Mountaineering Glossary & Grades

If you’ve ever looked at a peak page and wondered what PD+, AD−, or “bergschrund” actually mean — this is the only article you need.

Table of Contents

1. Why this guide exists
2. The thirty-second mental model
3. The French Alpine grading system, explained
4. Indian peaks at every grade
5. Why the same mountain can have three different grades
6. How to read a full route line (the Eiger and the Black Peak)
7. The other grading systems you’ll bump into
8. The Indian context: IMF, royalties, open peaks
9. The glossary: words you’ll actually hear in the Himalayas
10. A quick worked example: reading a peak card end-to-end

Why this guide exists

Open any aggregator for Himalayan expeditions and you’ll see peaks tagged with little chips — F, PD, PD+, AD−, AD, sometimes D or TD. Open the operator’s PDF and you’ll see route descriptions like “AD−, 70° ice wall, WI3, UIAA III.” Open a trip report and people will say things like “we hit the bergschrund just before the col, then front-pointed to the ridge.”

If you’re new to mountaineering, none of this is obvious. Worse, most articles online either dumb it down (“PD = intermediate, AD = advanced”) or assume you already speak the language. Both fail you. The first lies — a “PD” Mont Blanc voie normale on a fair-weather day is genuinely different from a “PD” 6,000m peak in Ladakh. The second leaves you nodding politely while not understanding what you’re signing up for.

This guide is the middle path. We’ll keep the technical vocabulary intact — because the vocabulary is precise and you’ll hear it on every expedition — but we’ll explain every term in plain English, and we’ll anchor every grade to a real Indian peak so you can calibrate.

By the end, you should be able to read a sentence like:

Black Peak (Kalanag), 6,387m, AD−, with a single 70° ice wall on summit day; bergschrund at ~5,900m, fixed lines on the headwall, alpine start from C2.

…and know exactly what’s being promised.

The thirty-second mental model

Three things are worth holding in your head before any of the detail lands:

1. Grades describe routes, not mountains. The same peak can have an easy line and an extremely hard line. “Shivling” is not a grade; “Shivling west ridge” is. We’ll come back to this — it’s the single most-misunderstood point.

2. Grades describe the whole route, not just the hardest move. A long, cold, exposed, three-day approach that ends in moderate climbing is harder than a short, technical move on a roadside crag. The French Alpine system (PD/AD/D…) bakes that whole-route experience into one letter.

3. Different grading systems describe different things. French Alpine grades the route overall. UIAA grades a single rock pitch. Water Ice (WI) grades a single ice pitch. Real route descriptions stack two or three of these together so you get a complete picture.

That’s it. The rest of this article unpacks those three ideas.

The French Alpine grading system, explained

The French Alpine system — formally the International French Adjectival System, or IFAS — was originally devised for routes on Mont Blanc and is now the global default for “how hard is this route, all things considered.”

It uses six letters, plus an “abominable” tier nobody you know will climb:

Each grade can carry a + or − modifier — PD+, AD− — to signal “harder end of PD” or “easier end of AD.” It’s a fine-grained distinction, but it matters when you’re choosing between two peaks.

What PD really feels like

A PD route is mostly a long walk in crampons with the rope on. There will probably be a short steep snow section near the top — say a 30-metre slope at 40-45°. There may be a short rocky step where you’ll move over rock with your gloves on. You won’t be leading pitches; you’ll be moving as a rope team behind a guide who is placing the occasional anchor.

If you’ve done a Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC) and one trekking peak above 5,000m, a PD 6,000er is the natural next step. Yunam, Mentok II, Dzo Jongo East — all PD.

What AD really feels like

An AD route adds a real technical pitch — typically a steep ice wall, a rock step graded UIAA III, or a heavily crevassed glacier section that takes hours of careful navigation. You’ll be on a fixed rope (more on this in the glossary) ascending with a jumar. You’ll need to know how to do this without thinking — practising it on summit day is too late.

Black Peak, Kang Yatse I, and most of the 7,000m peaks open to first-timers (Kun, Trisul) sit at AD to AD+. This is the threshold at which a BMC plus one PD peak is no longer enough on its own — you want a guided trip with a strong rope-fix team.

What D, TD, and ED really feel like

Briefly, because if you’re reading this article you’re not climbing these next season:

• D is sustained hard climbing where the route is long enough and committing enough that turning back is not trivial. You’re roped almost the whole way. Bivouacs may be planned in.
• TD adds altitude and exposure to D. Multi-day commitment on technical ground.
• ED is the alpine vanguard. Unplanned bivys at altitude. Routes that demand expert rope skills, expert ice tooling, and the judgement to retreat from anywhere.

