[galpinos]

Pete, that looks aces (as the kids say).

I agree with James, get a press release out showing how awesome it will look. As a volunteer not for profit (i.e. all going to the bolt fund) guide, the quality looks outstanding.

I will be buying your guide.

[Nick S]

  with the press release. The fact that the information in this guide is based on volunteers checking and rebolting every route is an immensely valuable USP that does not immediately come across but is worth making a big deal about.

[nai]

I'd imagine going to market in Autumn isn't the ideal time for a UK mountains/limestone guide with people's thoughts turning to bouldering/ice/indoors/abroad?  Does that give you some grace for one last wave of development this year then work on it over winter to have it ready by Spring and compete for market share when people are starting to think about the area again?

[Fiend]

It wouldn't be hard for Alan to give a straight answer about how many routes are being included on Pen Trwyn, LPT, Castell y Gwynt, The Diamond, Craig y Don and Penmaen Head and any other crags - Would it?

Indeed it wouldn't, but he's hardly obliged to. Given that you basically accused him of being a cunt in your email I'm not entirely surprised by his reaction.

But if the figures show that the limestone section in the RF guide IS select, he doesn't even have to use those figures out of politeness and good grace, he can quote the figures and say "screw you Pete, you're way off target, we're only including 150 lime routes out of the 500 we had in our definitive draft, piss off back to your Cave". THAT would be a conclusive counterargument.

[Fiend]

NWR: 57 lime pages out of 544 pages = 10.5 %

NW RF: 76 lime pages out of 460 planned pages = 16.5%

 

[Pantontino]

NWR: 57 lime pages out of 544 pages = 10.5 %

NW RF: 76 lime pages out of 460 planned pages = 16.5%

 

It's not about pages, it's about the number of routes. If the NWClimbs book has 350+ Ormes and A55 crag routes that is more than a third of the 1000 total. The 350+ figure looks consistent with the 400 sport : 600 trad split that I heard second hand from the mouth of one of the book authors (the other sport routes coming from the Llanberis Slate area). And remember, lots of those Ormes routes will be trad routes.

After the huge amount of work that Pete has done on the re-equipping front, the idea of setting out to undermine his not-for-profit, NWBF-supporting guide is frankly, outrageous.

[Doylo]

After the huge amount of work that Pete has done on the re-equipping front, the idea of setting out to undermine his not-for-profit, NWBF-supporting guide is frankly, outrageous.

Why let a little detail like that affect profits!??

[tomtom]

I'd imagine going to market in Autumn isn't the ideal time for a UK mountains/limestone guide with people's thoughts turning to bouldering/ice/indoors/abroad?  Does that give you some grace for one last wave of development this year then work on it over winter to have it ready by Spring and compete for market share when people are starting to think about the area again?

Hmm.. I would have thought getting it out before Xmas was important... something for people to put down on xmas lists...

[crimp]

I'd imagine going to market in Autumn isn't the ideal time for a UK mountains/limestone guide with people's thoughts turning to bouldering/ice/indoors/abroad?  Does that give you some grace for one last wave of development this year then work on it over winter to have it ready by Spring and compete for market share when people are starting to think about the area again?

Hmm.. I would have thought getting it out before Xmas was important... something for people to put down on xmas lists...

got to agree with you tomtom. I would go for as early a publication as possible. People like to spend dark winter nights poring over guides. Well i do anyway.

Sample pages look great Pete. Dont delay til spring. Print as soon as possible. Dont give them a 6 month headstart.

I've checked the other channel. You're point is gaining traction there. Press release and sample pages now. Publish quick as you can.

I would offer to help but no publishing skills.

[ksjs]

After your action with the Information Commisionors Office I will not deal with you on any level, on any topic.

If you want to know what is in our guide, then you can wait for it to be published.

Alan

Let me get this straight:

1. You raise a case with the Information Commissioner's Office
2. They caution Alan James / Rockfax
3. Alan James decides to cease contact with you as a result

Is this a correct and fair summary?

