UKC

Rockfax is really pleased to announce an exciting new guidebook - North Wales Climbs is being written by UKC Editor Jack Geldard, North Wales stalwart Mark Reeves and long term Rockfax author Mark Glaister, and it is due for publication this Autumn.

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/news.php?id=5552

In reply to UKC Gear:

Exciting to see, but not sure what the USP is over NW Rock with almost identical crag coverage. If you had NWR, would you need the Rockfax unless you simply liked owning duplicate books for the photos and the tickage (which I do!)

My other thought is that this guidebook will be stashed down the jumper a lot due to the high number of multipitch crags and seacliffs covered. I find the W Country Rockfax a bit thick for that purpose. Bigger is not necessarily better.

Oh, and one final thought. W Country Climbs is excellent but its major flaw was the coverage of Swanage/Portland (duplicated in Dorset RF) and Lundy (complete waste of space) adding to the thickness. I hope that including redundant pages for the sake of it is not policy.

In reply to Owen W-G:

Eh???

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:
IIRC the Lundy section more or less spends a few pages saying "go to Lundy, it's great, but you'll want to buy a proper guidebook before you go there."

I generally agree with Owen's point, anyway: it's good news and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with, but I'm hoping that they've managed to find a way of differentiating it from the Ground Up guide...

The size of the latest Rockfax books is something we are aware of. Our intention this time is to release the book at the same time as an App version (for iOS and Android). We haven't decided yet how we are going to sell the app version but it may well be that we can link it to book purchases some how.

The reason we included the Lundy section in WCC was to alert people to the area. Virtually everyone goes there for a week and we couldn't give a week's worth of climbing so we just thought we'd highlight it and point people at the CC guide.

I don't see that the Dorset section is a waste of space for people who don't own the Dorset Rockfax. It does what selected guidebooks do, points new or occasional visitors at the best crags and lines.


The new Rockfax will of course have some overlap of coverage although we are including different routes and crags including some easier venues and Mid-Wales, but no Llyen. Additionally we use larger photo-topos and the style of the guides is different I think.

North Wales is a big area though and I am sure it can support both guides if both are available at the same time. Our Classics book has sold well since 2010 so we do know what the market wants.

Alan

In reply to UKC Gear:

Nice cover shot. i remember those moves very well!

In reply to UKC Gear: I want it I want it I want it I want it

In reply to The Pylon King:

Do you think? 'Workmanlike', at best, I would have said. Bordering on 'dull and cliched'.

jcm

In reply to The Pylon King: Cover shot makes it look very very steep though!

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

I actually like the shot with the climber and the photographer more, but maybe the appeal is mostly seeing both photos side by side.

In reply to Owen W-G:

To clarify on my blunt comment, I thought Lundy was a waste of space because Rockfaxes are supposed to be used at the crag, not to showcase a crag which you wouldn't be using the guidebook itself for.

I thought Dorset was redundant because it is the first time that an area is covered by two separate guides. For me, who has the Dorset RFs, I thought it just added to the weight. A raiding northerner may think differently.

Either way, looking forward to the book. I'll be buying it anyway, but have come to expect a still warm copy and free postage from the publisher!

I like the LW cover as, for the mid-grade climber, it is the difinitive route in the region.

In reply to UKC Gear:
Looking forward to leafing through a copy and if it looks good with great photos and clear photo diagrams (which I'm sure it will do) I will get a copy, even though I already have the Ground Up guide and a full set of the CC guides. For me the USP of Rockfax is the inspirational, eye catching and very professional visual presentation in the more recent guides. Pembroke, South West Climbs and Lofoten are all fantastic.

The CC are catching up but this is where the larger format of ROckfax really helps. Of course the larger format makes it less suitable for taking on the route with you but these days it's easy enough to take a good quality photo with a phone and/or camera, plus you can always take the smaller CC guide as well.

Keep up the good work! Now you just need to do one for the Lakes, that would really piss off the FRCC

By the way, E6 6b for Lord of the Flies - a bit of a departure from convention?

In reply to UKC Gear:
Great cover shot by the way, though yes it does look scarily steep! A good choice - inspirational for women and for men, well...

In reply to UKC Gear: Why's Dali's Hole in the Slate Quarries being included? Now that there's a huge fence across it and the sensitive access issues surely it should be left out?

In reply to UKC Gear:
Grond IS NOT E3. It is not even E2.

In reply to Si dH:
I'd say E2 is fair. Anyway, one of the best grit jamming cracks around! In the same way that 10 Degrees North and Plexus (or is it Nexus?) are some of the best grit slabs at those grades.

In reply to Misha:

You need help!

In reply to Misha:
... one of the best grit jamming cracks around! In the same way that 10 Degrees North and Plexus (or is it Nexus?) are some of the best grit slabs

Grit? Good grief....

In reply to UKC Gear: This looks great and will no doubt be good for visiting climbers. However, at the same time a Rockfax guide focusing specifically on the Ormes would be far more useful as North Wales classics and/or North Wales Rock already provide plenty of coverage for those looking for an overview of the area. As the 1997 edition of 'North Wales Limestone' is so outdated and hard to follow I feel that focusing on a modern updated replacement would have perhaps been a more useful investment of time and money.

Nevertheless good work and I look forward to reading it!

In reply to Stone Idol:
Obviously it isn't really grit but it's very grit like.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Ta for clarifying the Grim Jim finish to Cemetery Gates. I think this is better than the original since it maintains the 5b grade and you can string it as a single pitch if you have 60m ropes.

In reply to Dan Hale:

That was our original plan back in 2011 however there was then a plan for an alternative guidebook to North Wales Limestone from another publisher. Unlike North Wales as a whole, NWL isn't big enough to support two guidebooks so we decided to change plans and build on the coverage we had begun with North Wales Classics with this new book.

Another thing that many people don't seem to comprehend when discussing guidebooks is that every book has a print run and a life span. North Wales Classics has only a year or so to run and we won't be reprinting that. NWR dates from 2005 and is probably also nearing the end of its second print run.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

its a shame not reprinting the classics, the size of the guide makes it *great*.

i look up /read routes in one of my 4 guides and carry the classics guide up the hill/route.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


Alan, if you are going to talk about Ground Up books try to stick to the facts. The first edition of NWR came out in 2007, the second edition (and it is a second edition rather than a re-print because we made significant changes, corrections, updates, added extra routes etc, it even has an entirely different cover to emphasize the point) was published in 2009.

We still have plenty of copies left - it's an excellent guidebook and I'm very proud of it. You might be happy to write off one of your own productions (North Wales Classics) as having reached the end of its life span but please don't try and suggest the same is true for NWR, no matter how convenient that notion might be for the commercial prospects of NWClimbs.

To do so is a cheap shot, and surely you're better than that?

In reply to Simon Panton:

Apologies. Now I have bothered to check, the copy I have here says October 2006.

It is a fine book and I am sure it will continue to sell well and you are justified in feeling proud of it.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Which crags are you including from Mid Wales?

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


Thanks for that, I emailed a load of aerial photographs of the cliffs around the orme's and haven't heard anything since. Anyone looking at producing a new guide of the area PLEASE get in contact with me.

In reply to Simon Panton:

Hi Simon

Drop me an email if you plan to do another edition of NWR (Best guide book around) I have lots of images that would be very interesting to you. We circled the Orme at low altitude and I got shots of all the crags that would otherwise need a boat to photograph otherwise.

In reply to The Pylon King:

erm yes, ... Mark is away this week and I haven't been able to get the list off him. When he gets back I will add it to the info sheets.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax: out of intrest does anyone know what the publish date is on the north wales limestone guide ?

In reply to The_flying_climber:

The problem with photos taken from the air (or sea) is that they often bear little resemblance to what you see when you're stood at the foot of the crag.

In reply to Toreador:

Yes this is often true although I'd still love to see them.

flying_climber - I have emailed you

Alan

In reply to Toreador:

Quite a lot of the Orme, particularly around the Light House Crags has shear drops straight into the sea. You would have to be either flying or sailing (from a distance) to get a good view really. The images I have are also very high-res, You can zoom in a spot climbers and even there ropes from an altitude of 500ft.

I just had a flick through NWR and it looks like a boat has been used on a few cliffs around the orme (Ed. 2006 Page; 510, 529. Also the CC have used extensive sea based photography in both the Swange and Portland guidebook.

I can also see, in the future drones will be used alot in guidebook photography.

P.S Just had a dig through and I have a lot of the Gogarth area as well.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan

Just uploading them to my skydrive - I will send them over when its done.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax: Hi,
Is this guide more accurate than the 'North Wales Classics - Pokketz' guide that had loads of mistakes in with grades, descriptions etc?

Thanks

In reply to Mark Lloyd:

I can't give you a date, but i have seen some bits of the new NW limestone guide. it's looking brilliant and all the hard work has been done. Just the slow, boring and tedious bit to go now...

In reply to Simonfarfaraway:

If you know of any errors in the NW Classics book other than the 10 listed in this update http://www.rockfax.com/climbing-guides/miniguides/north-wales-classics-upda... then please let us know.

Alan

In reply to UKC Gear: A minor point. Should not the title of the OP be .... 'New Guidebook to North Wales'.

Literacy and clarity are so important if you are publishing guidebooks.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

You are not quite sure which crags will be in your next guidebook? Really?

In reply to The_flying_climber: Hi

I look forward to seeing them. If you have any others of North Wales Crags even not for the guide, I might be interested in buying them off you as I am currently thinking of decorating my new house with crag shots from the area.

I am sure Alan will send over any images, although I am not working on the Limestone section.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Could Mr. Panton clarify this discrepancy?

In reply to Sl@te Head:

Hi Ian

I am pretty sure we are only including the old classics that are still bolted in Dalis hole (Launching pad and Holy...), and describing the approach via Dalis wall and down the descent to california tunnel, with a warning against climbing/damaging the fence and too many climbers using the area at the same time. I think it is important that we include this access information so no one makes a mistake simply because they are unaware of access information/issues here.

We are also putting in some of hidden wall and dali's slab, although a I saw a picture a few days ago and a friend reported a large section of this has fallen down in the last few months so this might be dropped when I get up there to have a look at what is left.

On the plus side the slate section of this guide will give us the opportunity to put your awesome multipitch sport routes in Twll Mawr into a guide and include a topo, along with the peppermint tower sports routes. Which reminds me, I need to know where the rock bottom line goes so I can take a crag shot that includes it, as not got round to climbing it yet.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

why is the top pitch on The Cracks given 4c and then 5a for Lorraine ? page 97

In reply to UKC Gear: I dont get why there needs to be another select guide for northwales- it rips of North Wales Rock which Rockfax has already done. Please someone make one limestone guide and one Gogarth South guide and then every thing is covered and everyone is happy, job done.

In reply to lithos:

Thanks for that, now sorted.

Alan

In reply to Kipper:

The printing was delayed but I forgot to change the Oct 06 date on the title page.

The books arrived in Llanberis in February 2007 - I know because I was there:

http://www.groundupclimbing.com/newsitem.asp?nsid=189

It's a minor point perhaps, but it is in Alan's interest to suggest that NWR is an 'old' book, even though it was significantly improved with the second edition in 2009 (for example, larger topos that bleed off the edge of the page).

In reply to Simon Panton: i think Rockfax would do better to spend their time on another project that would be in the best interest of rock climbers rather than the bank balance. We already have a fantastic selective guide to North Wales in NWR and i think Rockfax would struggle to match its quality.

Please someone do a definitive Lancashire guide. Along the lines of the Ground Up slate guide would be ace!.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

I agree wholeheartedly.

The cynic in me also thinks that the timing of this guide has been made to pre-empt the forth coming definitive north wales limestone guidebook. Surely it is no co-incidence that the the NWL sections are definitive to the crags covered, whilst the rest of the guide (even honeypot crags like Tremadog) are only selective.

In reply to C Chestwig; Treacherous climber:

Actually this guidebook has been being planned and written for two years. We started back in 2011 after we abandoned our own North Wales Limestone project owing to a second book being proposed from another publisher. From the seeds of that though, and inspired by Mark Glaister's brilliant West Country Climbs book, we decided that we would like to do a bigger and better job that had been started with North Wales Classics in 2010.

We have got to the stage now that we can be fairly sure about when we can publish it which is why we have announced it this week. This is our way of managing the delays many guidebooks suffer from as they near the finishing line. We have now reached the stage where we know what work is to be done still and can predict accurately when the book will be available.

The coverage is our usual mix of selected crags but include most of the routes people do on those crags. (Using UKC logbooks is a great way of finding out which routes are climbed). This does tend to mean that the quality bar is lower for sport routes than for trad routes but these are the routes people do. The coverage for the Ormes is Upper Pen Trwyn, Lower Pen Trwyn, Castell y Gwynt, Craig y Don and the Diamond. We are also including Castle Inn Quarry and Penmaen Head. Considering we were working with a definitive guidebook text for most of these sections when we started (they were already finished back in 2011) I would estimate that the coverage has been cut by around 50% in terms of pages.

Alan

I'd just like to say (and I'm no suck up) that I'm a bit depressed by some of the rather cynical criticism of Alan/Rockfax. For heaven's sake, they are a business and have to make money and, yes, there will sometimes be an element of competition. However, and I own the vast majority of the Welsh definitive and selected guides (including Ground Up's NWR), I welcome a new guide to the area with a different slant on it, to provide inspiration.

Perhaps it's an old story now, but we (climbers) owe a lot to Rockfax for revolutionising guidebooks and the rapid improvements in guides generally probably wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been done on a commercial basis first. Whilst I understand Simon's comment above, when all is said and done, Ground Up's NWR is a commercially produced guide too and I see no reason why it should be exempt from a little bit of friendly competition.

In reply to Skyfall:

The main criticism is simply the disproportionate coverage of the limestone relative to the other, arguably more popular areas in light of a new definitive limestone coming out. This means that it'll be direct competition for the new definitive guide which is being produced by volunteers in aid of the local bolt fund, ie, not commercially produced.

Lets not forget that without the bolt fund and local volunteers (mainly those associated with the guide) most of the crags and routes wouldn't have the shiny new bolts and/or lower offs they do now, the amount of work gone into this cannot be underestimated. For example, the whole of the Diamond, and the majority of Castel y Gwynt have been rejuvenated in this way.

To be fair to Rockfax, as Alan rightly points out, they initially pulled out of doing a NW Limestone book to allow for the production of the volunteer definitive guide (even though significant work and therefore man hours had already been invested) so why they are now including so much limestone coverage in this new select guide is a little bewildering and it is easy for it all to seem a little underhand perhaps.

The implications of such comprehensive coverage to the sales of the definitive guide are obvious.

Of course you could say that's business, and to a certain extent you'd be right, except for one very important point; that the hundreds of man hours re equipping the Ormes, the fundraising and donations for the bolt fund to pay for the bolts isn't business, it's pure good will, a lot of which has been done specifically with the new guide in mind.
I urge Rockfax to build on this further by showing some more good will of their own, that is making the limestone section of their select guidebook just a little more 'select', just like they have for the other areas.

