BMC Strategy Update - Have Your Say!

[Dom - BMC President]

Since 1944, the BMC has championed access and provided a voice for every hill walker, climber, and mountaineer. As we celebrate 80 years of adventure, we are asking for your support in developing our strategy for 2025-2030.
What do you think of our current vision, mission, and values - is there anything you would change? What does "The BMC" mean to you, and what do you want us to focus on going forwards?
We want our members, and the wider communities we represent, to be at the heart of everything we do. You don't need to be a current member to make your input - help us shape the BMC that you DO want to be a part of!
My role description as President says: "Members' Champion" so here's your opportunity to let me know what you think. Have your say - it's OUR BMC!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SF33DX5
Many thanks in advance for taking the time. Cheers, Dom

 

[Davo]

Done.

Just my thoughts and I understand others will think differently:

I’m a fan of the BMC but not of increasing participation in climbing and promoting access to the outdoors. I think the BMC should concentrate on representing its current membership rather than trying to get more people into the outdoors. I have no problems with supporting competitions and generally think that more should be done to engage with the large cohort of people who just go to a wall and never come across the BMC. Lastly I think a lot more support should be given to clubs.

Cheers Dave

 

[Steve Crowe]

Done.

Just my thoughts and I understand others will think differently:

I’m a fan of the BMC but not of increasing participation in climbing and promoting access to the outdoors. I think the BMC should concentrate on representing its current membership rather than trying to get more people into the outdoors. I have no problems with supporting competitions and generally think that more should be done to engage with the large cohort of people who just go to a wall and never come across the BMC. Lastly I think a lot more support should be given to clubs.

Cheers Dave

I agree exactly with Dave

 

[kingholmesy]

I can see why people might not want the BMC to focus on increasing participation in climbing (I am ambivalent about that), but I think it odd for you to suggest it should not be promoting access to the outdoors.

IMO the most important task for the BMC is fighting for crag access, and access to the outdoors more generally is closely aligned (and perhaps even intertwined) with that.

 

[Davo]

I can see why people might not want the BMC to focus on increasing participation in climbing (I am ambivalent about that), but I think it odd for you to suggest it should not be promoting access to the outdoors.

IMO the most important task for the BMC is fighting for crag access, and access to the outdoors more generally is closely aligned (and perhaps even intertwined) with that.

Apologies if you have misread or misinterpreted my post. I am very much in favour of fighting for access to crags and the outdoors. I just don’t think the BMC should promote increased participation. Personally I think it is up to individuals to find their way to the outdoors and that my subs to the BMC should be used to represent members.

 

[kingholmesy]

Fair enough - in which case I think we are on the same page.

My number 1 reason for being a BMC member by a very long margin is to support its access work.

A secondary bonus is the public liability cover.

Possibly a third reason might be if it can help provide good travel insurance for climbers, although arguably that should be self funding.

I don’t really care about anything else TBH. I have no antipathy towards competition climbers, but don’t really see why my membership subs should be used to support them.

 

[duncan]

Thanks Dom, individual BMC member here for 25+ years, affiliated club member for 10+, occasional voluntary worker, does most kinds of rock climbing.

I’m generally very supportive of the BMC and especially the work of the access and technical staff. I wavered when the competition arm was attempting to bankrupt the rest of the organisation and the only thing more embarrassing than the calamitous loss of financial control were the attempts to deny a significant problem existed.

I think the BMC could do with re-focusing on its core activities. Ask yourself how much mission creep has occurred, particularly where the BMC is working in the domains of much larger interest groups who do this better than the BMC. The BMC was set up by climbing and mountaineering clubs. There are no walking-only affiliated clubs as far as I am aware. Why the recent (last decade, give or take) emphasis on hillwalking when the Ramblers have been representing walkers for much longer and is a larger organisation? I ticked the hillwalking box in past surveys but whilst it’s something I do I wouldn't join a pressure group to advocate for it. I came into climbing via hillwalking but most now do so via walls. You surely must want to encourage young active climbers to join the BMC in which case you should be focusing more on indoor climbing and less on hillwalking. I have been to 11 different London walls this year, most of the most popular ones, and I have not seen a BMC logo in any of them.

