[Bonjoy]

Then again 'Dog biscuit' seems like quite a popular option.

[Paul B]

Then again 'Dog biscuit' seems like quite a popular option.

I like the charcoal ones.

[SA Chris]

not soggy biscuits though.

[grimer]

I was involved in the Over The Moors guide, linked earlier. Guidebooks are pretty exhausting (I stopped laughing at mistakes in other guides once I started making them myself ;-) ). There comes a point near the end, when you just want to get it finished, and someone pipes up Fuck, what about the Grinah Stones!?

Everyone looks around for the person willing to trot up there on a sunny day, get the photos, draw maps then launch off on the bottomless task of trying to work out what's what, who did what and when.

There's a heavy silence.

Then someone comes up with a line of some mystical bullshit about preserving the adventure, special place, spirit, a bunch of stuff like that.

A cheer goes up.and the progenitor of the idea gets bought a drink.

There's a lot to be said for mysticism.

[Will Hunt]

Real talk.
Sometime shortly before Yorkshire Grit vol2 came out I bumped into Robin Nicholson in Ilkley quarry and started excitedly telling him about the new crag I'd found. If looks could kill...
We've already had to significantly rework Attermire and Dib Scar to account for retro-bolting. I'm just waiting for Dave Musgrove to email me on the day before I send it to the printers and tell me that he's retroed the entirety of Twistleton or something. Someone lock his drill up until summer!

(Sorry for being off topic.)

[Stabbsy]

It feels like this is a discussion about preserving an experience, not preserving a venue. As such it's difficult to have a complete view without having experienced what you're trying to preserve. The nearest I've been was a small crag above Lancaster that I used to visit on a regular basis as a student - 45 mins up a hill to get there, 20 mins freewheeling back. It's unquestionably a shit crag (didn't even make it into Lancashire Bouldering!), yet provided many evenings of entertainment with a few friends before we had a car. It's fully documented on UKC now and I think if I had that time again but factored in the UKC documentation, I'd not get the same enjoyment because I'd do the problems that were documented and think they were a bit underwhelming rather than finding the entertainment by doing eliminates and being in the moment. I could still go and ignore UKC, but it would somehow not be the same.

It's experiences like the above that make me struggle a bit with this argument.

The more I think about it the less I'm convinced by the argument that having a guide somewhere means you can't experience a place on your own terms.

I think the above is probably technically true, but I feel like the experience has been changed. It's kind of analogous (in my mind, at least) to the argument put forward by retro-bolters when they say a trad climber can just ignore the bolts and still do the route as a trad route - strictly true, but you'd struggle to have the same experience as would have previously been available.

In an ideal world, unfettered by egos and social media, the minimal documentation ethic would probably work and, I think, would be my preferred option. However, it feels like it would only be a matter of time before more stuff got added to those minimal routes when someone does something they think is the next great Peak classic and wants to see their name in lights. All that leads to me to think it has to be all or nothing, with me falling on the nothing side of the fence.

However, going back to my original point about preserving an experience, it has to be the people that have had that experience that make the call as they know what is there to be preserved and whether it's worth it.

[Bonjoy]

It feels like this is a discussion about preserving an experience, not preserving a venue. As such it's difficult to have a complete view without having experienced what you're trying to preserve. The nearest I've been was a small crag above Lancaster that I used to visit on a regular basis as a student - 45 mins up a hill to get there, 20 mins freewheeling back. It's unquestionably a shit crag (didn't even make it into Lancashire Bouldering!), yet provided many evenings of entertainment with a few friends before we had a car. It's fully documented on UKC now and I think if I had that time again but factored in the UKC documentation, I'd not get the same enjoyment because I'd do the problems that were documented and think they were a bit underwhelming rather than finding the entertainment by doing eliminates and being in the moment. I could still go and ignore UKC, but it would somehow not be the same.

It's experiences like the above that make me struggle a bit with this argument.

What you are describing there is how to get the best experience out of an essentially underwhelming crag. This is quiet different to Grinah. At the other extreme, would say Almscliff be better undocumented if it were remote and undescribed? There is a trade off between one sort of experience and another which I think has a lot to do with how much good climbing a crag might have.

In an ideal world, unfettered by egos and social media, the minimal documentation ethic would probably work and, I think, would be my preferred option. However, it feels like it would only be a matter of time before more stuff got added to those minimal routes when someone does something they think is the next great Peak classic and wants to see their name in lights. All that leads to me to think it has to be all or nothing, with me falling on the nothing side of the fence.

Apologies for picking your post out to make this point, but I do have to take issue with the assumption that writing up new climbs is only and always an ego driven 'look at me' exercise.
While there is some element of this, it is far from the only or main motivation for many developers. In the case of Grinah for instance I think the most fun would be had by going up and doing things as a team with nobody taking credit, or indeed recording who was there on the day something was done.

