[reeve]

I'm dead against documentation of Grinah, for all the reasons of wishing to preserve the experience as has been well articulated by others.

Johnny A, Carlos, and anyone else in favour of documentation,  can you explain your argument for why you think Grinah specifically warrants a topo? I've only been once - and had a fab day - but it isn't objectively amazing rock climbing. I enjoyed it because of the place and the exploration. There's a lot of scrittle as well as some decent rock. It's got that moorland grime that the high crags get. It's not like the plantation. I thought it was good because it's wild, and the lack of a topo was part of that experience.

If I went to the plantation without a topo as a first-time visitor I'd be diminishing my experience by missing out on some cool problems. If I'd have gone to Grinag with a topo I'd have diminished the best parts of that very different experience.

Obviously documentation brings lots of good to climbing, like history, ease of finding the problems, a common language of names to refer to bits of rock. But it also takes away some mystery, the romanticism of exploring, it makes it harder to go to a place and 'be' rather than 'do'. I don't think the experience of climbing at Grinah would be greatly enhanced by documentation in the ways that documentation can enhamce climbing; but the ways that documentation can degrade experience would be particularly harsh on the whole 'Grinah experience', as i see it anyway. So I say let's document 99% of the Peak, but can't we please leave this one percent - a part which is almost uniquely suited to it - as remaining undocumented?

At the risk of laboring the point, this isn't an argument for/ against documentation per se, but about Grinah specifically. So Carlos and Ashton et al, care to explain why you think Grinah would be improved through documentation?

[Johnny Brown]

Totally agree with that Andy.

I can see that documentation allows people not on board with exploration to home in on good problems. However they can do that literally anywhere else, and with less walk-in. I think the drive here is more that it allows keen developers to document what has and hasn't been done, for their own ends. The gift of info for the wider community is a bit of a beard for the ego, developing is a creative act and normally gifting your creation is part of that, but it still implies that your way is the right way to approach the boulder. For me the importance of not recording information here is line first, then grade, then FA. I really found it fresh, liberating and intimidating not having described lines on clearly climable rock.

The opportunity for the history aspect here has already been lost, and I don't see much to gain starting now.

It’s kind of funny that people assume documentation is ego driven - the whole point of this was to document the lines without any FA info just so people who want it can access that info, personally I didn’t care to add names to it.

I can only speak for myself but my ego would be pretty chill about my name not being in the book, as long as I know it's my problem.

For the record I’ve not been yet

Well that certainly puts the rest of this thread reboot in a new perspective. I can see how acquiring a secret topo might seem gatekeepy, but it's the secret topo against the agreed ethic that is the problem, not the ethic. I don't see anything gatekeepy in several books having approach info and inspiring photos.

Here's an idea, you are clearly pretty psyched for the place, so how's about - just for the first visit - not taking the topo and giving it a go without? I'll be up for a mid-week hit when the days get a bit longer, never used the southern approach so far.