In reply to Skyfall:
Agree totally. Well put.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Though a new guidebook to an area is usually a good thing, I think that couldn't be further from the truth in this case. It strikes me that after Rockfax didn't get their way with a definitive NW limestone guide they went away to sulk, then had the realisation that if they add a few other bits in they can claim it's not a guide to NW limestone, whilst still being basically a direct competitor to the (far superior, no doubt, because the routes actually get climbed and checked...every single one of them) volunteer produced definitive guide.

My respect for Rockfax has been waning quite rapidly over the last couple of years and this is the final nail in the coffin (I'm planning to email you directly, Alan, with what the other nails were). I certainly wouldn't be upset to see this guidebook not sell a single copy, and in fact, I hope it doesn't sell a single copy. I hope the climbing community realises that they shouldn't be supporting guidebooks like this, they should be supporting the local, volunteer produced guides which are not done for profit but for love. All of the profits from the soon to be published volunteer guide are going straight back into the NW bolt fund. And quite rightly so.

Oh, and for what it's worth: I think the cover photo is a load of crap. It's a standard, everyday shot showing very little of anything, and certainly not showing anything of the environment or atmosphere of climbing in North Wales. It's a bog standard photo of a climber, on a rock. Great.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


'Bothered' to check the facts?

Sometimes, the details matter ...

In reply to Si dH:


FWIW I agree on that. I've never understood the E2 it gets in the CC guides.

In reply to UKC Gear: Really looking forward to the Limestone guide, and will as a guidebook addict probably buy the new Rockfax offering as well, although the coverage will largely be duplicated by guides I already own (CC Ogwen, Llanberis, Merioddnydd and Tremadog, Ground Up Slate, Winter and NW Rock along with Rockfax NW Classics and Clwyd).
I quite like the proposed New Rockfax cover photo, although the additional context offered by the "photographer in action" shot in the article is great ...could the cover be a wraparound shot with more of the road winding away through the pass on the reverse?

In reply to In reply to Dan, Jon and a few others:

When the 1997 NWL RF sold out in 2008 I didn't know quite what to do since we were fully committed doing other books and I couldn't possibly re-author a new book. Wales local at the time Jack G had only just come on board at UKC but not as an RF author and he was too busy anyway. So I offered the full document, albeit in a rather dated format, to Simon Panton since I thought Ground-Up would be the logical people to do the new guide. Simon told me then that Ground-up would be producing a North Wales Limestone guide in 2009 and he said he would think about the offer of the files.

In the end I didn't hear back from Simon and it appears that their proposed guide dropped off their schedule. With Jack living there though and keen to get involved we started putting together a fully definitive guide in 2010 (I can't remember when exactly). Jack did loads of work on Upper Pen Trwyn, LPT, and the Diamond.

Then in November 2010 Pete Harrison announced a new definitive local guide to NWL produced by an independent publisher (himself I think) but with links to Ground-up.
Announcement here - http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=433625
and Grubes corroborates some of this here http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=438644#x6176646

We thought about the prospect of 2 definitive guides since we could have easily produced our guidebook and, at that time, Petejh seemed perfectly happy to pitch his book against a fully definitive rival. I am not sure which book would have appeared first but I suspect ours would since the other one still isn't available and ours would have been there in 2011. Whether Petejh would have then gone on to produce his or not, I don't know but his rhetoric at the time suggested he would.

So we took the decision to drop that book - http://www.rockfax.com/news/2011/01/31/change-of-plans-for-north-wales-lime... . This was based on pure economics, we didn't think it was worthwhile producing a second book to an area that was a low-selling area that appeared to be getting a definitive guide anyway in the near future.

Then in June 2011 we announced the full North Wales Climbs guide - http://www.rockfax.com/news/2011/06/06/north-wales-climbs/
and here http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=462111
which we hoped to get out in 2012. This was a logcial step considering North Wales Classics had sold well but suffered from its small format, and that we already had the Ormes to add to the full book.

Well things got delayed, as they do in guidebooks, so here we are in 2013 planning on getting the book out. We haven't increased our coverage of NWL in fact we have reduced it by around 80% from the template document that Jack had started work on. We are including most sport routes on the crags we cover though since that is our normal policy since these are the routes that tend to get climbed, which is around 250 odd routes on the Great Orme for example.

Apart from the delay and what is documented above, nothing has changed in our plans for NWClimbs since we announced it back in 2011. We haven't been keeping quiet and we have mentioned it several times since, then we waited until we can be sure of the publication date before the final announcement. This is standard procedure which we use with every guidebook. If we forecast them too much in advance then we end up with the inevitable delayed publication dates.

With regard to donations to bolt funds
We gave money in the past to the North Wales Bolt Fund and we are happy to do so again in the future and will do after we have broken even from this new book which may take a year or so. We have also set up http://www.ukboltfund.org which has been extremely successful in many areas. I have checked yesterday and since it was set up, there have been 86 attempted donations made to the NWBF via that page. That is likely to be around £400 to £500 (I can't check the actual amounts) if everyone gave a fiver. We will push this initiative in the new book as well and continue to promote it across UKC and Rockfax sites.

We have also recently added a point-of-sale donation system onto the Rockfax site which has started to pick up donations from people who buy books direct. They can choose the local bolt fund or the ACT when they buy but so far most have been choosing the ACT. Hopefully this will gather momentum as we move on and I will certainly include the NWBF in the list.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Is this correct, rockfax have raised (through personal donations, not sales) only £400 to £500 for bolts. Is that it? Even at £5 per bolt that's only 100. Not going to make much of a dent with that.. Portland must have 1000's on its own.

What percentage of Rockfax's actual profit (not donations) goes on local bolt funds? (Portland, NW, Foreign crags) Simply saying "in the past" we were happy to give money makes it obvious there is no policy to give back to the community, that buy your guidebooks and in the end pay your wages.

In reply to The_flying_climber:

I believe it says that the £4-500 was for the North Wales Bolt Fund.


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Fair point, Alan was only talking about the NW fund. Its still from community donation rather then a rockfax policy of donation though. Lets try again, What percentage of the actual Rockfax guide profits are given to these Bolt funds (is there a policy)?

Alan simply saying


Doesn't really give much away.

In reply to The_flying_climber:

Why are you singling out Rockfax? Why not bully the manufacturers of approach shoes, climbing clothes, chalk, rucsacs etc etc into donating money? It could be argued that they all benefit directly or indirectly. Personally I think that Rockfax have made a fabulous donation to the climbing community with their guidebooks.

In reply to jon:

Saying gear manufacturer's should be giving money is a good point (and they should(who to is another topic)) but in the end they are not releasing specific area related gear. Say Five-ten released a specific "Portland" climbing shoe they would be taking advantage of the Portland bolts to sell their shoes so a donation to the Portland bolt-fund would seem appropriate. As rockfax are in the same way talking advantage of the NW bolts (there wouldn't be as many climbs to put in there guide) then a large donation seems appropriate.


Ground UP have done this AS WELL as directly raising money for the bolt fund. Read some blog/website posts from foreign climbing destinations covered with rockfax guides....

In reply to The_flying_climber:


I don't have to, I live in one of them. This is a far more complex issue here than you think and varies dramatically from one area to another and is irrelevant to the issue being discussed here.

In reply to jon:

Fair Jon, I will do some reading. Did rockfax donate any money to your local bolt fund?

At this point I'm leaving this topic, it will just end up with another banning.

In reply to The_flying_climber:

Well we don't really make much profit which is why we focussed our attention in recent years on using our resources to publicise and spread the word. If we do make profit it tends to go towards subsidising UKC, but occasionally we are in a position to make donations although these tend to be from me personally rather than Rockfax the company.

Since we set up http://www.ukboltfund.org in late 2010 there have been 830 completions across all the various funds which could be around £4000 (this figure is pure speculation though since I don't have access to the actual figures). I was actually wrong in my calculation for NWBF, it turns out to have been 129 completions so maybe nearer £600 to £650.

I have written a couple of articles on bolt funds.
Dec 2010 - http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=3311
and a follow-up here
Apr 2012 - http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=4578

In all my discussions the people involved with the bolt funds consistently said that the one thing they need more than money is people to do the work. This isn't to say they are all swimming in cash, they aren't, but it does indicate that there are ways to help even if you can't make a donation. Having said that, bolting is also a tricky business and requires skill and practice to get it right.

In terms of funds though, there is plenty on offer from the BMC whose better bolts campaign and bolting workshops from Dan Middleton are an excellent initiative - https://www.thebmc.co.uk/better-bolts-campaign-2011

Alan

In reply to The_flying_climber:

Firstly, your flying_climber profile has never been banned before, and secondly, we would never ban or remove post like this. It amazes me sometimes why people think that we would. Just stick 'rockfax bolt funds' into the message text box on Forums search and select 'older messages' if you don't believe me.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Thanks Alan, lots of reading to do.

If anyone needs a hand bolting down at Portland drop me an email.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Alan this is my third account...

P.S Please don't ban me again I don't want to set up a forth email address.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


On this point, it does seem ridiculous that Pete Harrison cannot comment on this thread and I need to go to the other channel to read his side of this debate.

In reply to Quiddity: What the hell lets get banned again....


The other side of the story can be found here.

http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,22459.0.html

In reply to The_flying_climber:

Once again, you really don't seem to get it do you?

Try putting 'UKBouldering' into our search to bust another myth.

In reply to Quiddity:

Well that's a different matter and not connected with anything he posted on UKC Forums, but I get the impression the feeling is mutual.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Just did, what am I even looking for?

http://www.ukclimbing.com/general/search.html?cof=FORID%3A11&ie=UTF-8&a...

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


His side of the story, from the other thread, is that the whole saga, which ended with his complaint to the information commissioner about your/UKCs handling of personal data, started with you banning him from the forums over comments he made about the level of research done for the most recent Rockfax North Wales Limestone guide.

From what I've quoted above, it sounds like you would disagree that his comments and your subsequent banning him was the catalyst for that?

In reply to AJM:

Well there is a huge difference between asking what might be perceived as an awkward question (as t_f_c did above) and making blatant libellous and untrue statements on a public forum which we would remove if they were made about any other business anyway. However, even that would be a misrepresentation of the facts in this case but I don't discuss this sort of thing on the forums so email me if you are desperate to find out more (it really isn't worth it though).

Alan

In reply to The_flying_climber:

No, the forums search - http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/info/search.php?forum=0&dates=1&na...

That's 700 mentions of a web site that we supposedly don't allow to be mentioned on UKC.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Would you care to respond directly to Pete's comments that





For the record I have no involvement in this issue and no axe to grind, only that I want to see a reasonable debate of the issue so I can make an informed decision on which guide I want to support.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

It sounds, from an outsiders and non legal perspective, that the specific phrase he mentions would fall very much into the "matter of opinion" rather than "blatant libellous and untrue" category especially if backed up with examples at least one of which has been provided - there's presumably no fixed definition of hard work or lack of so its an opinion rather than a definite. But it sounds like you're both in agreement as to the trigger for his current state of banned-ness.

Are the numbers quoted on that thread, which are a mix of your own quoted above (250 routes in and around LPT), plus some guesses at another 100 or so for Castle Inn and other lime crags, 350 out of a total "word from the authors is" of 1000 routes accurate, nearly accurate or miles out? At the moment I feel at least like clear info would help me judge better what to think - a select guide to north Wales with over a third of its coverage from the Ormes feels at least like a massively heavier lime-weighting than the other selected guides in the past (ground up, Paul Williams etc). Is it? Do you know how they break down?

In reply to Quiddity:

As I stated above, we originally planned a full guide to North Wales Limestone. The old InDesign document I have here has 234 pages allocated to it. The current page allocation in North Wales Climbs is 76. I hate the word definitive since I don't think any guide is ever definitive, but we were covering all the important crags. We had already taken the decision not to list the banned routes so this would probably rule it out as being 'definitive' for some purists.

When the alternative guide was announced, it was happy to pit itself against our dedicated guide, the A55 guide and the NWR selection (plus the CC 1987 guide which I think you can still buy and is almost worth the money as a collector's piece). So now the competition is minus one dedicated guide, plus one more selective.

Even if you were under the impression, when announcing your book, that we were going to produce a 76 page guidebook (when did Rockfax last produce a 76 page Rockfax?) then the competition is at least the same now as it was when entering the arena.

For what its worth, if it were my full guidebook to NWL in this same competition arena, then I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation in publishing it. I might restructure the finances a bit, but I am sure it would have a place in the market and could sell well enough (assuming it is a decent book, which it sounds like it is) and generate funds for the NWBF.

Alan

In reply to AJM:

460 pages (at present), 76 limestone. I haven't got a quick method for counting the routes I'm afraid, but don't forget that Rockfax do selected crag/buttress guides, not selected route guides. Also, people choose trad routes, but they choose sport areas, hence it is frustrating to arrive at a sport crag with 10 lines and only have info for 3 of them.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Thanks Alan. Overall, would you say the assessment that you will be providing extensive coverage of the popular areas, was reasonably accurate?

In reply to Quiddity:

I assume you are referring to NWL specifically here, in which case the answer is yes, but then that is the case with all our guides where sport climbing is concerned.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

If you do work it out, it would be really nice to know. Pages aren't going to be a good proxy since you can probably fit 40-50 short routes across certain double page spreads (the sort of layout used for the previous dorset guide for example or for some of the french rockfaxes) whereas your two mountain example pages have a total of 13 routes across 4 pages - and essentially all of the long routes which will eat up page space are trad so distort that weighting (except maybe some of the multipitch slate sport which I assume will be in?).

I certainly wouldn't characterise your approach as always "selected buttresses" any more Alan - certainly not for West Country Climbs and certainly not this one either! Your Cromlech page is nowhere close to definitive and (I would bet) every crag in WCC wasn't either. That makes perfect logical sense for trad guides since as you say people don't care about having every line in, so i wouldnt criticise the decision at all, but you can't try and pretend this guide is about selecting buttresses - you're cherry picking routes the same as all selected guide publishers do. I take your point about including all the sport lines on a buttress, it does make life easier for the end user, but if you then pick almost all the buttresses as well, which it sounds like round LPT you might be, you can see where people start to get suspicious that it looks, walks and talks every so nearly like a definitive?

In reply to AJM:

I am struggling for time actually and I think I have answered these points above. I won't be online again for a few days after this.

It does remind me of an incident after we published the 1997 North Wales guidebook. I was responding then (possibly on the early version of this forum) to someone who had said that Rockfax couldn't do a definitive guide and I said, "but what about North Wales Limestone?". Their reply was, "you can't count that, it doesn't have Craig y Forwen in it!"