I am ambivalent about competition climbing. I really like watching it but I get just as much enjoyment from seeing Adam Ondra do well as Toby Roberts. I think GB Climbing should be financially independent of the BMC: I don’t want to pay for someone else’s career or holiday. It seems to me GB climbing are currently in a parasitical relationship with the BMC: getting considerable financial and administrative support but giving very little back. Toby Roberts always wears a GB Climbing logo, infrequently a BMC one. This is not helped by the last two BMC CEOs have been non-climbers or mountaineers coming from a competitive sport background. Why is this? What proportion of BMC members are competitors?

Photo taken from the BMC website this year: where is the BMC branding?

I am less concerned than some about encouraging participation as I doubt if the BMC has a significant effect on numbers compared to climbing walls, social media influencers and Free Solo. I support work done to encourage a more diverse range of folk to enjoy climbing indoors and outdoors.

In the questionnaire Access and Conservation & Environmental sustainability are grouped together. They are related but different and sometimes conflicting themes. I value conservation and environmental sustainability but I don't see this as a primary role for the BMC. Organisations such as Friends of the Earth, the RNIB, and NT are conservation and environmental advocates, are much bigger, and have a greater impact. We'd all like to see a reduction in ocean plastics but this is not a core BMC theme and campaigns such as Hills 2 Sea are peripheral to your main aims in my view.

Finally, whilst considering the role of the BMC, in the highlights history in the latest Summit there is no mention of your great legacy of producing guidebooks for climbers. Why was this?

 

[kingholmesy]

+1 to all of that.

 

[SEDur]

I agree with Kingholmesy and Duncan, and have submitted my 2c in the survey.
I also think that developing guidebooks was a good thing that the BMC should get involved in again.
Maybe with a somewhat more sensible strategy when it comes to their development than last time.

 

[stone]

I'm intrigued that people want BMC guidebooks. For Peak limestone it has been a blessed relief to me that guidebooks are now instead done by other organisations who have punters (such as me) in mind.

The 1999 Peak Limestone guide https://archive.org/details/peaklimestonewye0000unse/mode/2up was abysmal. Rather than being of any use to anyone wanting to find climbs, it seemed more an exercise in back-slapping amongst the route developers. The compulsory co-purchase of a whole volume on history was such a flagrant abusive exploitation of the ethos at the time that discouraged climbers from supporting rival commercial guidebooks. Someone at the time told me they had thrown their history volume across the room in a rage after realising what it was.

Recent guidebooks seem great to me (I got the Peak bouldering Rockfax last year). What do people hope will be gained if the BMC gets more involved?

Online-only archives are the place for comprehensive databases of what has or hasn't been climbed.

 

[Pope B]

Seems a bit unfair to be comparing the BMC's 1999 guide with rockfax's newest offering...

I think the two most recent BMC guides for peak lime (north & south) are imo better guides than the newer rockfax one. Especially considering the rockfax guides have been built by the labour of people creating those BMC guides and then the labour of other people adding them to the UKC. I think it'll be a sad world when the only guides you can buy are from big producers and the local ones get pushed out.

The BMC guides do probably offer worse value for money, as you have to buy two for the price of the one rockfax.

 

[stone]

It's great to hear that the new BMC guides are good.

I guess a better comparison might be between the 1990s Rockfax Dorset guide and the 1999 BMC Peak Limestone guide (calling it "Wye Valley" was symptomatic of its attitude). I want guides to show me where the climbs are, rather than being tributes to route developers.

I suspect that it took competition from the likes of Rockfax to inspire the transformational improvement there has been to guidebooks (including BMC guides).