[Stabbsy]

What you are describing there is how to get the best experience out of an essentially underwhelming crag. This is quite different to Grinah. At the other extreme, would say Almscliff be better undocumented if it were remote and undescribed? There is a trade off between one sort of experience and another which I think has a lot to do with how much good climbing a crag might have.

Yep, I broadly agree with this - it's not the same situation, just the nearest I've been to climbing somewhere undocumented with me trying to share how I think it would have changed my experience if documented. The lack of documentation improved the experience at a terrible crag. However, it may be that the quality of Grinah does change the balance, but do you think that the lack of documentation makes the Grinah experience worse or just different?

Will people get more out of a day's climbing if it's documented? Yes, probably. Will they get a better experience? That depends on what they get out of the creative side of finding a problem, piecing it together and doing it. My guess is that you get a lot out of this and I think I do too. I could go up with a full topo and climb loads of three star problems or I could go and play around and get creative. I'll probably succeed less but I might enjoy it more.

Apologies for picking your post out to make this point, but I do have to take issue with the assumption that writing up new climbs is only and always an ego driven 'look at me' exercise. While there is some element of this, it is far from the only or main motivation for many developers.

Perfectly fair challenge on the ego point - it wasn't directed at most/all developers and definitely not at yourself. Your reporting of new problems feels like the antithesis of what I was meaning (as I said in the thread before it was split, your new problem thread is one of my highlights of the year on here). To be clear, writing up new climbs is not only and always ego driven, but sometimes the sharing of new lines on social media and the language used around it is. I was more trying to illustrate that I didn't think partial documentation would hold out for long in a world where there are some egos and social media. A sort of thin end of the wedge argument.

In the case of Grinah for instance I think the most fun would be had by going up and doing things as a team with nobody taking credit, or indeed recording who was there on the day something was done.

Totally agree with this, hence coming down on the side of no documentation.

[Bonjoy]

Cheers for the reply and clarification. That all makes sense to me.

However, it may be that the quality of Grinah does change the balance, but do you think that the lack of documentation makes the Grinah experience worse or just different?

I think a modest amount of info would enhance the experience for most first/second time visitors.
I think people motivated to revisit would get more out of a greater level of information.
I think a near total lack of information provides an interesting and different experience, but it comes at the price of preventing the standard way of interacting with the crag. This effect increases with subsequent visits.

I agree that there is some chance that any sort of documentation may slide into full documentation over time. But then again there have been at least two Youtube vids showing a good handful of problems up there, which have been online for years, and this has not escalated into more detailed information yet. Nor has the write-up in Over the Moors. I'd also re-iterate the point that no amount of documentation is going to persuade the average climber to visit, it just takes too much effort and there are too few days in the year when conditions are suitable. The type of climber who does make it up there has a reasonably high chance of being someone who will respect whatever consensus exists. And lastly, even a total lack of documentation is not an actual barrier to someone publicly writing up the crag without asking anyone else's opinion first, should they wish to.

[northern yob]

Great thread, I’ve been reading with much interest whilst trying to work out where I sit….

It’s such a hard call, documentation of venues should happen, and definitely improves the crag experience 98% of the time. However there is a lot of merit to having somewhere that isn’t! I suppose the question is should that place be the Grinah stones??

I’ve never been, but hope to regardless of if there’s a topo or not.

The only time I’ve been up to the barden fell crags I went in summer on a whim, no guide just me and three pads. It was a pretty cool experience, very enjoyable and felt a little bit special.

I have to admit to spending the evening working out what I had done on UKC. Whilst I was equally pleasantly surprised and dismayed about the grades of some things my experience that day wouldn’t have been compromised if I hadn’t found out names and grades.

On reflection I think it’s great that there are decent venues out there where you can go and do this, yes you can go without a guide but part of me loves the idea that there are places where you have no choice to leave the guide behind. You have to go and just climb…

Commercialism and consumerism are everywhere, it would be nice if there was the odd Venue you could leave all that BS behind and just climb like you were the only person who’s ever been there.

Just my 2p.

[edshakey]

Great thread, making for good pre Christmas entertainment.

Anyone tried a visit as a 2 day trip with a night spent camping up there? Sounds like a good way to make the walk in worth it, although pads and camping stuff is a sizeable load.

Related q: is there much there worth taking trad gear for? Or would you do it all above mats

[Bonjoy]

I keep threatening to have a camp up there, it's just a lot of kit to bring if you are also climbing with pads. There are a couple of good flat sheltered camp spots and some suitable bivvi shelter type blocks. Midges could deffo be an issue if bivviing though.
There are a handful of trad possibilities, two or three E4/5 type things and some harder things without much gear to speak of. It's certainly worth bringing a short rope and harness for cleaning highballs though.

