It’s always been a bit subjective and hard to standardise I would imagine.
Look at Glentress – the old reds there are probably easier than blues in a lot of other places and can all be rolled slowly no problem. The red at Comrie is full of unavoidable stuff that is certainly black graded in other places.
I’ve also ridden some orange lines that have less “risk” than the new red Twitcher at Glentress. I’ve ridden that a few times and there have been a couple people having a wobble walking down the steep berms – figuring that if they are fine on say, Cool Runnings, they will be fine on that.
And then there are the orange lines at Innerleithen, which apart from a couple easily avoidable big drops, are basically just rooty techy black trails…but a fair bit easier than a lot of the blacks at the Golfie.
And then you have the Laggan black which in the wet is absolutely bonkers tech – just one grade up from the new red which is just pretty flowy apart from one straightforward rock garden and a couple of wee dropoffs.
Probably too much for most people to be clear about but I wonder if having a climbing style grade system – with a general grade and tech grade. Like VS 5b would be a technically fairly difficult climb but not terrifically exposed or lacking in protection. I dunno if you could have one grade for injury potential (big drops, big jumps, steep berms you have to ride fast), and then a letter grade for how nadgery it is. Probably not.