 

[Pope B]

I don't think discussing the merits of guidebook makers based off their offerings from the 90's is going to tell you much that's useful for today...

It's a bit like comparing Windows & Apple based off the computer products they released in the 90's, things have moved on and newer things have come along, you'll just get an out of date view.

Also it's probably unfair to criticise old guides too harshly for having extensive history sections, Remus hadn't yet come along to document everything online for us (and I imagine he does a lot of that with the use of those history sections).

Also... think I can probably find (and have certainly experienced) plenty of instances where rockfax doesn't tell you where the route goes, and the line drawn on the topo has no resemblance to the actual route. A gulf between reality and the book they've produced hasn't stopped them publishing mind! At least with a history section you've got something interesting to read later when you've given up using the book as a guide.

If competition is helpful for the development of guidebooks then it seems silly to push for the rockfax hegemony.

 

[Will Hunt]

Do you have any useful experience of BMC guides, Stone? Maybe something produced in the last decade?

 

[stone]

OK, BMC guidebooks apparently have become good since they have been in competition with Rockfax guides.

But we have Rockfax (and any replacement that may spring up if they miss the mark ever). So isn't it better for the BMC to focus on what only they can do and leave guidebook writing in the very capable hands of commercial guides?

 

[Will Hunt]

Firstly, I find this whole idea that without Rockfax guides then not-for-profit guides would still be text-only right-to-left descriptions objectionable. Like there would have been absolutely no development from the clubs/BMC without there being competition from Rockfax. It's a daft idea.

Do you understand the differences in development and outcome between volunteer-led not-for-profit guides and commercial guides? If so, the BMC were not necessarily doing anything remarkably different from other producers, but they plugged some gaps in producing guidebooks for areas without another non-commercial producer. Lancashire, Cheshire etc. I'd argue that documenting a crag or an area is almost as important a part of access work (the one thing that everybody seems to agree they want the BMC to focus on) as landowner liaison, because how often do people actually visit crags that they can't get decent info on?

 

[T_B]

I'm amazed anyone buys printed guidebooks nowadays, let alone carrying them to the crag. I distinctly remember Alan James describing to me 20+ years ago how everyone would have a guidebook on a pocket-sized electronic device one day (this was pre smart phones, I think around the time the first Apple iPod came out). Alan was a visionary. Sure, there's a lot to knock about Rockfax, but I'm never going to pay for an updated BMC Peak Limestone guidebook full of crappy bolted quarries. The BMC should focus on Peak Rock coffee table style historical books IMO.

 

[remus]

For the BMC to get into printed guides again seems fairly suicidal to me. They've done great stuff in the past (e.g. grimer's work) but it's hard to see a long term future for printed guides: talk to anyone who's been to font in the last year or two and they'll chew your ear off about how good boolder is compared to any of the tens of available printed guides.

I could imagine something like a pimped out version of RAD being a great tool and somewhere the BMC could add a lot of value (e.g. have history, approach notes etc. there) but I don't think it's a pressing concern at the moment given their financial position and the amount of time and effort involved.

 

[spidermonkey09]

For the BMC to get into printed guides again seems fairly suicidal to me. They've done great stuff in the past (e.g. grimer's work) but it's hard to see a long term future for printed guides: talk to anyone who's been to font in the last year or two and they'll chew your ear off about how good boolder is compared to any of the tens of available printed guides.

I could imagine something like a pimped out version of RAD being a great tool and somewhere the BMC could add a lot of value (e.g. have history, approach notes etc. there) but I don't think it's a pressing concern at the moment given their financial position and the amount of time and effort involved.

Yeah that's my position too. Good work done in the past, and a great service, but if they ever do get involved with guides again it will be in digital form anyway, not books.

 

[gme]

Huge cash injection to sport climbing today from UK sport. 5x what we had for Paris.
If there was ever a time to split the BMC from comps it’s probably now.