[shurt]

To someone who knows neither of the people, not a lot about the past history apart from what Pete has written here it just looks like something fishy is going on. Reminds me of Ockham's Razor and that the most simple explanation is probably the most likely. In this case I'm not too convinced by Alan's this happened, then that happened, then we decided this then that etc etc and then we were magically about to release this guidebook in its current form.
Is it more likely that Rockfax just decided that they would include all the Orme limestone routes in the selected guide and be selected everywhere because of some long convoluted chain of events or is it more likely that Alan has just seen a chance to piss Pete off by gazumping his guide due to past history? I know which one seems more likely to me. A lot of hot air coming from Alan, especially over there on the other thread. The sad thing is that lots of people might buy RF as they like the user friendly layout and pretty pictures even though most new comprehensive guides are brilliant now and in most cases on a par with RF.
I feel sorry for Simon too as this feels like someone blatantly creating a guidebook to compete with the GU guide, even though they claim they are not!! In fact I'm not sure I've ever heard of a guide being a direct competitor to two guidebooks....
I can't stand people trying to make money make out that they are not and that they are doing loads of good e.g. all the guf about donating to the bolt fund. Their proposed actions are underhand and feel like settling scores and trying to elbow out other guides.

[shark]

I'd been keeping a logbook and it had about 1000 routes in it......He then emailed again to tell me he'd deleted everything.

It takes effort to create a comprehensive record in the logbook and then keep it going and it becomes a very personal thing.

If it was was deleted in the arbitrary way you describe then that was bang out of order.

I'd be livid if it happened to me.   

[petejh]

Guys - I can't do press releases! I don't have whatever it is that it needs to do them. I've got a proper job (don't laugh Doylo), I just sat through an 8 hour full irata members audit and my eyes are still crossed. What I do have is local knowledge, an amazing co-author, loads of psyched people willing to do little bits here and there,  the determination to see this thing through because I'm determined enough to spend 3 months hanging above the sea bolting LPT by myself, and the diamond hand-line likewise and Detritus Wall, Pen Trwyn, Castell y Gwynt, The Hornbys, St Tudnos, Craig Pen y Gogarth, and numerous other manky zawns. I'm passionate about this area and I hope that will show  through on the page - take a look for yourselves. If someone wants to take glossy PDF's of pages from me and do something about press releases then do - I'm full on trying to produce this thing and make it good. I 'll give you whatever material is needed. We're still busy re-equipping crags and routes so that we can route-check them and write up the good-but-neglected stuff in a good light. Of course that's what rockfax will never, ever do.

I strongly believe Alan has done this for nefarious reasons i.e. his grudge about being cautioned by the ICO - see his email reply to me, and the letter to the ICO. Why else would someone willfully piss off so many people by pulling the market out from a locally produced definitive guide, which is giving all profits back to the bolt fund which enabled the routes to exist in any climbable form, and for Alan to draw lines in the wrong place about.

The ICO's letter.








Alan's email reply to me when I asked him last week what he was covering in his guide:

Alan. To what extent are you intending to cover North Wales Limestone? I ask for a few reasons. Reading the publicity you state 'the choice of what to included is based as much on the crag it is on as the route itself. If we include a crag then we tend to include a good selection of routes on that crag.'
The 'crags' (some are areas) you list for nw limestone are:
Upper Pen Trwyn, Lower Pen Trwyn, Lighthouse Area, Little Orme, Castle Inn Quarry, Penmaen Head.
Another reason I ask is because the route lists on the rockfax page showing what's going in the guide include every single route for the limestone areas, yet for all the other areas you list a selection of the better routes, i.e. -
Craig Pant Ifan lists 11 routes,
Clogwyn y Grochan - 17 routes,
Cloggy - 27 routes
Carreg Wastad - 11 routes
Dinas Mot area - 12 routes

In contrast, the route list for the NW Limestone section is:
LPT - 57 routes (every route)
Upper Pen Trwyn - 220 routes (every route, more or less)
Castell y Gwynt - 21 routes (every route)
The Diamond - 18 routes (every route)
Castle Inn Quarry - 14 (every route on the main wall)


Are you intending to include virtually definitive coverage for these limestone areas?
If you are, and I really hope you aren't, then this isn't a selective guide at all - it's a selective guide for 90% of the content but includes definitive coverage of all the main areas of north wales limestone - with a clear goal of beating to market the actual definitive guide for the area which has been three years in the making and which has been the driving force for the re-development of this area. And are you intending to cover any other limestone crags not listed?
 
If I'm correct, it shoes a level of cynicism and disregard for people which I thought was beyond even you.

I look forward to your response.


Pete

.......