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


As the most active route restoration* practitioner on Hard Peak Limestone for the last 10 years (Gary does a sterling job covering the rest of the grade spectrum) I would like to back up this comment made by Alan. Of course I can only speak for the Peak bolt fund. Funding has NEVER been the issue here and with the fantastic support of the BMC better bolts campaign I have a large stash of gear in my cellar accumulating cobwebs.
Last year we had a bolting work shop at Raven Tor which was in my opinion an F ing waste of time! F all will come of it. Not wanting to be disrespectful to the people that attended, but they were hardly the sort that were active on the Peak scene.
Let me explain, in the Peak it is generally the harder routes that need reequipping. The history behind this is because the vast majoring of the routes below 7C were put up by Mr Gibson. Sometimes it is clear to see that his routes have just been a number and little love had been put into them. On the other hand he has ensured that the routes that people will climb have had a good re clean and bolt, in effect creating a legacy.
Many of the harder routes in the peak have not had this treatment and that is predominantly why the Peak bolt Fund was created.
There is a topic on UKB called "Peak Bolt Fund discussions"
Reading it makes me F ing sick. They all seem so keen to get there hands dirty but it is all F ing bollox.
There are too many consumers.

*Restoration: The practice of ensuring the route remains climbable/worthwhile/safe often using copious amounts of resin as is often required on Peak Lime.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


Well that'll be easy to lug up multi-pitch routes! Do economics rule out producing such a guide as a bundle of pocketz-size guides?

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

It was a point of interest rather than anything else. My guess is that as a number of routes it will seem proportionally more than it does as a number of pages even once you've corrected for the "dead" pages at the start and end (ie the non-route pages such as index, graded list, introductory blurb and what have you).

I think the point I raised about it being a selected routes guide is in direct opposition to your claim it is a selected buttresses guide, which is clearly just not the case based on the example pages presented so far and on WCC, so I'm not sure how you've answered that but I guess it's unanswerable really so probably not much more to say.

As to its definitive ness, you seem to have confirmed it will be as near to definitive for large chunks of the lime (given i seem to recall from above youve said you have used the databases to guide your route selection and are essentially definitive on buttresses for the sport stuff that effectively means almost all of the vaguely popular sport and as a byproduct most of the popular trad, above the road for example, since they often sit side by side?) as makes no difference.

To an extent that could be seen/interpreted to support Petes point that after withdrawing from producing a definitive to compete with the one which is produced by the local community in order to support the bolt fund you're now going to pop nearly definitive information back out on the market in the form of a selected guide that happens to be not very selective for one key area. I'm sure that the portrayal above is probably a difference of opinion between yourself and the team producing the definitive, or a result of poor communication of exactly what you're producing on here, but that's the way it's can be interpreted right now. You've said you've reduced the page count dramatically (how much due to the introductory blurb and whatever i don't really know, presumably some but only you really know) but yet you've also confirmed to Quiddity that the coverage is essentially definitive for large areas of the lime sport? Either one of those isn't quite right or the number of pages is not very closely linked to the amount of coverage provided.

In terms of your anecdote, I guess it helps illustrate your point which I guess is that you get slated whatever you do. However, there comes a point where "definitive enough" is going to make "definitive" seem like an investment not worth making, and in this case where (uniquely in the UK in terms of the definitive guides whose areas you cover?) the definitive guide essentially exists solely to support the bolt fund and area redevelopment, I think it's a different case from if you're competing for sales with CC or BMC or whatever definitives. And the question that I'm still unable to get any kind of sensible answer to is whether your guide is in the "light grey" area where you can claim its selected enough it might draw in visitors and hence have no impact on or boost sales of the local guide, or whether its "dark grey" where it provides so much coverage that there's no more incentive left to buy the definitive. Too many different metrics of measurement means there's lots of stats being thrown around which contain surprisingly little helpful information.

In reply to Dan Lane:
Shouldn't you also point out (as is the norm with diatribes like this) that Rockfax are making it uneconomical for definitive/volunteer guidebooks to be produced in future and they will all disappear? That's what was stated regarding Lancashire, and Northumberland, and NE England. Though the claims are let down rather by the fact that the Lancashire coverage was in Western Grit, and the BMC have just published the best ever guide to the area. And Northumberland/NE England were in Northern Grit, along with Yorkshire gritstone, which has just seen volume 1 published of the most comprehensive ever guidebook to the area, a contender for best guidebook of the decade.
It's easy to use Rockfax as an excuse. It's slightly harder, but better in the long run, to use them as an incentive.

In reply to UKC Gear: after reading this thread and the thread on UKbouldering, I am pretty disgusted with the decision to publish this guide. I for one will not be buying it.

In reply to Toreador:

Incentive to do what? If you look at the sample pages on UKB they look easily Rockfax quality in terms of layout standard already and one would assume that they will surpass it in terms of the knowledge contained within given the role the author plays in redeveloping the area.

Ive not got Northern England, but i got the impression it was a traditional selected guide (as i think Western Grit was for Lancashire?). At the moment it seems very unclear as to whether this one offers some sort of heavily cut down coverage as suggested by Alan's quoted reductions in page counts or whether its got nearly definitive coverage of large areas which is what some of his words and some of the numbers provided might suggest.

For me the key question is what it does to the funding of the redevelopment, competition in itself doesn't bother me in the slightest and has benefitted the end consumers of UK guidebooks.

In reply to UKC Gear:
Well I for one am really depressed by this news as inevitably it spells bad news for Ground Up and it shows Rockfax to be uncaring about the climbing community. It is one thing to identify a market opportunity where there is no, or a low quality, product and another completely different thing to go after a great product (NWR) that Rockfax will probably be able to well outsell based on its much better known brand.

What will this book offer that NWR doesn't? well apart from debatably knackering the new local activist limestone guide. It seems to have pretty well the same routes on the well known cliffs, i'm sure that it will have some great photos but if the cover photo is anything to go by then they will just be the same standard photos of the same routes. I'd be slightly less depressed if Rockfax were using the cover shot to inspire people to do a fab route they might not know about but boy who doesn't know about left wall and want to do it?

Alan says there's room in the market for 2 selected guides to this area. I have no idea of the figures but I just cannot see that. Most people will choose a reasonable product from the brand they know best regardless of the quality of the competition. Ground Up are producing some great guides, and I would imagine not big sellers, in the gogarth north and slate guides and this must be made much easier with the sales of NWR to support them. All of this will be put at risk by Rockfax wanting to muscle in on a well served market purely to make money.

Personally I don't like people failing but I really hope this book does fail though realistically it will sell and Rockfax will proclaim it as a triumph of consumer choice regardless of the long term effect on our community.

mike

In reply to AJM:

It's the competition that is the problem. I'm sure 90% of climbers out there would rather buy a voluntary collaborative guide than a commercial organisation's who have clearly seized upon an opportunity to the detriment of the volunteers who have worked extremely hard re-equipping the routes.

In reply to Toreador:

With respect, you comments are not really engaging with what the issue is here. Have you read the UKB thread? I know naff all about lancashire especially, but your example is flawed in that there are quite a few years between the publication of the rockfax and the definitive. People are much more willing to update their guidebook to an area after a few years than they are to buy two guides to the same area at the same time. Here there is a situation where the Rockfax will more or less coincide with the definitive. If they both arrived in the shops at the same time, and the rockfax had coverage of, say 90% of the routes that see 90% of ascents, how many people do you think would buy both?

This appears to be a very different issue from straightforward competition. Here you are looking at competition between a straightforward commercially produced guide, and a guide whose production is integrated with local climbing community efforts to redevelop an entire climbing area, it is not a level playing field. While Alan makes snide comments about how long the local guide has taken to produce, the fact is that they are checking and extensively rebolting for inclusion in the guide, from which the whole climbing community benefits. The volunteers are motivated by producing a guidebook which will showcase their work and put funds back into the local area. Rockfax argue that 'business is business', which it is for them, but I take the point that climbing is not a business for most people, including the NW lime volunteers, who are not running a business but putting in work to benefit the entire community.

In reply to the comment further up, this is more than just 'the usual suspects' damning Rockfax whatever they do. I have no particular agenda in this, I am just trying to make the case for the opposing view as this thread is understandably skewed toward one side of the argument. As a disinterested observer with no stake in either Rockfax or the NWL area, from the arguments made on here and on UKB, I cannot see how the business decision to include extensive coverage of NWL sport routes in the Rockfax is in the best interests of the climbing community.

http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,22459.0.html

Some fairly unhappy people out there, and rightly so.

Yes, business is business. But when you're "competition" is a bunch of people doing it for no financial gain, with the sole aim being to improve the crags out there, AND doing a better job than the Rockfax books, then it seems a bit of a poor show for Rockfax to do this (not for the first time).

The new comprehensive guide coming out looks like it will be great, and I'll be buying that safe in the knowledge that my money will be going to looking after the crags that we'll be climbing on.

In reply:
I agree with this opinion, found on "the other channel"

After the huge amount of work that Pete has done on the re-equipping front, the idea of setting out to undermine his not-for-profit, NWBF-supporting guide is frankly, outrageous.

In reply to UKC Gear:

+1 to what Ged said two posts up.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Just to reinforce what has already been said. From a consumer point of view I'm not sure what this guidebook contributes in light of the duplicated material to the Ground-Up guide. I'm sure Rockfax will sell a lot of units, which is probably their greatest concern. It seems strange to me why they opted for a North Wales guide rather than a Lakes guide. The Lakes FRCC selected climbs guide is now 10 years old and looking in need of a revamp.

This is more controversial than I realised.

Could RF not rename their new book NORTH WALES TRAD and leave the bolted buttresses to the competition?

That would slim what is sure to be an impractically heavy book and allow the little guys to achieve their sales.

In reply to Owen W-G:
Certainly I'd be more likely to buy something more like that. I think there are quite a lot of people who aren't that bothered by sport in general and hard sport in particular and who'd like a guidebook with more coverage of interesting and out of the way low-to-mid-grade trad lines and only a few of the more fat-traddy friendly sport crags. Effectively something like a much expanded North Wales Classics, which wouldn't step on the toes of the NW Limestone definitive and would also feel a bit more distinct from the Ground Up North Wales guide.

In reply to Mr. Lee:


There have always been multiple selected guides to North Wales - I own the Ashton guide, the Williams guide and the Ground Up guide. I guess North Wales is one of the most popular rock climbing destinations in the UK, so its not surprising it attracts lots of guidebooks.

In reply to TobyA:


Hmm, the Williams one dated from the 1980s, a couple of decades before the Ground Up. The Ashton one is a quirky and different one covering only 100 climbs, more like a "classic rock" book.

So, there haven't been multiple competing guides that are contemporaneous, the way the Ground Up and Rockfax are likely to be.

In reply to Coel Hellier: But I suspect that for loads and loads of occasional N. Wales visitors climbing up to about E1/E2 like me and who had the Williams guide, we didn't really "need" the Ground Up guide - I just bought it because it looked great and had nice photos in it. It seems the Williams guide is still in print though, so was Ground Up trying to "steal" that publishers market? Well I hope so, we got a great book from that "competition".

Anyway, I thought you were an ardent free market thatcherite? You're not suggesting that publishers get government mandated monopoly periods on a region are you?

The Ashton guide actually has 100 chapters, but most of those page spreads have three or four routes on them. I think its fair to say that all of those selected guides stopped me from buying any of the definitive guides though - but this is something that Rockfax always get criticised for but I don't remember anyone criticising Ground Up when that book came out.

In reply to TobyA:


The Williams guide was/is a very dated product sold by a large company who had had decades to recoup their investment on that guide.


Not in all things, there are plenty of areas of life where competition is inappropriate. The fact is that for guide data creation (as opposed to data presentation in books) the vast majority is done on a volunteer, non-profit or meagre-profit basis. Almost no guide is ever a from-scratch effort, all of them build on previous ones.

For most areas there is insufficient market for competition in definitive or near-definitive guides. Some areas can perhaps sustain more than one selective, but often a selective subsidises marginally-viable definitives. If competition between selectives removes that subsidy then the community doesn't benefit from having competing selectives.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


So who decides when a company is worthy of protection and when they have sufficiently recouped their investment.


I thought this was now known to not be true.

In reply to UKC Gear: I have many Rockfax guides and find them generally very good, but I fail to see the need for this new guide especially when the Rockfax NW pocket guide is so good and only three years old. I wished they'd spent the time doing a selective guide for the lake district instead which is needed, I have the FRCC selective guide but it's almost ten years old now and with no photo topos is a bit long in the tooth.

In reply to TobyA:

Don't forget the Ron James selected guide. It predated all of them.

In reply to rgd1977:


Personally I think the hand drawn crag diagrams are way clearer than a photo topo for a big cliff (often taken from a compromised viewpoint with the crag top forshortened)as they can emphasise the features the climber actually sees.

In reply to Ramblin dave: The problem is all this hindsight is futile (as is all hindsight!). RF ARE puplishing it as it is and no amount of retrospect is going to change their mind on this. Its highly likely that the reason RF didn't test the waters first is because they knew it would be controversial given their previous stance on not wanting to re-publish an updated version of the North wales limestone.

I can't help but feel the whole thing is a personal vendetta against one of the volunteer equippers over on the forum that I shalln't repeat the name of!

In reply to UKC Gear:
There's been a lot of focus in this thread on North Wales Limestone but that's actually a relatively small section of the new guide book. It happens to cover the same territory as the volunteer comprehensive guide but that's no different to the rest of North Wales, which is covered by the CC guides and the Ground Up North Gogarth guide. So why all this focus on the limestone? I suspect most people go to North Wales for the trad and not for the (mostly) bolted limestone. I would have thought that anyone who is really interested in the limestone will get the comprehensive guide once it comes out. Conversely, I would have thought that the people who will be buying the Rockfax will be buying it primarily for the selected trad routes and not for the limestone coverage. I bet that if there were very limited or even no coverage of the limestone, the Rockfax sales would not be affected that much. I know I'm making assumptions here but I've got an idea of the average climber who goes to North Wales and it isn't someone who hangs out on the Ormes on a regular basis! Perhaps locals and people from Liverpool and Manchester do but for most people it's a rainy day venue rather than a destination in itself.

Secondly, Rockfax are a commercial organisation and are free to produce guide books to any area they like if they think there is a market opportunity there. They aren't the only commercial outfit making some money out of it - think of the gear manufacturers and the outdoor instructors. Oh and Ground Up! If someone creates a good quality product that other people want to buy, good on them, be they the CC, Ground Up, Rockfax or a bunch of local activists.

In reply to Misha: I could tell you to read the entire thread but it's got beyond that point. Instead I suggest you read the thread on UKBouldering. it gives a much more interesting read!

In reply to Misha:


Because their coverage of the limestone seems to be (note the "seems") covering nearly all the worthwhile routes, and thus competing head-on with the definitive, whereas it is not doing that so directly in the other areas.

In reply to Misha:


Exactly. However the sales of the local definitive are likely to take quite a hit, especially if the Rockfax coverage turns out to be more rather than less comprehensive, as Alan has hinted above. To reiterate, volunteers are checking every route and extensively rebolting, for inclusion in the not-for-profit definitive, the proceeds of which are going directly back into the bolt fund. This, given your assessment quoted above, is exactly why this action seems mean spirited at the very least.

From the sample pages on UKB, the quality of the local guide seems to be similar quality to the latest Rockfax guides. However the less obvious point is that the accuracy of the information and the state of the bolts will have been checked by volunteers, a selfless action from which everybody benefits. However, irrespective of the quality of the guides, the Rockfax is likely to have wider sales (because of its trad coverage) and the strength of the brand - and once people already have comprehensive coverage of the lime, how many will then buy the definitive as well? As you yourself have said, probably not occasional visitors.

