Routes and Grading
Holds come in different colours, those of the same colour often being used to denote a route, allowing routes of different difficulty levels to be overlaid on one another. Coloured tape placed under climbing holds is another way that is often used to mark different climbing routes. In attempting a given route, a climber is only allowed to use grips of the designated colour as handholds but is usually allowed to use both handholds and footholds of the designated colour and surface structures and textures of the "rockface" as footholds.
The grade (difficulty) of the route is usually a consensus decision between the setter of the route and the first few people who climb the route.
Many indoor climbing walls have people who are assigned to set these different climbing routes. These people are called route setters or course setters.
As indoor climbing walls are often used to check the development of climber's ability, climbs are color coded.
- Climbing
- Indoor climbing
Read more about this topic: Climbing Wall
Famous quotes containing the words routes and/or grading:
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes.... It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)