After your action with the Information Commisionors Office I will not deal with you on any level, on any topic.

If you want to know what is in our guide, then you can wait for it to be published.

Alan
_________
Alan James, Director
UKClimbing - http://www.ukclimbing.com
UKHillwalking - http://www.ukhillwalking.com
Rockfax - http://www.rockfax.com

Finally, some more pages from the true North Wales Limestone guide, not some lazy wrongfax 'bag of'. Actually, I think they have a symbol for that.





(and this is so embarrassing. I am not in every pic and I did not plan for the cover shot it just worked out looking brilliant, I really want to get Neil on Megalopa but he's so flighty to pin down, I do have a good one of him on The Brute though)

I'd urge anyone who feels strongly about the way Alan, Mark, Jack and rockafax are behaving to make their voice heard on ukc, the BMC, the magazines and on here. It isn't right to have them controlling the volume dial and drowning out people's valid questions. And it isn'tright that genuine hard graft done for the right reasons gets trampled on for the wrong reasons.

[Wood FT]

Looks brilliant! I had to double check I couldn't see the Peñón in that first picture

[slackline]

Thats shit, ignorance of the law is no defense for not complying with it.  If anything Alan should be grateful for being made aware of the laws that he is legally obliged to comply with.

I wonder where individuals posts fall under this umbrella as they might be considered personal data too, and on more than one occasion I've seen posts disappear from UKC (obviously pertinent to any forum).

[Dave Garry]

Pete as I and everyone else have said; ..It looks dead ace an that, tip top aprt from that numpty on the cover mind 

but I cant help thinking that we need to shut the fuck up now ...let them bring out the guide ..let them print fecking thousands of the buggers ....then slowly over time as the dust settles on row upon row of glorified potty paper left abandoned in warehouses and storage cupboards across the country they will come to terms with what a fuck up it really was to shit on your own doorstep. 

The consciousness will support the "true north wales lime guide" ...  and as you know a dead soldier costs less then a wounded one.

I love climbing at the min ...what with the popular peoples front of the English lake district ....and the TNWLG ....Its all just dead ace ....fecking mental like ...better than a double omnibus addition Bellenders        

[psychomansam]

Slackers,

They can justify deleting posts routinely, i.e. in line with their moderation policy or randomly if they see fit in fact. If the deleted post is still stored somewhere you could rightly request it, but otherwise it's tough shit for using a heavily moderated forum.

If they archive posts, take them off the site but retain them somewhere, they you'd certainly be entitled to request access to your forum novellas/rants.


p.s. Keep the comprehensive coming Pete. It's what climbing guides are all about - local character and knowledge. The slate guide, A55 guide and others already provide great local character. Fuck mediocrefax. Although I'm sad I'll never look at Eastern Grit in the same way.

[petejh]

A reply to some of Alan's points:

In all my discussions the people involved with the bolt funds consistently said that the one thing they need more than money is people to do the work. This isn't to say they are all swimming in cash, they aren't, but it does indicate that there are ways to help even if you can't make a donation. Having said that, bolting is also a tricky business and requires skill and practice to get it right.

People like me. And Tony, Norm, Dave, Doylo, Andy, Pete, Rob,  and a few others, who, between us have made all the crags which you're cherry-picking, well, worth cherry-picking. But we've equipped so much more than that. You haven't lifted a finger for this area just like you haven't lifted a finger for the French and Spanish crags you cover. Why don't you just have some humility and give the same level of coverage as Groundup's excellent North Wales Rock - you don't have to include the same crags but a very similar number of routes would be a totally reasonable approach.

Jack did loads of work on Upper Pen Trwyn, LPT, and the Diamond.

