UKC

I have a suggestion...

I'd like to see a new routes page under the UKC logbooks.

I'm thinking of something with a rolling logbook type list of new routes done in say the last two years (by FA date).

FA Date - Route Name - Grade - Crag Name - Area

The route name and crag name would link to the appropriate pages.

There would ideally be the option to browse a map showing crags with new routing activity rather like you can browse a map showing where you have logged climbs or where your wish list climbs are.

I think it would serve to bring new developments to our attention quicker than we would normally stumble across them, hear of them on the grapevine or find them when they eventually make it into a guide book or app.

Obviously, how useful this feature would ultimately be, would hinge on new routers logging their climbs here on UKC and I appreciate not all wish to do that.

I really like this idea.

Sounds like a great idea, would be great to be able to see at-a-glance where new development is going on and if there were any good new routes at your local crag....

but...

Yup.

Based on personal experience and on a few other new-routers I know, adding routes to the UKC database is a relatively rare step in terms of publicising ones new routes, it's much more common to make a pdf/doc and post it somewhere online, if you can even get your act together to do that much. You just have to pick up any SMC definitive guide and start comparing it to the UKC database to realise that the UKC database isn't even definitive for routes done half a century ago, never mind anything recent.

Actually accruing some kind of comprehensive list of new routes (and enough information to find and/or repeat them) is a pretty big task, even on an annual basis. Simon Richardson does it for Scotland and I have every reason to believe he spends a lot of time chasing people up and poking and prodding to actually get a result that is fairly comprehensive for the journal.

It could still be pretty interesting to implement it though and see how much it gets used.

The SMC really do have it within their gift to do this for Scotland with their database. I wonder if as an organisation they are as fleet of foot and have the same wherewithal as UKC to actually implement it.

The more contributors, the better the resource would be.  However, even if only a fraction of development appeared I think it would still be a worthwhile exercise. We’ll see if the team at UKC Towers agree…

I’ve added maybe a couple of dozen low grade bouldering problems over the last year or so, and would love to have these featured on such a list as they’re at wonderful crags that don’t necessarily garner the attention they deserve. However it’s impossible to know if they’re actually an FA, and I’m not vain enough to log them even as an FRA.. so I might reconsider going off the FA date as included in the database, and maybe consider most recently added?

I understand your point about FA, however, using the recently added date would bring in play not just new climbs, but also a stack of older climbs than for whatever reason haven’t previously made it on to the database.

I’m sure we could think of some way to easy your discomfort. I think it usually enough to say in the route description that you suspect the route has previously been climbed…

Yes that was my thought too! However older climbs that haven’t previously made it on might also be more likely to have FA details. Whereas these unimportant boulders are ‘newly recorded’ and the likelihood more than a tiny handful of people having climbed them, if anyone, is incredibly low, otherwise they’d be recorded somewhere. 

Just a minor personal point really, I like the idea as a whole  

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. 

You might be surprise at how much choss gets added tbh

We'll have a think about it. I don't think it would take that long to build the new page.

Great.

I figured there might be an element of, here's my new route Z, it links existing Vdiff X into Hard Serve Y with 1.2m of new climbing. I never imagined there would be stacks and stacks of it though!

Seems like you have all the elements required to build the page already functioning in other pages so doesn't surprise me that you don't think it would be a big deal to knock it together.

Thanks for giving it some consideration. I'm looking forward to seeing if you come up with anything.

I think it's an ace suggestion. New routers who choose not to use it only lose out (or win out, depending on their point of view !) It doesn't have to be - nor could it ever be - a comprehensive list, but a really useful supplement, just like the old guidebook supplements.

The question is, does it have to be new routes, or is a documentation of newly added climbs and areas a good idea? In an ideal world, new routes would be part of a wider newly added groups. And getting where stuff is added may indicate where either development is going on or mainly British UKC users found places new to them.

All the same, as a consumer, i'd be happy to get kind if heat map where new stuff was added. It would help me with travel planning an checking for areas I might have overlooked. Support the idea!

For me, highlighting genuine new routes (and by default new venues) that obviously won’t be in any guide books, is more important than older stuff that is probably in a guide book somewhere but just hasn’t found it’s way onto the UKC database.

Having said that, I expect it wouldn’t be hard for the UKC boffins to provide a toggle switch to swap between reporting by FA date and reporting by date added to the database.

There would need to be minimum reporting requirements for a route to be included on the new routes list, otherwise it could be pretty useless. Many existing routes are entered with no details at all. New routes would need a description giving at least the start location, general line, type of climbing and suggested grade. If it was a new crag, the start location would need to include the crag location. Otherwise it would be sufficient to give the location with respect to existing routes/buttresses.

I think the minimum reporting requirement would only need to be...

FA Date - Route Name - Grade - Crag Name

This a least alerts to new stuff being developed.

If you want to actually go climb the new route(s) then yes, further details would be needed and if those details have not been provided by the developer for whatever reason, then it would be up to you to go do some digging but at least you've reached the "known unknowns" threshold.  

There are some big logistical problems with 'new routes databases' Over the years there have been a number of attempts at setting up such thing in fact there was one by the BMC way back in the early 2000s for the Peak area. Looking at that database I decided that there was little point in having a new routes database when you could just have a routes database, which is why we set one up on the Rockfax site (which then migrated to UKC to what we have now).

I realise that what people are asking for here is more of a 'new route' flag, not a dedicated database, but they suffer from the same problem which did for the BMC Peak attempt over 20 years ago, mainly the information becomes unmaintainable.

The key question is when does a new route stop being a 'new route' and become a route?

When it appears in a print guidebook?
Some areas have multiple guidebooks - which one is the one you base it on? 'Definitive guidebook' is a pretty meaningless term these days since many so-called definitive guidebooks are years out of date, yet there exists updated information in other guides, PDFs, apps that most people are using. Also, keeping a set of new route flags would require diligent work by guidebook writers carefully updating the data when they publish new information. This includes many people not connected with UKC and, I can assure you, that ain't going to happen. Moderators might be able to do it but it would be a really fiddly job and is also unlikely to get done with any consistency.

We could put a termination date of say 2 years on the new route but that could be annoying in slow-developing areas with older guidebooks.

The best solution is just to search on FA date and let the user figure it out based on the publication date of the guidebook they are using and I am pretty sure the system can do this already anyway. A problem is that FA dates are not always added consistently for new routes since frequently they are added by people ticking them, who don't know the FA, and not the FA themselves.

Alan

Och, Paul Phillips (above) was much more positive about the idea.  

The key thing for me was the "flags" on a map which I thought would be the primary interface rather than looking down a long list. Though, I guess I might want to have a nosy at this week's new additions to the list, so I can image scrolling down the list until I started seeing thing I was aware of.

Yes, two years is the sort of cut-off time frame I was thinking. I'd have thought that would capture most stuff and give people a reasonable time to notice it before it drops off the "new" list.

I appreciate you will be looking at how to apply your development resources where you think the site will get the biggest bang for your buck and this might not be it.

That's Paul for you!

It isn't really anything to do with bang for buck since a simple system wouldn't cost much. It is more that I don't think we would ever get the quality of data required to make it actually work. People simply don't enter the data accurately initially and they are even less diligent when it comes to updating routes which is what is required to get an accurate new routes system.

Alan

As a dedicated choss chaser, even I have to agree with that. I saw a recently submitted one today one hold different from the parent route. Not a hardcore eliminates area you might forgive such shenanigans.

It’s a superficially nice idea but nobody’s going to pay the salaries of the army of data clerks needed to make a decent job of things. 

Look at the number of ‘No description has been contributed for this climb’ for even fairly major existing routes and crags.