UKC

Dovestone Tor

Had a lovely outing recently to Dove stone Tor. Some real hidden gems up there if you can deal with the walk in...

Now we used the latest Rockfax Eastern Grit as our beloved guide for the day, and I'd like to preface this by stating that I really appreciate all the work that goes into the Rockfax guides - they are my go to guide books for most crags. Now here is my little issue, in both the latest Eastern Grit and it's predecessor we are given an approximate walk in time of 50 minutes from the parking on the A57. It actually took us 1 hour and 50 minutes up and 76 minutes down. Now I'm no elite climber but neither am I a slouch. Also a quick use of route mapping software puts the walk in distance at about 3.5 miles, a quick Google tells us that average walking pace is 3.1mph - that's not taking into account height gain or heavy climbing packs etc. So I'd like to ask Rockfax and our beloved Mr Craggs. Who did you use to come up with your walk in times? Was Mo Farah at a loose end by any chance?!

Haha!

Standard. I made guidebook time once on the walk in to a hut in the Alps last year. Nearly died. Although did make it in time for dinner, just

If you can't make guide book time then it's not the fault of the book.

????

walking is boring we're all running these days.

I hanever had a problem getting to the crag in under the time the guidebook specifies, including the one  mentioned in the OP.  The solution is always to get faster.

My wife and i have a theory the times are set by mountain guides carrying only a water bottle.

Where did you walk from? We usually go from Cutthroat Bridge, which my map tells me is 2.35 miles.

Become a boulderer and refuse to walk more than 5 mins from the car. Problem solved.

None of which means a guidebook can't be wrong (misprint etc)

It may have been me that added that time. 

Just measured it and it is actually only 3.7km taking the way we describe from the A57 parking and past the short connecting path to the grouse hides path. The other more-obvious path is longer.

I normally allow around 13 to 15 minutes for a km so that would put it around 50 mins. I guess that is where we got it from.

Your pace of 3.1 mph is actually around 5kph which is 12 mins per kilometre.

I think we are actually ok with this one.

Alan

If you make the guidebook time then theoretically you are fit enough to climb every route described. 

example- cyrn las book time, 90 mins. My time last week, 2.5 hours! 

Cyrn Las book time is 35 minutes, but it took us 40 on Sunday

The first and only time I've been to Dovestone Tor, we were pleasantly surprised to do the walk-in at a leisurely pace well under the guidebook time. Not sure how you managed close to two hours unless you took the scenic route!?

Every time I've been to Dovestone Tor, I parked on Mortimer Road and, *from memory*, the walk-in was half an hour to 45 minutes.

The Laddow walk-in, on the other hand, has a laughable guidebook time. It took considerably longer than the guidebook time to run down from the crag at the end of the day than it claims it should take to walk up.

You must have been taking a lot of rests, bird-watching etc, en route ... Did you climb anything?

How long from the car to the start of TPS? Does the grade lie in the answer...... ?

We have 40 mins and it is around 3km. Quite a bit of uphill though so I would suggest that is a little short but not that much.

Alan

Times on signposts on walking paths in the German Alps are based upon a husband & wife with 10 year old son apparently.

I've always ridden my mountain bike to Dove Stone Tor, Startting from the Strines Inn, the bridleway across Foulstone moor stops in the middle of nowhere and becomes a footpath so it takes a bit of responsible trespass to actually cycle to the crag.

IIRC from last time I was up there the orphan bridleway does stop by a couple of low key non cycling signs at the footpath intersection! Having the path up there redesignated as a permissive bridleway is a dream of quite a few mountain bikers who are sort of active in Sheffield/Peak access circles, but there seem to lots of bikers who don't give a sh!t and ride it anyway and I can't imagine that helps the cause much.   (Not aimed at you Jon BTW, just passing comment on that weird bridleway to nowhere from Strines and the biking situation in that area.)

Did the Laddow walk in at about 45 mins to the main crag a couple of months back. Only about 35 to the first craglets.

Naismith's rule says:

1 hour for 3km and 1 hour for 600m

Which makes Google's 12mins/km and my 13 to 15 mins/km look a bit over optimistic.

For Laddow it is 3km (= 60mins), plus 240m height (= 24 mins).

1 hour 24 then, or does Naismith only apply to soft hillwalkers?

Alan

I don't think riding it anyway is necessarily a problem.  A history of cyclists and walkers cheerfully co-existing could also strengthen the case for a permissive bridleway (doesn't seem to have done any harm on Longshaw and the Eastern Moors anyway) - that does require a bit of consideration though, so the "don't give a shit" part is never good. 

30 deg, huge packs, unfit and ice cold stream that was too inviting too often!

tried to walk slow enough to reduce sweating and slowed even more once we could see how many teams were on main wall. we had the route to ourselves though and the whole face in shade which was great!

Only in the Peak would the walk in to Dovestone Tor be described as something you needed to 'deal with'

Anyway the walk in from Strines took me, with gear, well under an hour. I don't know what the parking is like these days though - I gather you can't park at the start of the path by Strines Bridge any more.

Or climb at Avon. 30 seconds walk in

Or Castle Inn. Park under routes and belay from driving seat. Champion. Except when leader pulls off a block...

I love that the OP praises the depth of research that goes into the Rockfax books and then Alan pops up to explain that the approach times are based on a calculation!