Rockfax certainly have every right to publish but the misgiving of a lot of people is that the decision to include NWL is not in the best interest of climbers.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

including selected info on other crags in North Wales. A defininte USP over the up-coming definitive guide that has yet to be published. A USP that most un-informed climbers will, quite innocently see as a benefit over it!

That's my very cynical opinion of it, anyhow!

In reply to Coel Hellier:
That is a fair point. I read the UKB thread after posting this and if the route numbers in there are to be believed, there is a disproportionate skew towards NWL. I suspect the reason is that Rockfax originally planned a new NWL guide (let's not forget that they've already brought one out, in fact I think it's the 'current' guide to the area, though I might be wrong). Perhaps they then decided to do a selected guide for all of NW but didn't want to throw away the work already done.

In reply to Misha:


Alan gives his rationale earlier in this thread, saying that for sports crags their policy is to be more comprehensive.

In reply to Quiddity:
Perhaps the answer is for Rockfax to strip out a fair few of the limestone routes, leaving just the best ones, as with the rest of the guide. I doubt that would lead to significantly lower sales and would appease the local activists. Of course they are not obliged to do that but it would be a nice goodwill gesture.

Anyway, I think the really interesting routes to do on the Ormes are the trad sea cliffs... For someone from Birmingham and further away (as opposed to North Wales and the Manchester / Liverpool areas), going all the way to Llandudno for a bit of sport climbing isn't that appealing. Not for people who are primarily trad climbers anway, but perhaps we are in a minority these days... a whole different discussion!

In reply to Misha:

I suspect it's gone past the point of goodwill gestures. The die has been cast and I highly doubt given Alan and Pete's relationship that Alan will back track on this sticky issue!

In reply to Quiddity:


Just had a read back through posts, in an earlier one Alan says;


According to this then Rockfax don't really make any profit so contributing to bolt funds is too expensive as a company policy....

In reply to UKC Gear:This tread though arguably justified is turning in to your usual UKC shit storm. Simple answer would be for the conscientious climber to show their opinion via a wallet when the books hit the shelves.

I know which one I will be purchasing.

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

>

Good will, that is an interesting concept. The UKB thread is full of bitter vitriol, unpleasant comments and a general air of malice.


Chris

In reply to Misha:

Arguably a book with fairly thorough coverage of a couple of major limestone crags would be the best for everyone - serious sport climbers are probably going to get the definitive anyway and a lot of people (including me, tbh) are going to view any coverage of limestone sport in an area where they mainly go to do mountain trad as a bit of a waste of space, but if they do try it as a bad weather option and decide they want more then they might end up getting the definitive.

But I'm guessing it's too late for this sort of talk now...

All connected with this guidebook should be ashamed

In reply to Chris Craggs:

For good reasons judging by the statements made by both interested parties.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Personally, I see it more like this

towards those who are trying to undermine the hard work and financial input of volunteers, whereas it is full of goodwill and appreciation of the volunteers themselves
>
>
?

In reply to Andy Reeve:
Me too. On that note, I am out of this discussion as it's apparent all this is futile as Rockfax have made their bed and are going to lay in it not matter how uncomfortable it's going to be.

To all those who can't be bothered to read this thread all you need to know is:

Man makes a derogatory comment on UKC about a Rockfax guide book.

said man gets banned and rightly requests his personal information (logbook info) to be sent to him in a formal request.

UKC moderator (who happened to be an author of the guide the man made a comment about) gets the hump and illegally deletes man's data.

Man complains to ICO re the matter. This is upheld and apparently p1sses off UKC Mod so much they decide to release a selective, definitive guide for North Wales knowing Man is releasing one too after previously stating the area couldn't sustain two guides.

Sh1t-storm ensues.

I think that's the gist of the situation as I see it!

In reply to Misha:


+1

In reply to Misha:

This seems like one of the most reasonable suggestions and I believe there is precedent for this in Rockfax West Country guide book. Rather than include most of Cheddar only a dozen or so routes are mentioned along with a bit of information about the local guidebook. However I don't know whether this was done to free up space or to appease Crocker and the local activists.

I am currently away in France on a poor Internet connection so I won't be able to keep up fully with this debate.

One thing people seem to be missing from my posts above is this:

When the alternative guide was announced, it was happy to pit itself against our dedicated 234 page guide, the A55 guide and the NWR selection). So now the competition is minus one dedicated guide, plus one more selective.

Even if you were under the impression as seems to be being claimed, when announcing the alternative book, that we were going to produce a 76 page guidebook (when did Rockfax last produce a 76 page Rockfax?) then the competition is at least the same now as it was when entering the arena ( in reality actually much smaller)..

We then withdrew plans for our full guide and announced the NWC guide with clear plans which are exactly the same as the ones we are now re-announcing.

As I also stated above, I would be totally confident of publishing this other definitve guidebook in the proposed current market and, without wishing to pll rank here, I do know a bit about guidebook sales patterns.

Alan

In reply to higherclimbingwales:
snip

This is actually a pretty offensive post and completely untrue. I will not discuss this matter on the forums but plase email me directly if you wish to.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Alan, I don't think anybody is for one second saying that you don't know how to make money out of guidebooks. Quite the opposite in fact.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

The pertinent point for me is that your limestone sport coverage is (by your own admission) almost comprehensive.

Your guide would not be possible without the vast time and effort that's been put in by volunteers to check and re-equip these routes and crags.

Disregarding any background I think it's incredibly cynical to pre-empt the volunteer guide, especially because their guide will give back to the climbing community.

I will not be buying your north wales guide and I would encourage anyone else to wait for the volunteer produced comprehensive guide if they're interested in limestone sport, or one of the other excellent guides for anything else.

I would also urge any retailers reading not to stock this new rockfax.

In reply to IainAM: here here

In reply to GDes: or is it hear hear?

In reply to GDes:

<shrugs shoulders and googles>

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/hear-hear

In reply to IainAM: What Iain said

In reply to higherclimbingwales:


Of course you choose not to quote what Pete said about his actual actions:

"It was depressingly petty but I followed it through on principle. "

and

"I fully realise how petty it is and I felt a little bad taking up an important organization's time".

He also described Alan as acting like an "arse" so states he started acting as an "arse back". It doesn't sound like Pete is particularly proud of that part of the saga. People should maybe read the full UKBouldering thread because they won't get a full sense of the issue by reading your tabloid-worthy 'synopsis' here.

In reply to jon:

Yes, that excellent guide of 1970, 'Rock Climbing in Wales', was the first of its kind. I don't recall it ruffling any feathers. But the present issue is clearly a lot more complicated and inclines me to support the CC position.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I was using Steve Ashton's guide on Sunday. If you know what route you want to do, it works better than most modern guides and usually gives you a laugh in the process. Some great one-liners.

In reply to UKC Gear:

Having followed this thread and reviewed the same on the other site I can say that even after all of that I am not in a position to truly be able to judge what has gone on here. After all, a good proportion of this has gone on behind the scenes between a small group of people who are independently giving us snippets of their story.

It's also moot in many ways - this is a commercial world and we, as consumers, are free to make our choices. We may decide to buy Rockfax or we may decide to buy the alternative(s), and we will each have our own reasons for doing so.

I personally feel that any important messages in the debate (bolt funds for example, or the discussions about whether the market can sustain "x" number of guides) have been lost in a lot of petty name calling, vitriol and supposition.

Let's be honest, as soon as you decide to take a company and invent new and insulting names for it to try to boost your argument, you have strayed into what is at best childish and at worst is potentially libellous. Why do people need to call it xxxfax, xxxxfax or whatever? Is this a school playground?

I'm a huge fan of climbing guidebooks and have a massive collection of my own. Rockfax are a big part of that for obvious reasons and they deserve credit for pushing things forward. But let's remember that they are a commercial venture with a staff of enthusiastic climbers. You can argue all day long about whether or not you feel that they are being parasitic or not acting in good faith, but it doesn't change the fact that they are operating in a marketplace and are entitled to trade. The particulars of this individual case are patchy in my eyes and I certainly won't be making a judgement based on the outpourings I have seen on two long threads. I will make my own judgement as and when the time comes and for my own reasons.

Personally I'm a fan of the A55 guide which is a beautifully produced and compact work which now, sadly, is unlikely to be extended to a 3rd edition because of OTHER guides that will corner their little part of the market. For me this is a real shame.

The other shame is that a large number of active climbers can descend into such nastiness and name calling in an arena that we all love.

Any climbing guide book, unless it is the first of an area, will be building on the work done by people who came before. Nobody has the monopoly on the foundations that are already in place - the routes themselves. This is something we have to accept. The best way to distinguish yourself from the competition is in the production of your work, the price and some USPs. For example, if a guide pointed out that a certain % would go to the bolting fund I think that would appeal. Also the contents of the book ASIDE from the climbing are important. My example for this is the Ground Up Llanberis Slate guide where the "Diary of a Slatehead" entries are simply sublime and to me are a fantastic addition that you just don't see with Rockfax.

At the end of the day we live in a world of choice - whoever makes that choice the easiest will probably find that they sell a huge number of guides, and good luck to them. In fact, good luck to anyone who works hard to produce a climbing guide - I've done a few myself and it's hard work and more akin to a labour of love than a money making exercise.

In reply to Skyfall:

Sure; absolutely gorgeous book.

In reply to Rampikino:

I'm not sure if it's been missed by you (apologies for the drum banging if not) but all the "profits" from the new definitive are going to the bolt fund and it's being written by the people who are actually re-equipping the routes and climbing/checking them. They may profit from previous guides but are also putting in the lions share of the work out on the crags to bring the routes back to a climbable state. Are the Rockfax team doing the same?

As far as I’m aware the Rockfax team hasn’t been involved in the re-equipping and as yet haven’t promised anything to the North Wales Bolt Fund. I shan’t comment on their checking as I don't know whether they are out climbing all the routes that will be in their guide.

The main point is, have you seen the sample pages posted on UKB. They look fantastic!

In reply to galpinos:

It's a very decent thing to do but doesn't give it an automatic right to exist over and above an alternative.

I agree it's a better way to get more people to contribute to a bolt fund, but there is no obligation. How many people go to sports venues and never ever contribute to the cost?

At the start of this year I paid for and bolted 2 new routes in North Wales - I don't think that makes me any better or more morally elevated climber and I don't begrudge anyone doing the routes who has never paid a penny. I guess that's the way of things.

If I had spent a small fortune I may feel differently about things, but writing a climbing guide is always a gamble.

Yes, the pictures do look fantastic! If the guide samples are anything to go by then it will be hugely successful on its own merits irrespective of Rockfax.

In reply to IainAM:

I am certain I never said our coverage of the NWL sport was 'comprehensive'. I think I said 20% of the coverage and 234 pages reduced to 76.

Crags that are going in:
Upper Pen Trwyn - Mayfair Wall to End of the Road
Lower Pen Trwyn
Castel y Gwynt - 9 routes
Castle Inn Quarry
Penmaen Head

Crags which we haven't decided yet :
Little Orme - Craig y Don, The Diamond

Crags which are not going in NWClimbs but which were going in the original book we had planned and which presumably are going in the other planned book:
Llandudno Crags - Tramstation, Empire Crags, Elephants Cave
Parisellas - Dumbell Flyer, Mumbo Jumbo
Pigeons Cave, Cockelshell Bay, Hamburger Buttress,
Surprise Zawn, Wonder wall, Turdon Gorge, Un-named crag, Craig Pen Gogarth
Observatory Buttress, St Tudnos, Central Buttress, Crescent Buttress
Manor Crag, Allotment, meadow, Atlanta-detritus, great Zawn
Notice board Crag, The gallery, Llandulas Cave

Alan

In reply to GDes:

So do you believe me when I say that I don't think that there is a problem here and at there is plenty of room in the market for both books? If you don't, what are you basing your assessment on?

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

How do you reconcile this with what you yourself say here?


Sorry Alan but you are not being very consistent on whether or not you think the market will support two guides to this area. I can see why some interpret it as being disingenuous when you then say:

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax: No I don't believe that assessment, as I you have slightly vested interests! Of course you're going to say that you think there is room for your book. You have very little to lose in this. Your book will sell, will all know that. The point here is that a fairly large amount of sales of your book will take away sales from the comprehensive book, which is a kick in the d$$k for the volunteers who have maintained those crags, and removes money from the bolt fund. Isn't it that simple?

In reply to Quiddity:

I was referring to two definitive/full guidebooks, not a definitive and a set of selective guidebooks. Obviously the area can support a single definitive and selective(s) since it has done previously.

Historically selective guidebooks have actually supported definitive guidebook sales to an extent especially where the definitive is a good book.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Once again this point comes back to just how comprehensive is the 'extensive' Rockfax coverage that is policy for the crags that you cover, and your implication was certainly that it would be more rather than less, particularly if you consider how much you are including on a proportion-of-ascents basis rather than simply number of routes.

Would you agree that Misha's point here:

Is a reasonable suggestion?

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

OK, to clarify it's comprehensive on nwl for the areas most people visit, is that right? What then is the incentive for most people to buy the truly comprehensive guide? You will be reducing the sales of a guide that is giving back to the climbing community, and a guide that is a driving force for the huge amount of work that's taken place on these crags.

As I said above it's incredibly cynical to take advantage of the years of work that volunteers have put in, work that you have not contributed to in any meaningful way.

In reply to UKC Gear: The guys over on the other channel have found 7 errors on the yellow rockfax sample page already.

Just sayin...

In reply to IainAM:

I don't know about the relative popularity of the different areas of NWL, but unless the other areas are really just obscuro esoterica, this seems to be putting it a bit strongly.


* They don't climb trad, don't want to spend money on a load of trad routes they aren't interested in.
* They already have a good selected guide to the trad stuff or a bunch of definitives, don't want to spend money on a load of trad routes they aren't interested in.
* They're a regular visitor to the limestone, and don't want to be stuck with just the most popular areas.
* They generally like buying guidebooks.

As far as I can see, the main sales you might lose are the occasional visiting traddies who might see coastal limestone as an iffy weather option (and who don't already have the Ground Up book). But they're more likely to just go to Tremadoc or Gogarth rather than fork out for a whole new definitive to a sport area they don't plan on visiting very much anyway.

In reply to IainAM:

This sounds exactly like the claims that were made about Eastern Grit, and proved by experience to be completely unfounded.

In reply to Chris Craggs:




You forgot your own advice. Again.

In reply to Toreador:

What work was done to those crags that's comparable in financial cost and man hours to the amount of work done redeveloping North wales lime?

In reply to AJM:

A very good point!

In reply to UKC Gear: Apologies if this has already been commented on. I posted about this on UKB but will add here for those not of that parish.

