was first told that traverses are longer than boulder problems and are therefore easier. In fact we even had a bouldering grades chart that looked like this:

Old bouldering grades conversion chart

I suppose at that time The Wheel of life (Grampians, Australia, V16, 60 moves, Dai Koyamada FA) was still unclimbed. Basically what this table meant was that traverses should be graded like sport routes because they use more stamina and less explosive power. Problem is, later came the likes of Sharma, Hirayama, Rouhling or more recently a little midget called Adam Ondra, and they can use explosive power as a stamina basis....

So where one use to say "the hardest move of this traverse is 6a, the grade should therefore be 6c" they now say "this traverse is the hardest ever. But it cannot be as hard as the hardest route".

There is actually a good arithmetic system developed on the Australian bouldering website: that can be resumed as following:

V9 + V6 = V9,
V9 + V7 = V10,
V9 + V8 = V10,
V9 + V9 = V11,
V9 + V10 = V11,
V9 + V11 = V12,
V9 + V12 = V12

So anyway, this time I sent the French Connection II on my second attempt. So at 1 o'clock, I had nothing more to climb except a couple of projects that needed a bit of cleaning. And because I was not in the mood for gardening, I decided to drive to Doolin and try to tick off Fireworks, a cool problem opened by Gregor Florek a couple of years ago. Unfortunately every time I am around, so is the sea.

The Egg

So I retreated to the base camp and instead I tried another couple of lines on my tick list. The first one is an awesome overhang that was created by the cracking of one of the boulders during the last big storm. I already had a look at it back in March when Nigel Callender was trying it, but it felt impossible. Although this time I could do most of the moves, I was nowhere near getting the last slap from the undercut (which is obviously the actual problem).

So instead of trashing myself, I moved on to my own little project: an egg sit-start that stands literally right of Hider. This little gem does not look like much, but it is probably the second hardest line I have climbed after The Nose in the White bog (OK it's still nowhere near an 8a but hey, I'll be an old daddy soon!). From a sit-start on the tiny crimp right hand, one must slap to a "pinch" hold left and move up to an obvious sloper. If you can hold that, the rest gets easier.

Well folks, this post is probably the last one about Ireland before a long time. I have been fairly busy in the last few weeks as I am finally moving to Scotland. Not that I was looking forward to it (although from judging by the work of John Watson or Dave McLeod, Scotland is definitely a great location for bouldering), but I knew this would have to happen eventually and I am just moving sooner than expected.
By the way, 13 years ago I started as a "falaisiste", but the British call it a "sports climber" AKA a "French sissy" or more simply a "wuss". I only really got sucked into bouldering when I moved to Ireland. Therefore I would like to thank those who brought me to appreciate Ireland and its bouldering potential, particularly: Kevin Cooper, Seamus Crowley and Andy Robinson; those who were (nearly) always up for an early session: Michael Nicholson, Declan Tormey and Tim Chapman, and of course the rest of the Irish bouldering crew. And no, bouldering is generally not an "extreme" sport. But neither is that trad climbing thing, "a good deal of creative frigging, resting on protection, sneaky side runner, preplaced gear, and the introduction of prepracticed ascents" as Simon Panton once described it.
Finally I cannot resist to share with you a nice picture that I have recently received. I am not allowed to say where, what or who but I can tell you one thing: there's some serious potential for exploration in Ireland!