UKClimbing.com

UKClimbing.com is the World's most popular climbing and mountaineering web site. Our aim is to maintain this status by bringing you both the best of climbing and the best experience that Web technology can provide. We promise that:

We won't dilute our content.
We will give you the most up-to-date and most comprehensive information and news that we can, about everything to do with climbing and mountaineering from around the World.
We will continue to develop the site using the latest web technology, while maintaining a web site that is compatible with as many computer systems possible, old and new.
We will not over-populate the site with advertising.

We'd like to ask one thing from you in return:

Your participation - give us your opinions; take part in the discussions; submit your articles, photos and news items; use your logbook - because the more you take part, the more valuable this site will be to you and to everyone else. If you want to participate right now, then Contact Us, or go and start looking around.

Business Structure
UKClimbing.com was created in 1995 by Andy Hyslop and Adam Greenwood, and existed as a sub domain of various sites. Alan James combined his Rocktalk forum with the site in 1999 and UKClimbing.com became a fully-fledged limited company in 2001. From 2001 to June 2008 UKClimbing.com Limited had two directors: Alan James and Andy Hyslop. In June 2008 Alan James bought the whole company to become the sole director. In November 2009, UKClimbing.com Limited was bought by Rockfax Limited and both companies were established under a new single company called UKClimbing Limited, again with a single director, Alan James.

The UKC Team

The current site is maintained by a number of people.

Alan James - Director
Alan climbed his first route in June 1971 when just 7 years old. Subsequent trips in the Peak and North Wales with his father through the 1970s planted the seed but it was only in the early 1980s that this grew into a full obsession. Since then he has climbed all over Europe and the UK and even toyed with Alpine climbing in the late 80s. An impressive debut solo of the Frendo Spur proved to be a false dawn and in 1989 he hung up his crampons after a perilous ascent of the NNE Spur of the Cortes. He then concentrated on high standard trad and sport climbing. A handful of un-noteworthy new routes on Peak Limestone followed before he turned his hand to producing cartoons for OTE. This led him to a meeting with Mick Ryan and his first venture into guidebook work by authoring the Peak Limestone Rockfax of 1992. After Mick Ryan's departure to the States in 1994 Alan took over the fledgling Rockfax company and turned it into the most innovative guidebook company in the UK. The Rockfax web site was set up in 1998 which included a small discussion forum called Rocktalk. Combining this forum with Andy's Hyslop's UKClimbing site led to the UKClimbing.com as it is today. In June 2008, Alan became the sole owner of UKClimbing.com.
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Mick Ryan - Advertising Manager
Mick started climbing in 1978 when in sixth form at St. Mary's College Blackburn (Lancashire, England). He enjoys all types of climbing and climbers and has climbed all over the UK, Europe and the USA. Highlights include doing the Old Man of Hoy and Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Mick was a co-founder of Rockfax guidebooks in the early 1990s before moving to Bishop, California enjoying the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and the boulders in the Owens Valley. After 12 years in the States he moved back to the UK in 2006 to become the full-time editor at UKClimbing.com. Mick's role grew over the next year and in 2008 Mick become the dedicated Advertising Manager at UKC.
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Jack Geldard - Chief Editor
Jack started climbing in Yorkshire at the age of 12 - using a Whillans harness and a stolen washing line. As luck would have it, the science teacher at his school was a well known climber (Mick Ryan) and a source of inspiration (exasperation?!) that firmly planted the climbing bug. Since then it has been a whirlwind of mountain-based adventures all over the globe, including first ascents on several of the World's larger rock walls and a few of Wales' smaller outcrops. His real passion is trad climbing, but he has also been known to clip the odd bolt and fall off a few boulder problems. He is a qualified Mountaineering Instructor and resides near Llanberis, North Wales. He joined UKClimbing.com in 2007 as Assistant Editor and graduated to Chief Editor in 2008.
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Nick Smith - Chief Scientist
Originally from Cambridge, Nick moved up to Sheffield in 1999 to pursue his climbing ambitions. When not running the web-design company, Climbers.net, he can be found training at the local Sheffield walls or out on the grit (if the weather is nice!). Nick looks after the technical side of the site, writing the PHP scripts that interface to our MySQL database engine.
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Stephen Horne - Rockfax Assistant Editor
Stephen started climbing about ten years ago. Originally he stuck to bouldering because he "enjoyed the technical nature of it”. He thought this sounded better than saying he was terrified of falling off. He was later bullied and cajoled into tying-on and climbing routes, and eventually got over his fear of heights and has now climbed extensively around the world. He enjoys all aspects of the sport, although his heart lies with trad climbing. He spent ten years working in the climbing wall sector, first off manufacturing and installing climbing walls, then designing walls and the structures holding them up. He has just returned to Britain to live in the Peak District after spending two years in Grenoble working for Entre-Prises Climbing Walls, and joined the Rockfax team as an Assistant Editor in February 2010.
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Sarah Stirling - Assistant Editor
Sarah Stirling is an experienced outdoor writer and keen climber. She is an English Literature and Language graduate (first class honours) and has authored several books. Her work has appeared in many outdoor and travel publications.
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Mark Glaister - Assistant Editor
Mark is a climbing writer and photographer who has traveled to crags near and far for 35+ years. Mark started out climbing at school with friends on the sea cliffs and inland crags of Devon. At 18 he packed up his flares and Whillans harness, tide back his long black hair (where did it go!) and headed for the North living between the Peak and Dales before moving on to the Lakes for work where he was based for around 20 years. During the 90's, Mark with his then partner Emma traveled extensively spending 1995 to 2000 in a van in the States, Canada, Europe, OZ and New Zealand. The last decade has been a transient one hopping between the Lakes, North Wales, Devon and Lancs, with trips away mainly on guidebook (Rockfax) work or for articles to places such as Sardinia, Finale, Ceuse, El Chorro, Lofoten, Mallorca and Turkey. In February 2010 he joined UKClimbing.com as Assistant Editor in charge of Destination Articles.
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Tom Briggs and Jonathan Lagoe both help with the forum moderation. In addition there are others who moderate the photos database and who write articles. We are always keen for new input so please Contact Us if you wish to get involved.