Yellow Wall is one of the easiest, most obvious and best known (non-LPT) walls around yet:

- Cornhollio gets a trad grade despite being a sport route (it's even 7b in the UKC logbook)
- there is no mention of wires (useful on both Pirates and String of Pearls for example)
- the description for String of Pearls utterly fails to capture any of the essence of what is the classic of that wall; from what the description says you'd think it was a wall climb and while it sort of is, its nature is more that of a slab with a steeper finish
- the line is wrong for Badger Badger
- there is no FA for Badger Badger or Cornholio

This is one small section, a section Rockfax choose to release as a sample yet there is so much wrong with it. This says everything you need to know about the level of effort Rockfax make, virtually none.

This is why Rockfax has zero right to undermine Pete's work / the definitive. Rockfax should also be ashamed at the level of basic errors in their production. This is a recurring theme and the apparent attitude of 'pile em high sell em cheap' falls very short of what the area deserves and the level of inspiration genuine guidebooks attain.

None of this even touches on the potential damage to North Wales Rock's market. Another guide produced with a level of detail and passion that Rockfax, based on all the evidence I've seen, can't come close to.

In reply to Toreador:

Respectfully, guides to the most popular crags in the UK were never going to struggle to sell. Yet Eastern grit and VG selectives have almost certainly reduced BMC definitive sales and the extra effort required to produce the commercially competitive high quality guides, cost the BMC in production expense (and publication delays).

I don't resent Eastern Grit at all as it was the first to do the crags I started climbing on and love well and is properly researched and broadly accurate. It also pushed us to produce the definitive guides through the BMC that I wanted to be involved with, rather than doing them on the cheap.

For the less popular areas overmuch direct competition can potentially damage exisiting volunteer led efforts. I'd hope Alan can sit down and think about the balance in this case (when the fuss dies down) as I think he probably has it wrong.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


I asked if you would be


and your reply was


You can split hairs about the difference between 'extensive' and 'comprehensive' if you like.

Also the percentages of routes included are probably a misleading figure, the really pertinent question is what % of ascents do the included routes account for?

In fact it wasn't hard to do with logbook data and a spreadsheet, so I had a look - out of 19521 ascents listed on the relevant crags (not incl Parasellas or the crags you listed as unsure) 16104 are on crags going in the guide - ie. the 20% of the routes you are covering account for 82.5% of the traffic. This, to my mind, supports the accusation that you are creaming off the easiest to document and most commercially viable areas, which will significantly impact the market for the definitive once people already own the rockfax.

In reply to Quiddity:

Apologies if I missed something here, and with respect, isn't what you are saying above the very point of a select guide - the routes with the most ticks in the most popular spots?

If I was going to do a select guide to Stanage for example, I would focus on a large number of areas that had the most ticks.

In reply to Rampikino:

As Rockfax's stated policy is to offer comprehensive coverage of the selected areas they cover, the accusation is that the guide is being pitched as as-good-as-definitive for the areas of primary interest for a large proportion of the target market, and this accusation seems to be borne out by the facts.

A better example than your Stanage one is the Dorset 2005 rockfax. Although its coverage of Portland was technically selective, in practice it was as-good-as-definitive as it contained virtually every route that the vast majority of climbers had any interest in.

In reply to Quiddity:

I see, thank you.

In reply to Ramblin dave:


If you don't, by your own admission, know why did you think it important to give us your (incorrect) view?

The fact is most of the climbing on the Ormes takes place between the start of the Marine drive and the 'end of the road'. It's easily accessible after work or on the way to N Wales for the weekend. It's where people go to wait for the tide for LPT which is probably the next most popular venue and contains most of the routes which people actually travel from outside the area to climb. The most popular lower grade venues are Castle Inn and, more recently, Penmaen head. By covering these areas I'd say Rockfax have over 90% of the climbing covered (by that I mean total ascents not number of routes). To do guides for these areas probably takes 30% of the research effort, if that, because they are so accessible, you could do the marine drive without stepping out of the car! This is the low hanging fruit that appeals to both climbers and Rockfax and it makes commercial sense to stop there, putting in the extra effort would not yield many more sales but covering *all* the low hanging fruit will have a detrimental effect on the bolt fund guide book. Rockfax could have cut back on coverage which would not cost them any sales but would result in increased revenue for the bolt fund. Instead Rockfax chose to knowingly undermine the bolt fund guide book and deliberately cost the bolt fund money. Only Rockfax know why. ....

In reply to Tyler: Do you know if the plan is for the NWL guide to supersede the (excellent) A55 guide? With Mike Doyles consent? (general question but you seem to know your shit!)

In reply to Papillon:

I think this is a good question given the emphasis Mike Doyle gives in the book to bolt funds and profits going to such funds.

I said in an earlier post that this looked like the death of any future A55 update.

In reply to Rampikino:

I believe it covers the whole limestone area including those in the A55 guide. As to the second part of the question, about consent, I have no idea I'm afraid.

In reply to AJM:

I see - I take it that includes Dyserth, Castle Inn, Gopp, Llandullas etc?

Two points on that - firstly it probably does mean the end of a mini A55 future guide.

It also means there are areas not proposed to be covered by Rockfax.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Good work Chris. Definitely another contender for our "About" section http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/page,about_ukb.html but unfortunately we already have a "bitter-lads-in-cellars vibe". Got any other pejorative adjectives up your sleeve?

In reply to Rampikino:

Think so. As for your points - I think everyone with knowledge of the area knows Alan's guide isn't definitive, he has said so himself, the issue being whether it's too definitive by virtue of choosing to include the most popular crags (iirc he says he is including some stuff at castle inn at least?). So that isn't revelatory at all.

Regarding what happens to the A55 climbs guide, then unless the author was giving more to the bolt fund than Pete proposes to (difficult since he says he is donating all profits so presumably can be matched but not bettered) then it's not something that concerns me really. The bolt fund will benefit either way.

In reply to Papillon:

First of all thank you for your kind words about the A55 Sport Climbs guide. Thats the sort of payback I value along with seeing people out at the crags with the guide.

To answer your question, as far as I am concerned, there will be a third edition of the A55 guide at some point in the future. Having said that I fully support the forthcoming NWL guide authored by local activists Pete (the banned) Harrison and Andy Boorman.

It should be appreciated how much work has gone into re-equipping and new routing as well as checking of routes for the new guide by local climbers and activists and which has been fully supported by the North Wales bolt fund. All of this is entirely unpaid and all the profits from the guide will go to the North Wales bolt fund. The whole concept is about climbers doing it for themselves as well as for the wider climbing community.

The profits generated will mean more re-equipping and more new routes which will be in the interests of the climbing community rather than swelling the profits of Rockfax.

The new NWL guide itself has been something of a marathon journey but even though amateurs are compiling it, anyone who has seen sample pages will agree that it is a top quality product and up there with the best. Hopefully it will be out before the Autumn.

Despite Alan James' pages of meally-mouthed words there is little justification for the new Rockfax guide other than more profits for Rockfax. There is already a selected guide to North Wales in GroundUp's excellent North Wales Rock and that will be supplemented by the forthcoming NWL guide - so it can't be to plug a gap in the market. GroundUp are an outfit of locals with a real feel and passion for the area and who produce very high quality guides. They deserve to be supported. The area is also very well served by a number of CC definitive guides.

By the way, more money has been donated from the modest royalties of "A55 Sport Climbs" to the North Wales bolt fund than Rockfax say they have donated.

Rockfax's cherry picking of the best of the Ormes (and to a lessor extent the A55 crags) will inevitably result in less money for the bolt fund.

The guide book buying public have a choice. Buy the new Rockfax guide and contribute to their profits or support the work of the local climbing community and the North Wales bolt fund and buy the forthcoming North Wales Limestone Guide and the GroundUp North Wales Rock guide (if you haven't already got one).

Do not buy the Rockfax North Wales Climbs guide.

Michael Doyle

In reply to rockcat:

Delighted to hear that there will be a 3rd Edition of A55. I felt that it may be under threat, but clearly not, and I personally would buy one (especially as I did a couple of new routes there!)

In reply to rockcat: Well said Michael, we've used your A55 guide a good few times now, making for some great weekends. It speaks volumes that your small guide has contributed more to the local area than a company such as RockFax - keep up the great work.

In reply to rockcat:
well said Michael.

I think it can also be said (IMO) that the quality of the GroundUp NWR, Llanberis Slate and North Wales Winter (and I'm sure the others too, but I don't own them) exceed that of any Rockfax publication I've seen.

I look forward to seeing more of the same in NWL.

In reply to tobyfk:

Toby, WTF has happened to 'smug and superior'?

jcm

In reply to rockcat:

Well said.

In reply to rockcat:


Well said Mike, I'm glad you're fully behind the Bolt Fund produced guide. Just one point to note (and this is obviously not to undermine your contribution) but Rockfax have not given anything to the bolt fund, the money Alan was talking about earlier are contributions by individuals using the web page Rockfax have set up, so they helped faciliate the donation not made a donation.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

Not sure. Perhaps rejected as being too, er, smug.

In reply to rockcat:


Hear hear! Or maybe make that any Rockfax guide if you can help it. Not the sort of company we need to be supporting in the climbing world methinks. I shall be avoiding them in the future as much as possible.

In reply to Tyler:
Ah, okay, that makes more sense.

Put like that it does seem like a bit of a dick move.

In reply to...

Careful, you don't represent every person in the climbing world.

I think that no matter what your opinion, actively encouraging people to commercially damage Rockfax on this site or any other is taking things way too far.

In reply to psychomansam:
You'd best delete your profile and stop posting then.

In reply to Rampikino:


Do you not support boycotts in general as a pressure tool, or do you just think in this case that its OTT? I'm curious. They seem a fairly mainstream way for customers to exercise power in this world, not something that's as beyond the pale as you make it sound...

In reply to Offwidth:

I've never really understood this argument. Someone who doesn't climb there regularly isn't going to buy the definitive guides (OK, I would, but I'm the exception). If there isn't a selective guide then they'll borrow one, or download something from the web, or buy something cheap second hand.

Someone who climbs regularly in an area is going to want the definitive guide sooner or later. The new Yorkshire guide is only just out, but I've seen more copies at the crag than I have of the Rockfax guide.


Really? It doesn't seem to have held back the Yorkshire guidebook team. Less than 3 years from the launch of the project to the publication of volume 1 (which on its own is significantly bigger than the previous edition).

In reply to AJM:

I think there are ways of going about such things and a public row between various parties across two websites has led to more questions than answers and certainly hasn't given me reason to encourage others to act in such a way.

I think that if the NWL guide is as good as it looks then it will be a triumph. Creating a "war" with Rockfax causes a lot more harm than you realise - not just to the profits of a couple of people but far beyond.

I certainly won't be buying the guide, and will be buying the guide written by the local activist, Pete Harrison. I hope that many people feel the same way.

In reply to Rampikino:

The personal relations between the publishers aside (I have never knowingly met either of them, so don't really care), I think actually that continual pressure on the subject has given a lot more clarity to what Rockfaxs guide will actually include, so in that sense I think its actually answered some of the questions - I certainly feel a lot better informed now about the degree of overlap between the two guides than I was previously. I not sure what big questions you think the discussion so far has prevented anyone answering?

And whilst there might be a war between the two publishers, if you wanted to be dramatic about it, ordinary punters choosing to vote with their feet and encouraging others to do likewise isn't a war is it - were consumers at war with Starbucks over tax, or supermarkets over battery chickens/horsemeat/whatever, or boycotting products from countries they disapprove of? To me that's just democracy in action - negative public pressure comes as a result of doing things that chunks of the public disapprove of.

And do tell, what are these wider harms you think the chap in question is stirring up? I can see wider harms from the funding to the bolt fund drying up, for sure, but you are implying that the harms are from the opposite outcome...?

In reply to UKC Gear: pete also seems to be providing an app With taster sections on it if anyone wants to look it's here http://thesend.co.uk/apps/northwaleslimestone.php

In reply to AJM:


If you climb in an country with no guidebook, or out of date not very good guidebooks, I think you get a different perspective on the seemingly never ending UK "guidebook wars". The UK must be about the best served country in the world for climbing guidebooks, in no small part I suppose because you have choices on what to buy. Nevertheless, there is something deeply weird about how these "scandals" just keep coming with guidebook production.

But I'm also not sure about what the real accusation is here - that Alan is using (and perhaps risking?) his commercial venture to 'punish' Pete for reporting him to the authorities on another matter? Or that Rockfax are capitalist fat cats exploiting climbing to make a quick buck? Both have been made. I guess the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive but would require a surprising combination of top notch Machiavellian and business skills.

I suspect the "competition" between the two books is actually a lot less zero-sum for the Bolt Fund for example than is being suggested.

In reply to AJM:

Gladly.

The call wasn't just to boycott this guide but all Rockfax guides. That harms guidebook writers who are nothing to do with this publication. It also stops smaller guides being used - ones to more niche areas. Some smaller "labour of love" guides would suffer through a blanket boycott.

I totally agree with the concept of consumers voting with their feet - as I would do, but some of the language on the sites and the suggested lengths of the "war" are too much in my view - more akin to a hate campaign.

As I've said already, I'm delighted about a 3rd A55 guide, also the NWL samples look superb - they should triumph, and they deserve to do so independently of the bitter row elsewhere.

In reply to tobyfk:



Never did it for me and was a bit rich coming from an Etonian barrister

In reply to shark: I am concerned that there are not enough guidebooks for the Llanberis Path up snowdon... Rockfax needs to get on it

In reply to psychomansam:

You're ignoring their contribution to the development of guide books with photo topos, approach diagrams, professional presentation, etc. I think the climbing world owes the quality of modern guide books to Rockfax. That's not to say that we wouldn't have got there eventually anyway but it would have taken a lot longer because without the Rockfax competition and/or inspiration there wouldn't have been the incentive or the vision for the CC and the BMC etc to improve. I'm sure others will disagree.

Also, Rockfax does fill important gaps in the market. South West Climbs (the CC have only just published their selected guide to the Bristol area and Cornwall is way off), Peaks Limestone, Pembroke (before the new CC guides came out), Grit East and West (again, before the new CC guides came out). Also overseas destinations, Rjukan and Lofoten for a start.

In reply to UKC Gear:
I've got GroundUp's excellent North Wales Rock and I'll buy the forthcoming North Wales Limestone Guide. I don't need and will certainly not be buying this shoddy offering!

In reply to TobyA:

I think the issue is with the fact that the area was deemed too small to support 2 definitives only a few years back, and yet now a commercial guidebook is being released to compete with a non-commercial guidebook which exists to help fund the area regeneration which, after some tortuous wranglings with how you measure it, appears to include routes which cover 80% of the actual ascents made in the area and will be essentially definitive (of unbanned routes) for two of the largest areas (upper and lower pen trwyn) and include chunks from a number of the other popular ones too. Technically of course this is a selective guide competing against a definitive one, but when the coverage is so exhaustive in certain areas its leading people to remember that there was only room for one definitive guide only a few years back. And given the differences in funding models and core purposes, it matters in this case more so than if it were a CC guide for example.

Usually I'd agree with you about a selective not being a zero sum calculation with definitive guide sales, but there comes a point when its "selective" rather than selective, if you see my distinction.

As to Alan's reasons, I wouldn't wish to speculate and to be honest I also don't really care why he has made the decisions he has.

