UKC

Just got back from the crags of Haute Provence with my excellent rockfax guide book. Great book however I soon learned to keep it hidden in my bag as some of the locals aren't too happy about it accusing the company of taking business away from the original books and not putting any money back into re-bolting.

If this is the case I guess its pretty out of order by the company

In Buoux one woman accused me of just taking and not giving back at all to the area which is fair enough.
Also in St. Leger there are actual signs up saying explicitly not to buy it or books by jingo wobbly either.

The problem with some of the local boks though is that they are very difficult to read or understand with archaic topo drawings that are hard to decipher when new to the area and ultimately a waste of money

I wonder if rockfax should be more responsible though and actually contribute some of their profits to the local climbers even if it means charging more for the book

In reply to mikeconway:

Obviously there is the corollary that far less British climbers would visit if there wasn't an english language guidebook. And more visitors means more money going to local businesses. I have to say though, that in general french guides are pretty crap and uninspiring to many areas. Rockfax guides are actually interesting to flick through, whereas most local topo guides are dull series of black lines. Out of interest, how much money goes back into bolting from the local topos?

In reply to mikeconway:

"In Buoux one woman accused me..."

This would have irritated me. The way I see it, Rockfax are already doing their bit by stimulating tourism to an area that presumably benefits from it.

When I go to somewhere like Orpierre or the Dentelles, I spend a lot more on local wine, produce and accommodation than I do on the guidebook.

Competition is generally good for the consumer. The local guidebook writers should up their game - as indeed they have with the Orpierre guide, for example, which is great.

Luke

In reply to mikeconway:

Hi Mike

Adrian has written quite a lot about this here - http://blog.rockfax.com/adrian-berry/2009/02/

I wrote a bit about it here (but that is a bit out of date now) - http://www.rockfax.com/general/access.html

Before we published France : Haute Provence, I wrote to Marco Troussier at the FFME (the French equivalent of the BMC) inviting a dialogue, offering assistance in spreading their access message, offering assistance to communicate to climbers how bolting is funded in the areas covered and in the rest of France, and generally trying to strike up a dialogue with him. I received no reply from him despite the fact that he had already sent me some emails before this asking us not to publish the book. I'd be perfectly willing to open these discussions again if approached.

Hope you enjoyed the trip.

Alan

In reply to mikeconway: Like others have said, she made a stupid point. The fact that you are there, spending money, no doubt, in their restaurants, shops, hotels or campsites is blatantly beneficial to the local economy. I would assume that without a decent english guidebook, many would not visit this area.

She is clearly too busy looking at the more obvious benefits (Or lack of!) coming from the guidebook and not appreciating the fact that by bringing British climbers to that area at all it is having some benefit.

In reply to mikeconway:

The French guidebooks to those areas are god awful, and if they don't want people buying the rockfax ones then they should pull their fingers out and make some half decent ones. Don't forget that the French, as a nation, like to get all het up about stuff. I mean, imagine having to work until one is 62 years old.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: These are all very good arguments supporting rockfax and I fully support them but I guess there is one thing I couldn't help being disappointed about;

I understand that the local topo's are not good enough and rockfax has done a brilliant job with clear photo's and maps but at the end of the day locals have put a lot of effort into bolting the routes in the first place and it isn't being acknowledged by rockfax. For instance, why have the people who bolted the routes and the year of FA not been included next to each climb.
Not only would these extra details acknowledge their efforts it would actually make the process of choosing a route that bit more enjoyable and give each climb its own bit of history.

It also helps to choose a route based on the person who bolted it because some people are better at bolting than others. For example, any route in the blue mountains put up by Mike Law is guaranteed to be pure quality

In reply to Mike Nolan:

Would I get hacked off if there was a French language select guidebook to climbing in the UK? er no.

I'd also be a bit pissed off for getting it in the neck for my choice of guide- what's the alternative, buy several local guides and struggle with understanding the access instructions and route descriptions?

In reply to bomb: ha ha! good point

In reply to mikeconway:

I saw the one at St Leger last week. Very entertaining translation i thought. Mind you (like the local guide to chateauvert, which my missus owns) the local guide actually looked quite good.

For me it's quite simple. I don't really want to go on a holiday without researching it first (well, not for a convenience sport trip anyway) and the best way of doing that is a guidebook. If the French guides were available as easily as the rockfax in the uk, so I can browse them on a shelf, then I might buy them (depending on price and on how many of them I would need for my trip, and quality obviously, but as I say the St leger one looked quite good). I would certainly consider them, I've no overwhelming rockfax loyalty I'm afraid Alan, it's all convenience

The thing for me is that because the guide existed I had a nice week with 5 others near Buis last week, spent many hundreds of euros between us on food, drink and gites. I don't know of anywhere I can flick through the local guide in the uk, so if haute Provence wasnt there I'd probably have gone somewhere else - there's hardly a shortage of other options.

So if the French read these threads, I'm more than happy to buy local guides if you produce decent guides and make it easy for me in the uk to look at them (or atthe very least make them easy to find locally, it's like a game of treasure hunt sometimes).

In reply to mikeconway:

If we could get that information consistently for every crag then we would include it. Basically the information you ask for doesn't exist for most of the crags in the France : HP book, in fact several of the crags in the book haven't been printed anywhere (which makes one wonder how their bolts are being funded by guidebook sales).

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC: fair play, good to know. Oh yeah, I had a great trip. cheers.

In reply to mikeconway:

Not just confined to the French I'm afraid as I had a similar experience in Sella in the early '90s. At the same time a couple of Austrian climbers told us that they'd come in for some stick too as they were using Sun Rock. We were told that there was a locally produced topo guide for sale in the bars in Sella so we went and bought a couple of copies. Err ... it wasn't exactly good, nor useful either.

This is a difficult one as I can see where the locals are coming from. Fair enough try and make contact with the FFME but if there was no attempt at dialogue at a local level, then perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at their reaction. The local climbers who complained in this instance probably feel both alienated and disenfranchised, by Rockfax, the FFME etc etc and, unlike the UK, there is also no tradition of nationally produced and distributed French crag guide books. Outside of the Alps themselves, guide production is very much left to local initiative. As already said, you also often need to use some initiative to track them down but this is rarely impossible - local bookshops, climbing shops, sport shops etc.

The points made about visiting climbers bringing in revenue is extremely valid but again this only benefits certain sections of the community who may, or (more likely) may not support any local bolting/ guide producing initiatives. Throw in the French attitude to most things English and you have an interesting situation.

Oh well, no doubt this'll all add a bit of spice to future visits to Buoux.


Dave

In reply to Dave Williams:

Well there was since we had a good local contact in Buis, but we just received a "don't publish" in reply. I have since found out some more contacts and I will make an attempt to restart negotiation again once this latest book (Cote d'Azur) goes to the printers tomorrow. Incidentally, we have had some good communication with locals from the Gorge du Tarn with the third book in the series (due out next year).


Curiously, I just looked through some of my French guidebooks for the area of Cote d'Azur and 6 of the 10 are published by the FFME which tends to indicate that there is more central help available now. They are also the best local guides by far, the independent ones tend to be a little quirky to say the least with the Alpes Maritime being THE most bizarre guide ever published.

Alasn

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

I've a German guide to Buoux from the 1980s, as well as the then current Edisud guidebook which I presume was the "official" tome. On the other hand I've also got Godefroy Perroux's guide to winter climbing on the Ben - I don't remember too much fuss being raised about that despite there being two guidebooks to the winter climbing already.

I've tried using a lot of French/Spanish guides to sports crags and sad to say they haven't been up to the task. If people moan about not being able to follow textual descriptions in UK guides then they really would have had no chance with these topo guides.

ALC

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

I am currently stopping next door to Bruno Fara who appears to be involved with the FFME - he said "they" paid for the hundreds (thousands?) of bolts used in the re-equipping of Saint Victoire. Also that "they" were not very happy that the bolts were put miles apart and the routes don't get done much.

I have show him the Cote d'Azure guide, he says it looks great, and that there is nothing wrong with 'competition'.


Chris

In reply to mikeconway:

Basically some french people just don't like foreigners.

Would you adam and eve it?

In reply to mikeconway:
My take on this whole issue, from an expat living in Spain (where I believe Rockfax have had similar problems):

The problem is that in Spain, and as I've heard in France, there is much less central control over bolt funds and bolting policy compared to Britain. If you bolt a new crag, you produce the guidebook to it, or you give permission to your friends (who happen to be guidebook producers) to include the crag in their new book. The result is that the topos and guides are produced by amateurs, and are almost invariably rubbish. Take the new Siurana guide: it's up to date and accurate, but with the best will in the world to Toni, visually it's not a patch on even the very earliest Rockfax guides. The only recent guide that I've seen that is even vaguely in the same league is the new Rodellar guide (well done them!).

Now along comes Rockfax who, as a professional company, produces a vastly superior guidebook to the local efforts. Their attempts at dialogue to 'give back' to the community that bolted the routes fail because
a) there is no centralised bolt fund, and
b) any money donated would go straight into somebody's back pocket, who probably wouldn't reimburse the original bolters.

However, and this is they key point, the average joe local climbers like the rockfax guides. I've lost count of the number of times that locals have asked to have a look at my (very battered and used) Rockfax Barcelona miniguide, just because the simple novelty of a decent photo topo is miles better than a hand-drawn diagram.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I agree 100% with what Adrian writes in his blog "[Local topos] are, in general, hard to find, over-priced, restricted to small areas, amateurish, and often plain lazy."

Too bloody right.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: So what do the locals say about the French language 'selective' guides such as these
http://www.auvieuxcampeur.fr/nos-produits/cartotheque-librairie/les-topos-d...

(ps Au Vieux Campeur now lists your Haute Provence guide on their website although it wasn't on the shelves last time I was in their Paris shop)

In reply to mikeconway:

All the local guides i've used, Chatauvert, Boux, Orpierre, Ceuse, Gorge du Tarn have been excellent. Easy to find (Turn up buy it) and cheap.

I was amazed that buoux had been lifted complete and unadulterated from the local guide. ie all grades exactly the same, if you've been Buoux you know what i mean.

In UK the Rockfax model has a place, the clubs don't put anything back and their guidebooks are almost all crap and are only improving because of rockfax. In France it is different.

The Rockfax french guides just represent a straight transfer of cash from the french climbing community to Rockfax. The local businesses do not support climbing.

In reply to mikeconway:


No, it is absolutely not "fair enough". If they can't see that local guides in Spain and France (generally) are their own worst enemy in terms of inadequate information, then they deserve the consequences. And if they don't understand the multiplier effects of increased tourist revenue then, again, that is their problem.

In reply to idc:

Have they brought out a new guide to Ceuse then? When I was there in 06 it was easily in the top 3 worst guides I've ever seen (that were still on sale, at least) - if the route names hadn't been painted at the base you would have had literally no clue which route you were underneath.....

Since as far as I'm aware at least some municipalities fund bolting to bring tourists in, one could (and I'm sure Alan is about to) argue that these guides actually through their wider availability benefit the local area far more than the local guides do since they open it to a wider audience.....

In reply to Stig: I've just returned from a trip to Provence using Adrian's guide - I had a couple of pleasant conversations with French climbers who wanted to check lines and grades in it.

In reply to AJM: The bolting issue is a total red herring anyway. Us brits would look hypocritical if bolting was actually as highly centralised as AJM suggests. It's not. GG is a one man bolting machine and there are plenty of others like him on a lesser scale (and he doesn't do it for plaudits). It's only recently that the BMC have got in on the act and traditionally it has been down to individuals to bolt stuff - that's the way it should stay and we should all resist any stupid bureaucratisation of new routing and re-equipping.

In reply to Stig:

Interestingly, the intro to the Chateauvert guide depicts a very controlled and organised setup in terms of equipping and maintaining the cliff, and I've seen similar things with regards to crag development and maintenance in the chamonix crag guides and the like (and didn't either the guides office or the commune offer to pay Piola to re-equip some of his routes in Cham a few years back? I'm sure I saw an article that claimed he had kit supplied by them for a period as well). To deny that France has a far more developed and organised attitude to crag development and maintenance than in the UK is an unusual viewpoint, for sure.

In reply to AJM: Sorry: I was describing the UK situation, hence reference to Gary G and BMC (apologies if I misrepresented you as I am drunk). The fact that the French set up appears to be municipalised makes it even more bizarre that there is resentment to Rockfax since the tourism payoff quite deservedly goes someway to recompensing the French tax payer!!!

In reply to mikeconway: I spent a month in Provence climbing this year, prompted entirely by the rockfax guidebook making the place look so good! And it was.. I also had exactly the same experience as when I've gone to El Chorro and Costa Blanca with Rockfax guides - LOTS of European climbers walking around with crap topos, asking to borrow my guides and generally saying how much better they were. And in a month, nobody hassled me once about my choice of guide.

In reply to mikeconway:
I agree with everyone as to how good the Rockfax are in comparison with the local guides. With a few exceptions (Ailefroide springs to mind), the latter are unispiring, hard to use, even harder to get hold of and worst of all, written in French.

However I think it's slightly wrong to claim that the local climbers benefit from the influx of foreign visitors. Local business may do, but will that be passed on to the bolters ? What benefit will they get from the extra traffic on their local routes ? Could it be that they don't want the visitors ?

In reply to AJM:

We had no difficulty with the ceuse guide.

In reply to idc:

It's useable when combined with the fact that every second name is painted on (if they put grades on the guide would basically be redundant), but you'd have to be loving in a box and not seen a modern French or British guide to consider it good...

In reply to AJM:

"living" obviously - got to love comedy mistyping...

In reply to AJM:

I came across a couple of French tourists in Aviemore last winter with a tourist guide book for Scotland!!! In French!!

How dare the French have a book promoting travel and tourism in Scotland! Are they putting anything back into the Scottish economy, that's what I would like to know!

Being facetious aside, Rockfax is a commercial company who have the right to produce guidebooks for wherever they like. It is up to Rockfax to ensure their guides are of a quality that climbers buy and use them. The fact that they are very popular amongst British and a lot European climbers means they must be quite good!

I have used both the local guide for the crags around Nice and Cannes, Gorge Du Loup etc, and the new Rockfax for Haut Provence. Apart from the fantastic 80's photos in the local guide, Rockfax wins outright for clarity, ease of use etc.

I completely understand the argument for supporting local climbers and new routing etc. BUT how many people put any money into the "Local Bolt Fund" wherever they are climbing?

Pete Oxley spent the best part of 15 years full-time bolting new routes on Portland and at Swanage (usually in agreed areas, but not always! Go for it Pete! ) Numerous other Dorset local were also prolific new routers, Neal, Mike, Steve and others. Most of the cost of the new routing, bolts, resin etc was,and still is, paid for out of their own pockets. The Dorset Bolt Fund did pay for some but not much. Rockfax, I'm sure, also contributed. That has improved in recent years with contributions from The BMC for re-bolting but not new routes.

My point, in this diatribe, is that to produce a quality guidebook, on time, regularly to keep it up to date etc costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. As has already been pointed out Rockfax guides promote tourism (climbing is tourism!) in numerous areas in the UK and abroad with all the obvious benefits.

What Rockfax decide to do with their profits (Ferraris, mansions etc) is none of our business and if they wish to financially contribute to climbing in some way that is their prerogative and not for anyone else to criticise them for what Rockfax may or may not do.

Diatribe over!

Rich.

In reply to idc:

>

I suspect the vast majority of our French guides are bought by British climbers, who want some solid info before booking a trip away.

Both the Haute Provence and Cote d'Azure guides cover huge areas rather than a single crag, ideal for anyone wanting to plan a holiday and travel around a bit.


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

IMHO the idea that climbers contribute much to the local economies is a specious argument, they contribute very little cos generally they're tightwads.
I do have sympathy with the view that Rockfax "steal" local guidebook revenue, but I suspect its only marginal but it would be nice if Rockfax were to give something back to local bolt funds or similar, after all if the routes did'nt exist there would be nothing to report.

However, no matter what, Rockfax exists because it fills a gap in the market and that will not change, cos if these guys are'nt doing it, someone else would be. Take Finale, for example, There's a very comprehensive multi language guide (2 in fact) so the gap in the market is already filled there.

And , yes, I buy the Rockfax guides and also try to buy local guides

In reply to mikeconway: do people actually bolt routes in the hope they will make a living selling guidebooks? i always assumed that they published the guidebooks and topos just to share their creations.

In reply to Richard White:

Actually, I disagree with you here. I think all companies that trade on the outdoors have a responsibility to put something back into their community and hopefully this UKC web site is an example of Rockfax doing just that.

I don't think this discussion is really about money at all. Anyone who has produced a guidebook will know that small-scale, amateurishly-produced, very badly distributed local guidebooks is a very high-effort, low-return method of creating money for a bolt fund. If money for bolt funds and local climbers was all it was about then they should be welcoming the Rockfax since they could then sell a quality product, for three times the price, without all the effort of production and the extra costs of authors, publishers and printers. Each sale would bring in more to the local bolt fund than ten local guide sales.

I think it is much more about pride in local areas and the xenophobia of interference from outsiders that we all have to an extents. We would probably all feel a little peeved if some foreign guidebook appeared for Stanage with mis-spelled English names, extolling the virtues of top-roping and head-pointing. That doesn't mean to say that the company doing it shouldn't be allowed to do it, especially if they are stimulating poor local guidebook production to raise its game.

Alan

In reply to idc:

My experience of French guidebooks is limited to Clecy (appalling, couldn't find most of the routes), Pen Hir (adequate, but wasted a day as it was only available from the tourist information centre which was closed the day we got there), and a small crag somewhere near Mont St Michel (guide only available from the Tabac in the village, which is closed on Sundays, guess which day we were there).

