In reply to Frankie boy:
Just spotted this...
I'll give you answers from the Rockfax point of view.
We don't usually remove information from subsequent editions but I can see there may be a need for it soon with books getting fatter and fatter. Our solution would be to keep it available in app format.
Route Heights
I have answered this elsewhere and it does crop up quite often. We actually do leave the route lengths on many multi-pitch routes. We have stopped listing them on single pitch routes after finding that people were relying on them at sport crags to decide whether they could lower-off or not. This gets dodgy on routes close to 60m for a number of reasons.
- People don't stand in the same places when belaying - especially important at crags with sloping bases
- People often don't know how long their rope is
- Ropes sold as 60m long can vary from 60m to around 68m we have found
- People sometimes clip bolts on other routes lengthening their route
- Local equippers have been known to move a belay up when rebolting which causes big problems with existing guidebooks
Another reason is that I have found, historically, route lengths have varied between ridiculous over-estimates much of the time, to randomly accurate, to occasional short changing people. Traditionally the figures given in old guidebooks were those from over-enthusiastic first ascensionists which varied in accuracy but tended to be on the long and very long side. Many of these were never checked and it was only when I was trying to piece together our big photo-topos to these crags that I became fully aware of the bizarre variations. There was one supposed 150m route of three pitches that I had a photo of someone abseiling with doubled 60m ropes. I also ran together two 35m pitches on 50m ropes once with plenty left for the belay. There are loads of these.
Km or Miles
I take your point on this. We have started going back to miles for UK crags until you get close to the crag where we revert to metres. Despite it appearing to be a useful method, I am not a big fan of using mile or km odometer distances to measure approaches to crags since people often start counting at the wrong point and it then becomes bad information posing as accurate information.