[Fiend]

Say you're purchasing a guidebook to a more minor - but somewhat appealing - area, that's at most semi-local to you (i.e. not on your doorstep, but not at the other end of the country), or that you might be passing through, as a customer, how do you like it??

I.e. Do you like a full fat, full sugar, girthy beast of a book that covers absolutely everything including all the minor / esoteric local stuff and all the stuff that's outside your grade range, with an according price tag?? Or do you like the streamlined zero calorie diet soda water semi-selected guide that has anything and everything a typical visitor might want, but misses out on definitively recording local gems and every possible bit of rock (which can of course be detailed online)??

Given that on one hand you've got something like North Wales Bouldering which is fairly definitive, but it is almost all the good stuff anyway.....but comes with a size and price tag that makes a typical boulderer go aghast with shock and spend money on some £90 Prana trousers instead. And on the other hand you've got things like Churnet Bouldering or Lancashire Bouldering which have a mixture of great stuff for outsiders and not so great (or occasionally dire) stuff for locals, but are are slimmer and more affordable books....

No doubt locals would prefer the pricier true definitive guides, and I suspect this might work in areas with a vast local scene (i.e. Bristol Area Esoteric Bouldering, which can detail all the god awful shite down there because it's all roadside and it's in / near a major climbing city). But for outsiders / visitors / the wider market (i.e. you guys/girls and anyone you know), what do you think works best??

Ta!

[teestub]

Lakes guide is my benchmark comparator for all others, seems to have a great balance of comprehensiveness without getting lost in the weeds. I guess it helps that there are not a lot of eliminate/link up venues there, although since it’s been published there’s been a lot of links climbed at the stone which I assume would be left out.

Surely the actual size will depend on the volume of bouldering in a given area as much as a thing else? As such somewhere minor is likely to come in as a slimmer and therefore cheaper offering.

[Will Hunt]

Let the guide you want to make lead the page count, not the other way around.

[andy moles]

NWB is too fat.

And I say that as someone who contributed things that deserve to be casualties of its weight loss programme.

[remus]

Disclaimer: I'm a guidebook geek and will almost certainly buy the book whatever size, shape and price.

I quite like the BMC approach where the major venues are covered in detail, then the proper esoteric stuff gets a very brief write up at the end of the book with some pointers about where to go for more info.

For me the previous edition of NWB was too big and sacrificed a lot by trying to cram everything in to one volume.

[andy moles]

My hot takes for paper saving in a bouldering tome are:

No wordy descriptions about how you will feel when you top out etc. Most boulder problems don't need any description at all, a line and a grade will do, perhaps a word or two for any rules.

Don't bother with FAs (maybe a mention for main developers in the crag intro). No one gives a shit who made the first ascent of every one star problem.

Make the action photos count - not too many, just really inspiring ones.

[sxrxg]

For large areas that have long walk ins (North Wales, Lakes) I would like the areas split up into volumes that could be bought individually or as a set that come in a nice box (got to look good on the bookshelf!). This would save me having to photocopy pages as I currently do to save weight on the walk in to longer crags.

[bolehillbilly]

I'm a full fat, granular detail nerd. Include the link ups, specify start holds where relevant, FA details, all the random off piste bits, a good flavour of history, decent photos of less well known stuff, decent notes on approaches and conditions and a clear descriptions interspersed with a few more fully spiced accounts. Not much to ask of a guidebook author/team.
My favourite example of this is in BMC Froggatt to Black Rocks.
'Starting 2m right of the arete, use a black pocket to make nice up moves to scratchier rock and a top move that can't but help remind you of that bit at the end of Jaws where the captain guy with the beard was bitten in half by the shark'.
It's in inconsequential no star 6A on an unfrequented bit of rock at a very popular venue. (Prize if you can guess it without looking it up).

I want a guide I can sit and read and get inspired by, especially if it's a less classic, less well known area. If thats a bigger book or  more volumes and more cost I wouldn't mind. I don't recall ever regretting spending money on a guide.
It's easy enough to take a photo of the pages you need and leave the full tome in the car or at home if weight is an issue.

[mrjonathanr]

IMO it's obvious. Bigger book = better kneebars. Go for it.