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

The French have found a pretty good system for financing the bolting and maintenance of their crags. Climbers form local associations that carry out the work on a voluntary basis while proceeds from their topos go towards buying the equipment necessary. The efforts made to develop an area are recognised by climbers when they buy the local topo. It’s a system based on trust and respect. Rockfax undermines this system by taking a piggy-back ride on the cream of the crags from several different areas and selling a single English language guide-book which suffices for the visiting climber.

So either you choose to support the local climbing association in their efforts to equip and maintain the surrounding crags, or you choose to support a commercial venture where the profits go into the pockets of people who have no long-term investment in the area. It’s a bit of a no-brainer if you ask me. Climbers who know how the system works and who still buy Rockfax are choosing to put comfort and convenience over supporting the local climbing community. It’s hardly surprising that the locals get miffed!

People argue that the local topos are of poor quality and badly distributed. I think that what they mostly mean is that they are in French and sold locally (ensuring that the money goes where it is needed). Requiring that your guidebook is in English and buying your topo online from Rockfax simply isolates you even more from the area you are visiting. If you want to prepare your trip in advance then lots of general info is available on the net.

This whole issue would be resolved of course if Rockfax contributed money to the local bolt funds rather than taking them for a free ride. Alan, you claim to be willing to contribute, but if you were really serious about this you would contact the local organisations directly rather than someone who works for the national governing body. Their contact details are in the topos. However if this is to be anything more than a marketing exercise your product would need to be considerably more expensive and less attractive to the potential buyer. Are you prepared to do that?

Also to say that French climbers who critisise your methods are xenophobic is mis-leading and just plays to the general anti-French vibe of this thread. Donate a FAIR amount of money to the bolt funds and you’ll soon find out if the opposition are motivated by xenophobia or by trying to sustain the future of their activity.

Neil

In reply to nb: "The efforts made to develop an area are recognised by climbers when they buy the local topo. It’s a system based on trust and respect....."

I completely agree with this but like most others I think it is unfair to expect us to buy each book (average price 20 euros + the extra weight in my bag) for each crag I visit especially if I am only there for one day. Why is there no french rockfax equivalent for this area yet? Is there anything stopping them from copying the same format and just changing it to french?

In reply to nb:

In my extensive experience, the picture you portray here is not actually what happens. Much of the (re)bolting work in France is funded by centrally from local councils promoting climbing in their area.


The 'french-ness' of the topos is irrelevant. They are poor and impossible to get hold of for visitors as several have testified on this thread.

Distributing a book locally doesn't ensure money stays local, it only ensures that you less fewer copies.


I have tried that in the past and had no idea where the money eventually went. Since the FFME manage bolting over many crags in France I thought they would be a better place to contact. I have tried this and received no response. I will try some local contacts over the next week or so though.


I don't understand your point here.


I said we are all xenophobic to an extent when it comes to our own climbing areas. Don't twist my words.

Alan

In reply to nb:
>

Actually, I have a few french topos on my shelf at home, bought locally when I have been on holiday in an area, and they are pretty crap. The fact that they are in french is neither here nor there, as I can read french well enough to get by. They are simply not comparable to Rockfax guides - they are line drawings with dotted lines showing the routes. The only real way to find a route is to count bolt lines from the edge of a buttress. They are not a patch on a Rockfax photo topo.

Obviously there are some great french guides (Ailefroide, Font etc) but your statement (quoted above) is simply not true.

In reply to nb:

I can only speak for myself, but what I mean is that the topos are unusable, and they are *only* available locally. So you have to decide where to go based on guesswork (or one of those awful foreign guides) as you can't get the local guide before you go. And then have to spend time at the start of your trip trying to track down a guide (sometimes it's easy, sometimes impossible).

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
Not climbing in France recently I can't comment on your comments or the extent to which local topos now fund local equippers vs centralised funding.

What I can say is that the French have had a history of foreign visitors copying local topos (incorporating errors etc) and repackaging in their own language without acknowledgement. Plagiarism, to be frank.IIRC The German Verdon guide started this and really got a few backs up, understandably in my view.

A little sensitivity and effort to understand and support the funding system in place for equipping is the very least that should be expected.

Only Rockfax knows to what extent you may have done so.

In reply to a lakeland climber:

I wonder how much of the money that would have gone into the Ben Nevis bolt fund that siphoned off?

In reply to Alan James - UKC:



If it's LOCAL council funding it's not central! In Haute Savoie, the area where I live, the town council will provide funding for crags in the lower/middle grades ie. crags that will attract tourists and that can be used by the local guides/instructors. Higher level crags & multi-pitch routes are all financed by the local association - Escalade74 - which is funded by the topo (which happens to be excellent).


It doesn't actually require that much info to find a route at a sports crag. I've climbed all over the SE of France and have very rarely had issues. Admittedly if you speak absolutely no French & need everything handed to you on a plate then Rockfax fits the bill, which is why it works to the expense of the local topos. Local topos are usually available in cafés, tourist offices, newsagents (maison de la presse) or bookshops. It's usually not that difficult!

I'll translate your letter free of charge.
The point being that it would be easy to donate a few euros and make a big deal about it to promote your product. If you really want to help with the bolting/maintenance effort however you'll need to put a 'bolt tax' on the price of your book. It should be fairly easy to ensure that the money goes to the right place. Associations have a legal obligation to make their accounts transparent.

Like I said, help the bolt funds significantly and watch the xenophobia melt away!

Neil

In reply to mikeconway: Glad to hear that you will produce a guidebook covering Gorge du tarn. The local guidebook is really just a joke. They reprint always the outdated one without any new sectors and routes. The pictures are black and white in such a bad quailty that they are nearly unvisible. And the price is very much overpriced!

In reply to Alan James - UKC:



There are many examples in France that refute this. Fontainebleau has topos from British & Dutch climbers that have not aggravated the locals, but then obviously funding for bolts is not an issue there. Jon's topo to the Gietroz area near Chamonix is the standard guidebook for locals & foreigners alike, but then again he equipped most of the routes himself. Michel Piola (Swiss) publishes guidebooks privately that compete with the local topos in the Haute Savoie department but, again, he has equipped hundreds of routes in the area.

So basically as long as the people making money from topos aren't redirecting funds that would otherwise go to pay for crag maintenance, or are themselves investing in the local crags, then their publications are accepted without issue. I haven't come across any cases of pure xenophobia amongst climbing communities in 20 years of living in France. Problems only arise when publishers fail to invest in the crags that they are using to sell their books with, especially when they are seen to be getting a free ride on the countless hours of work that have been put in voluntarily by local climbers.

In reply to JimR:
>

That isn't supported by the Kalymnos experience.


Chris

In reply to nb:

So is the answer for the locals to start cooperating with Rockfax (and anyone else) - how can they expect to receive anything if they refused to talk?

In reply to Waldmeister: In my view the CAF topo to le Tarn is an excellent, very informative, and easy to use guidebook.

In reply to Chris Craggs:


I probably have an advantage over you in that I visited Kalymnos before there was any climbing when I was on a sailing trip.

Kalymnos was a very small island where even a couple of tourists would have doubled the local GDP. There was nothing there before climbing apart from a few boats running trips to Turkey.

Even as the epicentre of european climbing it has still failed to rescue Greece from financial meltdown, so clearly the hordes of climbers visiting Kalymnos are in fact tightwads!

In reply to JimR:

We have been asked repeatedly by the locals (car/scooter hire, restaurants, shops, bars) "will the climbers keep coming". Climbing has changed the island and the lives of the people here, they are well aware of the fact and grateful for it.

Chris

In reply to Jon Bracey: Hello John, you still got my Chamonix Glace, Neige et Mixte Guidebook?

In reply to JimR:

Even every climber in Europe visiting wouldn't have rescued them.

In reply to Chris Craggs:


But Kalymnos as a venue is somewhat unique.

Comparing the amount an average climber will contribute to the local economy in Kalymnos to virtually any other major climbing destination in Europe is somewhat misleading. For example, climbers staying at the Ceuse campsite hardly contribute much to Gap's GDP, in much the same way as climbers visiting the Costa Blanca don't really add much over the masses of other tourist there. In Kalymnos then tourism was suffering heavily due to the lack of package deals there and the mass influx of climbers has given a new revenue stream to the locals - also the climber has very little choice other than to contribute significantly. It's a relatively expensive climbing holiday and hard to live cheap when compared to an out of season villa shared with 10 mates in Spain, or a refuge campsite with a big local hypermarket...

I don't get the argument about local topos being poor quality either. I've never really struggled with any local topo I've used and my languages are awful. Nor have I ever found it hard to source one on arrival at a new venue. Ceuse is often used as an example of a poor topo to a great crag, but what more do you need other than route names, grades and approximate locations? The vast number of repeated symbols in the new book show that virtually every route is 3*, long, pumpy and technical.

(In reply to Alan James - UKC)
Wow, broad thread here. A consideration

I think it´s wise to draw a line between benefiting the general community and benefiting the climbing community. Of course lodge owners and barkeepers are happy with the influx of climbers. But on the other hand hordes of tourists polishing routes, littering and making acess work harder (usually noise & parking issues) can hardly make the French climber happy. And as far as I know visiting climbers generally don´t contribute to local bolting in any way. To pay a couple of extra £/Rockfax guide doesn´t seem to be a high price to me. Why don´t you set aside 1% of revenue like Patagonia and other responsible companies do? You could spend that on bolting funds and acess issues!

(Some of the "newer" limestone venues like Kalymnos/Thailand/Yangshou are the exception here where a lot of visitors are opening and bolting routes as well)

Would you like if thousands of Germans came over to Stanage leaving nothing but the echo of "scheisse" "ficken" and a lot of litter?
In my highly egoistic view visiting climbers is nice, but only in small and considerate numbers

In reply to DanielJ:

It is a much more complex issue than Neil is making out.

In order to get any money from a levy on a guidebook you have to put more than twice as much on the cover price as you will eventually get. ie. in order to make a contribution of £2 per book you would need to put about £5 onto the cover price. This is because there is a chain of distributors and shops who all take their cut. It would be impossible to gather these cuts from these extra links in the chain since there are so many of them (fancy asking Amazon for their share of the cover price for a bolt fund?)

So the end user would face paying £5 more for their books so that shops and distributors could make more money, just to create the £2 donation. I am not sure that many climbers would be happy paying £5 more for their books, especially if they knew that only £2 of it actually went to a good cause.

It is much better doing this in a sustainable way that benefits everyone, rather than penalises people for innovating and stimulating a market, or takes advantage of the consumer, and that is what I will be looking at over the next few weeks.

This is notwithstanding the other unanswered questions like:

- how much do local guidebooks actually financially contribute to rebolting?
- how much do other outdoor companies donate to rebolting?
- what is the actual impact of a guide like the Rockfax France series on local guidebook sales?


Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Excellent response, Alan, much respect for the way you are taking this issue on board.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: Glad that you´re going to look at the issue of what Rockfax actually can and should do. I don´t know how common it is in the UK to donate 1% for the planet (or whatever the campaign is called) but I know some companies who follws that (Patagonia and Klättermusen)

Concerning your questions, this is my take
My impression is that sales of local guidebooks dont contribute massively but they still do contribute.

I know that Petzl for one contributes a lot to bolting new routes and rebolting existing ones. The difference between you and other outdoor companies is that you directly increases the numbers of climbers in one specific place. Hence I would say that you have a bigger responsability to contribute locally. And maybe more important, really emphasize acess issues.

As a lot of the climbers who buys Rockfax wouldn´t go to these places if Rockfax didn´t exist I guess the impact on local guidebook sales isn´t dramatic. Some people also buy the local guidebook when they´re at the venue itself so probably not a great impact.

In reply to mikeconway: What a surprise the French are upset by competition. They wanted the European Union and we have plenty of EU competition law so let them take it to Brussels!!
I regularly climb in the Alpes-Maritime and as mentioned the guide is not the best. In fact it's not much different from the previous one ten years ago! I'm looking forward to the Rockfax one. Although I might stop flying there, hiring cars, eating in restaurants, buying from the supermarket, buying half pint draught beer in the local bar that usually stocks the local topo and sell both apartments! Then again...8-)

In reply to DanielJ:

I am not really interested in funding bolting of new routes; this should be up to individuals since they choose the routes to climb. Once you start using freely donated funds for bolting new routes then you open up a big can of worms in terms of who has a say in where a route goes, how close the bolts are etc. I think most new routers would not want this burden: a point Adrian makes in his article linked to near the top of the thread.


The main difference between Rockfax/UKC and Petzl is one of size. Say we gave a levy of £1 for each book sold last year as has been suggested in the past, then we would end up contributing 10% of our turnover. A larger outdoor company probably turns over something like £20 million a year so 10% of that would be £2 million - that is one hell of a lot of bolts and bolting!

Alan

In reply to mikeconway:

The local topo guide fro the Buis area wasn't that great and err ambitiously priced at 30 euros. The message? produce better guides and welcome foreign income.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Funny that, I'd been thinking that you had a fairly simplistic idea about how bolting is financed in France.


Well this perhaps answers your question about why locally produced guidebooks are so badly distributed. Because only by selling them through local outlets can the associations be assured of obtaining all the money they require for crag maintance. Unless you can negotiate better with your distributers over a bolt levy I'd say this is a pretty good argument for encouraging visiting climbers to buy the local topo and support the local climbing community.


We should really be talking in terms of at least a €10 net per book sold going to the associations. Crag maintenance requires petrol-powered drills, battery-powered drills, bolts, hangers, multiple drill bits, high quality resin glue, chains, belay krabs... etc...etc... We're talking a budget of thousands of euros for an area with several crags (remember that the work is generally done on a voluntary basis). €10 for unlimited access to a recreational resource that has been created by hundreds of hours of hard graft is quite frankly peanuts. A skier will spend €50 for just one day of using a ski resort.


Puh-lease don't play the underdog in this Alan. Sustainability is what the local associations have been about for years and they are the ones being penalised currently by Rockfax. Don't get me wrong, I think Rockfax have a role to play and a niche to fill, but only if they can contribute fairly to the developement of the crags.


Many associations have been created with the sole purpose of bolting and maintaining the crags. These associations are forbidden by law to make a profit and their accounts are open to anybody who asks to see them. The topos are often their only source of revenue although some may get some financial aid from the town hall. It is very complex however and each case is different. For example in a very busy Alpine centre the guides' office might also get involved in equiping a beginners crag that they use regularly.


Other outdoor companies are not diverting money from the local climbing associations in the same way that Rockfax is.


Good question. I very much doubt that anybody is going to invest money in doing the research to answer it however. In any case the bottom line is that visiting climbers should be prepared to pay a reasonable price towards the maintainance of the resource that they use. In my mind the best way of doing this is a levy on guidebook sales, including Rockfax. Do you really want to see a council employee coming along and selling tickets, or one of the local climbers doing the rounds with a collection can and doffing his hat to the generous donators?

Neil

In reply to nb:

Neil, do you know how much of the current 20 euro or more price of a local guide actually goes towards physical gear purchases like resin, petrol (for the drill not the equippers car), bolts and chains that actually then gets used on rebolting existing routes (like many others, I see a definite difference between this and new routing). I would be shocked if it is as high as 10 euros a guide, but do you know? I had a conversation with Adrian in march and I'm pretty sure the number he quoted was 5%, although I can't recall where it came from. Either way an effective profit margin of 50% seems monstrously high.

Regarding the local guide not being available elsewhere - as long as you don't make a loss on each sale, the more money the better surely (and hence benefits from wider distribution), and many examples in the uk prove you can still make money from widely distributed guides in that price range. Margins be damned - total cash amount is king here! I don't think that this is a particularly likely reason for the lack of coverage, personally.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: Of course you can´t give away 10% of your turnover. You produce a quality product which is demanded so I dont mind if you make a profit. What I´m talking about is to take some responsibility of the downsides that your guide books creates (hordes of somewhat ignorant tourists and unhappy local climbers). It´s basically a moral issue.

My not so knowledgeble suggestions would be to either follow the path of 1% turnover (for local bolt funds or access work) or to put a levy on the books (for the consumer, not to put you out of business). I wouldn´t mind paying an extra fiver for your end product if I knew money was going where it´s needed. You have to remember that most of your books are unique and don´t have a lot of competition for the visiting language-ignorant climber who want to visit several areas. (I dont think your books are very price-sensitive cause they are the only product in that niche)

As you point out, how to actually do it is easier said than done though. I think you deserve and will get a lot of credit from the climbing community if you figure out some credible way.

In reply to nb:

The problem with that approach is that many people won't visit at all as a result, so 100% of the possible income from those people is lost. At the very least, why can't they create a website to sell the guides direct to the public, with payment via Paypal? Or even a paid for download to avoid anyone having to spend time sending things by post.

In reply to mikeconway:
Late to the debate. I'll be honest and say I've climbed a bit in the S of France and always used local guides; good bad and indifferent. It sort of feels 'right'. Like saying 'thanks' to the locals.
And getting back to the actual threat title - 'topo vampires' - is the perception out there in France that a local or a commune develops a crag; they produce a topo; 'the man' buys a copy of topo; repackages it (and sure that repackaging may well be expensive and improve the product) and sells it at a profit, undercutting the sales of the local topo.
I know that the intellectual copyright thing was done to death in recent years but I can sort of sympathise with someone who sees their work repackaged in that way. 'Oi. They're MY routes'. Where exactly does Rockfax get their information about the crags they include in their guides from?
And sure, I recognise that the natives should really wake up, smell the coffee of competition and drink coke.....

In reply to Chris Craggs: 'I suspect the vast majority of our French guides are bought by British climbers'

I met a couple of Dutch climbers with Rockfax Haute Provence guides.

In reply to John2:

How dare they?

Chris

In reply to nb:


It is an important question though since if the answer is nil, or even a positive effect on local guidebook sales, it pretty much undermines all your other arguments.

