[Fiend]

Errr. Question?

Thinking in the context of, say, Peak bouldering, which is heavily documented, but still has some quiet areas....that might well get documented in the future in line with BMC policy. And what you lot think on all that.

[nodder]

First time i went to Crescianno, Chironico, (2002 ish) pretty clean and nice.  Now place is full of bog roll and shit steadily moving in from the edges of the car park.  The same car park that is having a blind eye turned to people parking/dossing there anyway.  This is caused by boulderers/climbers, was told this was why in the end they have decided to write a guide for the area as a sacrificial cow type thing, its been fucked up; might as well keep people there, and keep areas like Brione "closed".  If you really want to find out about these secret areas you can, it just takes more time and effort, in some cases a good thing. 

[andy_e]

I think it depends on the nature of the area as well as how quiet it is- i.e is it a complex jumble of boulders or is it fairly obvious what is what? Is it a long walk-in? Is it quiet for a reason (i.e. it's crud)?

I can imagine areas like Wolf Edge in Staffordshire being really quiet, since there's only really easy problems there- so maybe it would just have been worth mentioning This Is My Church as an exceptional problem and the rest left undocumented and to be rediscovered by generation after generation?

[cofe]

grinah stones is best example i can think of. will it be in the bmc moors book? dunno. would people go anyway given it's a proper quest? don't much mind either way at the moment but someone will put it in a book one day.

[Johnny Brown]

I'm sure this happens to every generation of guidebook teams, but you think some of the stuff in the definitive record is a waste of space. Climbed often by guide writers, questionably worthwhile and destined to be ignored. I say lots of venues should have a cursory mention and leave stuff for folk to discover. There's a lot to be said for having the opportunity to climb even easy routes that aren't named, graded or recorded. And then leave them as you found them. Good way to find out why you climb...

[slackline]

Pink Anasazi's 

[Falling Down]

I don't want to raise the ugly head of localism in climbing but one of the positive side effects in surfing is that spots are sometimes only hinted at or referenced obliquely and can be found with the right spirit of exploration and a positive attitude. 

[Eddies]

I can imagine areas like Wolf Edge in Staffordshire being really quiet, since there's only really easy problems there- so maybe it would just have been worth mentioning This Is My Church as an exceptional problem and the rest left undocumented and to be rediscovered by generation after generation?

I was there yesterday 

I like the quieter areas so am deffinately in favour of leaving them out of new guides.
Some areas need to be kept 'underground'... not missing much mind!

[blur]

I would like to think that Flash wouldn't benefit from a great load of people ruining their rocks and serenity. So yes, some areas should be kept quiet. Just observing the transformation of Newstones in a decade is quite worrying, the erosion has proceeded at an exponential rate.

[aly]

I'm not sure it should be a question of whether the area is 'quiet' but rather if it is 'fragile'.

There are superb quiet areas which are a mission to get to and have limited problems.  I don't really see a problem with documenting them as they'll never get really busy.
I'd be more inclined to leave out the fragile areas or ones with potential access issues etc. that are close to the road that may start to get battered if they are documented.

It's certainly a good thing to have some undocumented areas as some of the best days I've had have been climbing stuff in the middle of nowhere that I didn't know what it was.  If you leave it like that then loads of people can enjoy that experience too.
My answer to your question therefore is almond croissant 

[abarro81]

 

[Paul B]

Errr. Question?

Thinking in the context of, say, Peak bouldering, which is heavily documented, but still has some quiet areas....that might well get documented in the future in line with BMC policy. And what you lot think on all that.

by "quiet spots" do you mean places with a low amount of traffic or areas where access is edgey/banned?
I can't help but think you're referring to "that place we do not mention", which would be daft to document.

[Sloper]

There are quiet areas on Stanage for god's sake.

I think the argument 20 years ago would have been quite different but now, given the massive increase in the numbers of climbers and the number of climbers with cars, remember the trips to X 6 up in an old Cortina etc, as opposed to 4 climbers turning up to crags in four cars and the problems that this brings with parking etc etc the need to let some areas develop by word of mouth is greater than the need to publicise matters.