The leap from AD to D is not linear. It’s bigger than the leap from F to AD. Treat that gap with respect.

Indian peaks at every grade

The numbers above are abstract until you tie them to a mountain. Here’s the same scale, but populated with peaks you can actually book.

F to F+ — walk-up with crampons

Kanamo is often called “the easiest 6,000-foot-shy peak in India.” From Kibber village, you walk up through a barren high-altitude desert, put crampons on near the top, and walk to the summit. There’s no real technical climbing. It’s the gentlest possible introduction to the feel of high-altitude mountaineering.

PD — your first real 6,000er

These are the peaks most BMC graduates climb first. Yunam in particular is famous because the roadhead at Baralacha is so high that you can do the whole expedition in eight days — it collapses the logistics that usually make a 6,000er a two-week affair.

PD+ — sustained snow with a real technical move

Kang Yatse II is the textbook “first proper 6,000er.” The summit slope is around 45°, sustained for several rope lengths, with fixed lines on summit day. If you can climb KY2 confidently, you can climb most peaks in the PD+ band.

AD− to AD — one or more genuinely steep technical pitches

Black Peak is the canonical Indian AD− climb because of one feature: a single ~70° fixed-rope ice wall on summit day. Below that wall it’s a long PD-style snow plod. Above it, a short ridge to the top. The whole grade hinges on that one wall — a perfect example of how the grade summarises the crux’s impact on the whole route.

AD+ — long, sustained, high

These are 7,000m peaks where the grade reflects altitude and length as much as technicality. A AD+ at 7,000m feels much harder than AD+ at 5,000m, because cold, hypoxia, and exposure stack on top of the pure climbing.

TD and beyond

We’ll talk about Shivling next, because it deserves its own section.

Why the same mountain can have three different grades

This is the single point that confuses every beginner I’ve ever guided.

Shivling, in Garhwal, has at least three commonly-climbed lines:

• West ridge — graded D / D+. Long, technical, but reasonable for a strong climber with TD experience.
• East pillar — graded TD+. Sustained hard rock and ice. Multi-day commitment.
• North pillar — graded ED. World-class big-wall alpinism.

Same mountain. Same summit. Three full grade bands apart.

This is why “Shivling AD+” is meaningless on its own. You always want to know the route. When an operator says “we’ll climb Shivling,” ask which line. The answer tells you everything about what kind of expedition this actually is.

It’s the same with the famous European mountains. Mont Blanc has a F-graded voie normale (normal route) on its south side and an ED-graded north face. Both summits are the same. The experience is unrecognisable.

Rule of thumb: the grade is for the line you take, not the mountain you stand on.

How to read a full route line

Most professional route descriptions don’t stop at one grade. They stack several systems together so you get a full picture. Here’s the classic example, the Eiger Nordwand 1938 route:

ED2, VI−, A0, WI4, 60°

Five labels, five different things being said. Let’s decode them one at a time.

• ED2 — The overall French Alpine grade. “Extremely difficult, level 2.” This is the headline number; everything else is detail.
• VI− — UIAA grade for the hardest free-rock pitch. Roman numeral six, easy end. Means “hard sport-climbing-level rock moves” — about 5.9 in American grades.
• A0 — Aid-climbing rating. The easiest aid. Means “you might pull on fixed gear to rest, but you’re not doing real aid climbing.”
• WI4 — Water-ice grade for the hardest ice pitch. WI4 is steep ice with vertical sections you can rest on. Solid skill required.
• 60° — The steepest snow slope on the route. Just an angle, in degrees.

Read together: “An extremely difficult overall route, with the hardest rock pitch at UIAA VI−, light aid climbing in places, ice up to WI4, and snow slopes up to 60°.”

The same convention, applied to Black Peak

Now an Indian peak. Black Peak’s summit-day route is typically described as:

AD−, UIAA III, 70° ice, fixed lines on the headwall

• AD− — Overall French Alpine grade. Easier end of “fairly hard.”
• UIAA III — There may be a short rock step at this grade. Means “a comfortable scramble with the rope on” — about 5.4 in American grades.
• 70° ice — That’s the famous Black Peak summit ice wall. Steep, but short.
• Fixed lines on the headwall — The operator’s rope-fix team will have set anchored ropes on the steepest section, which you’ll ascend with a jumar.

The anatomy is identical to the Eiger description. Once you can decode one, you can decode any.

The other grading systems you’ll bump into

Quick tour, with the lightest possible touch. Skip this section if you’re only climbing in India for now — you’ll mostly only encounter UIAA and the French Alpine system.