Alan

In reply to DanielJ:

Yes, 1% is very reasonable and we are probably not far from that already, although currently this is only UK-based.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

I've bought several local Costa Blanca guides, and wouldn't have been there at all if it weren't for Rockfax. I doubt I'm the only one.

In reply to Toreador:

No, you aren't alone. I haven't climbed in an area of France with a Rockfax guide, but I have climbed in Sardinia as a group, where some of us bought the Rockfax miniguide, some of us bought the Cala Luna guide and some of us bought the local language guide. It's always interesting to compare them, and to visit different crags.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


Why did Rockfax produce a guide to Prades when there was already an excellent Spanish guide to the area?
We met Mark and Emma there when they were writing it, I said producing a Rockfax guide was wrong, Mark didn't disagree.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:



Alan you are defending your methods with unverifiable theories. One thing is sure though – putting a levy on Rockfax topos would bring more funds to the local climbing community. I don’t think anyone can contest that. You have even said yourself that it would be appropriate to help the bolt funds so the argument is really only on how much should be donated. Frankly - considering the huge amount of work that local climbers do voluntarily - I think your proposal of 1% of turnover is an insult. Calculate how much revenue each of your Haute Provence guidebook creates, divide by 100 and then divide again by the number of bolting associations that would share your contribution. That is verifiable in about 5 mins with a calculator. Please let us know the result. I would love to be proved wrong but somehow I don’t think that the Rockfax purchaser would be paying their fair share towards their use of the resource.

From re-reading your posts I get the impression that you have blundered onto the French climbing scene with very little knowledge of how the system works. Your assumptions seem to date from the 1980s.

For example:

- You think that most re-bolting is done through government funding.
- You think that the FFME is reponsible for organising bolting & maintenance.
- You seem to be unaware of the role, or even the existance, of local bolting/maintenance trusts.
- You don’t know which channels to go through to ensure that any money you donate gets spent on equipment.
- You think that French new-routers would prefer to pay for bolts out of their own pocket(!)
- You assume that bolting new routes in France is done with the same mindset as in the UK ie. to claim a first ascent. Bolting new routes and developing new sectors is considered to be a service to the climbing community over here.

With this set of pre-conceived ideas in your head, you decide that not only should local climbers bolt new routes free of charge, but they should also pay for the equipment out of their own pockets. A bizarre mind-trick then conveniently allows you to make a few bob by publishing a book that describes the fruits of their efforts.

Now you and your supporters rightly claim that you are not breaking any laws in doing this. However neither are there any laws preventing me from turning up at Millstone Edge, drytooling my way up London Wall, drilling a couple of V-threads into Edge Lane and taking a dump at the foot of Green Death (these would actually be my preferred strategies for each of these routes!). However I wouldn’t consider doing so out of respect for the local ethics. Now local ethics are funny things and outsiders often don’t get them. Try explaining to a Frenchman why he can place a bolt at Raven Tor but not at Stoney Middleton and you will see what I mean. (Don’t even attempt to explain why Scottish rockclimbs have to be a particular shade of white before you can climb them with crampons!). In the same way I don’t think you understand the complexity of bolting politics in France.

Let me illustrate with an example from my area. In the Mont Blanc range there is a desperate need for a guidebook to classic Alpine routes. Ever since the demise of the Vallot guides the only books which have come close to replacing them are the Alpine Club guides, but these are now sorely out of date. I would honestly encourage Rockfax to step in to plug the gap. You could make a mint! As guidebook production in the immediate vicinity of Chamonix is a joyous free-for-all of private enterprise you will not meet any resistance. You simply can’t go wrong!

However drive 10 mins down the valley and you are in an area where the equipping and maintenance of crags is financed by EKIPROC, a non-profit making association which is financed through the sales of its topo.

EKIPROC is run by Gilles Brunot, a F8b climber who has equipped and re-bolted many routes across the whole grade spectrum. After a day’s climbing I’ve accompanied him on a 6-pitch F6b so that he could replace the last belay! He also edits the topo. Gilles has a full-time job (weather forecaster in Chamonix – nobody’s perfect!) and does all this in his spare time.

Now if you were to encroach on EKIPROC’s territory without contributing a fair amount of money to the association (and with well over 4000 pitches equipped & maintained we’re talking way more than 1% of your guidebook revenue) you would be showing massive disrespect to the local ethic, in exactly the same way that Gilles would be if he bolted Masters Edge. You could both, however, claim to be providing a service to visiting climbers.

Bolting in St Leger is carried out by an association that works on the same principles as EKIPROC. I discovered this with a 30 second Google search. You apparently didn’t bother. Is it any wonder that the locals are miffed!

In reply to nb:

Would it bother anyone if the French copiled aguide to say....Castleberg..mereley jesting...N Wales Limestone say and didn't contribute to the N Wales bolt fund?

In reply to nb: where's your profile then...

In reply to mikeconway: What came first the bolts or the topo?Next question to ask is which came first the topos or rockfax?
I think what rockfax do is exellent but leaves little for the imagination in terms of new areas,crags etc.Personally i think the french guides have improved alot in the last few years influenced by publications like rockfax.
Re the gorge du tarn I spoke to one of the recent rt developers there about a year ago and there appears to be intercine politics going on there over who pays for what.
I was there 6 months before this and bumped into a german topo publisher who had a VERY fat DIY guide to the tarn with about 700 rts in it(a complete guide).He said he would not publish this in agreement with the locals which seemed respectful at the time.(new localtarn guide on the way by december/jan).This is my point as long as the local issues are respected the more guidebooks the better.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


nd also maybe:

- do locals have any reason to object given a lot of these areas have free online topos anyway?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Hi Chris, just wanted to reply specifically to your question:

"However I think it's slightly wrong to claim that the local climbers benefit from the influx of foreign visitors. Local business may do, but will that be passed on to the bolters ? What benefit will they get from the extra traffic on their local routes ? Could it be that they don't want the visitors ?"

When I was in the Gorge du Tarn (working on France III) I met up with a very active local climber who contacted Rockfax by email, I was prepared for a heated argument, but he was very supportive and as a professional in tourism he knew very much that the Rockfax books would be very beneficial to the local economy, and that as access is controlled by the local government, this was a very good thing indeed, and so was very supportive of Rockfax. If you want to know what kind of traffic French crags get - look at the crag shots, they were all taken on calm sunny days, and most of the crags are deserted - there's no airbrushing!

While I'm contributing, I would like make a couple more points - firstly, there's a bit of a myth that all the profits from local guidebooks are channeled into bolts. I know a climber in the Sisteron region who took the time to find out exactly how much of the cover price went into bolts - only 3% of an €18 guide (54 Cents) actually went to bolts, and I suspect most of that would go to developing hard new routes.

As I've said before, any contributions to bolting would have to come from the authors - the printers aren't going to give a %, and neither are the retailers who make more money than us by a very long way. I've produced four books now, and I've not covered my expenses yet! If you want a £20 book to contribute just £1 to a bolt fund, you don't just add £1 to the cover price! Retailers and distributors take more than half the cover price (correct me if I'm wrong) so you'd need to add double that to the cover price. There's no one stopping anyonce from contributing to a bolt fund - do it directly and your contribution is not 'taxed' by middlemen. Better still, do what I do: buy a drill, some bolts, and contribute directly.

And as for checking all the grades in Buoux - I'm currently in production of an alternative version of the Haute Provence guide where I've personally checked all the grades - it should only take another twenty years to produce and is a snip at £800 a copy - I'm happy to take advance orders.

In reply to nb:

Really? So a visiting climber, climbing on one crag for one day should pay the same as a local who climbs on that crag 50 times a year?

To be honest, rant all you like. If the French associations put out a collection tin at the crag/campsite/bar/local shop/whatever for donations to a bolt fund, I'm sure a decent percentage of visiting climbers would pop in a few euros, and your problem is solved. People have good guidebooks, Rockfax can include details of how these crags are funded, and civic-minded citizens can donate. You would probably raise more in this way than through forcing visiting climbers to buy the local topo, as a group of climbers are likely to only buy one copy of a topo, but each may put a couple of euros in a tin.

In reply to JimR:


Don't be silly Jim.

Anyway, look at the various business that have sprung up in Rjukan over the last few years, or the increase in tourists who are there to climb in Svolvaer/Henningsvaer. It might be make us feel 'special' and all rufty-tufty (I've hitched up and down the A82 more times than most for example) to pretend otherwise, but climbers travelling now are generally just like any other tourists - spending their money on budget airlines, car hire, local shops, camp sites, bars or villas. This seems true from Narvik to Kalymnos.

In reply to Colin Moody: I'll just add a comment here, you mention that it was wrong for Rockfax to produce a guidebook to the Sierra de Prades when there "was already an excellent Spanish guide to the area". I can state that I'd never heard of the Prades until Rockfax came out with the first Costa Daurada book. Armed with that recently published book I went over and had one of the best trips I've ever had--staying and eating and shopping locally. Even early in the season the area was quite busy with many visiting climbers using the Rockfax guide(and putting money into the local economy), and many locals wanting a copy. I always try to buy the local guides, but in the Prades it was impossible to find--the best I was able to do was look at the hut copy at La Mussara. In subsequent trips to other areas, some "Rockfax-inspired", others not, I have also often run into considerable difficulty in locating the local books (and I usually know where to look), but when I find them I do buy them even if I have a Rockfax or equivalent book, and I would also gladly give a direct contribution to the local bolt find if there was an obvious place to do so. I'd also like to comment that in general Rockfax, while surely not perfect, have greatly "raised the bar" on guidebook production in general--not only in the UK, but here in the States and increasingly on the Continent as well--definitely a good development.

In reply to Adrian Berry:

You sort of hit the nail on the head there - this guy works in tourism, so of course he can see the bigger picture and see the benefits that Rockfax brings. The problem is that not everyone will have such an open mind.

Furthermore they may well not appreciate having outsiders, and particulary Brits, telling them how to do things. I'm sure that if some local bolt fund asked you to promote them, you'd be more than happy to do so. I'm sure that lots of us would be more than happy to chuck 5 or 10 euros their way (i.e. far more than they would get from a topo) if there was a way we could do it from the comfort of our PCs (or in a bar - look at how much Steve at the Glaros has raised).


Generally agree with you, with one exception - Buoux, which is where one of the OP's incident's occurred. Didn't the local mayor try and ban climbing there altogether in the 80's ? That's what I was thinking about when I suggested that a big influx might not be appreciated

In reply to nb:

And you are doing what? Avoiding answering some of the questions Alan has posed?


How do you assess the tourism income? Is it "fair" that a once a year tourist contributes as much as someone who climbs there every week?

Perhaps the French should be looking at other ways of funding their bolting if it is so drastically affected by better guidebooks.

Fundamentally I don't really see how the situation is that different to the UK - yes we have some bolt funds but they don't cover every area and some haven't existed for all that long. It has always relied on volunteer effort to go out and equip/re-equip (sometimes at their own cost).


Sorry, but you are verging on foaming at the mouth now. Encroaching on territory etc - what about choice, competition etc?

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Climbing WAS banned. The problem as far as I can remember was caused by climbers abusing the place... parking anywhere, crapping anywhere, sleeping anywhere etc etc. Main culprits were Brits and Germans. Now, all those problems are sorted, but I think that in general climbers are better informed and behaved now, and just increasing the number of climbers in Buoux doesn't mean an automatic return to those days. Also, at that time Buoux was THE place where standards were being pushed and was immensely popular from that point. Now it's no longer à la mode, and so enjoys a less high profile, so a few more climbers shouldn't have too much effect..

In reply to AJM: ive been to Chateauvert twice and it is blissful and excellent. the local guide is cute and i like the ancillary info (flora and fauna) but its a pretty lazy and uninspiring affair generally.

i definitely think foreign publishers should pro-actively seek to make some sort of contribution to the area theyre covering but in economic benefit terms id bet everything i own that the additional income generated by visiting climbers, following publication of a foreign-produced guide, more than compensates for any lost local guide sales.

somebody makes the point above that nobody is stopping French climbers for example making a guide to Pen Twryn or Malham. hard to argue with that logic i.e. Rockfax can and should be free to make guides to wherever. one of the genuine issues does however seem to be when no effort is put in by the foreign publisher i.e. they simply piggyback on local guides through copying and / or not bothering to climb the lines. Rockfax is guilty of this at times but i recognise there are practical limits as to what can be checked. i cant escape the feeling however that not everything that can be done is being done to include / acknowledge the efforts of local climbers.

im not sure however anyone can argue with the fact that there was no guide to speak of for Ceuse (apparently the world's finest sport crag) until Rockfax's recent Haute Provence guide. if the system without Rockfax produces that kind of situation i dont think theres much going for the system...

In reply to nb:

Neil, just out of interest... if you, as a guide, take a client on one of Gilles's routes, you should give him a percentage of you guiding fee?

In reply to jon:
And having an up-to-date and easily available guide, which contains clear and accurate information on parking, access and general behaviour, should help matters.

I remember the german guide I used in the 90s contained the warning "camping in a savage way is banned"

In reply to nb:

It is very easy to verify. Guidebooks have remarkably stable sales patterns. An initial burst is followed by a fairly static year-on-year sales line for about 6 years, then it drops off. If Rockfax had an impact on local guidebook sales this would definitely show up in the sales figures.

I am not ignoring your other points, and I also acknowledge the very valuable point you make about altruistic individuals who put such a great effort in to maintain access and bolting at many areas all over the world. I am just putting together my ideas of how I can address this issue in the long term.

Alan

In reply to jon:

Jon I have personally contributed to the developement of the local crags by equipping routes and I have also bought all the local topos. I really don't think that Gilles expects me or any other guide to give him a percentage of their earnings when working on his routes. If you want me to do so on your routes then let me know and I'll put a levy on the clients?

In reply to MJH:

In reply to MJH:

What questions are these? If you mean the one about Rockfax theoretically boosting the sales of other topos then I'm afraid I'm in no position to answer. Lots of people are asking me questions but I’m afraid I can’t reply to them all. I feel strongly about this issue but I also have a life.


The person who buys the local topos contributes to the bolting effort in the whole area – even on the crap crags! Rockfax should at the very least contribute to the effort on the crags that it covers. Don’t forget that French climbers also travel around and visit other areas for short periods of time. I personally have a whole bunch of topos. I consider 20-30 euros VERY good value for a week of leisure.


The French have found a system that functions well. Perhaps Rockfax should respect it.


French culture towards donating money is VERY different to British culture. Brits consider that many 'worthy causes' should be funded by charitable donations - homelessness, cancer, orphans, injured soldiers, bolt funds ... The French philosophy is that people in need have a right to aid and that these issues should be resolved by a collective effort. Now obviously I am generalising hugely - there are many French charities (Medecins sans Frontières for one!), and the British do also make collective efforts (the NHS). Nevertheless a broad schism between the 2 societies exists. I am not in the least surprised that French climbers prefer a collective effort towards bolt funding rather than relying on individual donations. You probably have to have lived in France for a long time to know what I am talking about. I wouldn't bother trying to make a value judgement on which system is best.


It may sound like foaming at the mouth to someone who is not familiar with how the French organise the maintenance of their crags. In the region where I live different associations take responsibility for different territories. EKIPROC maintain the crags in the Arve, Giffre and Risse valleys, the MAD sport club maintains the crags in the Haut Chablais, Roc Altitude cover the Borne and Aravis mountain ranges etc...etc... I can assure you that no foam is frothing from my mouth as I write these lines.

>what about choice, competition etc?

If you feel that free market rules should take preference over local ethics then I am unlikely to convince you otherwise. Climbing, however, has a history of self-regulation and ethics are the unwritten rules to which most climbers conform. These are usually established at a local level. British climbing has a tradition of imposing ethics which is far more stringent than in most other countries.

In reply to nb:

It was a tongue in cheek post Neil - as I'm sure your reply was! You are more than welcome to use my routes completely free of charge! But on the other hand I don't see much difference between RF making some money out of someone else's hard work and say, the Compagnie des Guides taking clients up them.

In reply to jon:

Many guides from the Compagnie des Guides are active new-routers, often putting up routes that they will never take their clients on. The Compagnie des Guides as a whole invests time & money in the crags around Chamonix without ever expecting amateurs/competing guides to contribute or even give them priority on the rock. They are local players, they know how the system works and they contribute to it. It is unfair to compare them to Rockfax. (Note to readers: I'm not a member of the Compagnie des Guides nor do I wish to be!)

In reply to TobyA:

If you say so, but most of the climbers I happen to know spend a lot less than the average tourist.. and if you know climbers that are rich enough to enhance the economy in Rjukan you've got a much richer set of mates than I have!

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


Sounds positive. Feel free to contact me if you need assistance.

I should mention that although Gilles is the 'main man' in my area concerning crag maintenance, he is just part of a broad community that contributes to the effort.

I myself do very little grafting and am personally glad that I can contribute financially through the topos.

In reply to MJH:
>what about choice, competition etc?

er... read through my posts. I've never said that there shouldn't be competition, just that the playing field should be level. If one publisher is investing in crag maintenance as well as in their topo, they can't be expected to produce the same quality as a publisher that is only investing in their topo. Imagine a society where one set of plumbers had to pay tax and another didn't. The poor buggers paying tax wouldn't last long.

In reply to JimR:

I follow on Facebook the Climb Inn Rjukan - it seems that is a business that simply wouldn't have existed if people didn't go climbing in that valley. I know of a similar example in Northern Norway of a business (hotel, restaurant, guiding) that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for ski mountaineers.

In reply to Adrian Berry:


So basically you're saying that Rockfax would not be commercially viable without plagarising the local topos.

In reply to TobyA:


Ok two small businesses in Norway proves your case. I stand corrected and acknowledge that climbers are in fact the last of the last great spenders.

In reply to nb: To plagiarise is to present someone elses original thoughts/ideas as your own. You cant plagiarise information.

