UKC

In the Rockfax app, the topo for Gillercombe Buttress shows 6 pitches, but I'm only seeing a description for two pitches.

This is on Android.

It's definitely not 2 pitches, if you pitch it. But there are long stretches of scrambling between the climbing at severe grade, so perhaps 2 pitches might actually be quite reasonable. It's a great route, but not really the kind of thing where you need telling where to belay?

I've just looked on my phone. That description does look a bit fishy, as though it's maybe truncated. I'll double check this later against the book and correct it if necessary. 

Thanks. I notice the UKC description is the same as the app so if it is truncated it's not unique to the android app

Oddly enough I'd mentioned this route last week as a nice gentle first climb since February so seeing your query I've just had a look. It's 195 metres in 6 pitches according to the proper guide book. 7 pitches if you go back to the even "properer" guide book (FRCC Borrowdale {definitive} from 2000).

I think you will find it is 12 pitches.

and a bivi at the end of pitch 6

That will only be the  lost rockfax users.

They'll be done in no time when they run the whole thing out in two pitches

Description is truncated; that's just the description of the first two pitches. It's normally done in 6 pitches.

C

Indeed Martin. From the 1953 Bentley Beetham guide, which would have been the one we used first time I did the route in the sixties. So much more satisfactory to do a route of 475 feet rather than a mere 195 metres. 

Intrigued by now, I've also just looked at the 1925 guide but it's description, whilst it has references to the belays is not in the same way formalised into pitches, simply mentioning "the leader needs 55 feet of rope". In it, Thomson's introduction to the valley begins: "The climbs in Borrowdale are few and far between"! 

We'd decided that by noon C. Keep up!

It is a touchstone route for a good day out to get fit in most weathers, all times of year, in good conditions we do it in three long pitches, our record is 40 minutes two people, proper belays and gear.

Soloing would be quicker of course but not me thanks.

DC

To be fair, the rockfux  lists six pitches.

The app and UKC logbook only list two apparently .

I don't know about that. 195m is nearly 650ft? It seems have gotten 175ft longer in recent years!

Path erosion can be quite bad at popular crags.

Sounds grand. Then you can nip on from there up to Gable Crag. I know someone who simul-downclimbed it as part of the Lakes Classic Rock in a day challenge. Don't think my nerves are quite up to that myself!

It is three 50 metre pitches, 500 feet total.

DC

Occasionally a text frame in the page layout document for a rockfax guide is incorrectly not threaded to the "next" one, where a route's description is continued, and so the parser thinks the description stops before it does. That's what will have happened here, I just need to go fix it. 

The rockfax descriptions are uploaded from the app parser, which is why it's wrong on the website too. I should probably build a test for these orphaned description fragments to catch them earlier. 

So it is - I hadn't thought to do the conversion - just making a typical old codger's lament about "the times they are a changin'"! 

This has been fixed now, thanks for the report.