I had missed her original response somehow in the comments after, so that's the context for my long one last night (which I'll strike from the record), mostly spurred on by the frustration of someone saying that I was an adverse condition heh.
Wandering Daisy - I missed your clarification post earlier, sorry about that and my earlier response. I'm guessing that your style of responding to an argument is to a bit academic? A sort of holistic response on the general topic which threw me off. The timing of it with your follow up to the "don't you know secor is dead" post is what made me feel there was something personal going on from your side from just a sense of frustration at how the dialogue was going as we'd never had any tension on the site before. Thanks for handling my previous post with grace.
It felt like you didn't read the post because you never directly addressed specific points that I brought up despite being the first person to respond (and very vehemently against it). It didn't feel like a conversation, in that I would read what you wrote, respond to points and suggest ways of getting around flaws, and then there'd be an semi-related post after that didn’t refer to the points I made. I got a clear sense of why you don't think vanilla YDS is good for backpacking (which was never a position I advocated in this thread), but not why you felt using some modifiers (similar to canyoneering or Class 5 YDS) wouldn't at least get things to a more useful if still imperfect place.
I agree the class of terrain can vary based on an individual - that was a point I had specifically brought up and addressed to some extent, in that say a case where there's ambiguity between 2 or 3 one could do 2+/3- which gets across that it's on the border of those. I do notice terrain that’s technically class 2 for me at 5’10” is technically class 3 for my partner who is 5’4” - but that’s not ‘put away your trekking poles and climb up something class 3. Having to pass a pack up something simple in otherwise class 1 terrain isn't going to spur the same response in someone that'd look for an hour or two for a class 2 bypass up Valor or make a significant detour to avoid class 3 on the side of Dumbbell lake, etc. Obviously being in G risk terrain during a blizzard or massive lightning storm can make it an X, but at that point we can't really rate or describe anything - there is some assumption of normalized conditions for a rating or description and it's up to others to extrapolate the effects of local conditions.
I’d actually argue this thread is actually relatively meaningless, most people are either making jokes or talking about semi-related things - the only real feedback of use is that people don’t think it’s worth changing from the status quo.
To respond to your bit on the subjectivity of difficulty, that’s why I wanted to take "difficulty" out. Plenty of "moderate" hikes I find easy, and difficult ones "moderate" - some boulder problems of the same rating I found easy while a friend found them impossible and vice versa so it goes beyond just fitness and average skill etc.
So YDS classes with some extra (existing) plus/minus suffixes for the conditions (in normal weather, season, etc) and then the existing movie ratings (with references to protection removed) for risk. There’s class 2 which is riskier than class 3 etc - yet there’s some people refuse to go up any class 3, others would prefer it over loose 2. By trying to be more precise on the conditions, while including the risk, it allows for a quick "at a glance" way of evaluating passes for someone to come up with their own difficulty. It’s obviously not 100% standardized, but it’s better.
I think it’s fairly safe to say that class 2 is only a problem (assuming basic competence) if there’s an R or X risk involved due to either exposure or consequentially loose talus. Otherwise whether it’s slab or duff or scree or stable talus or whatever isn’t a huge deal - obviously some are more pleasant and less tedious than others. Vanilla YDS as someone put it is geared for moving on rock, but without R/X risk rock is the only thing that makes something difficult in the Sierra (aside from the very few bushwhacks). No dense underbrush of the NW, or common cliffouts & pourovers of the SW.
Class 3 I personally find fun even with a full pack if it isn’t exposed - but I wouldn’t want to do hundreds of feet of it carrying a week+ of food unless it was really chunky. If one is up 30 feet of steep class 3 that’s pretty exposed for all intents and purposes of risk even if it’s simple.
I originally didn't want to add a modifier for stability as it shows up indirectly in the risk factor if it's consequential, but with a lot of emphasis on that felt like I could give it a shot - which proved more unpopular.
At the end of the day we both agree that the narrative write ups are more critical, but using modified YDS for sections of a pass or something IMO can give a decent quick snapshot of desirability. Just 3 or 2 doesn’t say much. 2 with 3- PG at the top seems great - unless there’s some really tricky routefinding (unusual) that and topo would be all I’d need.
Lumbergh2- thanks, that's a very good take. It seems we just have very different takes on how to discuss the merits of an issue and I misread into that along with coincidental patterns of behavior. I generally give people the benefit of the doubt and just let things slide, but a lot of things piled up at the same time here.
Gogd - here’s why I "chose" to take this personally instead of your jokes like it looking like the tax code, people saying it was too complex to pronounce over a beer, or other comments that were dismissive of it. And again for whatever reason I only saw others responses after her post and missed hers last night (it was a long day for me).
1) I agreed with her on another thread where she pointed out someone saying what looked and sounded like class 2 terrain was class 1 by adding an additional argument out that not needing "occasional use of hands for balance" (Secor's wording) if you're using poles for doesn't make it Class 1, as they can take the place of hands in that instance. A follow up to me states that "Use of hands is the distinction between class 2 and class 3." No big deal - but in view of a larger audience I don't want misleading information as the last thing on a pass entry, so I bring out multiple sources including Secor why that's not a common interpretation of Class 2/3. That earns a quick admin response telling me to stop, take the discussion elsewhere, and find some way to make everyone happy. I admitted in that post I was verging on off-topic, but didn't expect such a heavy response. I shrug, edit my posts and move on.
2) My post wasn't "hey we should all use YDS", but "hey, adding on a few existing modifiers and only lightly changing their context gets around a lot of the different shortcomings, and while it's not perfect it still provides some useful information at a glance which is better than what exists now". I have no issue with someone disagreeing with me, I asked for that in the original post, but she wasn't really interacting with what I wrote. I -want- people to question it and point out flaws in it to make it better, it was never meant to be a final answer to all things!
Something like "huh using class 5 risk for 2/3 is sort of interesting, but why bother with G or PG if it's XC, it's assumed everything would be PG and G isn't critical. just keep it to R and X" was more what I was hoping for at least once.
3) The point where it began to feel personal was where someone chimed in with a derisive "hey don't you know Secor is dead..?" (yes, thanks) after bringing up some of the shortcomings in Secor [the book]. WD continues on that note by saying how she knew him, explains what mountaineers actually are, and that there's no exposure considered in Class 5 which sure felt like a "let's educate this newbie that took his name in vain and didn't even know he was dead". This is then followed up with responses of how she is so great and that's the way things were and people totally agree with everything she said.
The thing is, there
is an X rating in Class 5, it'd been brought up by me a few times and you quoted it a post or two above that. According to Secor and in general else it's the risk related to how exposed you are in relation to protection. At that point it sure looked like the second time I'd been 'corrected' recently vs a very high level overview of YDS for random people that come here via google. I generally think it’s a pretty safe assumption that if someone continues off of a comment addressed to me, it’s also addressed to me.
Thanks for looking into more posts for context.