UIAA — the Roman numerals

UIAA grades a single rock pitch by its hardest move. Originally European; you’ll see it on every European-style guidebook and on most Indian ones too.

For Indian Himalayan routes, you rarely see anything above UIAA V on the standard line of an open peak. Anything harder is up in the technical alpine territory we filed under TD/ED.

YDS — the American system

The Yosemite Decimal System. Goes from Class 1 (a flat path) to Class 5 (roped technical climbing), with class 5 subdivided 5.0 → 5.15d. The letters a/b/c/d after 5.10 are micro-grades. This is the system you’ll see in any US-published guidebook.

Water Ice (WI) and Alpine Ice (AI)

Single-pitch ice grades. WI1 is a low-angle frozen flow you could walk up; WI4 is sustained vertical ice with rest spots; WI13+ is the cutting edge in Canada and Europe.

AI uses the same numbers on glacier ice. Confusingly, alpine ice tends to be easier than waterfall ice at the same number, because the ice is more reliable.

Mixed (M-grade)

M1 to M14+. For routes that mix rock and ice, often climbed with ice tools on bare rock — a style called dry-tooling. You’re unlikely to encounter M-grades on Indian standard routes.

Scottish Winter

A dual grade like VI,8. The Roman numeral is overall difficulty (I–XII); the Arabic number is technical hardest pitch (1–13). Used worldwide for serious mixed routes.

Bouldering: V-grade and Font

Used for short, ropeless problems. American V0 → V17, French Fb 4 → Fb 9A. Not relevant for Himalayan expeditions but worth a passing mention if you ever start climbing on a wall in the off-season.

British E-grade

Trad climbing. Two parts — technical (4a–7b) and adjectival (Mod, VD, S, HS, VS, HVS, E1–E11). The adjectival half captures how dangerous a route is, not just how hard. Mostly British. You’ll only see it on Himalayan trad first ascents written up in UK alpine journals.

The Indian context: IMF, royalties, open peaks

Here’s a question every Indian climber Googles eventually: “Is there an Indian grading system?”

The honest answer: no. The Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF) does not issue route grades. Indian climbers use the French Alpine system for overall difficulty and UIAA for rock pitches, exactly like the rest of the world.

But the IMF does issue something else that often gets confused with grades: royalty bands.

IMF royalty bands

The IMF charges a peak fee — colloquially “royalty” — based on altitude, not difficulty:

• < 6,500m: US$500 per party of two
• 6,501m – 7,000m: US$700
• 7,001m and above: US$1,000

Plus a US$500 Liaison Officer kit-hire fee, and a refundable environmental deposit.

These bands are administrative, not technical. Yunam (PD, 6,111m) and Black Peak (AD−, 6,387m) sit in the same royalty band, even though one is a long walk and the other has an ice wall. Don’t read too much into them.

Open peaks

The IMF maintains a list of open peaks — peaks below 6,500m on the published list that don’t require formal IMF expedition permission for Indian climbers. You still need any applicable Inner Line Permit (ILP) and forest permits. But the bureaucratic load is much lower.

For foreigners, the open-peak system is more restrictive — most peaks still require IMF processing.

Inner Line Permits

Many border-area peaks — chunks of Ladakh, Spiti, parts of Sikkim and Arunachal — sit inside the Inner Line, a colonial-era administrative boundary. To climb there, you need an ILP: a separate document issued by the local administration, distinct from the IMF royalty.

Operators handle this paperwork on guided trips. If you’re going self-led, budget a few days in Leh or Kaza to sort it.

The glossary: words you’ll actually hear in the Himalayas

The rest of the article. Words and phrases you’ll meet in trip reports, on summit days, and in operator briefings, with Indian context where it changes meaning.

A

Abseil / Rappel — Controlled descent down a fixed rope. Same thing in two languages; “rappel” is more common in American usage, “abseil” in British and German.

Acclimatisation — The body’s adaptation to thin air at altitude. The reason every Himalayan expedition has rest days and “climb high, sleep low” rotations. Skipping acclimatisation is the #1 cause of failed summit pushes — and serious altitude illness.

Alpine start — A pre-dawn (often 1–3 AM) start to summit before the snow softens or the afternoon weather builds. On every PD-and-up Himalayan summit day, expect to be roped up and walking with a head torch.

Alpine style — Climbing in a single continuous push, carrying everything you need, with no fixed lines or pre-stocked higher camps. Contrast with expedition style. Almost all Indian 6,000ers are climbed in expedition style.