In reply to shark: Solicitor surely. I'm not sure he ever graduated to the rank of barrister.

In reply to Rampikino:

I don't think it really matters - I think some of their guides are dead useful as well so on that we probably aren't miles apart. It was your initial taking of issue that I responded to, which was that you didn't want people to "commercially damage Rockfax" that I thought was strange since it seems to defy the point of even a limited boycott on that one book.

In reply to AJM:

I think perhaps I would reword it to express commercially damaging Rockfax across the board rather than encouraging others to buy alternatives to the new guide.

A blanket campaign against Rockfax is unhelpful.

In reply to rockcat:

Very well said Michael

In reply to Misha: I'm not disagreeing with your assertion that Rockfax have catapulted British guidebook production into the late twentieth century, but before Rockfax's South West Climbs there was Littlejohn's massively influential book of the same title. As for the Pembroke situation, I'm not sure what really happened but there are those who claim that the first Pembroke Rockfax was rushed out in order to beat the definitive CC guide to the post.

In reply to kevin stephens:

I understand that sales of Ground Up's very good and popular selective guide help to finance the less popular but very good comprehensive guides to slate and Gogarth North.

I'm really looking forward to Ground Up's (hopefully) forthcoming Gogarth South book - especially with all the development that has gone on since the previous CC guide.

If sales of the proposed new Rockfax selective guide take more sales from Ground Up then appearance of Gogarth South seems ever further away.

With their proposed new North Wales guide Rockfax's claim that sales of their selective guide boost sales of local guides seems to be getting harder to substantiate.

In reply to UKC Gear:
I have absolutely no need for yet another selected guide to North Wales, particularly as I have all of the definitive guides anyway. But given some of the comments in this thread I'm very tempted to by a copy anyway.

In reply to Toreador:

Aren't you a big man, ey....

In reply to TobyA:

Personally I think the issue is that the local activists (Pete et al) have spent a lot of time and effort on preparing the ground for their guide by re-equipping many routes that had fallen into disrepair if not downright dangerousness. Their efforts seem to have been highly altruistic as any profit from the guide was going to be reinvested in the area to continue to make it an attractive destination for the wider climbing community.

Then, as if by magic, as soon as the routes have been put into decent condition (by someone else's effort and investment), along comes this new guide to take advantage of the situation and syphon off money that could have been raised to continue the re equipping and development. There might not be a personal vendetta, but there definitely seems to be a level of parasitism that needs to be called out (especially as there does not seem to be much of a contribution to re bolting coming out of the RF coffers).

There are also longer term questions to be asked. If there is less money going into the bolt fund and if the locals feel their hard work has been hijacked for others to make a profit, what is likely to be the outcome in a few years time when the routes again need re equipping? Will they go through all this again and give up their free time to do a load of work knowing that it is going to benefit a commercial organisation (that they dislike)? I wouldn't, and ultimately if they were to take the same attitude the area will once more fall into the disrepair that it was prior to them starting their re-bolting campaign.

No one enjoys climbing on manky bolts, so if people want North Wales crags to have more than a brief renaissance, they should vote with their wallets when deciding which of the two books to buy; one that will benefit the local area, has had the routes checked (and no inaccuracies) and looks great or one that will have less benefit to the long term sustainability of routes in the area.

In reply to Toreador:

The first point is obvious. If you can't see it I deapair. What would the climbers with only EG have purchased? You seriously think the guides have produced a new market or the vast amjority have both?

On YMC get Robin to agree to that he gave up huge amounts of time. Niall, Moff and I helped the team directly and it would obviously have been a lot quicker to produce a less glossy volume.

In reply to Chris Craggs:

haha you f*ckin dick

In reply to UKC Gear:

I wont be buying this book, and from the sound of it nor will many others.

As for some comments above about Rockfax contributing to guidebooks in general with photo topos and that this should be recognised etc etc...the CC and BMC have more than caught up. In fact, in my view, they have overtaken Rockfax by quite a margin in terms of guidebook quality. The more recent BMC and CC guides that I have purchased have been brilliant - to the point that I have sold many of my old Rockfax guides.

In many ways, the great work of recent CC and BMC guidebook authors now means that it's Rockfax playing catch-up. Perhaps this, in part, explains why Rockfax seem to be keen to make a quick buck on the back of other people's hard work in this instance.

It sounds like, having read both sides of the argument, that this proposed book could realistically reduce sales of the North Wales Limestone guide, which seems to be the work of some very altruistic and self-giving locals who have spent a lot of time and money making sure the routes in their guide are in the best possible shape. If Mr James and co can't accept that it's a bit crap, to say the least, to launch this book despite that, then I can only hope that most people will choose the definitive as simply the better quality guidebook.

In reply to 1234None:

I will also not be buying the Rockfax

In reply


i, explains why Rockfax seem to be keen to make a quick buck on the back of other people's hard work in this instance.


Is this fair, really? How quick is a quick buck and how long does it take to produce a guide? Having done one myself I know the time it takes and the dedication.

The assumption being thrown around the sites appears to be as follows:

"Rockfax, through motives of profit and retribution have decided to take advantage of others work in a cynical manner to rush out an inferior quality guide to market ahead of a competitor and parasitically siphon off funds intended for a bolt fund and into their own pockets."

Could I ask that if you believe this to be true that you put it directly to Rockfax themselves. Why not try asking Alan directly, I'm sure he would take the time to respond.

Secondly. Given the anti-Rockfax sentiment being thrown around I hope you are aware that without Rockfax there would be no UKC and all the content it provides free of charge.

Rockfax have transformed guides and the way we look at them and now there is a lot of competition. If you believe they are a force for evil perhaps you could ask the various businesses in Rjukan for example.

I don't know the full story here and I suspect very few do. Personally I will buy whichever guidebook best suits my needs - probably the NWL given what I already have, but we will see.

In reply to i.vincent: There are a lot of UK climbers who just won't be very interested in NWL - it's not the trad heartlands of the Pass or Ogwen or the V-diff to HVS grade range that takes so much traffic. But perhaps a selected guide that shows people what is there might actually bring climbers to the area? I suspect the Ground Up guide is doing that already - my copy is in the UK but I remember it having lots of the limestone routes in it. And some might realise how much fun sport climbing can be and buy the comprehensive guide, particularly as it looks like it's going to be such a good one. That's what I mean it not being zero sum.

If the NWL local activists' motivations are so pure (having spent many many hours hanging on ab ropes, scrubbing at rock and scraping out cracks, to clean dozens of new routes - I suspect there is also a bit of ego and local pride at play - being honest I know that's part of my motivations) I would hope they would just be happy that new people are visiting "their" cliffs regardless of how they get there. I hope they are putting the effort into the area because they love climbing there. Yes, someone might find a way to monetize that, DMM or Petzl selling quickdraws, whoever owns Marine Drive and charges the toll, campsite and B&B owners, and even Rockfax (and I hope some of those businesses give something to the bolt fund) but surely that is secondary?

Having done us some good in the past isn't an excuse for present behaviour.

How about just boycotting any of their books which are covered by local or comprehensive guides. Local guides frequently contribute to the local scene and bear local character, and comprehensive guides contribute to the area by getting traffic on a wider variety of routes rather than polishing a few while others grow over. Buying either also helps avoid monopoly. Many people buy rockfax because it's standardised and a name they know, even when rockfax isn't the best guide available.
If, like me, you take umbridge with Rockfax's behaviour, then you might also try to avoid them as much as possible. I wouldn't expect people to choose not to climb, rather than buy their guides - if that's the only option.

In reply to UKC Gear:I think we all should buy Pete's guide it looks light years ahead of any rockfax book. If the looks alone dont make you decide wgere to spend your money, think about Pete a guy who single handed bolted lpt, put in that hand line to be dimanond. We cant all but him a pint ad a thank you but we can buy a guidebook which will enable him and people like him to enable us to enjoy this brilliant area.

Cheers Pete!

In reply to Rampikino:


Doesn't this strike you as a bit like one of those "have you ever been a member of the communist party or any other banned organisation" questions?


They were separate companies a few years ago. Do you know for sure that there is a subsidy? You seem very sure.

In reply to AJM

Try asking.

I did.

In reply to Rampikino:

I'm quite sure I know what the answers I would be told are - after all I'm pretty sure Alan has clarified both so far already this thread. My problem is that given the levels of verbal games that have gone on so far about whether guides are definitive, comprehensive, selective and so on, and the statistical joy of how the levels of coverage appear under each different metric, be that routes, pages, ascents and so on, I'm in somewhat a cynical mood.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that this thread hasn't made me think about local issues. However, I would repeat that I think we, as climbers, owe a lot to Rockfax for hauling guidebooks into the modern era. We were pretty much happy at the time of Peak Gritstone East to accept a commercial enterprise had the right idea because it was leaps ahead of the volunteer guides at the time. Ditto re some of the euro sports climbing destinations. So I have a problem with (some of) the climbing community now trying to dictate to a commercial organisation run by keen climbers (just like any climbing wall or your favourite gear manufacturers) what they can or cannot publish. It would be great to see more donations to the bolt fund and I think Misha's idea of somewhat restricting the limestone sports route coverage is excellent. However, I'm sorry but this smacks of Daily Mail style bullying of someone actually doing nothing very much wrong. This website and the employees of Rockfax/UKC make (I would guess) a very modest income out of a different sort of service to climbers and I see nothing wrong with that.

In reply to AJM:

I never guessed


You can call me a cynic if you like but this thread does seem to carry a lot of responses by unfamiliar posters whose only listed thread responses are this one. Where did they all come from all of a sudden? I wonder.

In reply to John2:
Sure, and I have Littlejohn's book, but it isn't really the same by modern guide book standards. I like colour photo topos and professional quality colour layout with photos and approach diagrams etc... As for Pembroke, may be so but I came out in 2010 and the CC have only just released the last two volumes. Also, to buy all the five volumes would cost about 4 or 5 times as much as the one Rockfax. The committed Pembroke climbers will get the definitives. Those who go there only occasionally will probably opt for the Rockfax - there's loads to do even in that one book. I have (but have not yet used!) the first two CC guides and will probably get the other ones but that would be more because they are more portable and I like to support the CC, rather than due to the comprehensive coverage.

In reply to i.vincent:

Or they could go trad climbing... No need to fund bolts!

In reply to Misha:


Whilst honesty is a great thing, I'm not sure what your sexual orientation has to do with the current guidebook debate

In reply to TobyA:
I agree, I doubt there are actually that many people interested in NWL outside the local area. Those who actually go there regularly may well get the definitive anyway. As for the Rockfax, might as well trim down the NWL section to appease the locals and slim down the book to save weight! I don't suppose most people buying it will be buying it for the sport routes.

In reply to UKC Gear: shan't buy the rockfax guide.... Excited for pete's guide... Looks brilliant!

In reply to Skyfall:
LOL! The trouble with using a phone...

In reply to Rampikino:


It's not a great secret, surely - they usually post somewhere else but have taken the trouble to register and post here because they feel strongly about this subject. I don't see much to be cynical about there, whatever one's feelings on the subject under discussion.

jcm

In reply to AJM:

The part Rockfax plays in the continued existence of UkC is utterly crucial. Obviously it was set up by funds from Rockfax and Rock and Run. Until 2008 when I bought Andy H out, it was subsidised almost exclusively by the two companies. After that when it was run as a separate business, we began to make the advertising more successful so that UKC funded the hosting and general maintenance itself but all development and content was still pretty much funded from Rockfax.

In 2010 Rockfax bought UKC. Since then, and the hard work done by Mick Ryan in particular, we have managed to make it much more profitable, but this has also required taking on 4 permanent staff plus two 1/2 time staff, so 5 salaries in total. The financial contribution from Rockfax is still significant although UKC can repay that with advertising ( like this thread !)

Everyone who buys a Rockfax helps support UKC.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Alan, if this website is not suitably profitable then you're doing something wrong.

From looking at the sample pages of the two books I think the choice is clear as to which guidebook will be the superior and better researched product. And that's before the other apparent unpleasantness is examined.

People will buy your book, Alan. RockFax, for better or worse, is a familiar face to many in the market and it has mass appeal. In saying that I mean it will appeal to the masses, i.e. the many who do not care enough about climbing to think that doing it in the company of a soulful and lovingly accomplished guide is a valuable part of the experience.

In reply to Will Hunt:


What exactly?


Ah, the masses. Ignorant proles, the lot of them - can't trust 'em can you?

I would suspect that the "soulful" people making new routes, particularly routes that take extensive cleaning and/or the graft of bolting, would just be happy for a small part of the masses to come and enjoy climbing their routes (or the routes they maintain). Otherwise why no cynicism that this is all about the keeping the bolt fund topped up so that some people's hobby doesn't cost them so much?

In reply to TobyA:

That is a particularly poor attitide in my opinion. Have you actuallu climbed at the Orme or the surrounding areas much? Did you ever see the state of the bolts and how many crags were pretty much unusable before Pete and all the others starting re-bolting and sorting everything out? You are talking about thousands of pounds and thousands of hours for no gain whatsoever apart from doing it because they wanted to.

I personally have benefited from this as have everyone who has climbed there recently. The guide is not a profit making venture and the attitude that it is just to make someone's hobby cheaper is rubbish. I won't buy the rockfax guide not because I have some vendetta or dislike the guides in general but simply because I would like to make a small contribution to the development and funding of further development of an area that I have loved climbing at.

If you can't see that one guide will help the area and is pretty much a selfless act of hard work and generosity and the other is simply a professional company trying to make a profit then I despair!

Dave

Sadly a boycott of the Rockfax guide by the few people who are informed enough of it's background will have little impact. As Will says, the masses will go for the familiarity of Rockfax without considering the quality, let alone the impact on the bolt fund. The only way a significant difference (i.e. boost sales of the local, superior guide and to teach Alan et al to operate with a little more respect) could be made would be to convince the shops to examine their choices of which books to stock. I would imagine a large proportion of sales of both books will be made in the shops of North Wales. I'm sure a few polite messages to the managers of said shops would draw their attention to the situation so they can make an informed decision of what to stock.

I am surprised this thread has been allowed to last so long.

In reply to Mowglee:



I'm not. Rockfax/UKC are in Catch 22 now. Imagine the outcry if it got pulled.

I'm surprised there isn't a social media campaign.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Oh come on Alan. This is a deeply cynical move to deflect criticism given you are losing the argument over NW lime.

Rockfax and UKC exist as a business so that you and other employees can make a living. I have no problem with this but the exact subsidy from Rockfax to UKC is a decision of your business model - let's remember how useful people filling in logbooks and writing comments in the databases is to being able to produce guidebooks - is it is not something you do altruistically for the benefit the climbing community. The people who use UKC are the product, we are not the beneficiaries. If you take the attitude that 'business is business' in your guidebook production, (and this has been your basis of defending your actions over the NWL issue) why not be clear on this point?

To try to insinuate that supporting UKC via Rockfax is an equivalent ethical choice to supporting the NW lime guidebook where the volunteers are contributing their own unpaid time and in many cases paying out of their own pockets to produce the climbing infrastructure that your guidebook depends on, is a deeply cynical comparison.

