Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 22, 2014 - 10:52pm PT
|
They are fatally flawed and promote crowding. Most will agree that the rating system is rife with subjectivity. Quality ratings are far more subjective than ratings and that is the fatal flaw of "select" books. These books also promote the already deeply ingrained "herd instinct" in climbers and direct people to the same routes allowing perfectly good climbs to fall into obscurity.
Case in point....Yosemite's Select has a topo of all of the lines at Arch Rock but leaves the non-select climbs vacant of info.....just a scribbled line on the wall. English Breakfast Crack, an enduring classic, is left blank as if it didn't exist. Okay, that is my subjective opinion but that's the point.
Complete worthwhile areas are overlooked. I know that the whole purpose is to winnow down the choices to a consise few but these books do a disservice to the reader. Far better to have a definitive guide that YOU can "subjectively" winnow. Hell, you're sure to find some nuggets and maybe a little exploring will be good for you. With weekend lines at the base of a half dozen routes in a climbing mecca like the Valley, one wonders why so much great climbing lies fallow. This problem, by the way, is in no way unique to Yosemite.
Some here think that all guidebooks suck.....any opinions?
|
|
j-tree
Big Wall climber
Typewriters and Ledges
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 10:59pm PT
|
Perhapes you're not the demographic for this type of guidebook?
If I'm in an area for a short period of time, the "select classics" make more sense despite the crowding than spending precious time trying to figure out what the worthwhile obscure areas are.
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:02pm PT
|
If you loan your guidebooks to my friends, they will tear out the pages for any route over two pitches long.
Now I have the "leftovers select guide" and wonder what was on that missing page.
I still like Roper's word descriptions the best.
|
|
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:04pm PT
|
I think guide books suck.....climbing should be a personal matter like religion...there's something capitalisitic about claiming first ascents...
|
|
drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:04pm PT
|
I dunno Jim, I just got the Vogel Classic Joshua Tree routes and Bouldering guide and I couldn't be more stoked.
My trusty old comprehensive guide from the early 90's is essential but the new one weeds out many of those no star routes.
This new guide lists classics with worthwhile routes in the immediate area- a good recipe.
|
|
Greg Barnes
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:07pm PT
|
Guidebook or not, everyone climbs the quality moderates.
Which are in short supply in the Valley - if we are honest. Red Rocks or Joshua Tree or other areas...you might have a case.
|
|
Magic Ed
Trad climber
Nuevo Leon, Mexico
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:07pm PT
|
In the Potrero Chico, where many new routes are still going in every year it would be prohibitive to produce a quality comprehensive guide and try to update it every season. My solution was to produce a slick, professional Select book with color photos and the best routes in every sector AND continue to publish my Plain Jane edition which is updated every year. Potrero Select does point out that there are other worthwhile routes in each sector.
Overall I prefer to have some sort of guide to a new area I'm visiting although I must admit that many of my best memories are of days and adventures without a guidebook.
|
|
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:08pm PT
|
You just don't know how to use one properly.
The select guides tell you the places you want to avoid on the weekends. They work really well for that.
|
|
ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:13pm PT
|
well, guess I'll cancel my trip to Cobra Pillar on account of select guidebooks pretty much sucking
|
|
Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:41pm PT
|
Guidebooks. It depends. Do they reveal secrets or show the way? Revealing secrets to the world is a sacrilege whereas showing the way is one's savior. My preference is personal discovery, even if done before me. it is curious how too much information can destroy wilderness. Leave no trace?
|
|
Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:42pm PT
|
Select guides serve a population of climbers who are:
1. only planning to do a few climbs in an area (folks on a roadtrip)
or
2. not sure if they will do more than a few climbs, i.e. people who haven't climbed outside much (yet)
or
3. unable to buy the complete guide because it's out of print
If these climbers end up coming back a lot to the area they may end up buying the complete guide (if in print); then they will have both.
Even a complete guide these days will have stars which will direct traffic to some of the crowded routes.
Mostly it provides options to folks who don't need to do the top 20-50 routes over and over.
There is also the related issue that some editions of the semi-complete guide may also skip some climbs, such as Washington Column Direct and Mt. Starr King. Some judgement is made about whether the route is worthy, or possibly whether the effort to include route info is worth it.
I agree, though, it seems weird to have a page on Arch Rock and not fill the page with climbs, regardless of star level.
I.e. why leave a climb out unless it saves you a page or unless it's certifiably bad.
English Breakfast Crack is cool - especially up near the end of p2!
|
|
Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:50pm PT
|
I love "Select" guide books for 2 reasons:
1. Crowds the good routes, leaving the less popular ones in solitude.
2. Helps me find the good routes mid week when I'm new to an area.
Mostly I no longer use guide books. I'm aged-out of the demographic. I just go climb rocks that look pretty which winds up being 5.6 or less.
