The Great Outdoors Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who love being outdoors enjoying nature and wilderness, and learning about the required skills and equipment. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This is possibly a little of a generalisation but, why are indoor grades easier than outdoor grades?
Having climbed at many many indoor walls (all over the uk) and done multiple outdoor climbs (bouldering and trad) pretty much universally I can climb much higher grades indoors than out.
For example at my local gym I I boulder at about V4-5. Outdoors I've completed one V1. In fontainebleu I was struggling at V0.
The biggest difference in indoor climbing is that your routes are mapped out for you. It can be challenging to figure out the proper sequence, but it's much easier if you know where all the holds are right away.
Another big factor is the abundance of large(ish) foothold. When setting in a gym (from 7 years of personal experience) even the tiniest jib can be very positive. Outdoors you struggle with purchase and deal with dirt/sand/etc... Which makes footwork even harder.
Some gyms make their grades soft on purpose, I've never really been able to understand why. They think it's beneficial to the beginner climber, but consistency is more important. Where I worked (in Seattle, WA) the grades would always stiffen back up when the setters got back outside in the summer, and soften a bit over the winter.
If nothing else, indoor routes are set with the intention of being climbed a certain way. When we set we know the moves will work. Outside it's just a blank canvas with a grade attached to it.
Interesting question. Here's some speculation, but I don't know if I'm right.
There has been a clear tendency for climbing grades to inflate over time. You can really see this, for example, if you look at the climbs at Tahquitz Rock that were originally used to define the Yosemite Decimal System. For example, The Trough was the original definition of 5.0, but Vogel and Gaines (2001) call it 5.4. Climbing gyms are a relatively new invention, and most climbing gyms are not that old. Therefore it seems natural that there would be a tendency for gym ratings to be soft, compared to outdoor ratings at long-established climbing areas, which may have been assigned at one time and then resisted inflation. The most inflated ratings I've ever seen are at the gym Sender One in Santa Ana, California, which opened a year ago.
We're just talking about different types of climbing, which aren't comparable. Routes in the gym often have "jug" holds, which you almost never see outside. Outdoor trad climbs are often crack climbs, but the gyms I've been to don't even rate their cracks. Gym routes are super safe because they have many bolts, no ledges, no loose rock, and so on. The consequences of a fall in the gym are zero, whereas outdoors a fall often is a more serious thing. I'm conservative on multipitch climbs because they're committing; gyms don't have multipitch climbs. In general, I'm willing to attempt stuff in the gym that I would never try outdoors.
Gyms want to stroke the egos of their customers.
I suggest that this is because you climb in gyms more than you do outside. Back when gyms were rare, when I went to the gym, it felt way harder for the grade than outside routes. That was because I climbed outside way more than inside.
Any new area seems harder because different types of rock, holds, conditions, styles, setting, etc require substantially different technique and fitness.
I find similar graded climbs are so much easier outside than the ones in the gym. Maybe its because I'm a shorter climber, I think I have many more options to find foot and handholds outside. It seems to me, in the gyms I've frequented, that many of the climbs are geared more toward climbers of average to taller heights with little choice for alternative holds for shorter climbers. Outside I have many more options to reach the next hold
