Let's talk about 5-9, because I think by your own admission, you're maybe the professional

climber who's climbed the most 5-9 of professional climbers.

That's probably true.

I bet that is true.

I mean, Peter Croft and I are probably nearly tied.

Yeah, let's talk about like 5-9, because I think it's a funny grade.

Like today, I'm not sure that if you started climbing in the last even 10 years,

like you quite have the same appreciation for 59 or 59 plus as maybe you and I did when we started climbing in the 90s.

What do we need to know about this grade?

Yeah, the important thing to know about 59 and especially 5plus, is that it used to be the end of the scale. So there's a lot of grade compression at 5-9 and 5-9-plus because a lot of historic routes through the 50, 60, 70s, you know, sort of old-school roots, you know, the scale ended there. So they were like, well,

it's as hard as anything we've ever done. So let's call it 5-9 because that's the top of the scale. And so now it means that you can, you know, nowadays you can get on a route that's sort of old school 5-9 and you're like, geez, Louise, this feels like 5-11 or like, you know, at least 10C or something. And I think there's also something to be said that a lot of

the old five-nines are a particular kind of style that are extra hard for somebody learning how to

climb in a gym because a lot of the styles of climbing that were achievable for somebody in

low-performance climbing shoes using petons and things like that are basically

wide cracks and chimneys and like things where it doesn't require standing under tiptoes and

you know really tricky maneuvers it's more like hard work with your whole body and that's the

type of thing that's really hard to learn in a climbing gym and so I think that nowadays a lot of things that are sort of five, nine plus old school, you're like, that feels so hard because nobody really has any experience climbing, you know, off with cracks. I don't know. I mean, I definitely have had some major experiences in Yosemite where I'm like, oh, it says five nine, it should be fine. And then you go up there and you're like, this is so full-on.

You're like, oh, my God.

We didn't really think there was anything harder than 5-9.

I mean, numerically, 5-9 was the ceiling.

This is Henry Barber.

And we were back east trying to do these roots in the Schwongunks, Never Never Land, Matinee, coexistence, try again.

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