This is also a problem that is primarily limited to grit as no other rock is within such easy distance of the mass of the midlands and in such a fragile and financially delicate environment (see shooting on Ilkley etc).

Punters simply don't need to be spoon fed about every lump of rock that's out there.

[tc]

I am confused about this one. Always have been. So, let's say you find a previously undeveloped area and do a few problems. Some might even be good, or hard, or both, in which case you accord your new discovery more importance than it might actually merit. And now you have another problem. Do you go for: Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, Discussion, Taglines, Trailers, Posters, Photos, Showtimes, Link to Official Sites, Blogs and Beta? Do you invite the attention of the claims and counter-claims of sardonic old-school Trad Daddies like me with their proto-punk nihilism? Entrust that special place to the soulless nu-skool wannabees, hell-bent on achieving celebrity status with their inflated grades and fragile egos, cluttering the place up with loud self analysis and discarded chalk wrappers?
Or do you shut the fuck up? 
Me, I'm getting selfish in my old age.

[granticus]

Errr... Thinking in the context of peak bouldering.  Eagle Tor is case and point of a 'quiet' area getting trashed and subsequently 'banned' as a result of too many inconsiderate individuals knowing where it is.  The Peak is always going to have this issue due to the high population of boulderists.  I'd say keep schtum about quiet areas in the Peak. Unfortunately the probability of idiots making the effort to go forth and desecrate places is high due to the sheer numbers of people into climbing. 

I don't want to raise the ugly head of localism in climbing but one of the positive side effects in surfing is that spots are sometimes only hinted at or referenced obliquely and can be found with the right spirit of exploration and a positive attitude.

Indeed.. I would suggest that those with inquisitive minds and a spirit of exploration will discover anyway.  I would also suggest that this kind of person would discover and respect said quiet areas.  Whereas amongst the spoon fed idiot masses lurks the litter bugs, the chalk cakers and the alfresco poo fiends!
In the context of other less populated areas of the country, they will stay quiet regardless of the amount of information that is available about them and only the adventerous will make the effort anyway.
That'll be an almond croissant then...

[CJ Whitaker]

There's recently been new climbs updated on yorkshire grit at shipley glen but i myself have done these climbs before and i have also seen many others climb them. Although they are graded very easy they should have been left undocumented. As i think most quiet, hard to reach places should be.

[AndiT]

Just observing the transformation of Newstones in a decade is quite worrying, the erosion has proceeded at an exponential rate.

Is this a result of it being a guidebook, it was in the previous one too. It's more a case of its accessibility, you see far fewer people at Baldstones, Wolf Edge, Gradbach etc which all have similar difficulty problems on similar rock, in my opinion.


Are we not being hypocritical or selfish by suggesting these crags should be left out of guides, would you have ever been to Grinah Stones, Woolpacks, Wolf Crag etc if they weren't in guides? How many of you have climbed on the First Cloud at the Five Clouds, which is deliberately left out of guides soley for exploration purposes, or the back of Hen Cloud?

[Johnny Brown]

Neither the Grinah stones or The Woolpacks are in guides though.

[dave]

andi is on the money here. if you're a climber and you want to climb stuff then you need to know where places are, which unless you happen to be a personal friend of someone who been going there it needs to be in a guide. the "i'm alright jack" approach of keeping things deliberatly quiet is all very well but its not very progressive.

for example, all the examples of "look at the state of XYZ crag since it was put into the guide, looks like a shithole now" etc etc etc. Well for a kickoff, its not guidebooks that fuck up crags, its climbers. by trying to pretend that crags don't exist doesn't help address the underlying problems of access issues and people not respecting the crag environment. if our guides are only filled with trashed areas then newcomers won't know any different, and expect that to be the norm. If we pretent crags don't exist then how do we educate people about these issues?