As much as the people re-equipping long neglected routes on forgotten crags so we could route-check and write a proper definitive guide? - not even close to the same amount of work. It's like comparing a 100m sprint to the marathon.
As much work as route-checking esoteric trad routes on Observatory Buttress and St Tudno Lower? As much work as hanging off LPT for 3 months putting in one hundred and eighty 16mm duplex stainless bolts? As much work as teaching myself inDesign and grafting like mad in the evenings after work to try to get good at page layout and the million and one other things involved in producing a book? As much work as ringing around photographers and climbers and running around organizing photoshoots on wild, hard-to-access sea cliffs - not Pen Trwyn and LPT. You don't put the work in, that's the whole point. You don't research, you don't route check, you just do a half-arsed job.
I made it possible for Jack to even get to the Diamond! And when he got there  - me Tommy, Doylo, Pete and Ding Dong made it possible that the routes were climbable for him. We made that cliff worth your while - Steve Mayers and George Smith and Zippy are the real hereos, jugging out like that! Please don't take that to mean I feel I have any sort of sense of ownership over anything on NW Lime -  becasue I really don't think like that, I did The Diamond becasue I wanted to and I love having challenges like that, and no-one else was going to do it. Other people can treat that however they want but please, as a guidebook publisher, don't try to forget or dismiss in any way the incredible amount of hard work and love that went into these places that you're skimming off away from the definitive guidebook, and which you only write about becasue of our effort, not yours. We've been re-equipping this area solidly for the last 6 or 7 years, (and intermittently before then with Steve Mayers being a prominent force back in the day) to bring crags back to life from the mess of 80s and 90s junk bolts that made much of NW Limestone unclimbable. This is an unusually high-maintenance area, combine that with going 16 years without a definitive guidebook and you have a recipe for loads of neglected cliffs. That's what we're finally coming close to finishing sorting out, and we want to showcase it with a glossy, passionate definitive guidebook not some half-arsed cheap-shot rockfax, cherry-picking all of the already-popular crags and written by somebody who doesn't give a hoot for North Wales Limestone - it's a running joke on the Ormes that Jack he has hardly ever been seen there except for when he's asking people where the lines go so he can sit in his van drawing them on his laptop. He had to ask me where mumbo jumbo lower-off was in 2011 - one of the most popular 6a+'s on the Orme.

Well we don't really make much profit which is why we focused our attention in recent years on using our resources to publicise and spread the word. If we do make profit it tends to go towards subsidising UKC

You're a limited company and your annual turnovers are freely available for anybody to view should they wish to do the research on companies house - you have a damn cheek trying to play like you're scrimping by - you're making a lot of money yet you're fully prepared to damage the livelihood of a genuinely passionate and brilliant person to have as chronicler of the North Wales scene in Simon Panton.

Firstly, your flying_climber profile has never been banned before, and secondly, we would never ban or remove post like this. It amazes me sometimes why people think that we would. Just stick 'rockfax bolt funds' into the message text box on Forums search and select 'older messages' if you don't believe me.

Your love of banning and censoring people who say awkward things is well known amongst climbers.

In reply to Quiddity:
> On this point, it does seem ridiculous that Pete Harrison cannot comment on this thread and I need to go to the other channel to read his side of this debate.
Well that's a different matter and not connected with anything he posted on UKC Forums, but I get the impression the feeling is mutual.
Alan

What feeling? And why aren't I allowed to post on ukc, not that I want to particularly - I dislike how you sell people's voices for advertising revenue but that's facebook in a nutshell, it just so happens you've chosen to sell people talking about climbing to sell advertising space. You banned me in 2011 and zapped the thread in which I said that I consider your 97 NW limestone rockfax 'lazily researched'. Disrespectful yes, and I know how much effort you'll have felt like you put into that guide, without which making this guide would have been ten times more difficult so I respect the good work that you did do. However it had blatant errors in it which only come from not checking things - like Wall of the Evening Light -  which as one one of the best 7b+'s in the UK (see the 'Climb' 100 routes), deserves to be checked at least. You described it as 50 metres and 'There are 16 bolts so you shouldn't get lost'. I re-equipped it in 2010, after spending 3 months almost killing myself building the hand-line to access The Diamond (that's £1600 you owe the bolt fund, my labour is free) - it had 7 bolts 2 pegs, and is 35 metres. You couldn't have even stood at the bottom of it, on one of the very best routes around.

Keep talking Alan, the hole you're digging is getting deeper.

[petejh]

NWR: 57 lime pages out of 544 pages = 10.5 %

NW RF: 76 lime pages out of 460 planned pages = 16.5%

 

Fiend, this is from Alan James, it's on the ukc thread.

We are including most sport routes on the crags we cover though since that is our normal policy since these are the routes that tend to get climbed, which is around 250 odd routes on the Great Orme for example.

So 250 routes on the Great Orme alone, according to Alan.
Then there's The Little Orme, Castle Inn, Penmaen Head - and anything else they forgot to mention.