When I set a guidebook time, I walk to the crag and note how long it took me. Simple.

#wrongfax #woke #doomedtobezapped/banned/emailed

I am just putting the Slate guide together. A place like Australia has 30 odd buttresses each of which has an approach time box. I will confess now that I haven't started at the car and walked to each one of these buttresses separately in order to test the approach times. Sorry.

Alan

I have a very simple solution. Go in someone else's car

As Alan suggests I think that may have been his input - and he is MUCH fitter than me.

I always walk in from the Strines 'cos it is the shortest approach

Chris

I thought Naismith's rule was 3 miles per hour plus 30 mins. for every 1,000 ft. of ascent.

Unfortunately, your calculation is off. Try entering your walk as an entry in the UKC diary. It gives 1.91 mph for a 3.5 mile walk in 1hr 50m. That's approx 31m per mile and definitely at the slouchy end of things

Your downhill comes in at 2.76mph, 21.4mins per mile. I'd say the guidebook is ok.

Edit: I see what you did. Your result was in kph (3.072kph) and not mph. In other words, speed up slow coach :0)

Heard everything now: Never been called names because I used the very basic maths I learnt in school, to help someone out

Admittedly, that was about the least offensive name I've ever been called...

What, just you?  You don't get a representative sample of different climbers, say about a dozen or so, to do the walk and average their times?  Seems a bit slapdash to me.

That’s more like it. Now, if going fast and light in cool weather I have no doubt it’d be dramatically quicker but in 20C with heavy racks I’d say that rule sounds about right to the top of the actual crag itself (rather than the craglets).

Without looking it up, a rough metric approximation is 4.5 km per hour plus one minute per 10 metres of ascent. Me and a mate used to find that pretty accurate over a days worth of hill bagging. 

Loving the enthusiastic response guys.  Guess I'm just older and unfitterer than I thought. Haha

We took the really obvious path which dog legs back on itself. Maybe that's why we were so slow, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it anyway. ????

Back around, Alan.

Naismith's is 1 hour for 3 miles (or 5k) and a minute for 10m (which you had right). Most climbers used to such walk-ins will be OK on that timing on good obvious paths. To be fair, the old BMC Laddow times were also a mean joke.

My longest approach in recent years was to go bouldering. It was teeming with adders and I didn’t get up the problem.

Dulcinea (f7A+)

I remember our first visits to Chamonix in the seventies. 

First surprise was that all the signposts gave times not distances.

It soon occurred to us that the Vallot guidebooks were quoting the same times to the huts as the signposts. 

It also soon occurred to us that these we needed to add 50% to these times, but also after a while we realised that if we ditched all the unnecessary gear, travelled light and  got fit, the times were achievable.

Any chance then you could add some kind of symbol to show which ones are checked and which are just wild guesses? I'm sure it won't matter on the slate, but on a bigger day out we recently had to change plans significantly because of bullshit approach times in a guidebook. Given different circumstances the consequences could have been a lot worse.

I can look at a map and have a guess myself. If that's all the guidebook author has done it' d be nice to know so I can ignore it, or rip it out, or save them the bother of printing it in the first place.

Doubling the walk in time seems pretty standard when using FRCC guides for the lakes, which seem to top out at 90 minutes for everywhere. We all probably need to just sort it out and walk quicker.

I came to the conclusion years ago that Rockfax walk-ins are done on a motorbike 

I think you're misquoting Naismith: 3 MILES per hour, and an hour for every 2000 feet / 600m.

For Laddow, that's about 50 minutes.

I'm always at least 50% slower than guidebook times, accepted that authors are either superhuman-gazelle type beasts or it's a macho thing

Not usually a problem but long walks like Dovestone you do start wondering if you have wandered off route

A friend of mine always joked "it's a 30 minute walk if you run" . Seems increasingly true as the years rush by.

I remember using the guide to Suicide/Tarquitz years ago - it said something like 'the crag has been reached in six minutes' - half and hour later and still toiling upwards I realised it was pretty useless as a guidebook!

Chris

Yes I realise I quoted that wrong. Thankfully I never actually use it for crag approaches . Looks like it would have made them all longer if I had!

It also looks like we are probably around 10 minutes out on Laddow which I will correct in the master documents here.

Alan

We were using the Vercors guide a few years ago. A crag we were looking for was described as:

"A 35m slab, facing west, 20 minutes from the parking, at 1800m, with routes graded 5b to 8a+"

After an hour of searching over this vast hillside we found a 15m overhanging wall, facing southeast, 7 minutes from the parking, at 1500m, with grades 5a to 7c. It did have routes with painted names matching those in the book, so at least we knew we were in the right place. Sadly the fact it faced almost completely the other way from what we wanted meant that out efforts to find sunshine were foiled.

Alan

Using the old red collomb guides it was a major achievement to get anywhere near the walk in times

You have to add time for any route finding or obstacles etc. Speeds will vary widely with specifics.

Over a few hill walks I have taken rough measurements and they have varied from 4.13 kpm  on mostly good tracks, no obstacles, basic navigation to 1.7 kpm mostly off track, fern bashing steeply uphill, untwining & re-twining wire around farm gates and a few aborted attempts at getting the dog up some small crags before bypassing them. All involved ascents of c700m and with an overnight back pack.

I average a speed of 3 kpm (for non-snow walking) on the up with an overnight pack.