I don't think most people reading this thread are quite as credulous as you take them for.

In reply to TobyA:

Having done little bit of work with the Yorkshire Bolt fund many years ago and doing a few new self funded routes of my own both in England and France I will happily admit that ego and the buzz of other people enjoying your routes plays a big part in it.
As to your second point about having your hobby subsidesed - bollocks! (For want of a better word)

E

In reply to Quiddity: Andy Popp's post on the other side is quite interesting.
http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,22459.150.html

“Could I ask that if you believe this to be true that you put it directly to Rockfax themselves. Why not try asking Alan directly, I'm sure he would take the time to respond.”

As if anyone would answer in the affirmative way to a question like that! People going on about the benefits of competition seem to forget that even in the harsh world of business, investment in improving the quality of existing products is protected from competition in order for them to recoup said investment. As I see it, this situation has similar overtones, work has been done to make an area attractive and someone else has jumped in to take advantage of that hard work.

“I doubt there are actually that many people interested in NWL outside the local area. ……I don't suppose most people buying it will be buying it for the sport routes”
“There are a lot of UK climbers who just won't be very interested in NWL “

So why put so many routes in? You would think that a poverty stricken organisation might be targeting profitable segments of the market! At the very least they would be trying to keep costs down by omitting non-essential elements of the guide. I am pretty sure that the lime is regarded as a money-maker or else it wouldn’t be in.

“If the NWL local activists' motivations are so pure (having spent many many hours hanging on ab ropes, scrubbing at rock and scraping out cracks, to clean dozens of new routes - I suspect there is also a bit of ego and local pride at play - being honest I know that's part of my motivations) I would hope they would just be happy that new people are visiting "their" cliffs regardless of how they get there. I hope they are putting the effort into the area because they love climbing there. “

The difference here is that they have not been doing new routes or projects; they have been giving up their time to re-equip other people’s routes. Let’s face it, who would really prefer giving up a days climbing to go to Trewyn or wherever to replace a load of bolts on some routes they had no emotional investment in.. I am sure the locals will be happy to see an increase in traffic, but they need that traffic to help them keep the area in good condition (through guide book sales). I think this is the main issue (as I have said before) as RF does not appear to be contributing much.

“Or they could go trad climbing... No need to fund bolts!”

The sort of sentiment that makes this site so generally irritating.

In reply to davo: You missed my point completely then, see my post somewhere further up where I said that there are plenty of businesses that will somehow benefit from that work and I hope they somehow contribute to the bolt fund too.

My point is I know exactly how much work cleaning and preparing route is (where I climb, it's the wire brushing that is the hardest work - shockhorror!) and although I haven't put bolts in myself, I've help friends clean routes before bolting and clean the holes before gluing. It's a lot of graft, but the best (and only, really) reward is to see people enjoying the routes and I suspect that the Rockfax guide will make that more likely not less. That's why I don't think this is a zero sum thing. I've got the Ground Up guide which has some of those Limestone routes in it; that makes me more likely to climb there than less. I drove around Marine Drive years back with my wife but we didn't climb anything because we didn't have a guide and didn't know if there was anything we could do. Now I'd know where to find the easier stuff. And perhaps others in that situation will do similar then find they enjoy it, go there again and buy the comprehensive guide.

In reply to TobyA:

Looks like your normal sharp analysis is blunted for once by some Rockfax passion there. So what if the climbers enjoy developing this area or get some subsidy for their bolts, the huge effort and cost is still real and the outcome is a massive benefit for the climbing community. Are you serious that we should be cynical about such activists? It seems obvious to me that future efforts like this will clearly be affected if another publisher steps at the last moment and mops up all the cream. On the other hand careful selective inclusion can help such guides and I'd hope the 'competing' publishers could negotiate a reasonable position to achieve that for the good of climbing.

Rockfax/UKC are now the big fish in this situation and although they undeniably do much good for the community I think it very likely they have overstepped the mark here. When they first started producing guides in aeas covered by the BMC and CC they were the cocky small fish taking on vested interest and problematic product: the resulting competition clearly ended up benefitting guidebook production as a whole. The competition can work without damage, as it does with Eastern Grit and the old Snowdonia select, so I really hope they don't become what they stood up against in the beginning.

In reply to i.vincent:

Beside possibly bringing new climbers to the area to do the routes?

Completely separate to this guidebook debate, it seems to me looking at Portland as an example, bolting as many 4s, 5s and 6as and bs as possible is the way to bring more and more climbers to an area. My feeling is that the NWL is geologically inclined towards tougher routes, but possibly the locals know some places that might work that way?

In reply to Rampikino:

As jcm said a fair few are regulars on other forums who either don't post on this one or don't post on this one any more. If they feel strongly about the issue then for better or worse UKC is the place where their post will reach the widest audience and therefore also the largest number of undecideds.

As for my cynicism, given Alan has said somewhere below that Rockfax subsidises UKC but that UKC can repay this with advertising, that's the sort of comment that tweaks my cynicism-o-meter because it's said in a way that makes it sound completely transparent (one subsidizes the other) but what it actually means is very opaque (the subsidy then being repaid in advertising, that sounds to me more like a quasi-commercial exchange).

So yes, I'm a tired embittered cynic on this one because I've seen what Alan has said in the thread and how it eventually developed further down and so my level of trust in him has taken a hit.

In reply to TobyA:

Toby,

Reading your posts you seem to be approaching this from a new routers perspective, and you're probably right to say that seeing people enjoying your new routes is a benefit for the money, time and effort you put in.

A monstrous chunk of the work here is reequipping though - yes people pit in time and enjoy their hard work and enjoy others enjoying their hard work, but when it comes to the cost that's where the Bolt fund is important. From what Pete has said it took several days but also about £1600 to install the access line for the diamond, and that's before you start the reboltimg work to get the routes back into shape.

That's why the money aspect is more crucial to my mind than just whether you get reward from seeing people enjoying your hard work. I'd need a lot of people to really enjoy it for that amount of cash!!!

In reply to Offwidth: I think I only own two Rockfax guides and one I got out of the bargain bin for a few quid and have never used (the original slim Pembroke one), so no particular interest beyond wishing ANYONE would a do a guide as nice as a Rockfax (or the new NWL guide by the looks of the sample pages) for where I live!

Perhaps your description of the situation is right, I don't know, but the cynicism was all one way. Of course I don't believe that this is someone trying to save money on their bolting projects; but the immediate questioning of motives was only done one way. People can make mistakes, there can be misunderstandings, people can see the same thing differently - but starting from a presumption that someone is out to do you harm for personal reasons is rarely right or helpful. But as you say, Rockfax is big enough to fight their own battles!

In reply to AJM: Yep, fair enough Andy. If you have to buy bolts glue and bits it is a huge amount of money quickly. We're very lucky here that the national climbing association gets a grant from the government and hence they can provide the hardware - the climbers just need to put in the time and sweat.

In reply to AJM:

Maybe what is wrong here is the apparent assumption that the bolt fund should be funded by guide book sales. I accept that overseas it is common for such things to happen but there the guidebooks are very basic and less costly and it is often the only style of climbing in the area (not a mix of sports and trad). If the bolt fund were properly advertised and funding from other sources sought, it might well generate sufficient revenue all on its own. If that is the 'only' thing winding people up, there are solutions other than trying to block Rockfax from producing a guide.

In reply to TobyA:

I'd agree if presumption was the starting point, but are you really sure it was (I suspect some offline discussion before the UKB thread started)? Your a big UKC regular and occasional contributer to articles and UKC/Rockfax are the same thing. I'm similar, in case you think I'm getting at you.

Why not talk to your locals and get together to do your own guide?

In reply to Skyfall:

Basic and less costly certainly wouldn't be my description of a lot of continental guides - I've used some very good ones, and I've bought some very expensive ones!

I don't know whether perceptions of whether its right or wrong for guidebooks to fund bolt funds is terribly relevant to be honest - we are where we are, one guide is and one guide isn't and those are facts which aren't likely to change. I don't doubt for a minute that the bolt fund has other sources of income as well, but nevertheless the locals seem to feel that the extra funding offered by the guidebook surpluses is useful/necessary, and they know a lot more about the amount of work that needs doing and the amount of other funding they get to make that call than I do.

Long term you might be right, there's a lot of bolts across the uk which will ultimately need replacing and that's maybe going to require a mindset shift in how its funded, but that's a very different timeframe from how to fund the redevelopment work they're doing right now.

In reply to TobyA:

Here's how I see it. Rockfax have done a lot of good for the climbing community (the tense there being deliberate), with Eastern Grit being a landmark guide. And, for example, Rockfax is currently the only sensible option for Peak Limestone, and for the occasional visitor to Pembroke. I have about a dozen Rockfaxes on my shelves, and generally support Rockfax.

But the Rockfax model -- which is essentially all about presentation of information -- depends on the existence of a non-Rockfax volunteer base who are creating the information, checking and cleaning routes, re-bolting, looking after ab-points etc. And a lot of that tends to revolve around non-Rockfax guides.

Thus, nowadays, with Rockfax being a very major player, it is in Rockfax's long-term interests to encourage that volunteer base, and to do so by sensible giving space to alternative guides, with sufficient communication and discussion to that end. Rockfax's omission of Cheddar from SW Climbs is a good example of them doing that.

In reply to TobyA:


Email Alan and offer to write it!

In reply to Skyfall:

I think ( from reading both threads ) that what is upsetting people is they they have put the time and effort into re-equipping the area and making it more popular.

Rockfax said they wouldn't do a definitive guide to these areas, now the area is becoming more popular they are, unless you believe the statistics of pages, routes and percentages we are being blinded with.So some see it as cashing in on the hard work done by the locals.

The guidebook is being produced to fund the continuing development and maintenance of the area, which now may be affected by a guide book that will keep all of its profits for itself, unless Alan has just forgotten to answer the question of what percentage of the profits from this book will go to local climbing ?

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Not to forget that for a long time, the only guide available for NW limestone was the original Rockfax ! As a very occasional visitor its still the only guide I have to the area.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Pretty well said i think.

BTW as pointed out further up the post we are the non rockfax volunteer base every time we log climbs on UKC

In reply to UKC Gear: I don't know the area at all but as a general question, if these areas are so popular that guide book writers are rushing over each other to swamp the market then how come the areas were allowed to fall into such a state of repair that all this rebolting and cleaning is suddenly required?

In reply to Oceanrower:

I think it's the other way round. It is anticipated that this area will become more popular because all this rebolting and cleaning has now been done.

jcm

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

>We gave money in the past to the North Wales Bolt Fund and we are happy to do so again in the future and will do after we have broken even from this new book which may take a year or so.

Irrespective of any of the other arguments on this thread this is for me the key issue here - what exactly do Rockfax put back into the areas the profit from?

Why not simply publish details of every payment Rockfax/ UKC make to bolt funds? That would silence a few here. I am not interested in payments you surmise others might have made through a few links you have posted - give us straightforward figures of your direct contribution. This would be a great marketing opportunity too (certainly seems to work for Patagonia) - I can't think why you aren't doing it already. Well, that is unless the amounts are embarrassingly small. But I'm sure that's not the case.

Given the retained profits you declare to Companies house each year (£215,000 for UKC as at Dec 2011) it hardly sounds like the struggling outfit that needs propping up by Rockfax you describe, but I'm sure there are good reasons for that too.

In reply to Adam Long:

Interesting point Adam, and what appears to be a deafening silence in reply!

In reply to Hugh Cottam:

Perhaps approaching Alan directly would be a way of ensuring that this IS a deafening silence rather than him off doing something else with his time?

In reply to Adam Long:

http://www.ukboltfund.org/

and yes I know it won't cost them a lot. But it does make it simple for people to contribute. I assume the new book will publicise the site further.

I wonder if any Rockfax boycotts will extend to rejecting donations made via that site?

In reply to Offwidth:

On Peak Rock, or the Paul Nunn guide, or Steve Ashton's.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:


To be fair, Alan is abroad with only intermittent internet contact.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

I simply think that Adam has raised a good point and I don't suppose Alan is the only one who could answer it. But nobody is saying anything, and I can't believe that none of the relevant people are watching this thread.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:

If you truly feel that it's fair to expect Rockfax to be hanging onto your every demand then I think your expectations are a little high. Again, try contacting them directly rather than posting and expecting an immediate response - I did speak to them, and it was very informative.

Speaking to Alan hasn't made me choose one guide over another, but it has told me that there is a lot more to this than is clear from the posts of 2 different websites. It certainly hasn't convinced me that I should be slagging anybody off, trying to undermine anybody's work or that anybody is a Hooded Claw in all of this.

In reply to Toreador:


From running my own websites I would budget less than £200 all in for ukboltfund.org - its a day's setup from any compentent website designer, plus ongoing hosting costs which would be non-existent for a company already running its own servers, plus a few hours maintenance a year. I'm not knocking it at all - but facilitating others' contributions is not the same as contributing.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:


Isn't Alan more or less sole proprietor of UKC/Rockfax these days, with the others being employees? If so then Alan is likely the only one who could answer it.

In reply to Rampikino:


Of course he can make this public if he chooses.

In reply to Rampikino:

So did Rockfax tell you this stuff in confidence?!

jcm

In reply to Adam Long:

The question of Rockfax funding bolt funds was answered by Alan already.


So basically after they have paid themselves all a nice wage, moved money to UKC they have no money left(really?)! Donations to the bolt fund are from Alan's OWN pocket. Maybe someone fells just a little bit of guilt.....

In reply to Adam Long:


Adam, you have worded this (maybe deliberately, I don't know) to make it sound as though the company showed profits of £215k in 2011. A quick look at the accounts shows that the retained profits hardly moved between 2010 and 2011 (actually they fell slightly) and that those are historic profits. Hardly megabucks for what is quite an old business now. Of course, as the accounts are abbreviated, there is no detailed info so it's all a bit meaningless.

However, my point being, I really don't think you can use this as evidence that they are raking it in.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

It was a conversation between Alan and myself and I won't be reproducing it for a number of reasons, not least because I haven't sought permission to do so. If Alan wants to say more then that's up to him, but he isn't obliged to. I genuinely suggest that if someone feels that they have a right to insult Alan, make accusations about his actions or motives or try to undermine his work then the least they could do is ask him DIRECTLY to respond to such accusations - otherwise it is simply biased and lacking in a sense of proportion.

But of course it is so much easier to dismiss this approach and continue with the accusations.

For what it's worth. I'm certain that I would also like to see Rockfax be clearer about how they help contribute to bolting funds, and I would encourage them to put a proportion of the profits into bolting funds, but at the end of the day they are a commercial enterprise and they are not obliged to - which leads back to the same point that a consumer can make their own choice.

And just a quick question - genuinely out of interest. Given the massive amount of bolting at huge expense done in Clwyd by Mr Gibson, when Clwyd Limestone popped up did the same arguments and objections happen then? This is a genuine question as I don't know.

In reply to Adam Long:


I think the key issues are that and how much impact the Rockfax selective guide is actually going to have on sales of the definitive.