In reply to remus:

This has been a most interesting thread with some very cogent arguments, particularly from nb.

Can a topo or crag diagram and the information within it be protected by copyright ? Or another form of intellectual property right ?

And out of curiosity, since I don't own a Rockfax guide, when Rockfax go to a new area to make a new guidebook, from where do they get the information that ties together the location, name and grade of routes which go into their guide? And is the source of that information acknowledged or referenced in any way ?

Dave

In reply to Dave:

The answer to this is a very definitive yes, we do reference all our sources, in fact we positively encourage people to buy local guides by telling them what extra climbing is on offer in the local publications.

Neil is being mischievous when he uses the word plagiarise. Only those who have never written a guidebook use the word 'plagiarise' in this context and, as pointed out above, this is an incorrect use of the term.

It actually takes a lot more than a list of route names and grades to write a guidebook, that is just the starting point. The job of each guidebook writer should be to use all available sources to gather together the information about an area, then use your own interpretation to create an inspiring, accurate and up-to-date representation of the climbing in an area.

If you want to start claiming exclusivity over route names then you will have a hard time, not least from the people who invented the route names in the first place.

Alan

In reply to nb:

I too don't expect you to do any more than you are already doing, however in the context of this debate I think this is an interesting question. The fact that you buy local topos is irrelevant - I do that, but if you trade on the outdoors then your point appears to be that you should do more than just buy the local topos.

I don't know to what extent you utilise bolted climbs in the areas you take your clients on, but I suspect the answer is that a considerable proportion of your business relies on bolted routes, and many of these will not be in your local area. Your business provides you with a livelihood for a single person, and your contribution to the local crag maintenance system you state is equipping some routes in your area.

Rockfax provides livelihoods for around 4 people and all of us have been involved in new routing, bolting and access work over a period of many years in our local areas.

Petzl, Simond, DMM, CAMP, Edelrid, Black Diamond, Faders, Beal, Boreal, La Sportiva, .... < a very long list>.... rely for their trade on there being routes to climb, and access to the outdoors. They provide livelihoods for thousands of people and I am certain that the contribution per individual across these companies, in both active participation and financially, is a tiny fraction of what you and I put in.

In light of this, is there a reason why you feel that people who write guidebooks for Rockfax have a greater financial responsibility towards maintaining the bolted routes and access to the crags they utilise, than guides like yourself or the thousands of other people in the outdoor trade?

Alan

In reply to JimR:

Well Jim, perhaps you and your mates are really the last of the rufty-tufty dirtbag climbers - I presume you just camp by the side of the road in Rjukan. But most people aren't as tough as you and rent cabins, villas, pay for a campsite with facilities etc. on their climbing trips. They also often have a few drinks in a bar, hire a car, buy their lunch from a local shop - that sort of thing. Kind of like tourists who have gone on holiday to birdwatch, visit medieval churches, windsurf, visit the home of famous painter etc. etc.

In reply to ksjs:
im not sure however anyone can argue with the fact that there was no guide to speak of for Ceuse (apparently the world's finest sport crag) until Rockfax's recent Haute Provence guide. if the system without Rockfax produces that kind of situation i dont think theres much going for the system...

Eh? Keith what are you talking about! I've been on 3 trips to Ceuse between 2001 - 2007, each time we used the last two editions of the local Ceuse guidebook with no problems at all - a great trip was had by all without any of us getting on the wrong route or not being able to find the crag/campsite/gear shop/bar - how did we survive without a full colour symbol-laden idiot's guide I hear you ask, well I guess we must have just been lucky and this, combined with our ancient knowledge of the ways of the sport-climber saw us all through the adventure unscathed.
Yes the book could be better, but it's good enough for the purpose of going climbing at the world's best sport crag, and Ceuse is so obviously brilliant even from miles away that it sells itself without needing A5 photos to inspire! If you can't get excited about Ceuse unless there's a lavishly produced full colour guidebook (not aimed at you Keith) then you should take up another hobby, like jet-skiing I'd add a lot more to the thread but I can't be bothered, other than to say that there's a lot to be said for local-ism (baguettes over hovis anyone?) just as there's a lot to be said for commercialism but to suggest Ceuse never had a useful guide before rockfax came along is complete and utter bollocks!

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

The French do things differently to the UK/US.

Your argument in essence is that the French are wrong and should get with the programme and do what the enlightened Anglo-Saxons do. I'm sure readers can think of analogies here.



In reply to TobyA:


What a wonderfully middle-class list of activities! I thought people went on holiday for the cheap booze and shagging opportunities

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
I said I couldn't be bothered adding to this thread but you've got me intrigued - how much money (if anything) are you planning on contributing to the North Wales Bolt Fund, Alan? Because it's commonly accepted in North Wales that without the voluntary efforts of the NWBF in re-equipping vast numbers of sport routes you wouldn't have a reason to produce the North Wales Limestone guidebook, from which I assume you plan to profit?

I should add that your previous arguments about not wanting to contribute to unorganized bolt funds, in case the money disappears, doesn't hold up in this case - the NWBF is one of the most well organized funds out there and which has a history of re-equipping on the limestone, slate and other crags.

In reply to flaneur:


Well, we are talking about climbers here. It seemed an appropriate list. Anyway you should see what those twitchers get up to on an evening... binoculars in bowl etc.

In reply to petejh:

Hi Pete

NWL is still four books away so I haven't really given it much thought yet. I have a lot of ideas how to co-operate, promote and contribute to the bolt fund though - Facebook page, Just Giving Page, promotion on UKC and in the Rockfax, generally to make donating to the fund easier, and helping to get more outside interests involved. I'd also be happy to kick start the fund at the time with some money.

Keep in touch and we can discuss it nearer the time.

Cheers

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


If the local ethic is to finance crag maintenance through sales of topos, then Rockfax has a moral responsibility to respect this decision. My work as a mountain guide does not direct money away from the local associations. Neither does your work at UKClimbing and as such I’ve never suggested that UKC contributes to local bolting funds.

However you can rest assured that if ever I visit an area where equipping and maintaining the crags is financed through a levy on guides working there, then I will happily comply. I honestly can’t imagine myself refusing to contribute to an area on par with my competitors.


Sorry to spoil your argument but I only very rarely guide on bolted routes. However even if I did so regularly, I would still not be prejudicing the local bolting associations as Rockfax are.

A lot of the people contributing to the bolting effort throughout the Alps - and in SE France in general - are mountain guides. I've personally equipped an entire crag (albeit a small one!) as well as the odd route here and there. I would never consider charging anyone (guides or amateurs) to climb on the routes that I've equipped, no matter where they came from. My approach is very much in line with ethics over here. The Rockfax approach is not.


I don't think that a guidebook writer such as Adrian has any financial responsibility in the matter, although I personally would have a moral dilemma about getting involved in such a venture.

However I do feel that Rockfax, as a company, has a responsibility to ensure that their contribution to the bolting effort is on a similar level to the non-profit making associations with which they have gone into competition. It’s a bit easy claiming top dog status when your rival has chewed off a hind leg to feed the pack! I wouldn’t expect you to contribute uni-laterally though.

> Neil is being mischievous when he uses the word plagiarise.

No mischief intended! I probably should have used plain old ‘copy’ when I was referring to Adrian taking names & grades directly from local topos and putting them into his own one without verification. As you are citing sources then plagarise may technically not be the correct term. Nevertheless, even if copying this information is legal, it doesn’t seem right to me.

In reply to nb:

To be fair Neil, it'd be stupid not to copy the names...! What's the alternative? Re-naming them?

In reply to nb: Neil, do the publishers of selected guides published in French contribute ? - I've no idea but it would be interesting to know.

In reply to jon:

Er no Jon that's not quite what I meant, but it's an interesting concept. I might try it out on the new Gietroz guide that I'm putting together. I'm sure potential buyers will prefer my names to yours!

But seriously, putting a grade to a route is one of the most important aspects of writing a guidebook. If you just copy name/grade from the competing topo then you're shirking your duties a bit.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
The promotional bit sounds good, the 'just giving' bit already exists in the form of numerous 'donate' links on the slate and limestone wikis, and a paypal 'donate now' button on a NWBF webpage set up for the purpose of taking online donations, more traffic would be a good thing though (approx £250 donated so far this year from the paypal button).

You wouldn't be 'kick-starting', the fund has existed for years. Co-operation is good and the onus is most definitely on rockfax to decide what support (if any) they wanted to give and to make contact with the person who organizes the NWBF (which isn't me).

In reply to Doug:

To be honest I don't know of any selective French guides to single-pitch sport climbing (multi-pitch is a slightly different can of worms). Piola (Swiss) has a selective topo to my area which covers multi-pitch routes & crags although it's a bit dated now. He got away with minimal ranting because he has invested SO much of his own time and money in equipping the crags around here. We're talking thousands of bolts.

In reply to nb: I guess the books I was thinking of cover multi-pitch routes. Any ideas about the via ferrata guides ? I guees they cost more than a few routes to equipe but feature in several books/guides

In reply to TobyA:


Eh .. you really have leapt up the ladder of inference have'nt you!!!

All I said was that climbers tend to be tightwads not contributing as much as other tourists to local economies .. cos not surprisingly they're spending their time climbing, rather than spending their money indulging in your extensive list of middle class, middle aged activities ..

In reply to Doug:

Just to give you a general idea of how much things cost... I equipped a TINY via ferrata to allow access to some of the Giétroz crags (above the F/CH frontier: http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crag.php?id=1951) in winter - before there was only access from a different direction and in winter it was frequently snowed/iced up, despite the crags being full in the sun. It's not a VF that you would go to do for itself as its at most only 40m long! There are 22 proper VF galvanised rungs. They cost me something like 300CHF. Then I had to borrow the Compagnie des Guide's petrol drill as a Hilti isn't up to 22mm x 12cm holes. The resin cost me a fortune too. It took me three days one winter. So, very expensive.

But to put it into perspective, the last new route Hilary and I did on the Perrons this year, which is 11 pitches, cost me 400€ just in bolts, hangers and belay rings, not to mention the 19 days over two years. I've also almost finished equipping a new sector of single pitch routes which has so far cost more than that and has 9 routes at the moment, with the potential for maybe 12 - 15.

Am I going to ask Piola for some bolts to help pay for the now 3 long routes on the Perrons that I've financed myself, that also cost about 400€ each, when he puts them in his Aiguilles Rouges Vol 2 guide? No. I open new routes for the love of climbing and doing new routes - not for financial gain. And I guess I'm no different to the majority of people who climb new routes.

In reply to mikecon:

The Rockfax guides are the most comprehensive and clear guides.

The French people claiming you're not spending money in their area is

absolutely ridiclous. Why would one buy a guidebook with no photos in French?

In reply to jon:

I don't know... I'm thinking of charging the Finnish climbing associations for the wire brushes and knuckle skin I've worn out cleaning new routes here!

Actually, not only did I do that, I then sent in all my route info, and provided three photos for the guidebook. I didn't even get a free copy of the guide - let alone any payment. It would be great if Rockfax did a book here!

In reply to TobyA:

Ooops, I forgot the hundreds of wire brushes...

In reply to nb:

I can see that where such a funding route is established, there is a moral responsibility to make up any short fall, and I shall be looking at that with our French guidebooks. This was the type of discussion I was trying to get started before when I got no reply last year. It is possible that I was talking to the wrong person on that occasion, although the person I was talking to would have known the right people and should have replied, but I do have some new contacts now.


I disagree here. I think that our moral responsibility is too make up a short fall, beyond that our responsibility is the same as all others whose trade relies on bolted crags.

Alan

In reply to nb:

Copying the name isn't an issue, as Jon has pointed out. Blanket copying grades would be shirking your duties though although obviously the previous grade is the starting point hence there would be a considerable amount of correlation between editions.

A single author can't climb all the routes - that would be pointless anyway since it would only give you one opinion and mean that a guidebook took 20 years to write. Check as many as you can, and concentrate on key routes that people do, especially in the mid-grades. Ask around and get other's opinions and get an impression of the overall level at a crag. Also investing in in a feedback database so that long term consensus grades can be obtained is also a valuable contribution to ensuring that each subsequent addition of a guidebook improves the information and quality of coverage.

Alan

In reply to petejh:

Get the link up here - http://northwalesboltfund.webs.com/

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
>I think that our moral responsibility is too make up a short fall

How do you intend to calculate this shortfall? If you are going to base it on sales before and after the arrival of Rockfax then your logic is badly warped. By entering into competition with the bolting associations, you are obliging them to “up their game”. You even say that this is one of your objectives. However to “ up their game” they will have to become less amateur and more professional, and put an awful lot more money into the production and distribution of their topo. This money will obviously not be going to the bolt fund. Are you planning to calculate and compensate for this shortfall as well? Mmmmm, thought not!

Bottom line is that the competition can only be fair if all parties are contributing a similar percentage of their revenues to the bolt fund. Try as you may (and you’re trying impressively hard) I can’t see any way around this. If one party has a mathematical advantage over the others from the outset, then I’m sorry but it just ain’t fair. Don't you think you can produce a competitive product without this advantage?

I really can’t work out why you seem so determined to ensure that Rockfax pays less to the bolt funds than your rivals anyway. It honestly doesn’t make good business sense to me. Ok so it will make your guidebook a bit more expensive, but it will also take away a major moral obstacle to choosing your product. I don’t know what your opinion of British climbers is, but personally I think that most of them would prefer it that way.

Neil

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

So basically you're saying the same thing as Adrian. Rockfax is only commercially viable in a competitive market if a team from the local bolting association has done the research beforehand.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Local bolting associations are mostly affiliated to the FFME. Just because it says FFME on the cover, doesn't mean that more government money is available for bolting. The FFME probably like to have their logo on the book because they compete with the FFCAM for membership and it helps promote them.

Most guidebooks explain where the bolting funds for their area come from. Is this the case with the Côte d'Azur guidebooks? If so can you tell us what it says. This would be more informative than vague theorizing.

In reply to nb: the same is true for any select guidebook surely?

In reply to remus:

Which is why the French tend not to do selective guidebooks for single pitch sport climbs. They know how the system works and they respect it. Rockfax have apparently been ignorant of the system until now (that alone I find quite shocking considering they are making money out of it). Let's see how they operate now they do know.

In reply to nb:

I intend to try (for a second time) to communicate with the people involved in the local area and learn what the system is, and how I can work with this system to ensure that there is no loss in funding. I am not expecting that any loss of sales to be proven since that would be impossible, but some indication of what the level of sales are at present, and what the funding system is, would be a nice start.

Alan

In reply to nb: Neil - if you haven't, you better check out 27crags.com I just randomly selected some areas in SE France and lots of crags have been added, e.g. http://27crags.com/areas/%2844.12,4.43%29 and these things tend to go viral. Scandinavia is seeing this happening - in areas where there aren't good guide books all the info is going onto the net. I really think that home made topos are out-dated simply because the info goes onto the net better. Local and national associations need to find other ways to fund bolting - perhaps most obviously by creating online 'honesty boxes' for people who climb there to contribute a small amount towards the up keep.

I think you are picking on Rockfax as just the most obvious example of a trend that has been happening for a long time. I remember going to Orpierre in the mid-90s and just being given by a mate a photocopy of a photocopy of the local topo. But then last summer I bought the Dorset Rockfax for my first trip down there just because it has so much info well present it seemed worth the money, despite I probably could have got enough for my short days climbing off UKC if I had wanted to.

It's a shame none of these local topo writers hadn't had chance to get together and build a good "visitors guide" to the region based on and financing their work. You can bet that the Rockfax will be being sold in shops from Edinburgh to Helsinki, via Hamburg, Copenhagen, Warsaw and Stockholm to us northerners looks for some sunny climbing. Local topos are great for locals, but climbing is bigger than that these days.

In reply to nb:

Except that at least 6 of the crags in Haute Provence didn't have a local guidebook. For those it was a matter of web sites, Jingowobbly and names painted at the base of the cliff. That includes St. Leger of course, which was developed and climbed on for many years before a guidebook was produced after ours.

Alan

In reply to mikeconway:
Surely it is partly down to the local community and how they choose to use the additional funding stream that rockfax visitors bring?

Hypothetically:

No rockfax, therefore no visit from rockfax inspired person.
Amount of money to local economy : 0 euros

Rockfax, and a weeks visit to local area.
Amount of money to local economy:
Camping: 6x5 euros(Cheap!) - 30 euros
food : 6 x 10 euros - 60 euros
beers - 30 euros
petrol : 50 euros
chalk + other nice climbing related things we always buy : 25 euros

Now I think that is a pretty damn cheap week. It is likely we are going to spend way more than that.

So that is well nigh 200 euros per person that is coming into the local economy because of a foreign guide. They are there because of the bolting, of course, but isn't it also true that 200 euros is a a pretty significant amount of extra money coming in to the local community?
It seems to me the benefits potentially far outweigh the downsides. If the local community were to work together and decide how to tax sales that come through the rockfax-inspired tourism to pay for bolting it would produce far more bolting money than the sale of a few paltry guides (which are usually pcopied amongst local climbers anyway).

And finally...tourism is extremely precarious. If local climbers decide the best approach is to harangue people who are legitimately coming and spending money in their local area because they haven't spent 10 euros (and aren't donating 1 euro therefore) to the bolt fund, people just won't go. They will only have themselves to blame.

In reply to nb:


Toulon (2 volumes), Massif de l'Esterel, Chateaudouble, Chateauverte, Verdon Rives Gauche - all FFME logos all over them and produced in the same layout style with the same icons and appear to be the work of Phillippe Bugada. All have most of the text in English as well and are pretty good guidebooks. Les Calanques is in a different style and appears to be a different publisher but also has the FFME logo on it.