Anchor — Any fixed point used to secure a rope: a rock placement, an ice screw, a snow stake, a bollard carved from snow.

Arête — A sharp ridge with steep drops on either side. Many Himalayan summit ridges are arêtes — exposed but technically straightforward.

B

Belay — Holding the rope to catch a falling climber. A “static” belay holds the rope fast; a “dynamic” belay lets a small amount of rope run through to soften the catch.

Bergschrund — The crevasse at the top of a glacier where the moving glacier pulls away from the still snow or rock above. Often the technical crux of a snow climb. On Black Peak, the bergschrund is the gateway to the summit ice wall.

Bivy / Bivouac — An overnight stop on a route, usually without a tent. May be planned (a bivy ledge on a long technical climb) or unplanned (forced by weather or slowness).

Bollard — A snow or ice anchor carved out of the slope itself. A teardrop-shaped pillar with the rope wrapped around it. Useful when you’ve run out of gear.

C

Col — The low point on a ridge between two peaks. Most Himalayan summit pushes traverse a col on the way to the summit.

Cornice — Wind-deposited overhanging snow on a ridge. Looks solid; isn’t. Cornices collapse under their own weight or under a climber. Don’t walk on the very edge of a windward ridge.

Couloir — A steep gully, usually filled with snow or ice. Many AD and D routes follow couloirs because they’re the line of weakness on a face.

Crampon — Steel spikes that strap to mountaineering boots for ice and snow grip. There are walking-style crampons (10 points, semi-rigid) and technical crampons (12 points, rigid). For PD/AD routes, walking crampons are usually fine.

Crevasse — A crack in a glacier. Can be open and visible, or covered by a snow bridge. Roped travel and basic crevasse-rescue skills are non-negotiable on any glaciated peak.

Crux — The single hardest move or section on a route. Black Peak’s crux is the 70° ice wall.

D

Death zone — Above 8,000m. Not relevant for Indian peaks — the highest point in India is on the eastern flank of Kangchenjunga (8,586m), and that side is rarely climbed.

Deadman / Snow stake — An anchor buried in snow. A flat metal plate (deadman) or a long aluminium stake driven in. Surprisingly strong when set well.

E

Edge — The sharp metal rim of a crampon point or ice axe pick.

Expedition style — The opposite of alpine style. Multiple camps, fixed lines, gear ferries between camps, a support team. This is the default for almost all Himalayan 6,000m and 7,000m peaks.

F

Fixed line — Rope left in place — anchored at top and bottom — so climbers can ascend with a jumar and descend by rappel. The standard tool on the steeper sections of any AD-and-up Himalayan summit day.

Front-pointing — Climbing steep ice on the two front spikes of your crampons, with the rest of the foot in the air. The basic technique for anything over 50°.

G

Gaiter — A fabric cover from boot to knee that keeps snow out. Wear them on every snow climb. A wet boot at altitude is a frozen toe later.

Glissade — Controlled slide down a snow slope, sitting or standing, using the ice axe as a brake. Faster than walking when the slope angle is friendly and the runout is safe. Forbidden when crampons are on (you’ll catch a point and break an ankle).

H

HAPE / HACE — High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema (fluid in the lungs) and High-Altitude Cerebral Edema (fluid in the brain). The two life-threatening forms of altitude sickness. The only real treatment is immediate descent. Both can develop in hours from mild symptoms.

Headwall — The steep section near the top of a face or couloir. Often where the fixed lines are placed.

I

Ice axe — A single tool with a long shaft for general mountaineering and self-arrest. Distinct from technical tools, which are short, curved, and used in pairs for steep ice.

ILP — Inner Line Permit. Required for parts of Ladakh, Spiti, Sikkim, and Uttarakhand bordering China or Pakistan. Separate from any IMF royalty.

IMF — Indian Mountaineering Foundation. The national body that issues expedition permits and royalty for peaks above 6,000m on the controlled list.

J

Jumar / Ascender — A mechanical device with a one-way grip on a fixed rope. Slides up; locks down. Used to ascend fixed lines. Every climber on an AD-and-up Himalayan expedition needs to know how to use one without thinking.

K

K2 (and CB-13, CB-14, etc.) — Survey designations from the colonial-era Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The system is still used informally in the Indian Himalayas. The “CB” peaks in our peak list (CB-13, CB-14) are Chandra Bhaga survey designations.

M

Moraine — Rocky debris pushed up and dropped by a glacier. Lateral moraines run alongside the glacier; medial moraines run down the middle where two glaciers meet; terminal moraines mark the historic snout. Most Himalayan basecamps sit on moraine.