[remus]

Don't bother with FAs (maybe a mention for main developers in the crag intro). No one gives a shit who made the first ascent of every one star problem..

Personally I think it's a shame not to record this info where it exists. So much bouldering history is already lost and guidebooks have traditionally been the place where the work is done to find.out who's done what. Maybe it's the wrong medium in the long term though?

[andy moles]

Fair enough, just proposing some potential sacrifices in the interest of girth limitation other than leaving out climbs.

[Bonjoy]

Don't bother with FAs (maybe a mention for main developers in the crag intro). No one gives a shit who made the first ascent of every one star problem..

Personally I think it's a shame not to record this info where it exists. So much bouldering history is already lost and guidebooks have traditionally been the place where the work is done to find.out who's done what. Maybe it's the wrong medium in the long term though?

Perhaps predictably, I agree wholeheartedly.
Such a shame if the history of bouldering is lost to save a few inches of page space. Most peoples names aren't actually that long.

[andy moles]

Perhaps predictably, I agree wholeheartedly.
Such a shame if the history of bouldering is lost to save a few inches of page space. Most peoples names aren't actually that long.

But printing them each three hundred times on separate lines adds considerable vertical millimetres.

I'm not suggesting not recording them anywhere, just that in terms of information I want to take with me to the crag, it's far less of a priority than how to find all the climbs.

[Bonjoy]

They’re generally in small font and don’t necessarily have to be on a separate line. If there was a realistic prospect of the information/history being faithfully recorded elsewhere (hello BMC), there’d be no need to clutter guides with it, I just don’t see any prospect of that happening currently though, which leaves guides as the de facto history books.
With most/all bouldering guides being commercially produced I expect the loss of FA records, ostensibly as a space saving measure, but more realistically as an effort saving measure. Like I say, I think that’s a shame. It would be less likely to happen if boulderers where more full throated in their support of retaining the records. J Fullwood, May 2022

[remus]

If there was a realistic prospect of the information/history being faithfully recorded elsewhere (hello BMC), there’d be no need to clutter guides with it, I just don’t see any prospect of that happening currently though, which leaves guides as the de facto history books.

UKC would seem the natural place for it given they've already got a list of ~all the climbs in the UK. Persuading people that it's useful info to record seems to be tricky though (going on the occasional 'we should fill in the FA details for things' threads that pop up over there).

[andy moles]

UKC would seem the natural place for it given they've already got a list of ~all the climbs in the UK. Persuading people that it's useful info to record seems to be tricky though (going on the occasional 'we should fill in the FA details for things' threads that pop up over there).

I don't think UKC is the best place for it, if only because UKC is a private company. I'm willing to put a lot of information on UKC and spend time moderating crags because it's such a useful resource, but there's a slightly uncomfortable tension there because all that data is not actually public property.

Hello BMC, indeed.

[Bonjoy]

I’m increasingly coming to the view that we’re collectively letting the perfect be the enemy of the good with regard to the UKC database. At this point I think it might be time to take stock of the prospect of the BMC ever setting up a rival database and accept it isn’t going to happen, that ship has sailed, and get on with using the resource that is already available. As per history in guidebooks though, I do wonder how much concerns about data ownership are mostly a (subconscious?) fig leaf for a general lack of appetite for data entry.
We tried the grass roots rival database thing with peakbouldering.info and that turned out to be a near total waste of a lot of time and effort for the few people who made an effort to populate it. It disappeared without warning and is now only partially accessible via a third party archive site. At least UKC has the size and scale to be relevant, stable, well maintained, and durable.

[andy moles]

To a large extent I agree, and I've walked that talk a lot over the years (though not specifically for FA info). Wholesale acceptance that UKC will now be the central authority of climbing history seems potentially short-sighted though, without some kind of clause that ensures free public access to that data in perpetuity.

[scragrock]

I used UKC for years thinking it was a free platform for skint folk like me to access info, i deleted most of what i put up and stepped away from it when i found out they struck a deal with Rockfax and now any info/Topo's/descriptions will be monetised.
I do however see the point made that it seems to be the only system that works long term

[Duma]

Given the other channel's laissez-faire attitude to data ownership wrt other guides, I'm surprised anyone is worried about using their database.
A real shame that the BMC hasn't taken this on IMO.