[edshakey]

Ah hadn't considered midges. Tent does sound more feasible.

Sounds like a fun trip. I'll join the list of people with vague ambitions to head up there in the summer

[grimer]

I did what I think was a roped First Ascent at Grinah.

The week before Andy Cave and Simon Nadin had been trying it unsuccessfully. I was pleased to do it. I think it's because I was stronger, bolder and more technically gifted than Andy or Simon. Either that or...

It wasn't a great route.

[edshakey]

I did what I think was a roped First Ascent at Grinah.

Sounds like you're trying to claim an ascent at Grinah.

Mods, please purge this information from public vision.

[Falling Down]

Four pages, great Christmas entertainment.  By now we could have crowdsourced a topo, written the poem, Yossarian published a stunning graphic .pdf guide as a Christmas Ldn Climber download special and Grimer recorded a JamCrack episode interviewing those who have actually climbed there.  Keep it up.

[DAVETHOMAS90]

There are decisions about who has access to information. What could be updated and shared, and by whom? Are answers to those questions something that could then be passed on to future custodians?

A bit of folklore could add significant richness - making it feel as though a less arbitrary/exclusive policy was being adopted - without having something that was limited to the extent that other people might want to challenge it in the future.

In some ways it feels like decision by committee on this whole question and talk of custodians etc. is counter to the spirit of what people are trying to preserve. In hindsight it might have been better if I'd not asked the question, but just put out a few nuggets of perhaps anonymised information somewhere obscure online for people to find. But then that feels like a very unilateral breaking of a group code.

All I mean there Bonjoy, is that if you document things, whichever way you do it, how is that preserved in the future? Who has access to the info, and do we have any legitimate right to overly influence how it's then used? You are putting the question out to group input 

[Fultonius]

In some ways it feels like decision by committee on this whole question and talk of custodians etc. is counter to the spirit of what people are trying to preserve.

Could always just be done like "secret" French crags - sketchy hand-drawn topos that are hard to understand and where it takes ages to find someone who has one... Can definitely still feel like an adventure compared to normal!

This reminds me of the early Stone Country guides. The maps were useless, with no GPS coordinates, and waffley poetic descriptions of the approach. In my early climbing years I found this incredibly frustrating. If someone has the information, I don't want it drip fed to me in morse code - I want to be told how to get there. If all I wanted to do was wander round a bog for 3 hours with a pad on my back, I would have looked up google earth and aimed for a new spot.

IMO documenting something doesn't take away the adventure, because you CAN not look at the guide. It's not like some of the sport crags I've been to in the Sud Tirol where there's a laminated topo at the base of the crag, with placards on each route with the name. Very nice, but yes, impossible to ignore.

If you wander over to Grinah with a pad and no guide, how will that be different from there not being a guide? It very much false equivalence to the bolted route argument, you literally cannot avoid that there is a bolt there. (just read some more of the thread and see a few people saying they felt that knowing a venue is documented isn't the same as it being undocumented. That's interesting, as for me I guess they're both different forms of the same self delusion as, in both cases the "difficulty" (if not grade) and quality of the lines, is known to somebody, somewhere, you're just unable to get that info - one way through personal choice, the other through someone else's choice (not to share/publish).

This might just be a personal view, but I really hate info being held out of the public. To me that's taking away freedoms, not giving adventure. If the info is documented you have the freedom to not read it, it doesn't change the rock, the environment etc. It means it's there if you want it. However, I can understand this being a personal, not universal opinion.

We had a big dilemma about the same thing when we were in Chile 2 years ago (humblebrag...) doing new routes in Aysen. We did as much research as we could, and interestingly found a lot of things along the way that were clearly "known", but not shared. This rankled a bit, as the knowledge that the first half of the 800m tower we were planning to try a second ascent / variation / new route on had belay stations with bolts...  Had we known this, it might have changed our approach. The whole thing was probably the truest adventure I've had in my life and we mulled over how much information to publish. In the end we added some better maps, topos and route information and some snippets like maybe not camping where the last teams (including ours) had camped, as it was right under a huge and not very stable looking glacial moraine lake with hanging glaciers above....

Ego, pioneering spirit, human nature. We've always explored, documented, shared, bragged, fought, argued over who got there first.  I find holding back information creates a kind of low grade adventure, but again, I can see why some might feel that worth preserving even if I, personally, don't.

Not convinced this ramble adds anything. Probably just says more about me that anything else 

P.S. still never climbed in the peak. Maybe this winter....

[Potash]

I've camped up there before and bouldered in the evening sunlight. It pissed it down the next morning so it was less productive than it might have been.