I do buy Supertopo guides to support this site but I never use them.
I will accept signed editions of guidebooks from authors if they have my picture in it or if there is a thank-you credit for me. (I understand if you don't when your guide is so fat it costs you personally $40 just to print the damn thing.)
|
|
Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:50pm PT
|
I think the answer is to stop "printing" actual bigger guides mostly and keep online versions that are updated on a continuous basis and can be subscribed to and printed out in portions.
I would love to see a 2 or 3 volume definitive guide book for the Valley but it can't happen. Sloan says he has been working on one for many years, but meanwhile...nothing. And today, it would be too static. The moment it were printed, there would be another hundred routes missing from it. And we all need to face the changing times and use resources more intelligently.
This is not to say an online digital one could not be amazing and rich. Like the Roper ones. The discursive ones. But what we get out of CMac and people like him today has to change too. The historical aspects of printed guides could still carry on with this "Wikiclimb" idea!
|
|
looks easy from here
climber
Ben Lomond, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:58pm PT
|
On the flip side, I loooove a good comprehensive guide. I spend hours reading and rereading Brad Young's Pinnacles and SPH guides, routes, area history, all of it.
|
|
Byran
climber
San Jose, CA
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 11:59pm PT
|
Some of them are pretty good, especially if it's the only guidebook available. Cirque of the Towers and Deep Lake comes to mind.
Also this one
But I feel like once a guidebook breaks 1000 routes, it's not really much of a "select" book, regardless of what the cover says.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 23, 2014 - 12:12am PT
|
I remember when that first big powder blue Yosemite guide book came out.
I think it was Donny Reid that gave me the first copy in the camp 4 lot.
So I'm standing there in the C4 lot looking at the front cover while Donny is walking away into the sunset.
Haven't even opened it yet and I can't remember who it was came up and said; "You got the new guide book!!!!"
I said: "Yeah" and handed it to him then said; "Keep it, it's yours" as the sun sank in the west.
So sorry, but Donny I still love ya ........
|
|
Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
|
|
|
Apr 23, 2014 - 12:34am PT
|
the blue one 'showed us the way'
learned much from a short Dill article at the time.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Apr 23, 2014 - 12:37am PT
|
Yeah Dills preface was/still is a good one.
He asked me to read it way before he ever submitted it to Donny.
|
|
MisterE
climber
|
|
|
Apr 23, 2014 - 12:44am PT
|
I think the answer is to stop "printing" actual bigger guides mostly and keep online versions that are updated on a continuous basis and can be subscribed to and printed out in portions.
I would love to see a 2 or 3 volume definitive guide book for the Valley but it can't happen. Sloan says he has been working on one for many years, but meanwhile...nothing. And today, it would be too static. The moment it were printed, there would be another hundred routes missing from it. And we all need to face the changing times and use resources more intelligently.
This is not to say an online digital one could not be amazing and rich. Like the Roper ones. The discursive ones. But what we get out of CMac and people like him today has to change too. The historical aspects of printed guides could still carry on with this "Wikiclimb" idea!
I am more interested in the conversation about the heart and soul of the people hammering out the various critical elements of the recording, and how things get lost when one stops fingering pages of a well-used and annotated volume that carries the history of the process, your own desires and goals.
What climber has not made side-notes in your guide-books? What is lost when all of our recordings are digital?
8a.nu score-keeping and digital down-loads are just not congruous to some ways of thinking.
|
|
RyanD
climber
Squamish
|
|
|
Apr 23, 2014 - 12:45am PT
|
The Squamish select is good because it has about 500 previously unrecorded pitches out of 2000 in the book. We have so many new routes that this book was a blessing, if these routes didn't start seeing traffic they would have grown over. I think our area is an exception though & the book pictured above is more of a "comprehensive select"
We need a new comprehensive guide so badly before all the new stuff since the select & stuff that didn't cut it goes green!
The author Marc also makes good practice of rotating the "top 100 climbs"
In the soon to be released bouldering guide for Squamish he has changed about 70 of the "top 100" from the previous edition in order to redistribute traffic. He plans to do the same in future editions of the select as well. I think this is a good strategy & a good way to establish "modern classics" if they are really good routes they will stay popular after the "top 100" disclaimer is removed from their description in the next edition.
Select guides are here to stay, like it or not.
I think it's best to contribute feedback to authors whenever possible if you want to see an area well represented or have knowledge that the author was not aware of about an area that could be useful. Most guide authors I've met are pretty open to suggestions.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!