UKC

The Climbers' Club Range West Online Guide is now available.

This FREE pdf guide consists of 76 double page spreads with over 800 routes described with full route descriptions. Full details on access arrangements are given.


More details at UKClimbing.com's news page.. http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

The quality of the photography more than justifies the price ...

In reply to tobyfk: This information will be incorporated into the forthcoming CC Pembroke guide, which will probably be in the comic book format.

In reply to John2:

Comic book as in graphic novel?

Cool.

Makes me laugh this Perrinesque slur of 'comic book." Does Arch-Duke Jim not realise that Lord Ken had a big hand in the "Newsweek" easily digested design with Mountain magazine and the Hard Rock Series that incorporates clean design with photos/topos/phototopos/descriptions.

Let's face it, the puzzle should be when you are actually climbing NOT when you are deciding what to climb.

Mick

In reply to John2:

Really .. you reckon someone's out on a kayak bothering to photograph all these never-to-be-repeated classics in Yet Another Zawn, Bloody Long Walk Wall, Unfunny Military Pun Head, etc? Care for a bet?

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: My comment was non judgemental - the Pembroke Rockfax does a far better job of showing the locations of the climbs than the existing CC guide (and I've heard a respected CC guide book author say the same thing).

In reply to tobyfk: I await the new Pembroke guide with interest - I really don't know exactly what the format will be. It's no secret that the forthcoming CC Portland guide will indeed be photo based, but that's a much smaller area.

When all the Pembroke guidebook bashing is said and done, it is a very large and constantly evolving area (both in terms of new climbs being put up and old ones falling down). It's not an easy task to document the entire area.

And many of the new routes in obscure areas are actually really good.

The Range opens for climbing on the last Saturday of May and closes on last Sunday of January.

Without sounding like a total dick, does this mean anyone can happily go climbing in range west between these dates? i was under the impression a permit is required? if yes does anyone know how i would go about getting a permit?

In reply to david morse: You or the person you are climbing with have to attend a briefing at the Castlemartin army camp (I think the first one this year is April 28th). Once you have a permit, you are only allowed to climb at weekends or bank holidays.

In reply to John2:

any ideas how i get a place on this briefing?

In reply to david morse: The dates are Saturday 28th April,
Saturday 26th May, Saturday 28th July. Turn up at the Castlemartin army camp (easily identified by the two large tanks parked outside) at 9:00 am.

In reply to John2:


I suppose. All the same - and I speak as someone who assembles 'guides' for new stuff all the time here in camel-land - digital cameras and cheap/free photo-editing/ graphics software make it pretty easy to lash together photo topos these days. Which would surely be simpler and preferable to all this 'follow the third groove to the left of the blunt arete until it fades' verbiage?


Of course. But my sense is a lot is unexceptional. I have been fortunate to have one or two friends and friends-of-friends who are, or have been, active Pembroke new-routers; and so have had a taste of repeating new stuff, admittedly only in Range East. Seemed to involve an awful lot of faff: abbing in to rather diminutive facets between the known crags; belaying on non-ledges whilst watching your leader vanish up a non-line whilst showering down ex-holds .... I guess if you have done everything else it is worthwhile? And personally I think there's too much respect for this notion of the definitive guide in the UK. There's an awful lot of rock in the world and every ascent of every excrescence surely doesn't need to be recorded?

In reply to tobyfk: 'I speak as someone who assembles 'guides' for new stuff all the time here in camel-land - digital cameras and cheap/free photo-editing/ graphics software make it pretty easy to lash together photo topos these days'

Well, they say that the camel is the ship of the desert (because it's full of Arab seamen - boom boom) but I think the problems of photographing the Pembroke cliffs are slightly greater than those that you are confronted with.

I couldn't agree more about the 'third groove to the left of the blunt arete' bit, but as I indicated above at least some of the CC guidebook writers are aware of the problem. My own point of view is that diagrams unmistakeably locating the correct abseil points would be a major benefit (and I have wimped out of abseiling into areas in the past for the very reason that I wasn't certain that I was abseiling in the correct place).

Indeed, your paraphrase of CC terminlogy understates the problem - I open the current guide at random and I quote -

Square Chimney The deep, seaward facing chimney in the centre of the East Face . . .

Ledgeway Climbs the ridge to the right of Square Chimney . . .

Illusion Corner The corner immediately right of Ledgeway . . .

Arete and Groove Start10 feet right of Illusion Corner . . .

Well, you'd better hope that they got Square Chimney right (and I could provide details of routes where either the start of the route (used to reference subsequent routes) or the abseil descent were misdescribed.

Sure. a lot of the new routes are unexceptional. But if you ask around, you find out what the good ones are.

In reply to John2:

Come, John, that's a piss-poor example of what you're complaining about (which is much less common and much less of a problem than you like for some reason to pretend). What that tells the reader is that he's looking for a f*ck-off obvious chimney with a ridge to its right and a corner immediately right of that, with probably an arete and groove ten feet right of that. It's not like it's all 'start ten feet right' and so on; the features you're looking for are described.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


With respect, as someone who has frequently stated a dislike of Pembroke, and so has presumably not done much there (and leaving aside the fact that you now 'never climb'), are you well placed to comment?

In reply to John2:


Yes, but these Pembroke new routing types are full-bore outdoor action hero types .. you'd think they'd relish bobbing about in kayaks to get the photographs?

In reply to John2:


Actually that's exactly how I recollect the day of non-ledges/ non-lines/ ex-hold-showers being initiated ...

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: John, I really did open the guide at random to produce that example. The problem becomes far worse at, for example, the south face of Mowing Word where one of the routes from which other routes are referenced is itself mislocated.

In reply to tobyfk:

What on earth are you on about? I used to climb quite a lot, and it makes no difference what cliff we're talking about; the principle would remain the same.

In reply to John2:

Fair enough, but my point is that to say that describing by reference to a single route leaves you lost if you can’t find that route is a cheap shot: this is only true if the guide gives no details of the route ‘ten feet right’. If the second route is described with its features then it helps you in finding all the routes; you need to find a line of features in a particular order and a particular distance apart.

Obviously if a route is misdescribed that’s a problem, but it will always be a problem. I forget which is the South Face, but if that’s where Diedre Sud is (a wild guess) when I have actually climbed there, and there wasn’t any problem finding the routes. I’d have thought they were mostly described in relation to DS, which one could hardly miss.

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously:


I didn't have the impression that you'd done much at Pembroke specifically? So I question how you can appreciate how homegenous the rock can be there .. and thus how unhelpful the verbiage approach to route identification may be.

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: The south face is the Charenton Crack one.

Anyway, I think we're getting a bit bogged down in this issue - I think that good drawn diagrams or photodiagrams do make it easier to locate routes than starting with route 1 and counting 5 routes to the right.

This does seem to be the direction in which the CC are currently moving - I've seen the Portland sample page, and I'm genuinely interested to see what they come up with for Pembroke. So what precisely are we arguing about? Would you like to see the CC produce the next guide without photodiagrams?

Another important issue in Pembroke is locating the correct abseil point - here again the Rockfax guide tends to be far clearer than the CC one. For Heart of Darkness the CC guide is actually wrong - when I followed its instructions I ended up at the bottom of an E4 called What the Butler Saw.