Only the Toulon guides mentions anything about bolt funding - "The selling of this guide book contributes to the protective equipment". The others have no text that I can find in English and they are mostly one-to-one translations.
The Calanques guide is only in French and I can't see any text about bolt funding but I could have missed it. My information is that the huge Alpes Maritimes guide contributes nothing to local bolting.

Alan

In reply to middlevern:


Topos describing sport routes are published by climbers to finance the developement of their crags and provide info for other climbers. Their aim is certainly not to promote tourism. All these "Rockfax are bringing huge numbers of tourists to the area" posts are completely missing the point. The idea is not to make as much money as possible. French climbers are like the British in that they tend to prefer their crags quiet and uncrowded. They tread a fine line between selling their low-key topo to fund bolting and hoping that their best crags don’t become too popular. With Rockfax they lose out on both counts.

Anyone seen that film where the local climbers have all been painted blue and the Rockfax team strut around in military uniforms, barking orders and shooting anyone that gets in their way. Nice scenery, but yeah, I thought it went on too long as well.

In reply to nb:

I would have thought that increasing professionalism, improving distribution and general appeal of the local guides would lead to an increase in sales and profits. This is why Rockfax produce good guidebooks that are well distributed, rather than poor guidebooks that are difficult to get hold of.

Alan

In reply to nb: But presumably when the various local bodies (communes, etc) help fund bolting, its done, at least in part, to stimulate the local economy via tourism. Or is it always under a 'sport for all' idea ?

In reply to nb:

You do seem to have taken this to heart Neil... If it's any consolation, I've long sung the praises of Gilles - in several threads on here over the last couple of years. This for instance, from August:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=422996

But, while we're on the subject, just for the record I'd like to point out that your statement...


... Which was quite mild and not at all loaded, but which seems to infer that I have somehow that even though I've produced a topo to a local area a wee bit in conflict your ideals, but it's OK because I bolted a good proportion of the routes... well, I'd like to point out that Giétroz is in Switzerland and not the Haute Savoie!

In reply to Doug:

I posted a reply which although replying to you, was sort of a general reply to anyone interested, but I've just re-read it and it could be misconstrued as being bit stroppy, which certainly wasn't my intention - sorry. But just to add to it, when I first started to bolt new routes here, I paid for everything myself. This situation represents maybe 80% of my routes. Then Gilles Brunot gave me a few bolts and belays. I approached the Cie des Guides and thay gave me a few bits and pieces. Then I approached the Commune de Vallorcine (the mayor at the time was a climber and guide) and they were very generous giving maybe 2500€ worth of gear. This is at odds with Neil's statement that Alan's ideas about local communes funding equipment was 'out of the 80s'. This was as you say in your post above, to stimulate the local economy. Unfortunately, it has since dried up due to a new administration being voted in during the last municipale, so I'm back to paying for this stuff myself. A word about FFME funding... it's true I could apply for that, but the problem is that I could no longer use 10mm bolts - even stainless, which I use as a matter of course. As far as the FFME is concerned, if it's not 12mm expansion bolts or glue ins - then it's considered terrain d'aventure!!!

In reply to mikeconway:
I have just left Provence, and I have to say I fully support Rockfax. Having their guide persuaded us to go there, hence bringing money in tourism to the area. Now I know I clipped the bolts, but they were there before Rockfax even wrote the guide. The bolters, while their significant efforts cannot be ignored or played down, were happy to supply the bolts then. Why should they expect funding now just because theres a decent guide out.
I am all for donations to bolting but see no reason why it should automatically be expected.
Rockfax has done more than enough in bringing money to the area.

In reply to Frankie boy:
That's the spirit, the French should be grateful for our visits. It's a well known fact their economy is largely sustained by the climbing pound. Really, they should be paying us.

In reply to nb:

As part of your guiding do you insist on your customer purchasing a local topo for the route you are guiding them on ?

I know that's a daft question but I have to ask

Aurelio

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Hi Alan,
this is my experience (recent) of using both the haute provence guide Easter this year and the El Chorro guide just back Saturday...

at beoux (easter) we had no one say anything bad about the use of a rockfax guide, virtually every climber who happenend to be near by and didn't own one wanted to look at it as it makes sense of the crag once you are at the base... French, Germans, Austrians, and Swedes all thought it was wonderful.. combined with the definative french guide it makes perfect sense of virtually every route.... but for the visiting climber with 1 or 2 weeks climbing in the area it is the logical choice....
I have a house on the Isere Haute Alp border and spend almost 3 months out there so do buy as many local guide books as possible in order to try and find the local crags but this would amount to about 200€ and most of them are pretty grim...
the same thing happend at El Chorro last week Norwegians Finns Germans Poles Spanish and Americans all wanting to look at the guide....

the only bad comments seem to come from the Brits moaning about inaccuracies such as grades, pitch lengths, walk ins....

In my experience of the area of france i operate in is that most crags are developed with the help of the local commune/mayor even to the point where there is no need for a topo as a board is erected at the base of the crag with routes grades and a nice topo.... if climbers want to develop new areas they will do it anyway regardless of a local bolt fund the fact that others then come along and enjoy these routes should be consolation in itself.... the fact then that somebody deems it worthy to include in a nice glossy guide book thats sold around the world should give them a double helping of satisfaction (by the way bolt hangers are much cheaper in France and Spain around 60 cents for a 10mm passivate.. 1€ for a stainless steel one)

this is the way I operate in South Wales.. I equipped Gilwern Hill and Tirpentwys and didn't take a penny of Bolt fund money and refused any offers or donations... this way leaves you free to do what you want and how you want without any interference..... there are nice laminated topos of these crags being produced with proceeds going to the South Wales Bolt fund which I have absolutely no problem with whatsoever... and if rockfax decided they wanted to produce a guide to South Wales sport I would have no problem with that either I wouldn't feel hard done by and expect a slice of any profit so I could carry on doing what I'd have done anyway..

The fact that Rockfax produce guides to certain areas and do so selectively will not stop the local climbers of that area putting up new routes..(and producing rubbish topos) it in their nature as climbers.... the fact that some one is perceived to be making a profit on the back of someone elses hard work is something we'll just have to all deal with in our own way... no one forces you to buy a particular guide book

I'm prepared to be flammed
Paul

In reply to Paul Bowen:

As with the Cote d'Azur guide, every book I have ever written has upset someone - I guess it goes with the job.

Over the past three years I spent 10 months living and working on the Cote d'Azure, the idea of 'profit' from the book is an interesting one - I don't know what the book has cost, but we were shelling out over €200 a month just in petrol and tolls.


Chris

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


C’mon Alan, think a bit about what you are saying. It’s ludicrous.

In areas where bolting is financed by local associations these associations have, by common accord, been the only ones publishing the topo. With the arrival of Rockfax on the scene they are now being obliged to enter a competitive market with a rival who is unprepared to donate as much money as them to bolt funds. In this very scenario you are expecting them to be able to INCREASE their sales. They would need to be the marketing equivalent of Superman to pull it off.

>This is why Rockfax produce good guidebooks that are well distributed, rather than poor guidebooks that are difficult to get hold of.

Nothing like a good old-fashioned bit of chest-beating! Nevertheless don't forget that, despite your obvious financial advantage over the competition, Rockfax isn’t even able to compete in the arena without copying unverified information directly from their competitors topos!

In reply to owrehleeoh:



Nothing wrong with daft questions! I always insist they buy me a beer at the end of a day. Will that do for an answer?

In reply to Paul Bowen:


Paul, I’d love to flame you but the fire is starting to run a little low, so I’m just going to use this space to showcase the quality of topo that local bolting associations can produce. Click around a bit and you’ll see what I mean. No direct competition from Rockfax was required to stimulate this effort.

http://www.escalade-74.com/ click on ‘Les Topos’ and scroll down to get ‘Vallée de l’Arve’

Note in particular this paragraph:
« Une grande partie des bénéfices de vente de ce topo sont empochés par l'association EKIPROC, qui finance une importante quantité de matériel pour équiper ou rééquiper des voies en Haute-Savoie »

Now I know this doesn’t mean that all French topos are brilliant, but everybody else seems to use isolated examples to prove a wider point so why not me!

In reply to nb:

I've used this guide recently: it's really good. For what it's worth adding a voice to the 100s of posts already, posting about helping the wider economy is missing the point...

In reply to nb:

Sorry Alan. Bit of a knee-jerk reaction there. Your argument is not 'ludicrous'.

In reply to nb:

yes that one looks pretty good for a french guide, and if i was visiting that area for a week or more then i would buy it.. but not because of some statement saying money from the sale of this book helps with the equipping/re-equipping of routes... I would buy it because it is obviously the best guide to the area....
if nobody bought these guide books you are not going to tell me that no more routes would get done?? they would get done because that is what drives these people...the only difference is they would only get done by the 1st ascentionist plus his/her mates and no one else and therein lies the crux...if through hard work and love of climbing you develop a really good crag/route you want people to know about what you've done so you need a topo...trouble is peoples expectations are very high these days and they don't want to pay for books with rubbish photos of your mates drilling or cutting branches or painting names of the routes on the crag and poor line drawings and bad approach maps.... Climbers will pay for guide books but they must be good ...how the money from the sale of the books gets broken down is of low priorty...
In my opinion once you start to expect some form of contribution to pay for equipping it moves the possibility of actually having paying to enter a specific crag or route closer (as with some french via ferrata routes)

In reply to petejh:


And predated even you Pete. Much work was done by the BMC and DMM in the early 90's with the Eco-bolts on NWL. Steve Mayer's, author of the second Rockfax to NWL (I was publisher) led a whole group of requippers in the early 90's. I myself helped and also established new routes on NWL as you know.


I'm in awe at what you have achieved through your personal efforts - and financial contributions. May I say thank you.

It is also commonly accepted that without the efforts of the original new routers on NWL we would have no routes to climb.

We all freeload off their efforts.

Mick

In reply to nb:

Seems reasonable

In reply to Mick Ryan - Senior Editor - UKC:
And predated even you Pete. Much work was done by the BMC and DMM in the early 90's with the Eco-bolts on NWL. Steve Mayer's, author of the second Rockfax to NWL (I was publisher) led a whole group of re-equippers in the early 90's.

Uh huh, it's existed for years. Even me? Surely not.

I'm in awe at what you have achieved through your personal efforts

I find that hard to take seriously. If you are serious then I'm in awe.

- and financial contributions. May I say thank you.

I haven't contributed a penny to the NWBF. Have you?

It's off topic for this thread, but North Wales limestone is a different situation to the argument going on here about French bolt funds. The point about the sport climbs on the N.Wales coast is that over the last 15 years thousands of expansion bolts have needed or still need replacing with resin bolts due to corrosion as a result of the aggressive salt-water environment.

Except that at least 6 of the crags in Haute Provence didn't have a local guidebook. For those it was a matter of web sites, Jingowobbly and names painted at the base of the cliff. That includes St. Leger of course, which was developed and climbed on for many years before a guidebook was produced after ours.

Alan

Hi,

So which ones were these six or more crags without topos/guides?

In reply to cogoen:

St. Leger, Malaucene, Combe Obscure for sure, Bellecombe, Baume Rousse and much of Ubrieux I think. I am not sure about Venasque either. Adrian was the author so he'd be able to tell you better.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

touche

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Hi,

That's odd as I've had 2 versions of the Ubrieux & Baume rousse guides for over 10 yrs (1997 I think when I got the 1st version). There is/was also a well produced hard card topo for Bellcombe-Tarendol before it got into the local guides.

Google: Escalade dans le Drome

While on the other hand - St Leger de Ventoux, Malaucene (Rocher Groseau) and Bedoin (Combe Obscure) have had a local topo since 2008.

Google: Escalade-autour-du-Ventoux

Or:, try these links:

http://www.yadugaz07.com/idrome/topo_passo.jpg

http://www.yadugaz07.com/escalade-drome.php

http://petzlcrew.petzlteam.com/index.php/post/2008/10/24/Nouveau-Topo-:-Esc...


SOEscalade and various other web outlets have these guides, which can be sent to Britain.

In reply to cogoen:

None of these were available in Buis-les-Barionnies when I was there in 2008.


This was published after most of the research had been done for our guide.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Humph, typical. How dare they run out of stock in the local Tourist office as you come in, the Newsagents/Tabac by the 'square', the local Shoppi supermarket on the way out to Ubrieux and Baume Rousse.

I hope you can at least reference these in the Find a Crag section, to help all in our knowledge and spread of guides for the area.

In reply to jon:

I seem to remember buying a topo guide to Buoux produced by a non-French climber in 1988 - some silver-haired British bloke !!!

He must have been making a packet, it was at least £3.

In reply to steve taylor:

Bloody hell, you must have been one of about ten! Ha, talk about limited editions! Must be worth a fortune now...

In reply to jon:

You can have my copy for "a fortune" if you like, I've got a Rockfax one to replace it.

Here are my two cents, as an American living and climbing in France:

I am generally a guide book addict, and only the most obfuscated and ugly of guides put me off. However, in France I often get the feeling that equippers feel *entitled* to guide book revenues, despite that fact that many crags remain secret "bros-only" areas for as long as they can keep lids on them. Furthermore, the FFME pays for a lot of the hardware. Of course, FFME funds and the inevitable rockstar like status of an ouvreur are feeble compensation for hours tearing down ivy and crowbarring of blocks!

The bottom line that I think a little competition would be good. It could help to ameliorate situations like the present one in the Drome, where there are a huge number of mini guides (Ombleze, pont de barret, saou, etc), when they could easily be consolidated into one or two regional guides. It would also benefit situations like that of the Tarn, where one of the best areas in the country did not have a guide book update since the 2003 edition.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

I can't really see a problem here. The Rockfax guide is great for the first-time visitor going out for a week or two, and the odd return visit, but if I was going for longer and/or returning repeatedly I'd buy the local topo's Meanwhile I'm bolstering the local economy via my tourist spend.

An intriguing thread. Having chosen to go to Buoux earlier this year pretty much solely because there was a high-quality guidebook that allowed me to see what I was going to get before I went there, I'm very grateful for Rockfax guidebooks and I do think there's some weight in the argument that a *lot* of people will now go to these areas who never would have done otherwise, and at least some of them will buy the local topo. I didn't, but if anyone knows of a way to do so I will happily contribute to the bolting now.

The issues I see them are as follows:
1) The Rockfax guidebooks have at least the potential to divert money that would go to the local topos and therefore towards bolting.
2) The Rockfax team appear to be keen to contribute to bolt funds, but would have to increase the cost of the guidebook really quite massively in order to be able to contribute any decent amount, because distributors, retailers etc all take their cut.
3) The makers of the local topo do not have this problem because they don't have big retailers and distributors.

So, forgive me if this is a massively over-simplistic solution, but: would it be possible for Rockfax to sell guidebooks to whoever it is sells the local topos at the UK wholesale price, and then all the retail profit of the guidebooks which are bought locally can go to the bolt fund, just as with the local topo?

Please do pick holes. I'm just really keen that this thread might actually contribute towards finding a better way forward, and I'm sure there's a way that this can be worked out.

Pete.
(Please note, I am only a humble doctor and have no real conception of how selling large volumes of a product actually works in practice.)

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Huh? This moral responsibility seems quite flexible and egoistic.
Petzl does rely on bolted crags, at least to some extent. However they don´t directly increase the amount of shit (or tourist climbers) in one specific climbing location. That´s why your responsibility goes longer than theirs.

Acting morally for a company, at least in my view, is about minimzing negative sideeffects of your product from the start (in your case like informing about local guidebooks, where to buy them, pressing access issues, info about where to find upto-date access info and so on) AND taking care of the situation when the shit hits the fan.

Somewhere in the thread you wrote that you are contributing in the UK only, thats good but not good enough. What isn´t even good is your suggestion to let the climber voluntarily donate money. If standing alone, that´s a way too easy solution and seems like a way to escape your responsibilities. And, finally, I don´t think that would generate a lot of money either, people are like you(?) and me, egoistic. At least in the nordic countries individual and voluntary financing of greater common goods doesn´t seem the way forward.

In reply to DanielJ:

I am not sure which bolts Petzl quickdraws are going to clip if they aren't the ones on bolted crags. These big companies have turnovers 50 times greater than small guidebook companies and have funds specifically set aside for this sort of thing. No matter what the moral argument is, they make a much more sensible target since they actually have the cash.


A decent guidebook actually spreads the load. Before the Haute Provence guide, many visiting climbers didn't go to a lot of the crags around Buis since they hadn't heard of them, they went to Buoux, Orpierre and Ceuse instead since they knew about them. Now there are a dozen more crags to consider. Good guidebooks that inform climbers of new locations spread the load.


Agree here. This is what we do of course.


Actually I think it is Toby that has hit the nail on the head in this discussion where he suggested that in the future the Internet would take over anyway. The days are certainly numbered for poor local topos since they will be replaced by poor online (free) topos relatively quickly. The days could also be numbered for good wide-area topos like ours since they too will be replaced online resources.

However the Internet also offers some new opportunities one of which is the ability to shake your collecting tin in front of the nose of every climber using 'PayPal Donate Now' and that sort of thing. We are looking at doing something along those lines at Rockfax.

Alan

In reply to PeteH:

This would be relatively easy for me to do but, considering that the book isn't even stocked locally, I think it will be hard for me to persuade local climbers to sell the book themselves. I will try though but I'd be surprised if they actually go for it.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
It'd be interesting to see. There are a few issues, of course. If the same guy is offering a shiny Rockfax book versus a rather more poorly-produced hand-drawn topo, and they're about the same price, then not very many people will buy the topo. However, if all they're interested in is getting money for their bolt fund, and they can get as much money for the bolt fund on the profit margin from selling your Rockfax guide as they can from selling the local topo, then there shouldn't be a problem. So we would need to know how much of the topo money does go to the bolt fund, where the rest of it goes, and how that compares to the profit margin on the Rockfax guide.

Good luck!
Pete.

