Last time my partner and I were climbing at the New River Gorge , we decided to try some new routes, so we cracked opened the guidebook. We wanted to hit high quality routes, so we looked for a star rating next to the route name. We chose some 5.6s and 5.7s. For those of you who don’t climb, that’s on a 5.0-5.15 scale. Routinely, the guidebook rated each moderate route – every one an aesthetic crack climb easy to protect and requiring some technical skill – “good for its grade.” Meaning: good but … But what? Good if you can’t handle the harder stuff? Good if you’re having an off day? Good enough for shitty-ass climbers like yourself? Good but I can’t admit it if I regularly climb 5.12? “Good for its grade” is never in the description for harder routes. Well I’ve been on a multi-pitch 5.6 route at Seneca Rocks that beat every single (all right, the very few) 5.11s I’ve ever climbed. And guess what? I don’t feel like I have to make excuses for climbing a route that I thoroughly enjoy, w