O

Objective danger — Hazards of the mountain itself: rockfall, serac collapse, avalanche, weather. Distinct from subjective danger — your skill, judgement, and decisions. You can train down subjective danger; you can only avoid objective danger by route choice and timing.

Open peak — IMF designation for peaks below 6,500m on the published list that don’t require formal expedition permission for Indian climbers.

P

Pitch — The length of a single roped lead — typically 30–60m. A “five-pitch route” has five rope-lengths of climbing.

Plateau — A flat or near-flat snow expanse high on a peak. Deo Tibba’s plateau is a famous one — beautiful, slightly menacing, and crevassed.

Porter / HAP — High-Altitude Porter. Carries loads on expeditions, often above the Advanced Base Camp. The unsung backbone of Himalayan climbing.

Postholing — Sinking knee-deep or worse in soft snow. Exhausting. Avoided by an alpine start — getting onto the slope while the snow is still frozen hard.

Prusik — A friction hitch tied with a thin loop of cord around the main rope. Used as a backup brake or to ascend a rope without a jumar. Every climber should know how to tie one.

R

Rappel — See abseil.

Rope-fix team — The lead party on summit day that places anchors and fixes ropes for the rest of the expedition to ascend. Usually the strongest, most experienced climbers on the trip.

S

Self-arrest — Stopping a sliding fall on snow with the pick of your ice axe. The single most important skill taught at a Basic Mountaineering Course. Practised until it’s reflex.

Serac — A tower of glacier ice, often at the lip of an icefall. Inherently unstable. Avoid camping or pausing under serac fall lines.

Sirdar — Lead Sherpa or expedition manager. A Nepali term but used colloquially throughout the Indian Himalayas.

Spindrift — Powdered snow blown along the ground or down a couloir by wind. Can be uncomfortable; rarely dangerous in itself, but a sign of stronger weather above.

Summit fever — The psychological pull to push for the top despite weather, time, or your own exhaustion. The thing that kills experienced climbers. The cure is a turnaround time set the night before, and the discipline to honour it.

T

Top-out — To finish a pitch or a route by reaching the top.

Traverse — To move horizontally across a slope rather than up or down it.

V

Voie normale — French for “normal route” — the standard, easiest line up a peak. Mont Blanc has one. So does Black Peak.

W

Whiteout — Total loss of visibility in cloud or blowing snow. Sky and ground blur into the same milky grey. Navigate by GPS, by wand-line, or stay put. Do not “feel your way down.”

A quick worked example

Let’s put it all together. Imagine you’re looking at a peak card on an aggregator and it reads:

Kang Yatse II Altitude: 6,250m · Region: Markha Valley, Ladakh Grade: PD+ Route: Standard south-west face. ~45° summit slope, fixed lines on the headwall, alpine start from C2. IMF royalty: US$500 (party of two) · ILP: Required for non-Indian climbers · Open peak: Yes

What does this actually tell you?

• PD+ — A first 6,000er that’s genuinely a 6,000er. Sustained snow, real technical content, but no aid climbing or hard rock. If you’ve done a BMC and one prior peak above 5,000m, this is in scope.
• 45° summit slope — A real angle, sustained for several rope lengths. You’ll be front-pointing for the upper section. You want to be confident with crampon technique before you arrive.
• Fixed lines on the headwall — Translation: the operator’s lead team will have placed anchored ropes on the steep bit. You’ll ascend them with a jumar. Practise this skill before you go.
• Alpine start from C2 — Summit day starts from the second high camp at around 1–2 AM. You’ll walk by head torch for the first three hours. The snow will be hard and easier to walk on. Plan to be back in C2 by mid-afternoon before the snow gets soft.
• US$500 royalty — Standard sub-6,500m IMF rate.
• Open peak — No formal IMF expedition permission needed for Indian climbers. ILP for the Markha Valley is needed regardless.

That’s the same card you’d have stared at uncomprehendingly thirty minutes ago. Now it reads like a sentence.

A closing note

Mountaineering vocabulary is dense, but it’s dense for a reason. Every term in this glossary is a piece of compressed knowledge — a thing climbers learned the hard way and gave a name so the next person didn’t have to.

You don’t need to memorise the table at the top. You need to be able to look at a peak listing and decode it without panic. Bookmark this page. Come back when you see a word you don’t know. In a season or two, the language will fade into the background and you’ll just be reading routes — which is when the real fun starts.

Pick a peak. Read its card. Ask the operator the right questions. The mountains will do the rest.

Written for first-time Himalayan climbers. If you spot an error or want to suggest a term, write to us — we update this guide each season.