In reply to PeteH: Many of these "local" topos are on sale in Au Vieux Campeur's Paris bookshop - anyone (Neil ?) know if they sell them without the usual retailers markup so as to allow more of the price to go the relevant bolt fund ?

In reply to Doug:

Hi Doug

Diversity is now the key to attracting tourists - via ferratas, canyons, accrobranche, mountain-bike pistes etc... So although towns might help to maintain a couple of low/mid grade crags, they will generally leave the rest to the local associations. Now there are towns out there which could be used to suggest the contrary (eg Jon’s town Vallorcine), but I think this is a fair description of the general trend. Even Vallorcine has now succombed!

The FFME (French equivalent of the BMC) have historically helped finance the bolting and maintenance of numerous sites, particularly in the south of France. They seek funding from a number of sources – government, advertising, sponsorship etc... - but they are also very much reliant on topo sales to fund their work. Anyone wanting to contribute can buy their topos here http://www.ffme.fr/boutique/categorie.php?id=1 . These topos are created by local climbers and then certified by the FFME. Alan’s claim that the federation imposes bolting regulations on new-routers is misleading. They simply insist that the crags are classified in one of 4 categories if the topo if it is to carry the FFME logo. These categories depend on the equipment used and the spacing between the bolts. They are - terrain d’aventure, site sportif, site de bloc and initiation. The same crag can be in more than one category if it has a mix of route styles http://www.ffme.fr/escalade/site/topo.htm .

People shouldn’t just assume that the effort is finished when all the bolts have been placed. The equipment needs maintaining on a regular basis and sometimes catastrophic events mean that a huge amount of work is suddenly required. For example a forest fire recently devastated the environment around the crag at St Beauzille de Montmel, and the heat generated caused an enormous amount of damage to the equipment and the rock itself http://www.ffme.fr/escalade/ARTICLE.php?id=3868 . The whole crag needs to be purged and the bolts tested and replaced if necessary. This work will be carried out by the FFME if and when they find funding, but in the present economic climate this is not guaranteed. The last thing they need is for money to be diverted from their topo sales by a competing product that doesn’t contribute. Are you planning to cover this crag Alan?

This partnership between local bolting associations and the FFME is by no means the norm everywhere. In many areas, including mine (Haute Savoie), the local bolting associations just have to get on with it. I imagine that climbers from these areas would resent the presence of a non-contributing guidebook even more.

At the end of the day I personally have no preference for how the bolts are financed; individual efforts, council grants, associations, sponsorship – I really couldn’t care less, I just want them to hold my falls! However if the locals decide to fund bolting through the sales of their topos, then it seems appropriate that competing publishers should share this responsibility.

Rockfax should really be paying me a consultancy fee for all this! More to come!! Next episode – How much money from the local topo goes to the bolt fund?

In reply to jon:

A French climbing association spontaneously providing an Englishman with equipment for his voluntary bolting work in Switzerland. What an inspirational example of how things can be done with a bit of mutual respect and understanding!

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Hi Chris

What is your relationship like with the authors of the Kalymnos guide at the moment? I've heard rumours but I'd love to have your view.


Chris you're a guidebook writer ffs. If you ignore the obvious grading issue it must be about the least controversial job in the world. Doesn't the fact that you're upsetting all these people suggest you are doing something wrong!

In reply to nb:

... and as I said to you in my email, after two donations of gear, I refused Gilles's help as I considered it to be abusing Gilles's generosity as the crags were in CH. What a reasonable guy I am!

In reply to nb: I've been following this discussion with some interest, and I have a question about bolt funds and the notion that Rockfax should contribute to them.

How is Rockfax to know which areas I visit, and hence which bolt funds to contribute to? If there are 10 crags that have bolt funds covered by Rockfax's book, and I visit just one of them, why should Rockfax be required to contribute to all 10 bolt funds on my behalf?

I don't know what the solution is. But it seems unrealistic that Rockfax can afford to contribute (at least not on a significant level) to every bolt fund for every crag covered by their guide. For crags where we spend time, maybe we should all just buy the local topo, even though we already own the Rockfax guide?

Visitors that frequent a crag and purchase neither the Rockfax guide or the local topo should be required, at least as much as any other frequent visitor, to contribute to local bolt funds. Again, the purchase-the-local-topo-to-fund-bolts idea doesn't work here.

Perhaps it's time for a new system for bolt funding to be invented.

In reply to nb:

We don't want hard facts to get in the way of rumours do we?


You misunderstand; every guidebook I write upsets 'some' people, these are hugely outweighed by the positive feedback we get from the vast majority of our users.


Chris

In reply to V0chuffer: I agree,one of my great passions in climbing is exploration.In a way the rockfax guides don'nt even get close to helping with finding those elusive mega-areas that if you stumble on them you know you have found something specail.
Ask local'bros'about new crags in the tarn area and you might get lucky and find youreself at a crag not in the guide and a route that has no lines of people or paper tissue mountains(at least during high season).If you are unlucky they will pretend not to speak french(!) or english,blank you and just walk on by.
These amazing climbing areas are victims of their own success,locals often know this the Rockfax guides are definately viewed with suspicion...in the the same way as a iplayer bouldering guide to crag x say(peak lime)would be looked at by its own devoted locals.Alot of their attitude I just see as damage limitation.When one local at the tarn told me how much it had cost him to equip some relatively recent rts there I was a bit shocked.
Its a never ending debate,i like rockfax for the photo diagrams etc accomodation info,access info they are great guides but i don'nt use them without the local ones

In reply to witnessthis:

Same here. I have a library of local topos, alpine guide books, Rockfaxes, my collection of UK guides etc etc... hundreds of books. I buy all local guides as well as RF - I just don't see the problem.

In reply to nb:

This is a very good question, and one which I think is at the heart of the matter!

I've climbed at loads of places where there is a direct opportunity to contribute to local bolting and usually do so. Two good examples are -
- Kalymnos - I always make a donation to the bolt fund run by Steve in the Glaros. This seems outstandingly successful - see the recent UKC article
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=2953
- Owens River Gorge, California - I always put something in the collection box in Wilsons Eastside Sports (assume it's still there, it's a few years since I've been).

I've climbed all over France, and don't recall ever seeing such a thing. Why not? ("It's France" may be an adequate explanation!). It seems to me to be a far more cost effective method of raising funds rather than relying on topo sales. How may topos would need to be sold to raise 10,000 Euros as the Glaros fund has?

The most recent French topo I've bought (3 weeks ago) is "Escalade dans le massif de la Clape" for the area near Narbonne (a great place where we really enjoyed the climbing). It's a fairly typical small-area topo which cost 16 Euros in the local tourist office, and I think raises several interesting comments/questions -
- how many bolts will me buying that book actually fund? I find it hard to believe it's more than 1 or 2.
- It's a new guide (2009) and includes a mention of the authors website -
http://andre.berche.sudsportsnature.pagesperso-orange.fr/accueil/sommaire.h... . The topo can be bought direct from the website using credit card or paypal, but as far as I can tell with my French, there is no mention on the site that sales support the bolting, or a facility to simply donate to a bolt fund. Surely that should be an obvious thing to have?
- there is no mention in the topo itself, as far as I can tell, that sales of the topo will contribute to the bolting, although there is a request not to photocopy it ("Le photocoPillage TUE le livre" and a little picture of a pirate!). Also no mention of contacting the author or any local bolting initiative. Again, surely this should be an obvious thing to have in HUGE print?
- as to the topo itself, as I said it's pretty typical - lots of info about the area itself, a complete list of the routes by grade (which is useless as an index because it doesn't give page numbers!), details of the equippers/re-equippers (which always seems more important than 1st ascent details to them), and fairly un-detailed black and white line drawings. The route details themselves take up 35 pages of a 65 page book - why is it so expensive, at 16 Euros, and isn't that just an open invitation to photocopy it in the first place??
- not all the routes have names at the bottom, so we spent quite a lot of time counting bolt lines (sometimes up to 10) to find a route from the last known point! The book is full of B&W photos anyway (often on the same page as the crag drawing), so why not use photos instead of line drawings? This would make it a better, more professional-seeming publication and better value for money I would think. Quality crag-shots is one obvious reason why people buy Rockfaxes!

As I say, this is pretty typical of topos I've got from all over France - about 40 on my shelves, and I shudder to think how much they've all cost! I've also got the Haute-Provence Rockfax, and have just ordered the Cote d'Azur one - maybe I'm a total guide-book addict (quiet at the back!), but it proves that in at least one case Rockfax isn't killing local topo sales. Next time I'm at Buoux, I'll have the Rockfax, and if anyone whinges, I'll wave the local topo in their face as well!.

Actually, the La Clape topo raises a few questions for Rockfax as well - Alan?
- Is Rockfax planning to cover the area with La Clape in it, and if so will La Clape be included? Its a fairly small area, so if included in a Rockfax, to be worthwhile it would probably include all the routes - what effect would this have on the local topo?
- As I said it's a new topo with full (website) details on how to contact the author. Would Rockfax try to do so in advance?
- It has a full list of the route equippers (often but not always the author), and the local club. Would Rockfax try to contact/acknowledge these?
- would Rockfax reference the local topo in their publication?

To be honest, if Rockfax do all those things, and the locals still don't engage with them, I don't see what else they can be expected to do, and would look forward to seeing the new Rockfax!

Cheers
Andy

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Actually I do want the hard facts to get in the way of the rumour - that's why I asked you!

Are you going to answer now or just continue ignoring my question?

In reply to Chris Craggs:


And anyway it's the locals, not the customers who are getting upset. It's easy to ignore them.

In reply to mikeconway:

I was at the foot of a crag in Burgundy with the jingo wobbly guide to Burgundy. One French climber, a novice apparently started making a remark similar to those made to you but the bloke who was with him and going to lead the climb - obviously the experienced climber who was teaching the novice - said that the problems had been sorted and as the JW guide book was only a selection of climbs and advised climbers to buy the local topo for the reasons given there was no problem. So apparently attitudes are not the same all over France.

I answered that as it would suit me if there no more bolts placed I certainly wouldn't buy the local topo to finance bolts The older guy just laughed and said that anyway it had been out of print for ages. Later on I did buy a French guide to the area which had less gongs and whistles than the JW version but had a lot more climbs.

Personally I think that there's no reason for there to be a monopoly, it's a free world, and the the local topos aren't always that good, obviously mostly in French - a bit of competition might wake the local clubs up a bit.

In reply to nb:

I write the guidebooks for the customers. The locals don't need them - obviously.

Chris

In reply to nb:

Well as I don't know what the rumours are it would be hard to refute them.

I sent Aris comments for the 300 routes I have done on Kalymnos, I gave him some crag-shots he was missing, he used some of my action shots for the book. I proofed the whole manuscript. He invited me to the launch and gave me a signed copy of the book. We have met socially on several occasions too.

So what were the rumours?


Chris

In reply to Andy Cairns:

The third volume doesn't extend as far as La Clape, however I will answer it hypothetically.

We always reference local topos in these books and generally point people at them within the text as well where there are sections that aren't covered.

I can't think of an occasion where we have completely covered a crag so that the local guide had nothing more. There may be an example but I think it will be only where the local guide is very old and out of date.

We have tried to contact local authors where possible but the reply was very frosty in Haute Provence. Adrian has had some good co-operation with the Gorges du tarn climbers for the next volume after Cote d'Azur

Actually crediting equippers is an awkward one. We don't do this as a rule since the style has developed from Spain where such information is almost impossible to come by. It is more easily found in France so perhaps it is something we should think about now. A better option may be a general credit for prolific equippers in the introduction to a crag.

Alan

In reply to Chris Craggs:


Rumour has it that you were seen in a certain ‘Kalymnos Klub’ doing highly inappropriate things with climbing gear while reciting some of the steamier passages from the Rockfax topo !

Only kidding - just following the universal rule which states that if you talk yourself into a spot, you should quickly make a joke!

And I am in a bit of a spot! Thing is that being a man of integrity, I don’t believe in spreading rumours on an internet forum. However now you’ve asked, if I don’t answer your question people might well assume that this rumour is way worse than it actually is, and also it doesn’t give you a chance to refute it (which was the whole point of my original post).

So anyway, RUMOUR has it that the authors of your Kalymnos topo now don’t want to work with Rockfax anymore.

I’ll just go off and tighten the old cilice belt.

In reply to nb:

The authors of the Rockfax Kalymnos topo being Alan James and Nick Smith - http://www.rockfax.com/publications/miniguides/item.php?id=45

I can't speak for Nick, but I am keen to work with Rockfax for the foreseeable future. I think Nick too would consider himself part of the UKC/RF team still even is he has removed his photo from this page - http://www.ukclimbing.com/general/about.html

Not a difficult rumour to check up that one.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Nice reply. Made me laugh anyway!

But who's Aris? Is he still happy to work for Rockfax?

In reply to nb:

Aris is the author of the local guide who Chris mentions above. He has never worked with us on a guidebook but we have had discussions about guidebooks in the past, that was back in 2003. Since then he has produced at least 3 very good editions of his own guidebook.

We have no plans any more to do a guidebook since Aris is doing a great job and the pace of development is so fast, we couldn't possible keep up. Our miniguide is out of date, although it isn't too bad for the limited set of crags it covers. It is still online simply because, if we removed it, I would get a load of emails asking where it had gone both by those who had bought it before, and new users. It doesn't sell very many copies anymore though - 30 in the last year.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
Thanks, Alan. I still think topos like that would give you a bit of a problem area, though -
- it is a new guide, not an out of date one.
- relatively few routes on a few good buttresses - I don't see how you could do a selective coverage effectively.
- if as you say above you didn't include it because of those factors, as a Rockfax customer I'd be a bit pissed off that you'd missed out some of the best climbing in the area.

Cheers
Andy

In reply to nb: Alan has replied to my post of 12:04 - any comment from your point of view?

Cheers
Andy

In reply to Andy Cairns: 'How may topos would need to be sold to raise 10,000 Euros as the Glaros fund has?'

That's a tricky question. The only realistic answer is that we don't know. One hears all sorts of rumours about what percentage of the revenue from the sales of French topos ends up funding bolts and what percentage goes to the people who produced the topo. Who know the reality? One should also bear in mind that in may of the more popular areas of France e.g. Orpierre the bolting is actually carried out by workers from the local Synicat d'Initiative, who recognise the economic benefits that climbers bring to their communes.

In reply to nb:

Actually just picked up on this point, and I'd agree with much of it. I'd also say that if money from topo sales is that important to them, the FIRST thing they need is for it to be actually available on sale! We went to St Bau last year, with a friend who has a topo, and were impressed with the crag and the area. The topo is also one of the few French ones I'd like to own, rather than just have to find the routes, as it has good diagrams, is interesting to read, and has a good cartoon story at the end! But it isn't on sale anywhere locally! We went into the bar in St Bau, named in the topo as stocking it, and they said they didn't have it, hadn't for ages, and didn't know anywhere you could get it. None of the other shops in St Bau, or in neighbouring villages which sold other local topos, had it. The only place I could find a reference to it was on the website for the Yeti shop in Montpellier, and you cant order from outside France!! Again, if the local bar is friendly, why not have a collection box for the bolt fund?

Cheers
Andy

In reply to petejh: Hi Pete, mais oui, je prefere les baguettes et les croissants!

i probably have no right to comment as i havent been to Ceuse or seen the guide. my impression was that the guide was some or all of the following: hand/line-drawn, lacking in descriptions, no colour, low quality, intermittently available and generally uninspiring. i just cant see how Ceuse doesnt merit more.

yes, of course the climbing will still be fantastic and it wont detract from a trip there but i just love good guides. they can add another dimension to an area: bringing routes to life, photos that inspire, information on local wildlife / geology, some of the history of and characters involved in the crag's development, graded list and so on. now, maybe this is a legacy of the UK trad climbing's tradition of descriptive guides hence our continental cousins just dont go in for this that much but i definitely feel it adds something.

maybe the best example i know of is Siurana: ive been twice and had brilliant trips but the guide is a real let down. for example i would never pick it up when at home to get inspired or reminisce. whereas i spend too much in bed with the excellent North Wales Rock and BMC Burbage and Millstone guides.

like i say, maybe its unrealistic to expect countries with a different climbing heritage to have the same approach to guides as the UK but i think, of all places, Ceuse deserves a guide to go with its status.

In reply to ksjs:
Hi Keith. I don't disagree with any of those points, and I too think we're spoiled when it comes to guidebooks in the UK. I was disagreeing with your statement that there was 'no guidebook to speak of for Ceuse before the Rockfax came along'. This isn't true and gives entirely the wrong impression.

I'm a book geek too and I find the BMC and CC guides best for this obsession, the new GU Slate should be good too. I think it's a uniquely British thing to be honest - I can't think of any area where I've climbed and own the guidebook to in Canada, the US, France, Spain, Oman, Italy or Argentina where I've wanted to sit down and actually read the guide for snippets of history/character of the area etc etc; in these places they're more just tools to get you where you want to go and there's nothing wrong with that, you end up making your own memories of climbs and places anyway regardless of what the guide was like! I think it's a bit off to expect UK-quality publications for anywhere else outside the UK if it impacts negatively on a local scene - but that's the classic globalisation argument in a nutshell. Cheers Rockfax for bringing issues of globalisation and commercialism into climbing guidebooks, we really needed that. Thatcher would be proud of your ethos Alan

In reply to mikeconway:
Great thread and very interesting reading. Rockfax....mmmmm.... Personal experience on trips is of fantastic guidebooks, well-written, interesting read and all the right information. However personal experience of my local climbing area (until very recently) is very different. A poorly researched, inaccurate, downloadable guide was produced a number of years ago for Tenerife. Wrong grades, names and lines were frequent in a guide clearly cobbled together during somebody's holiday.
That's fine, there's nobody saying you can't publish information that is incorrect (route names) and debatable (grades - some 7a's in the guide are actually solid 8a's). However the biggest problem is that information was published about a crag that had serious on-going access issues where locals had reached a tentative 'tread-lightly' policy with the local authorities. There were access restrictions during the nesting season for a particular species of bird, parking issues and a policy among ALL local climbers to fully respect this. No mention was made of this (not surprising, only local knowledge would allow access to this information) and the guidebook published information for the crag with a number of routes being identified with '?' as their name and '?' as the grade as well as a whole bunch of inaccurate names and lines.
A couple of years later a locally produced guidebook was produced and the crag in question, which in the opinion of the vast majority of climbers on the island is by far the best, was omitted as the access issues continued to exist. Only in the last guidebook (published Summer 2010) was this crag included after strenuous efforts by the local mountaineering federation in negotiation with the government environmental agency led to climbing being classified as an activity compatible with wildlife protection in this area.