As far as I can see, the main market for the Rockfax is likely to be occasional visitors who mainly climb trad but might go for a bit of bolt clipping as an alternative to Tremadoc if the mountains are cold and wet, whereas the obvious market for the NWL definitive is going to be locals, regular visitors and people who mostly climb sport.

I'm not saying that it'll be a negligible impact - occasional visitors will gradually become regular visitors and might end up wanting the definitive guide - and on the balance I'm still unimpressed by the decision of what to include, but I think it might be being blown out of proportion a bit. Even without the controversy, most people who want a guidebook to North Wales Limestone are presumably going to favour a guidebook that gives them everything on North Wales Limestone over one that gives them the most popular bits of North Wales Limestone and then 350 pages of trad that they either don't care about or already have guidebooks for.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

That sounds like an attempt to makes something seem sinister when it is not. It was an email conversation between Alan and myself, nothing confidential, but certainly a private email conversation. Try it yourself - really, try it.

In reply to Rampikino:

>Given the massive amount of bolting at huge expense done in Clwyd by Mr Gibson, when Clwyd Limestone popped up did the same arguments and objections happen then?

Eh? Gibson wasn't doing a guide to Clwyd limestone, surely?

jcm

In reply to Coel Hellier:



Is 'I'm cranky' not around anymore? Five UKC points to anyone who gets the anagram....

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:

My question was more around whether Rockfax came under fire over producing a guide to an area that had been equipped by someone else and whether Rockfax made any funds available to cover any of the bolting costs. Afer all, areas like Trevor fell nicely into the hands of Rockfax on the back of all this good work didn't they?

In reply to The_flying_climber:

That would be Mick, and I don't know.

In reply to UKC Gear:


Really, Alan said they have to subsidise UKC with the 'profits' from rockfax guides.. It looks pretty profitable from the company house figures.

Something doesn't add up here.....

In reply to Rampikino:

Why don't you read some of the background info on this affair that is actually contained in this thread and the one on UKB. Otherwise you're making meaningless comparisons and telling us about the secret conversations you're privy to but can't talk about.

In reply to The_flying_climber:

Read my last post. UKClimbing Ltd made a small loss in 2011 (the last accounts filed). Of course, that could be due to salaries paid out (you can't tell from the abbreviated accounts on Co's House) but it certainly didn't make the £215k profit I think most people will have read into Adam's post. The £215k is historic retained profits and over 50% of this is reflected on the balance sheet as stock.

In reply to Skyfall:

Thanks for clarifying.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:

"Secret conversations"

Silly person. I spoke to Alan over email via this site which anyone can do. Nothing to see here except in your imagination. Do you believe in chemtrails too?

And yes, I have read the UKB thread at length. My views across a number of posts have not changed at all.

In reply to Toreador:

I don't get your point. OPR is BMC and the other two will have similarly detracted to some extent from the income from BMC guides (even though I see them once in a blue moon and neither is available in shops). To be fair to the SA guide, it was perhaps a model selective guide in that it was very careful in its choice of route and nearly everyone I knew who purchased it later got another guide to the area, as it was so inspiring (same with his Snowdonia guide).

My point is that EG does compete on almost equal terms with the eastern edge BMC guides (at least from from what I see at the crag) and so I think it clearly reduces BMC purchases directly. Unlike the SA guide the coverage is such that only bibliophiles and those keen to the area will buy both sets. As I said before I'm OK with EG as it is well researched and came first (as PGE) in the high quality colour topo stakes and so led the way to what I helped produce for the BMC.

In reply to Offwidth:


Really?! Good Lord. I would have agreed with you had you said 'utterly useless' instead of 'inspiring'.

jcm

In reply to Skyfall:

I didn't intend to mislead anyone - I used the term 'retained profit'. Even if the retained profit reduced slightly between '10 and '11, it doesn't mean they made a loss, nor strike me as a particularly unhealthy balance sheet. But I'll admit accounting is rarely simple...

In reply to Offwidth:

Yeah, that tallies with my experience. On the other hand, some selectives - eg the Rockfax North Wales Classics - seem to mostly be handy because they give you something to do in a wider range of areas while you're still building up your collection of definitives.

The question is really where the new guide will fall on that spectrum, ie if you see someone next year climbing at LPT or wherever with the Rockfax book, will that be someone who would otherwise have bought the definitive if they didn't have the Rockfax, or someone who would otherwise have gone climbing somewhere else?

In reply to Adam Long:


I think it was usage of "each year" which is suggestive of it being an annual profit. Certainly, at least one reader who posted above took that to be your meaning.


Er, sorry but it almost certainly means they made an accounting loss on the P&L in 2011. I have myself said that doesn't mean much as you could produce an accounting loss by paying out more remuneration but we don't of course know that.

Interestingly, I see that Rockfax Ltd (a 100% subsid of UK Climbing Ltd) shows no activity whatsoever. So, unless there is another company I'm not aware of (quite possible as I've not bothered looking further), it may be that all activity (ie. UKC and Rockfax) may be run through the one company. Just speculation but, if that were true, it would mean that the two sides to the business aren't independent in any real sense. It would also mean that the overall business did make a small loss in 2011 (at least in an accounting sense).

In reply to Rampikino:

People have been putting questions directly to Alan, in public on this thread.

In reply to Quiddity:

People have also been insulting him and accusing him of all sorts on this thread. Try speaking to him directly. Go on, try it. Really. Just try it.

Stop diverting, stop trying to squirm out of it and just try it.

Stop these attempts to drag the conversation off elsewhere and contact Alan, through the email that is avialable on this site, directly and ask him direct questions.

You could have done it already in the time it has taken me to post this response

In reply to Skyfall:


I'm going to regret this but I can't let it go unanswered.

You're correct except for one important fact. Reserves are not just affected by salaries (which affect profit) but also by dividends paid to shareholders (which do not).

Yes it is impossible to say what the profit of the company was in the year but to state categorically that it made a loss is incorrect as we don't know how much money was taken out.

Adam is correct that the balance sheet appears to show a very strong position (31/12/11) with over £60k in the bank and a net "value" of over £215k without considering goodwill or intangible assets (the value of the websites). The stock value should also not be an issue provided nobody is overstating the valuation (unlikely as this would just increase tax liabilities and shouldn't be necessary considering liquidity).

The earlier point about one income stream supporting the other is moot really as it's all run through one company so the results are consolidated in these accounts.

Apologies for typos etc I'm on my phone and this site is a bitch to write on. Oh and yes, I'm an accounts geek and I love this shit.

In reply to Adam Long:

True.

Also, relying on the contributions of the publishers of whichever guidebook you choose to buy, is not the same as making a direct donation yourself.

Anyone who would buy the Rockfax guide but decides they want to boycott it, could contribute just as much to the bolt fund by buying it anyway and choosing to make an additional donation.

In reply to Quiddity:

I believe (as someone said higher up the thread) that he is out of the UK at the moment, possibly caught up in the air-traffic control strike in France.


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs:

Maybe he's just not replying because of the general air of malice on this thread.

In reply to Rampikino:

Have you had a personal email conversation with Pete.... If not

In reply to seagull:

That's pretty much my point - I think I would personally find it more sensible to respond to individual and polite requests rather than try to engage in some of the heavy and weighted accusations on this thread.

And that's before you even look at the tone on the other site.

In reply to The_flying_climber:

I don't feel I need to - the accusations are all being aimed at Alan/Rockfax and those were ones I wanted answers to. I think Pete's position is very clear and easy to follow frankly and I have nothing that I feel I need an answer to.

In reply to Rampikino:

I actually think there's very little malice on the recent posts in this thread. Adam asked a simple question about actual bolt fund donations from UKC/Rockfax which is clearly relevant to what is being discussed. I agreed with him and noted there doesn't seem to be a reply (he may well be out of contact and will answer later). Quite why you're getting so hot and bothered about it all is perplexing.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:

You're funny.

:-D

In reply to Rampikino:

Funny and Silly. Why thankyou!

In reply to Toreador:

Except the definitive will donate ALL profits to the bolt fund. So buying that IS a donation.

In reply to Hugh Cottam:

You are right about recent posts - nothing too horrendous there, but the overwhelming line on UKC has not been pleasant at all to Alan, and has included direct accusations which, on the face of it, are very serious and pretty nasty.

Personally I'm not hot and bothered at all as this is not aimed at me, but I am saddened by the whole thing as when it comes down to it we are all in the same sport for the love of it and just want to enjoy it.

In reply to Rampikino:

BOOM!

Thanks for reminding me why I don't post on here. I didn't think it would be so quick.

In reply to seagull:

Do tell...

In reply to Rampikino:

Sorry, that was facetious. It's just that I thought it was a pretty obvious joke if you'd read the whole thread and saw who I was replying to.

I forgot where I was.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


<--- This.

Rockfax's guides are only rarely produced by committed locals. The business model works because they take a lot of the information produced by local climbing communities and adding some value (nice topos, stars, access maps etc). As a result the business model is, at heart, parasitic. This makes Rockfax vulnerable to how it is perceived by the climbing community. If Rockfax doesn't give enough back there's a risk that people will stop buying the guides, or that local developers keep crags secret (as happens in some areas of france and spain). The conclusion - it is in Rockfax's *own interest* not to piss off local developers too much.

This is something that POD has done pretty well with his Tarragona Climbs guide. If you look in the margalef section, for example, it's clear that POD has put enough in for a casual visitor, whilst leaving several excellent sectors out. It's explicitly stated that this is to encourage people to buy the local guide.

I suggest it wouldn't massively impact sales of Rockfax's guide to remove a few crags from the limestone section (maybe the Diamond, Penmaen Head, Gwynt), but it would go a long way towards restoring relations with the climbing community. For that reason I think it's probably in Rockfax's own best interest...

In reply to seagull:

Ahh I see.

Well I'm no member of UKB but I understand that the moderation of UKB vs UKC is very different and it would appear that the forums are done very differently.

Having looked at the long UKB thread, some of it does appear a bit out of the school playground, e.g. Users coming on UKC to have a go and then going over to UKB to boast about what they just said. Maybe it's just me...

As I said earlier, the whole thing saddens me.

In reply to metal arms:


Correct.
So it's (a) buy the definitive (which benefits the bolt fund), plus another selective to cover the majority of what's in Rockfax. Or (b) buy Rockfax and make a donation to the bolt fund.

In reply to Toreador:
Or buy the definitive but don't buy a new selective at all because either you've already got a selective, or you've already got most of the definitives or you aren't interested in mountain trad.

In reply to seagull:


As you will know then, dividends are usually shown in the P&L as well, albeit post tax, either (historically at least) on the face of the P&L or more commonly nowadays as a note. "Profit" means different things to different people - it rather depends where you draw the line. I agree, both will hit reserves and the real point is that for an OMB, it's the same thing (where salary can be swapped for dividends). Therefore, it's pretty much irrelevant to this discussion in what form the profits (whatever they were) were distributed.


As above, agreed re profits in a technical sense but the point is that, whether money was extracted by way of salary or dividend, there was a reduction in retained reserves and the balance sheet fell. If this were to continue, your assessment of a strong balance sheet would change. Not having looked back to earlier accounting periods, I can't say what the trend is. But a drop in the B/S with little real asset backing is rarely a good thing.

In reply to Rampikino:

The thing is, I am not really interested in a private chat from Alan, I am interested in how Rockfax justify their actions on this issue in a public forum. Given the extent to which Alan's comments have shown to be deeply misleading under closer scrutiny*, I am sure you will understand. If Alan doesn't want to disclose things in public then that is the face of rockfax he wants his customers to see.

Also I think you will find the vast majority of critical comment on this thread has been civil, reasonable, and substantiated with facts.

* see above references to '20% of the coverage' and 'rockfax doesn't really make a profit'

In reply to Ramblin dave:
yes but in any of those cases you wouldn't be buying the rockfax anyway

In reply to Quiddity:

+1 to your opinion

In reply to Skyfall:

My point was that stating that the company "made a small loss" not only means a lot in the context of this thread, but is misleading and a total guess.

It's actually not irrelevant at all as it could be the difference between the company making £120k profit, paying £20k in tax and a £104k dividend to it's one shareholder and it actually making a £4k loss, paying no tax and no dividend.

The two same things could have happened looking at that balance sheet as could a million others.


Again, I hate to be rude but this is nonsense. There is only one shareholder so the company assets are technically those of the individual. It is purely down to tax planning as to how much you leave in the comapny and how much you pay yourself. A £4k adjustment on a B/S value of over £200k could be anything and is absloutely immaterial.

As mentioned, provided the stock figure isn't overvalued and things are being reported correctly, this is a very strong balance sheet. I'm not sure what you mean by "little real asset backing" but £68,315 in the bank plus debtors/stock looks more than ok to me. It's generally incorrect valuation of Fixed Assets (property etc) that are the concern these days. No problem with that here.

The fact that the intrinsic value of the company based on it's profitibility, market presence, name etc (Goodwill) is not included (as it shouldn't be) and there is no value shown for the other intangible assets (the websites, also correct accounting policy if you want to do it that way) only improves the overall positive view one should have of the business at that date.

In short, if this isn't a healthy looking position for a one man band Ltd company then all but about three of the hundreds I deal with are screwed (clue, they're not).

In reply to C Chestwig; Treacherous climber + Quiddity:

+2 from me

You sure your not thinking of the Nunn guide. I cant see how the Ashton guide could be regarded as useless in any respect very clear and quite funny

In reply to seagull:

I am not sure why you are being quite so rude (despite being sorry for it). However, and I'm in a rush (clients you know)...


But is is exactly the same thing isn't it. One is above the line, the other below. But same actual result for an OMB. That was my precise point.




Well, hating to be rude, you do know (I assume) that this is complete nonsense. The assets are legally and beneficially those of the company.


Yeh, I do valuations too.


The point is whether it is currently profitable and we don't know.

Hope your hundreds of one man bands keep you busy!

In reply to Toreador:

And, of course, 'we' all have bought them, haven't 'we'? Knowing full well what the production model is - get the locals to do the donkey-work and then re-package it in a sexy format. That is exactly why they got all of the plaudits that they did. They made good looking guides by using the knowledge and work of others. Everywhere. (Some of those route descriptions in the NEW North Wales Rockfax look surprisingly familiar - Left Wall; did I really read 'the most fallen off route in Wales'? That phrase is surely copyright Paul Williams c. 1990 for god's sake!) And 'we' bought them by the piggin' shed-load for years for Spain and France (Majorca gets a bye - they've never ever had anything like a decent guidebook ever). I'll hold my hand up and say I've never bought a UK Rockfax apart from - North Wales Limestone - ever, on that basis. Any more hands going up?

Its interesting comparing the reactions coming out in this thread with the one regarding the French reaction to 'topo vampires' in the South of France a couple of years back. The majority opinion then seemed to be 'Yaaawn. Oversensitive Frogs. Cant expect me to buy three or four local guides can you. Rockfax doin' great job. Great lookin' guides. Anyway the commune buys the bolts.....'

You know what? 'We don't like it up us', do we? (apologies to Perry and Simpson).

Still. It's interesting watching the bandwagon roll. Enjoy.