It seems like it should be easy to use countif to look at a column and count
how many cells lie in a specific range but I can't figure out a simple way
to do it without creating inbetween columns first

since you seem to be have to use

COUNTIF(A:A,"<10") to count less than 10's, I thought COUNTIF(A:A,"0<10")
or COUNTIF(A:A,"0","<10") might be logical, but they don't work obviously
(not sure why you even need the " in there at all

I've had to make a column from 1 to 100, and use COUNTIF(A:A,Bn) where n is
2 to 101, and then set up ten sums to work out the values in ranges
1-10,11-20 etc

bah humbug!