This begs a number of questions.... 'Should companies like Rockfax not attempt to work with local climbers to achieve a consensus beneficial to all?' 'Should Rockfax have a clear policy to ensure sensitive issues such as access are clearly researched before publishing information?'.
In this particular case it really is like a foreign company publishing a guide to NWL and including Craig y Forwyn (or similar crag with serious access issues) - this leads to an influx of visiting climbers which further complicates access issues.

On another issue related to this thread both guidebooks were financed using money from the local council and regional government for tourism promotion to cover publishing costs. All written work, design, translation and photography was done for free by local climbers with ALL profits being re-invested in re-bolting existing routes and new routes.

One more point - plenty of inaccurate information about Ceuse here - I was there in 93, bought the local guidebook and had no problem finding my way around - I guess it all depends what you want from a guidebook.

In reply to sean coffey:

Come on Sean, don't be ridiculous and judge the whole Rockfax repertoire and publishing ethic by one MiniGuide published in 2003. Read the caveat on the page with that guide - http://www.rockfax.com/publications/miniguides/item.php?id=33

As it says on that page, we haven't been there recently, and we had no plans to go there. If these access problems you mention were so critical why hasn't someone mentioned it to us in the 7 years since the guide was published? It is not as if Rockfax is hard to contact.

I would have withdrawn that MG years ago were it not for the fact that I'd get countless requests for it since it is still one of the few widely available sources of information. I would certainly have instantly withdrawn it had someone from Tenerife told me that it was causing access problems.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:
Hi Alan
In no way do I aim to judge Rockfax based on one Miniguide from 7 years ago - look again at the first sentence of my post where I mention the fact that I have used fantastic Rockfax guides (notice the plural here) on a number of climbing trips.
I was informed that local climbers had contacted Rockfax about the access issues in Guaria (Guia de Isora). If this information was 'lost in translation' or simply didn't happen so be it but it does not take away the sentiment that Rockfax should do some research BEFORE publishing. It's all very well saying that you would have pulled the miniguide but by then it has been downloaded, passed on, copied etc.
I do not wish to give the impression that I'm doubting Rockfax's professionalism (again, I refer you to my first sentence), I'm just giving an example where a different approach could have been used..

In reply to sean coffey:

Is this another one of those rumours?

It did not happen.


So if you are not judging our entire policy by 7 year old miniguide, then I assume you must be judging just that miniguide, and the method we used to produce it.

Rest assured we don't use the same methods any more and haven't done for 7 years.

Actually it is 8 years since it was published in December 2002. It was written by a keen brit who had never written a guidebook before, and hasn't since. He did a good job under the circumstances but it was a flawed publication. It is about the most atypical Rockfax publication there is.


Alan

In reply to AJM:


There has been a lot of speculation in this thread about just how much money from locally produced topos goes to buying bolting equipment. Much of it has suggested that a very small percentage of the cover price actually goes to the bolt fund, and that this method is not a cost-effective way of financing bolting and crag maintenance. A number of these posts have come from the Rockfax team.

Here are some figures from the topo to my local area (the Arve valley).

The book costs 30 euros and this price is broken down as follows:

VAT - 1.05
Retail outlet - 9.95
Printer - 4.50
Distribution - 4.10

So the local association that publishes the topo gets 10.40 euros for each book sold.

Of this sum 40% goes directly towards buying bolting equipment, with the rest of the money going on computer hard/software, accountancy, tax and intellectual property rights. Compare this with the 1% of turnover that Alan suggested Rockfax might be able to donate to local bolt funds!

The association that publishes the topo (EKIPROC) has spent an average of 4200 euros per year on bolting equipment over the past 10 years. This money comes from the sales of 2 different topos.

The editing, formating, researching and administration are all done voluntarily, as is the bolting and maintenance work. Transport costs are not refunded.

Now I’m not going to pretend that all associations contribute the same amount per topo sold. The Arve valley guidebook however, is a very professional affair and they have a lot of overheads to cover. The 20 Francs you used to pay for a photocopy in the local bar back in the day, often went straight into the bolt fund. The bar-owner was just happy to get the extra custom.

It really is up to Rockfax to research the local situation before they start producing their topo and then to base any contribution on this. The accounts of the local bolting associations are all consultable and could serve as a base for negotiation.

Neil

Coming soon – those Rockfax/FFME dialogues in full !

In reply to Adrian Berry:


Of the 1550 routes in the Arve Valley guidebook, Gilles Brunot - the author - has climbed 1450 of them, many multiple times. That’s with holding down a full-time job, doing countless hours of voluntary work for the bolting association and getting strong enough to climb the odd F8b. His guide-book costs 30 euros.

There are many ‘Gilles Brunots’ throughout France. I suppose you could always argue that being local gives them an unfair advantage over the Rockfax team!

Neil

In reply to nb:

Interesting stuff, cheers Neil. Looks like somewhere round about 15% then by my count, more if you count tax (I'd assumed to be fair as a non-profit it wouldn't pay any), accountancy etc.

Do the French do collection tins at all? I only wonder because to be honest given my choice there are some places (say Ceuse) where I'd prefer to pay my £25 in the UK for the Rockfax and chuck €5-10 in a tin to fund the bolting than to spend in total roughly the same amount on a poorly produced local guide - I get a far higher quality guide that covers far more areas, the bolt fund gets the same amount as before, and everyone is happy, perhaps.....?

AJM

In reply to nb:

It sounds like they have a good thing going in this area Neil and good luck to them. I shall certainly keep it in mind if we ever go in that area, but we don't have any plans to do so at present.

As far as I am aware, none of the areas in the Rockfax guides to Haute Provence and Cote d'Azur has anything like this level of funding from their guidebooks.


I have written to the FFME and two local contacts around Buis. That was a week ago, I'll let you know if they get back to me.

Alan

In reply to nb:
Of this sum 40% goes on...blah blah.... intellectual property rights. >

'Intellectual property rights'? Is that money well spent?

In reply to mikeconway: Fun stuff on Euro guidebooks. The main principle is that there is a lot (I mean a lot !!!!!!) of money flowing around the FFME (Federation Francais Montagne Escalade), that in many ways goes to support both climbing, training, comp teams, bolting, guidebooks, clubs, social climbing cohesion etc – France for heavens sake is a republic where there is a massive collective central fund that distributes all over the place. Trying to make any sense out of what supports what -- !!!- is competely hypothetical, and simply an excuse for a rant. Both Jingo Wobbly and Rockfax are publishers, OK we do things in different ways, both on the ground in our guidebook style, and as publishers – so there isn’t any link remotely. Jingo Wobbly attitude is quite simply – sell what is on the outside of the Can, in other words, make a guidebook to the best of your ability (rant forthcoming), and sell it at a minimum price to pay for the production. Then add any extra funds you want – in additional price - for access lawyers, bolting funds etc - in the shops, which will pay that directly to the relative funds – with no vat, shop cream off, fiscal cream off, distribution cream off etc etc etc. The buyer then knows what they are paying for the production of a well produced colour book, and how much is going to the various damn good funds. Only the shops can do this because they collect the money and can separate it out. As a publisher, if we added a euro for access, then the shop would add 2 euros since that is what shops charge for anything they buy in, so the punter pays 3 euros extra, and only 1 goes to access – barmy!!!! Publishers are just like bolters, just leave them to get on with the job that they know how to do, and work bloody hard at, collect at the point of sale if you want a bolt fund etc.

In reply to AJM:


In order to be able to accept donations, a French association must be recognised as being in the public interest (Association reconnu d'utilité publique). This status is not applicable to local bolting associations.

These associations rely on topo sales to fund their work.

It may be that the only way you can help with the bolting/maintenance effort is to provide equipment. This may actually be the only way that Rockfax can operate as well. I don't know the finer points of the law.

Obviously a collective effort via Rockfax would be a lot easier than individual efforts.

In reply to mikeconway: Bottom line of bolting funding - should have nothing to do with shoes, ropes, clips, guidebooks, clothing etc. It should be direct to whoever clips the gear and relies on it for personal safety - it is they who should dip into their pockets. How about a 10 cents per go attitude from the climbers using the bolts.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:


Just the fact that you aren’t aware doesn’t shine a very positive light on your involvement in the area. If the topos you compete against don’t have to contribute much money to the bolt funds then all the better for Rockfax! Nobody is suggesting you contribute more than the locals. Research their accounts and base your contribution on this. Negotiate downwards if combined funding from both topos exceeds the cost of bolting/maintenance.


I have written to both the FFME and to the author of my local topo over the past week. Both got back to me within 24 hours with long and detailed emails.

I know that the people you contacted in the FFME were irritated by the tone of your letters, in particular concerning a perceived lack of awareness of environmental issues. Don't forget that they are the ones that have to sort out the access problems.

Also comments to the effect - It's a free market, may the best man win! - will not endear you to people who see their work as being in the wider interest of the climbing community. Try putting this in your email and see what happens - “We are prepared to contribute to the local bolting and maintenance effort on a par with the locally-produced topo”.

Finally, I have no idea what language you are using in your emails. Common courtesy would suggest French to be the most appropriate. Contrary to popular belief, Johnny Foreigner doesn’t always find it easy to communicate in English.

In reply to Jingo Wobbly Editor: Bottom line of bolting funding - should have nothing to do with shoes, ropes, clips, guidebooks, clothing etc. It should be direct to whoever clips the gear and relies on it for personal safety - it is they who should dip into their pockets. How about a 10 cents per go attitude from the climbers using the bolts.

That's far too simplistic an argument.

The real bottom line is that every crag and area has a unique set of circumstances. Take this for example: http://news.v12outdoor.com/2010/11/16/new-limestone-guidebook-to-support-no...

Now try explaining why Jingo Wobbly should publish a guide to NW Limestone and not feel obliged support the bolt fund, in an area which relies heavily on the fund and volunteer's efforts, not for the equipping of new routes and crags , but for making literally many hundreds of routes safely climbable again after years of sub-standard bolting. I agree that individual climbers should contribute and they already do via various collection ideas including bouldering aggregates, collection tins, onlione donate buttons.
It's pretty simple - individual climbers don't gain any financial reward from climbing bolted routes, guidebook publishers do gain a financial reward from them. Yet you seem to be trying to say that it's individual climbers who should contribute financially as well as give their time and effort. Which begs the question, what exactly are you prepared to contribute? A book?
It's already been shown that producing good quality full colour guidebooks isn't rocket science and companies like yours and Rockfax can't claim to be doing anything that can't be done by motivated volunteers with modern desktop publishing software.

I'd be more inclined to argue that climbers should contribute their time and effort, and companies like yours should contribute their money, where well-organized bolt funds exist.

In reply to petejh:


Who has shown that exactly? I know the modern generation of BMC guides that have met with so much praise rely on volunteers for much of the work, but does Grimer still edit them? He's a pro. Are there examples of quality modern guidebooks produced only by volunteers?

In reply to TobyA:

Do they CC or FRCC have professionals on board? I don't think the CC do, and their new series aren't bad

In reply to AJM: I also just saw Pete's new thread about the N Wales Limestone guide, so he will be able to give that one as an example! (Although that a bit sneaky because Simon Panton is a pro even if he is volunteering for that project)

In reply to TobyA:

Grimer sprinkles magic dust but in modern volunteer guidebook production is the exception not the norm: most are volunteer produced.

In reply to Offwidth:


I think I get your meaning there... errrr...

What about the SMC ones? I've thought that ever since the mid-90s they have been doing good guides, preferable to many of the English and Welsh ones of the same era. Do they have pro staff at the helm?

In reply to TobyA:

I was once told that the quality of the recent SMC guides was due to the recycling of profits from their highly successful Monros book, so someone is getting paid (if that is true!).

Chris

In reply to petejh:

A lot of businesses benefit from the presence of bolted climbs and free access to crags. It is the responsibility of everyone in the industry to do something towards funding these aspects that make climbing possible. As an individual I also acknowledge my personal role in doing volunteer activity where possible but by necessity, these tends to be restricted to one's local area.

Guidebooks are not a very lucrative target for bolt funding though since the amount of money in a guidebook is tiny compared to the amount of money in outdoor gear and outdoor retail, but that doesn't mean to say that guidebook producers shouldn't do their bit, and this is something that Rockfax acknowledge.

Donating the proportion of a cover price to a bolt fund is a poor way to make contributions since you need to put the price up significantly in order to get a small contribution hence the buyer will be paying £3 extra in order for £2 to go to the distribution chain, and £1 go to the bolt fund. If you control the retail outlets and get them to include their cut as well then you could boost this amount but then you wouldn't be able to distribute the book widely and you would get the problem you get at French crags - nowhere to buy the book.

There are some really good ways a guidebook can support a bolt fund though, as well as the obvious financial donation (not tied to the cover price). Publicity in the guidebook, and raising awareness of what climbers who use the areas can do to help, and making those in the trade aware of their responsibility to support access and bolting.

Rockfax and UKC will be doing this for the North Wales Limestone guidebook and other guidebooks that we publish. Last month we registered the domain http://www.ukboltfund.org and contacted all the uk bolt funds to get their co-operation in setting up a central web site linking the 'Donate Now' buttons for UK Bolt Funds. I am also writing an article on UKC about bolts and we have other ideas about how to continually publicise bolt funds.

Alan

In reply to mikeconway:

It seems to be mixing philosophy and politics with the problems of maintenance of equipment which doesn't seem like a good idea - it's one of the problems that arises from climbing that relies on protection placed by others than the actual climber... but that's the way it is in France nowadays everyone has to live with it - especially as modern climbers seem to demand 100% safe equipment. There have been suggestions of limiting climbing on a particular crag to club members whose club fees would pay for bolts - I don't know if this has ever been done but I've been told of the idea. As this would clearly pose a number of problems, especially for visitors, the other common way was to sell topos to finance, but as said already this leads to problems too - often the topos are out of print, few are available abroad for tourists wanting to read up in advance, difficulty of buying one when you arrive at the area on the weekend etc.

Finally I reckon the idea of separating the two issues leaving specialists to make the guide books and finding other ways to finance the bolts (local tourist bodies at at Buis les Barronies, municipalités, FFME, collections - selling post cards of the cliff gets round the legal problem, etc) is the most appropriate. Those who don't agree will make do with local topos, if they can find them, others will buy guides like the ones under discussion here. It's a free market economy, that's what the French people vote for year after year, like the British, despite what some seem to think. Commercially editors may find it's worth their while to make contributions too... but that's up to them, and the climbers who choose whether to buy or not.

In reply to nb:

Neil, please show me the respect of not second-guessing what I have written and then going public with your guess. I will email you the communications I have had with the FFME and you will see how far from the mark you are.

Don't start quoting rumours and innuendo again - remember where that got you with your Kalymnos blooper.

Alan

In reply to petejh: Sorry, I really do think the issue is simple. If you pay by each time you get on a route, you contribute fairly. 30 days climbing at 10 blasts a day = 30 euros, fair cop for a lot of climbing. The keen climber using the bolts a lot - gains from them. A struggling grade 5 climber who can only do a few routes, 2 days - 2 euros. Why should those who A-are not good enough, or B, don't go there often - contribute the same to others who use a crag week in and out. Pay as you go like French motorways, campsites - seems a rather common and well accepted system.

In reply to mikeconway: How about this for an idea: In our street we have parking permit scratchcards, where you buy a book of 20 for £20. You then scratch the day and date and put it in the window for temp parking. Any bolt fund could do this, and you would scratch the day and date, and put on your sac at the crag, showing that you contribute daily to the bolt fund etc. Those who volunteer to place bolts get given free ones of course, and all is visible at the crag - so you can heccle, hound, and give a thoroughly hard time to those not contributing.

In reply to Jingo Wobbly Editor: What an interesting idea, I can only see one flaw:

It's completely ridiculous and unworkable.


Planet Earth calling jingo wobbly.

In reply to mikeconway:

The situation of the guides books point of view from France.

Firstable, 2 thinks appears to be balanced :
1- climber tourists which spend money on locals restaurant, campsite, shops etc.....
2- buying a guide book proposed by local climbers
In fact they are not.
1 -> this kind of tourists (so I'm one) don't interest very much tourism actors wheras they don't expensed much money
2 -> traditionaly when you buy such a guide, the money is going in the pocket of the writer, who's dispatches the benefits as he likes (crags equipments or other). So nothing yo deal with local tourism.

Second, in France the funds for bolting crags are now various : personal intiatives, cities, climbing institutions (FFME, FFCAM, FSGT,...), tourism industries (UCPA),....
Consequently the argues, i, ge,eral, regarding Jingo Wobbly guides brought in France don't mean manything today. Il could be for local particular crags.

My personnal experience
I've, in a climbing club, taking responsabilities on outside climbing for many years. I've made bought about 20 guides books for the club, including one Rockfax (Burgundy). The Rockfax was popular at the begining, it is not now. Users (in particular me) don't feel this guide is convenient, informations are sometimes partials. Matter of culture ?