Places like grinah stones are fine as they are being mentioned just in passing and not in detail, although i think this is an exception rather than the rule - afterall who wants the job of trekking up there repeatedly to draw/photograph the blocks, make a topo, work out who's done what and what the grades are? no fucker does, life is too short for most people.

most places that have managed to stay out of guides are not immune to problems (tickmarks at cragx etc), and generally end up having topos made up on the downlow anyway (cragx again) but they lack the "official" nature of a guide descriptin laying down the access issues. Most places in the peak that are off the guide radar so far generally are only of intrest to the true enthusiast, there's no new burbage valleys about to be discovered, so these places are unlikely to get trashed. In contrast, some of them could do with some traffic, unless you want a boom-bust situation where a crag gets rediscovered every few years, cleaned, then once the wet winter comes left to go ferral again, in the meantime we all go back to the plantation.

I thought the grinah stones and the woolpacks are at least mentioned in the previous (i.e. current) series of guides? i can't be arsed descending 2 flights of stairs to check. woolpacks needs to be in guides to tell people not to be fools and climb on it, that place needs avoiding, not worth ruining a natural wonder to create a 3rd rate venue. this is a great example of how ignorance does no-one any favours.

[AndiT]

'For those who like a grand walk, a wild and glorious bivouac, and an hour's exercise bouldering and scrambling earl in the morning, there can be no finer place than Grinah Stones' Eric Byne c.1392

blah, blah, blah and the hundreds of large boulders which lie below.

This from p.195 of the current Kinder guide.

I suppose for arguments sake, this is an example of 'a brief mention' which is infinitely more appealing and attractive for the prospective boulderer than a well documented guidebook entry. Wilderness Rocks and Rollick Stones are well covered in the guide, and through their description you are, perhaps, less likely to visit than in the case of an enchanting brief mention.

Same goes for that bouldering picture which I think is in the bouldering guide? of Woolpacks, that's more alluring than an in depth description which actually explains the true nature of the crags.

I suppose you could say the more you include in a guide, the more you spread the load?? Just a thought.

[SA Chris]

I think yorkshiregrit.com raises an interesting situation. The info is there, and easily accessible to anyone bothered to click on a few buttons, yet some fantastic venues are totally deserted most if the time, as human nature says that the vast majority of people will still visit the same old well profiled and easily accessible venues again and again. Unless there is a glossy article in one of the rags or on one of the popular websites, it appeares in a high profile DVD, or someone makes a significant hard ascent there, then they suddenly appear on everyones radar.

[Johnny Brown]

I'm always surprised by the number of climbers who are motivated mainly by the tick and aren't interested in problems they've already done. I guess they aren't likely to go anywhere mentioned in brief. That suits me.
I don't think a 'definitive' bouldering guide is possible anyway. Chasing diminishing returns there for sure, so I guess brief mentions are always going to be the way.

[Andy B]

I'm always surprised by the number of climbers who are motivated mainly by the tick and aren't interested in problems they've already done. I guess they aren't likely to go anywhere mentioned in brief. That suits me.

Shirley, if a climber isn't interested in problems they've already done, then this makes it more likely, not less, that they will go in search of new problems to try at ever more obscure, and less well documented areas. Wanting to climb problems that they haven't already done is a separate thing to only wanting to tick lists in books.

[Bonjoy]

Guides (or at least the BMC ones) should strive to be definitive whilst maintaining a reasonable minimum standard regarding what is and isn't worth recording. Generally they should only exclude what is clearly worthless to even a local. It's the job of a guide writer to document climbs and climbing activity not to nanny people by deciding what they should and shouldn't see. Nor is it the writers place to try and socially engineer people's behavior by discluding crags. Present as much info as practicable and let the reader use the info as they see fit.

[Drew]

Definitive guides (BMC, CC, Ground Up - Gogarth) should be just that (include everything which has been documented, ever), and selective guides should be... well... selective. Rockfax et al should mention places which aren't worth a full topo (too small, too easy, not enough stars), but are still good for a day out.