Compared with NW Rock which has about 90 routes on the Great Orme, 12 on The Little Orme, 6 on Castle Inn.

It couldn't be clearer.

[ksjs]

The coverage is our usual mix of selected crags but include most of the routes people do on those crags. (Using UKC logbooks is a great way of finding out which routes are climbed). This does tend to mean that the quality bar is lower for sport routes than for trad routes but these are the routes people do.

Not sleeping, thought reading this might help... Does Alan really believe his own hype? A major component in what gets climbed are guidebooks. If authors decide what to include in select guides on the basis of comments in a database then this sets up a negative cycle where less and less stuff is getting done. It simply isn't true that what doesn't get climbed is always of less merit.

[AJM]

Those pages look mint.

Chiming in with the others, it really needs a press release or an article extolling the area or something to help I publicise that its coming, maybe see if the BMC can put a teaser or something into Summit or something like that. It's one thing feeling you've got the moral high ground as well as the local knowledge and all that, but if no one knows about it in the wider world then the selling points aren't being pushed as hard as they should be 

I know several others have said as well but if you need some extra help with the guide then I've currently got way too much time on my hands. I've done some proof reading of 1-2 things for the CC before because I'm the kind of picky grammar pedant you'll love to hate but in general whilst I've got the time I might as well try and give something back in it.

[SA Chris]

The sad thing is that lots of people might buy RF as they like the user friendly layout and pretty pictures even though most new comprehensive guides are brilliant now and in most cases on a par with RF.

I would say in many cases superior. There have been some fantastic ideas in recent printed guidebooks; top tens, anecdotes from local climbers, esoterica ticklists etc. Which make them great reading at home or on the crag. I personally think Rockfax format is starting to look a little dated; the same symbols and things have been used for 20 plus years now. However I'm sure there are lots of people who like the homogenous product, and will buy the guide as soon as it comes out to add to the collection proudly displayed on theit Richmond* flat wall. Personally I love seeing passionate local climbers producing their own interpretation of what a great guidebook should look like.

* Not discriminating against Richmond, other generic London suburbs are also available.

[slackline]

Slackers,

They can justify deleting posts routinely, i.e. in line with their moderation policy or randomly if they see fit in fact. If the deleted post is still stored somewhere you could rightly request it, but otherwise it's tough shit for using a heavily moderated forum.

If they archive posts, take them off the site but retain them somewhere, they you'd certainly be entitled to request access to your forum novellas/rants.

Most savvy web-sitres are backed up if those who are running them are sensible, and its likely off-site, just as the server running the software that makes the website will be hosted "off-site" from the UKC offices which are listed as being in Sheffield, although the web-site is holsted on servers located in London (UKB for example is hosted by RoseHosting who are a US company and the server is in O Fallon, Missouri, USA).  Older posts on UKClimbing appear to be archived in some manner as threads get locked after a period of time (e.g. locked 2009 thread).

I understand the application of a moderation policy and not posting inflamattory/derogatory/offensive stuff, but random deletion because it doesn't fit with the "party line"?  Out of curiosity are you aware of any examples in the UK?  A cursory search of the ICO's website didn't throw anything obvious up on this front.

[ianv]

Leaving aside all the personal stuff, I reckon the main reason its coming out now is that you have done all the donkey work with the re-equipping and he sees it as the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the fact that the crags are all now in good nick gear wise. Pretty parasitic attitude but from his disingenuous comments regarding bolt funds etc on the UKC thread it doesn't suprise me at all.

My advice wiould be that you need to:
1 get the guide publicised (as others have said)
2 get it out asap, ideally around the same time or before the RF one
3 try and tie up distribution outlets. The welsh scene must have a fairly close relationship with the local shops and you might be able to use this to get them to stock your guide exclusively. Also, can you use DMMs database to contact shops outside the local area to send them some sort of communication about the guide, its ethos, the reequipping that it will fund etc and the positive contribution it would make if they stocked it exclusively (no potentially libalous comments  , just the positives). I am sure this would work for a fair few.

I reckon there might be a good chance of having one over on him if you manage to do number 3 
 

[al]

carry on and publish pete, if you can; your book will be the one with the heart, done for the right reasons and that's what counts in my world - fuck them
I know its easier said than done, but don't get too side tracked by all this stuff either, don't let it spoil your project