On topic, I'd rather a decent history section than fa details for every problem tbh.

[abarro81]

Given that on one hand you've got something like North Wales Bouldering which is fairly definitive, but it is almost all the good stuff anyway...... And on the other hand you've got things like Churnet Bouldering or Lancashire Bouldering which have a mixture of great stuff for outsiders and not so great (or occasionally dire) stuff for locals, but are are slimmer and more affordable books....

This is just a function of the area though surely, rather than a different cut-off. Or is there really loads of stuff in the Churnet that they didn't put in the guide because it didn't make the cut?

[remus]

What bonjoy said. In theory a BMC run database would be amazing, but in practice i don't think they have the time, money or expertise to do it. Rockfax do and have been doing so very successfully for many years.

Bonjoy, if you know who I can speak to to get access to the database behind peakbouldering.info I'd be psyched to try and rescue the data with a view to making a read only copy available somehow.

[andy moles]

Given the other channel's laissez-faire attitude to data ownership wrt other guides, I'm surprised anyone is worried about using their database.

I wasn't so much worrying about using it, as worrying about having unrestricted access to it.

It would obviously be a total dick move to limit access when the data has been supplied to a large extent by volunteers, but it's a limited company that can ultimately do whatever it wants.

Not that I doubt the integrity of the incumbent regime    

[Dac]

With regard to recording first ascents of boulder problems I feel the ship has already sailed. Bouldering had been practiced, principally unrecorded, for decades, prior to bouldering guides being developed; and as such any first ascensionist detailed will be fragmentary at best.

Any problem of moderate difficulty near to a roped climb has probably been played on for decades, even with a bouldering only venue seemingly just discovered and freed from the dirt and foliage there is every chance that some keen climber who used to live down the hill was climbing there in the 60’s or 70’s.

I feel a good guide should credit the initial developers of any newer venues, and detail the first ascents of the more classic or significant problems, but wholesale recording of every problems first ascent is simply not possible to achieve, it’s hard enough to be consistent with the naming of problems!

[Will Hunt]

There is a database that the clubs built, and there was talk about the BMC taking it on. I don't know the history of it but I think it was a CC thing that was backed by various other Wired members. It's been used as an engine to build Lake District Rock and Lakes Sport & Slate (and maybe some other guides). However, it has been frustrated by a few things. Firstly, it wasn't publicly accessible and, by extension, there was no wider crowd-sourcing of information. This was done to try and protect the data but in reality I'd say the ship has sailed. Because it was primarily intended as an engine for building books and an app then it was also wholly club-centric. There's nothing that would have stopped it becoming broader but it was only being added to by club people. You've then got all the usual nonsense about internal politics and fallings-out that seem to plague this sort of thing - I think the database is currently on ice because of this.

At least UKC has the size and scale to be relevant, stable, well maintained, and durable.

I agree that the UKC database is the best thing out there at the moment and it would be incredibly difficult (impossible?) now to build anything to rival it given the head start it has. However, Alan said something very similar to me in an email a few years ago; a short while later there was a pandemic and the begging bowl was being passed around to prop up the site (UKC Supporter membership). The UKC database, particularly since it is now the engine of the app as well as all the books, is a hugely valuable asset and it's naive of us to assume that it won't become less open in future. All it takes is a change of circumstance, inclination, or ownership in the future. At least two of those things are actually guaranteed. I can see a future where it becomes the DCD (Dior Climbing Database); 15 years ago who'd have thought they'd ever be wearing Adidas Anasazis?



On topic: please do continue to include FA details. It adds a lot of richness. One of my favourite sightings in the Yorkshire Grit book is that Crucifix Arete is a Don Whillans problem - who'd have thought?! If it makes the book a bit bigger then so be it - if it gets too big then split into two volumes. I don't understand why people moan about big books for stuff that isn't multipitch. If weight is that much of a problem maybe drop the portable fan, fingerboard, pointless sit-start pad, CBD gummies, 5th 4K camera and tripod, armada of toothbrushes etc etc etc.