We cycled in as far as possible (with bouldering mats) which was not as bad as it sounds as the road is shut to traffic so there is no chance of being blown in front of a car.

I'm firmly in the don't document camp. There are so many over documented venues in the peak where every boulder has had someone climb every obscure possibility in order to satisfy the British train spotting, list compiling, and categorisation urge.

[Johnny Brown]

That's not the case here. AFAIK the only written info is one route Cavey put in the Outside new routes book. You could still did out I'm sure. Otherwise it only resides in the brains of those who've been, and getting greyer by the day. If there is some secret topo I don't think it has left BJs laptop.

The not looking at the guide argument is totally specious. The knowledge that it exists will always be there, the temptation will always be there, it isn't the same. Otherwise you'd not have bothered going to Aysen. You went because it was unclimbed.

I do agree with your point mostly though, when going on expensive trips far from the UK researching the best info makes a big difference to your chance of success. I can understand those with unfinished projects might not seek to broadcast it though. And there is also a much bigger question of how much longer we will able to persist with such colonial attitudes unchallenged. Well it's already being challenged, even in places where we did a pretty good job on the ancestors, so maybe not so long. I also think it's likely westerners going 'exploring' for their holidays won't be judged that important vs conservatin priorities. But that's a tangent.

When places don't have much of a written history then naming routes and publishing info can be seen a form of territorial claim, and also a sort of domestication, of bringing a wild place in a little closer to civilisation. I just think it would be nice to leave one place in the Peak a little further out there.

[DAVETHOMAS90]

"This might just be a personal view, but I really hate info being held out of the public. To me that's taking away freedoms, not giving adventure. If the info is documented you have the freedom to not read it, it doesn't change the rock, the environment etc. It means it's there if you want it. However, I can understand this being a personal, not universal opinion."

This.

Some light description of what it's like there, with the odd description for a handful of noteworthy lines - to give a sense of what you might expect - would allow useful information. This could be combined with an explanation of why there is a common local practice of not recording new routes etc.

At the end of the day, guides used to be just that - guides.

I think there's a sense in that which is being lost.

[Johnny Brown]

That's almost exactly what is in the definitive guide posted above, though with photos of a couple of the best lines not descriptions.

[cofe]

That's almost exactly what is in the definitive guide posted above, though with photos of a couple of the best lines not descriptions.

Great shots, too. Whoever took them must have a fantastic camera.

[Fultonius]

The not looking at the guide argument is totally specious. The knowledge that it exists will always be there, the temptation will always be there, it isn't the same. Otherwise you'd not have bothered going to Aysen. You went because it was unclimbed.

I kind of agree and kind of don't. I'm still able to be convinced both ways. For me, if it's in someone's brain it exists. It's not the documentation of it that makes it tangible, it's the existence in the common body of knowledge (as ephemeral as that is, being just one person's greying brain).

I also have no issue with an area being collectively agreed as "undocumented" so long as it doesn't turn into an "in club" of those in the know who say a bit here and a bit there. Nods and winks and secret clubs.

If it's to stay undocumented, I'd far rather that be announced as a "thing" and have a little bit of carefully worded detail to hint at the possibilities. I guess harking back to the early Stone Country guides in Scotland, I'd not like to see something that masquerades as a topo / guide with not quite enough useful info. Far better to to have some accuracy and draw the line. Again...IMO, just speaking from my own viewpoint here) 

The knowledge that it exists will always be there

  true, but that is the case now anyway. You could badger Bonjoy to give you the goods....   

It's an uneasy feeling releasing info on somewhere undocumented. On the one hand you think "well, might as well be us as the next person will do it anyway", on the other you have a brilliant adventure and you do somewhat take that away by giving the info. Where's the conflicted emoticon 

Just last month I was conversing with a guys about going to Aysen and this was his last comment:

Hey Alasdair thank you so much for all this information! It’s been incredibly helpful and Rusty and I feel like we have plenty of information to go in there and have a great time. I hope all is well on your end and will let you know how it goes! Again thank you so much for the help.

One less adventure, one more happy customer. 

[Will Hunt]

Just seen these two videos. It looks stunning.






The first time I climbed outdoors I went to Pex Hill. I knew there was a guide but I didn't own any guidebook yet. I picked out things that I thought I could climb and looked good and I tried them. I don't understand how that's different from somebody going to Grinah without looking at a guide.

It's also interesting that the two videos show people climbing much the same problems. They're obvious, natural lines, and there are signs of traffic on other boulders. It was hinted that the idea that the problems might be previously unclimbed was important to making a visit special. These people obviously didn't think they were new problems and surely anybody who goes does so on the understanding that it's one of those everything-was-done-years-ago sort of places? Whether the problems have been climbed before isn't the issue because everyone knows they have.