Now 2 questions,
is anyone encounter the same problem out of South-East for France (where climbers are a bit jealous of their spots) ?
how can a serious job can be done by publishing a guide like Rockfax 'Haute Provence' ? And moreover the next Rockfax 'Cote d'Azur' which covers about 4000 or 5000 routes ? Jingo Wobbly must have an army of climbers-tester.........

Thanks in advance

In reply to Alan James - UKC:



Alan, read my words carefully. There is no second guessing. I'm telling you how your emails were perceived by the people concerned at the FFME. Also read through the Kalymnos 'blooper' posts again. I was simply giving Chris the opportunity to refute a rumour. There was no intent to quote that rumour.

"I know that the people you contacted in the FFME were irritated by the tone of your letters, in particular concerning a PERCEIVED lack of awareness of environmental issues."

"Also comments TO THE EFFECT - It's a free market, may the best man win! - will not endear you to people who see their work as being in the wider interest of the climbing community."

In reply to nb:

Please read your email Neil. Your posts here are not helping anyone.

Alan

In reply to Here Fred:

For the record, Jingowobbly and Rockfax are separate companies. The Burgundy guide is Jingowobbly.


Cote d'Azur is a Rockfax, as is Haute Provence.

Jingowobbly also produce a book called Avignon Soliel which covers some of the same area as the Haute Provence guidebook.

Alan

In reply to...all

Long and illuminating post this - hard to read through but worth it as the general theme of the discussion is valid, though a number of the posts are unnecessarily vitriolic.

I can speak from a number of angles being:

a. A climber
b. A fan of guidebooks
c. Someone who has developed crags and bolted routes
d. Someone who has written guidebooks

I truly cannot see a genuine reason for anyone to get so angry with Rockfax specifically other than a form of penis envy. The Rockfax guides have pushed back the boundaries with guidebooks. Simple.

Of course local ethics and practices have to be taken into account, and all I see here is something I already knew - working on guidebooks is time-consuming, expensive and not about to turn anyone into a millionaire. Furthermore, Rockfax have always discussed local ethics, conservation, access etc - they are not mavericks.

I would like to point out that Rockfax currently list 2 of my Miniguides for sale as downloads. Guess how much money Rockfax make from these - £0. I myself have also made very little - nothing like the amount of money spent on researching the guides, doing the hard yards. So for people to post talking about "guidebooks for profit" is not exactly true.

I applaud Rockfax for doing what they do and I welcome Alan's comments about bolting funds for NWL. I also get the gist from what he is saying that he is open to dialogue with anyone who has a vested interest in the areas where Rockfax publish guides.

I don't think the anti-Rockfax brigade can see beyond the envy part sadly.

M

In reply to Jingo Wobbly Editor:

Not really.... by far ! Most of the business guides books doesn't go by the FFME because this Federation is not active to promote it.....except for fews crags.

In reply to nb:



A little bit more complicated. Every association can accept a donation...... the public interest is a matter of tax that can be deductible.

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Ok thanks for this precison Alan.

In reply to mikeconway:
The further south you go the more animated people are...it's called latin blood. Welcome to the fascinataing world of cultural differences.

So next time, Mike, here is what you must absolutly do:
1) quietly but scornfully listen to the local gesticulating in front of you in either incomprehensible local idiom or equally hard to decipher local's rendering of your own idiom.
2) when you sense they are about to finish (very purple in the face, out of breath...) look at the person in the eye with a slight look of being lost/confused.
3) when eye contact is secure, in one well timed mouvement bring your shoulders up towards your ears (like a warm-up) and your arms on both sides up with your palms facing up (stop just below your shoulders height). Don't forget to bend your arms or you will look silly.
4) expel air from your closed mouth so that your lips vibrate and make a noise.

This is the general sign, that you genuinely don't know, don't care and won't find out anyhow.

The alternative is to learn French and explain the many valid points made on this thread (here is a summary. Your guides are crap and expensive: Vos topos sont chers et mal fait.)

There's a better alternative yet (but much harder than it seem) you don't play the Brit and get all offended, they don't paly the French and get all arrogant and everyone's happy climbing with their own guides =)

In reply to French Erick:

L'entente cordiale?

In reply to TobyA: what do you think are examples of good professionally produced guides?

In reply to ksjs: The last one I bought was (this summer) Rockfax Dorset. It's great and will get me back Dorset at some point. The one before that is lovely North Wales guide from Ground Up.

In reply to mikeconway: It is certainly very interesting to see the lack of interest in daily paying to use other peoples bolted routes, which points to a fair bit of rant - and not wanting to dip into one's pocket!

Another point worth including is about the advantages of free press. I’ve worked on-off for the BBC, CBS, etc over the past 30 years and enjoyed working all over the world to report news, current affairs etc. Much to the envy in places such as Russia and China, where local media reporters suffer the controlling of big brother. I really appreciate the very free attitude that a pretty free press has. In climbing terms, you are very unlikely to find written in a guide produced by local bolters – “this route is appalingly bolted for lower grade climbers who quite frankly we don’t give a damn about.” If you have a free and completely independent published book – you can say this of course. In addition, most chef’s would love to write their own reviews of course, but in the end – by keeping reviews, guides etc completely independent, the public can often be served in a far better way.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: perhaps im totally wrong but i think the guidebook thing is down the list of priorities in terms of bolt funds.

my perception is that only a tiny fraction of climbers actually contributes to a bolt fund. the view seems to be: we turn up, the crag is magically bolted, we climb, we have a nice time, we go home and complain about bolt position / condition but we do nothing to improve the situation nor do we even contemplate a donation to a bolt fund or local equipper.

now, that lot may well be too harsh but i dont think its too far wrong. certainly, im not aware of many other activities where a resource which costs significant money, time and effort to put in place is so poorly funded / paid for by the end user.

the argument that 'bolters will bolt' regardless obviously exists but at places like Portland, Malham, Kilnsey, Pen Trwyn etc im not sure its particularly relevant given how they're used.

none of this lets Rockfax or anyone else off the hook but i do wonder if we need to be asking ourselves a question about funding first before pointing fingers?

having read this very good thread it does seem that the most immediate / effective solution for loss of guidebook revenue in France for example is a sturdy reminder to all Rockfax purchasers to make a donation to the local bolt fund / association and provide details of how to go about this. the locals then just have to provide the mechanism.

In reply to TobyA: Rockfax have their place for sure and i own and enjoy various Rockfax guides but i dont buy the argument that glossy cover etc makes for a good guide. there are just too many lazy errors in the Rockfax guides generally and, for me, not enough heart.

as Pete says a committed and switched on group of volunteers can produce equally good if not better guides; it aint that difficult to take some photos and put some lines and names on them with readily available software is it? it does however take interest bordering on the obsessive to do the extra bit that makes a guide special; volunteers are well-placed to provide this sort of input.

by the way i agree on North Wales Rock, almost perfect.

In reply to ksjs:

I don't know how we could put more 'heart' into our guides, I just put in body and soul; the solid two years on the Cote d'Azur guide have been a bit of a grind to be quite honest.

And the typos, yes they are a bummer - its not that we don't check for them!


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

... and it's not that other guidebooks don't have them.

Alan

In reply to ksjs:

Have you got the Lofoten one?!

Of course the other important point is that the volunteer publishers have only stepped up their game because Rockfax have given such a kick up the arse in the last 15 years (although I exclude the SMC from that because they have been doing good clear guides since the 90s Ben Nevis and Scottish winter climbs).


I don't know. I suspect it is. You should see the Finnish guide - it helps remind me how utterly spoilt we are in the UK for fantastic guides.

In reply to mikeconway:

Hello,

I'm french ( so excuse me for mistakes... )

You know, In France we like bolts. There are 2 ways of bolting a crag :

- A town decide de promote tourism by creating sports crags. Bolts are payed by this town. Buying the local topo is not really useful, you already finance the local life by sleeping and eating.

This way is unusual ( I think It's the case of Orpierre for instance)

- People, from FFME or from a local association, decide to bolt a crag, by passion. They spend lot of time and money in bolting this crag. So they create a local topo ( which can be a good one or not... ), they get money back when climbers buy the topo.

This is the way of almost every crags. For a french like me, the problem is not the quality of local topos, but the fact that you have to buy a topo for each crag ! You can guess I have a Huge collection...

In conclusion : If a French is a little but aggressive with you, explain him that you're on holiday, and that you can't buy 15 topos ! I'm sure he 'll understand.

By the way : French are not specially xenophobic, and most of french like english ! But you know, when you travel, it's good to know a few words of the country, it makes the people friendliers ( or more friendly ??? )

bye,

see you soon in France !

In reply to antoine:

Mostly true, which is why I try to atleast learn a few frases in the local language (since finnish isn't really that useful).

I've been laughed at in Italy for begging mercy when my dinner plate arrived (gracie pronounced differently has different meanings, one is thanks and other is mercy).

But when I asked in reasonably fluent frech if anyone could speak english, I got a pretty rude answer (in french), that if you could ask in french, why couldn't I just continue the whole conversation in french... Guess the douche had a bad day or something...

In reply to Jingo Wobbly Editor:


That's probably a good point, although I imagine even independent writers might feel the need to be a little circumspect?

The point Antoine makes is true too - when I first wanted to have a look at the Burgundy area I had an introduction to most of the crags by buying the single jingo wobbly Burgundy guide, then later on I bought one of two specific crag guides which are more complete. I think that in the Burgundy case they are complementary.

In reply to antoine:

Thanks Antoine, you message is perfectly clear.

I think that the big Rockfax guides open up these new areas to many new climbers from across Europe. In all cases we describe other climbing and point to the local guide to get more information. I am sure that many of these new climbers will also buy one or two of the local guides at crags they visit. Hopefully their contribution is in proportion to the amount of climbing they do at the crags - 1 week trip, 1 visit per crag, couple of local guidebooks - seems reasonable to me.

Obviously it is up to the individual but it isn't the case that we see our Rockfax guidebooks as rivals or replacements for the local guides, they are complimentary as Bruce says.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - UKC:

Quote by Ksjs:
'Rockfax have their place for sure and i own and enjoy various Rockfax guides but i dont buy the argument that glossy cover etc makes for a good guide. there are just too many lazy errors in the Rockfax guides generally and, for me, not enough heart.'

Reply by Alan James:
'... and it's not that other guidebooks don't have them.
Alan'

Alan, in your 97 NW Limestone guide (sorry to keep bringing it back to this) your route description for Wall of Evening Light reads: 'There are 16 bolts plus some old pegs so you shouldn't get lost'. Nobody from Rockfax ever climbed that route. If they had they would have known that in reality there are 7 bolts and 3 pegs! Quite a big difference between 16 bolts and 7 bolts I think you'll agree.
It's the same story for The Shining, another 40m (not 50m as you describe) epic sport route which you didn't climb - 'loads of bolts and hard moves'. I can think of a term for that description but I don't think it would pass the moderation police.

I know this stuff because I've been all over that wall just like I've been all over most of the other walls in the area. Wall of Evening Light is one of the best sport routes in the country yet you couldn't be bothered to find out the basic facts of the route. I've rebolted Wall of Evening Light, you'll need to go and actually climb it to give it a proper description.

I shouldn't have to point out that the argument for you not being able to climb those routes (difficult access, bad bolts) has been rectified by efforts supported by the local bolt fund... the irony

It's also obvious that you either didn't climb or fact check Plagued by Fools - a great sport route which you describe as having 6 bolts. In reality it was a semi-trad route with 4 bolts on the first half and wires required for the second half of the route, as I found out when I didn't have any.

You also obviously didn't climb Drip Drip Drip or Drip or Drip Drip Direct. If you had you wouldn't have written the descriptions as they are - one is significantly better than the other but you guessed the wrong way. There are other examples but I think I've made my point.

It's not compulsory to climb every route, but for a significant number of routes on The Ormes you obviously didn't even bother to find out the facts from people who had climbed them.

These aren't typos! They're an illustration of the sort of lack of attention and lack of local knowledge of some of the areas you write guides to. Compare your NW Classics book with any of the other definitive and select guides to the areas it covers (I'm thinking GroundUp and the CC books). Jack's NW Classics contains appalling basic factual errors which the other guides don't. The pitch grades for Spectre being an obvious example and the topo lines for the winter routes on Clogwyn y Garnedd being another (dangerous) one. It's very obvious from looking at that topo that Jack's never climbed the routes he's trying to describe - which isn't in itself a problem - but neither has he bothered to make the effort to find somebody who could fault check his work to the required standard.

It's these and other examples of a lazy 'good enough' attitude and lack of local knowledge which makes me and everyone else I climb with on the Ormes wary of you knocking out another 'good enough' guide for NW Limestone.

The locals will do a better job than you and all profit made will go back towards the local scene. I can't think of a reason not to support that.

In reply to Bruce Hooker: Many things to say, firstly that nobobdy goes into journalism to be liked, it's a life of long hours, and about reporting what is pretty accurate but might not be pleasing - just ask Kate Adie & John Simpson. I have had some very good - if somewhat heated discussions with my friends in "Pays - Le Pen." We came to completely different views on grades and a lot of stuff, and I feel that the climbing world should have both sides presented. For sure on the access side we do get together and take very seriously the placement of a P for parking on any map, and the ramifications about such publicity of a crag. Without doubt, the Jingo Wobbly Guides are completely different to local guide books - that is the whole point, just as the Guardian and the Times offer different takes.

In reply to petejh:


That's all well and good, but when will the locals do a better job?

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: A collaboration of active local climbers have been busy at work producing a new, independent, and non profit-making NW Limestone guide for the past 4 months. All profits will go straight back to the bolt fund.

http://news.v12outdoor.com/2010/11/16/new-limestone-guidebook-to-support-no...

and
http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,16402.0.html

and
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=433625

Please keep up Tom!
(I think you'll agree it's looking pretty good.)

In reply to HeMa:

sorry for your story...

Don't hesitate to ask advice on the french website for climbing
camptocamp.org/

In reply to antoine:
>

Many thanks for your kind and balanced words, I hope the new book will speak for itself when it is out. Contact me and I will send you a copy and you can report back on here with your thoughts.

All the best


Chris (Author: RockFax Cote d'Azur volume)

In reply to Chris Craggs: i dont doubt the personal effort that goes into the guides but, for whatever reason, this sometimes doesnt come across in the finished article. equally, the results are sometimes great.

In reply to mikeconway:

There's been a C2C thread running on the same subject for a day or two. Seems like discovered this UKC thread today. It'll be interesting to see how (if) it continues... http://www.camptocamp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=185645&p=3 Not all French are anti RF - see Bruno's post at 20 : 49 : 36 today (page three) as a perfectly balanced example.

In reply to Alan James - UKC: when i said lazy errors i wasnt just referring to typos i also meant inconsistency, incompleteness, being plain wrong and the way in which the guides 'pretend' to be based on intimate knowledge of an area and direct experience of the routes when this clearly isnt the case.

i assume Pembroke is a flagship guide for Rockfax and would therefore expect standards to be at their highest. when there in september (my first time using Rockfax's new guide to the area) i was however again reminded of why i struggle to muster any real love for the brand:

- Youth on Fire
i climbed the upper wall direct from where you reach the break. it felt bold for E3 5c (maybe E4 5c) so i checked the CC description and contacted Gary Gibson (FA). both confirmed that you move left on reaching the break.

also no mention of the thread being pretty knackered and impossible to re-thread on lead or the fact that it is easily backed up with good gear (this is mentioned for Howling Gale when in fact there was nothing obvious to back the pegs up with; inconsistent).

- St Govan's East access
the guide mentions that there are abseil stakes 50m left of the coastguard station or whatever it is. i hadnt been for a year or so and looked in vain for the stakes. it was only because id been before that i knew the stakes were somewhere in the area and looked a bit further afield - theyre more like 150-200m away.

- Howling Gale
unless i escaped the climbing (very possible but i dont think so) the description and the line and on the topo are wrong: after the pegs you trend right and finish direct up the loose corner. as mentioned above there is no obvious way to back the pegs up. if i remember correctly, the CC description was nigh-on perfect for how the route climbed and is at odds with the Rockfax wording.

of the few routes i did on that trip, there seemed to be something not quite right with the descriptions for a fair percentage of what i got on. this was more than merely typos.

while on a Pembroke theme what is it with Bloody Sunday: why does the description slavishly (the description hasnt changed from the previous edition) talk about tough E3 / soft E4, when 'everyone' (even the FA i believe) gives this E4? why also does the description mention a very specific piece of beta when i didnt notice anything resembling this nor are there any such descriptions on any other route where it would actually be warranted / relevant?

also, whilst trying to give an overview of what im talking about: good luck to the aspiring E5 leader who steps out with Rockfax's North Wales Pokketz to do Right Wall. compare and contrast the topo and description with North Wales Rock and / or the CC Pass guide. quite a difference for the middle section (crux for some) and this is one of THE routes in North Wales. it does make me wonder.

surely Rockfax must accept theres something in the sort of things im talking about? maybe though i have unrealistic expectations and am an innocent in the realities of guidebook production. regardless, i believe that with the combined efforts of guidebook writers and local climbers, whether its in the UK or overseas, these kinds of errors can be avoided.

In reply to ksjs:

.. but these sort of things appear in every guide.

In 1995 I was slightly guilty of putting a very personal impression on my route descriptions and it was only the second guidebook I had written. I had climbed every route you mention in your post in the three years before publication and written it up from personal experience. This was the case on many routes in the guide, after all, that is a great way of writing guidebooks. When we re-did the book last year I discovered a number of places that my personal experience were not helping people climb the route, in fact it was making it more confusing in places. We edited a lot of those out but some obviously remain.

If you write up your personal experience of a route then things like this are bound to happen, which is why all guidebooks need feedback and attention from people who climb there. So thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated, and if you have more then give it using the Rockfax database then we can incorporate it in the next guidebook.

Alan