UKC

In this review UKC regular Tom Ripley takes a look at the new Dolomites guide, written by fellow UKC regular James Rushforth, and published by UKC's sister company ROCKFAX.

"In conclusion, this is a brilliant book. It presents a lifetime's worth of climbing and via ferrata to one of Europe's premier rock climbing destinations..."

Read more at http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=6675

In reply to UKC Gear:

A comprehensive Dolomites guidebook would constitute a monumental work, but some masterpieces of historical relevance are definitely lacking from this book...who is gonna climb Italia61 at virtually unbolted 8b anyway? Also, Reinhold Messner is not Tyrolean (Tyrol being an Austrian Bundesland), but Italian. Other than that, I really liked going through the excellent pictures.

In reply to Alessandro Tentori:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tyrol#Name

Also: "Reinhold Messner, 1944 in Südtirol geboren..." from http://www.reinhold-messner.de/de/vita/lebenslauf/biografie.html

In reply to Alessandro Tentori:

Merano is South tyrol. He is Tyrolean. As for lacking - i have yet to see a book of the dolomites in which all the routes are the very best or even historically relevant, or even fully comprehensive, bar the CAI guides which cost as much as this guide for a single mountain - not really an option. At some point a guide writer has to decide what to put in and what to leave out. Not an easy decision.

In reply to UKC Gear:

I'm guessing this is a full size guidebook which won't fit in a normal sized pocket?

In reply to James Oswald:


It is almost "Full Sized +' at over 500 pages,


Chris

In reply to James Oswald:

Hi James,
It (Just) fits into the map pocket on my waterproof and the waist pockets of my Skarn windproof. Just too big for a standard guide book cover though.

It's slightly longer and taller than SMC guides and about twice as thick.

Cheers,

Stu

In reply to StuDoig:

Is it worth buying? It looks like a good coffee table type book, though I guess the size explains the cost.

In reply to UKC Gear:

I'll add +1 to the conclusion that it's a great guide book to the Dolomites! For my purposes (normally a short 10 day trip once a year) it's ideal as we can chop and change areas without buying new guides and based on what we climbed from it this year, the routes all seem pretty good quality! I don't know the areas well enough to comment on what's been included / missed, but I doubt if anyone would be disappointed on a trip climbing the routes included!

Compared to the Italian and German guides my partner had it was fantastic, topos much clearer easier to read and descriptions better / more up to date. I've not used rockfax guides before so it took a while to get used to the symbols etc, but liked them by the end of the trip.

Only slight gripe was that it's just too big for a normal guide book cover so has gotten fairly beaten over the course of a single trip being stuffed into / out of pockets, but at least it now looks well used and everyone knows duct tape re-enforcement improves the look of any bit of climbing gear!

Cheers!

In reply to Removed User:

I think so. It is big as on-the-hill guides go but not excessively so. If we were a bit more organised I'd have photocopied the main routes/areas we fancied or taken a pic with my digital camera and tried to use that on the route rather the guide it's self. I've no regrets about the purchase anyway!

Topos and pics are all big enough for coffee table style planning / fantasizing too.

Cheers,

Stuart

In reply to UKC Gear:

It looks great, lots of inspiring photos from James. I can't imagine you would need more if you are just going for a few week/two week trips.

I'm off there for the first time on Sunday so I'll be better qualified to comment when I return. It is quite sizeable though, so I guess photocopies/digital pics of the relevant pages would save weight and trashing the book too quickly.

In reply to UKC Gear:

It looks like a great book but my only real gripe, which applies to other Rockfax guides to multi pitch areas is, as others have pointed out, the size of it.
I know you can photcopy or scan pages but then you lose picture quality and you have to know what you're going to climb before you get there and whilst you can take a photograph you then end up looking squinting at a 2inch screen which defeats the object of a big format.
I understand the rational behind always putting the description in full on the same page as the photo but it does waste a lot of space. I've never found turning a page to be a problem and all my guidebook holders have 2 page dividers so I can bookmark the description and diagram without any bother. Personally I'd rather compromise on this and have a smaller book.

I am of course being picky here and don't want to sound like I'm detracting from an otherwise excellent book and a great effort by the writer.

In reply to pec:

One of the features of most of our books is that the topos for long multi-pitch routes are as full page as we can possibly get. Even if we do fit text around them, this tends to be done in gaps rather than forcing the topo to be smaller. So there is no space to be gained in most cases from shifting descriptions to another page (this is against our fundamental rules anyway, so we would never do it).

There is, however, a lot of clarity and topo quality to be lost by making the book a smaller - say A6ish - in size.

You only need to look at the topos in out North Wales Classics book (A6), and compare them to the same topos in out North Wales Climbs book to see the massive difference in clarity that the bigger A5 format affords.

That said, the point about book size is one that people do mention. We could do two or three smaller books, but again, that is losing one of our selling points - people have shown time and again that they prefer books with lots of information in them.

I personally have found photographing the page a very workable option, especially since you can zoom in closer than you can with the book.

The other option that we will be offering soon is our App. Obviously this is still a small screen on some phones, larger on others, and getting large with the latest iPhones, but it is designed to be navigated and used on that screen size and is more useable than a photo by some distance. Also, screen technology is moving on at an incredible pace and I am sure it won't be long before there are some very portable larger screen devices available.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:


I do understand your points, I've got a lot of Rockfax Guides so I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. Its a difficult compromise between quantity/quality of information and size/weight.
I think you're probably right about screens though, some sort of robust, waterproof easy to see in bright light Kindle type device that you can load all your guidebooks onto is probably the future.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

I have a few friends who think that CC guidebooks are soooooooooooooo much better than Rockfax guides but often borrow my 'faxes to get a better idea of where they are and where the route goes.

Any idea of when the App will be in testing?

In reply to UKC Gear:

Great cover shot, really makes me wanna go!

No pleasing everybody on size I guess. I always take a pic for long routes if I don't want to carry the guide. I don't see what the problem is. Just wondering when RF will finally go the app route?

In reply to drolex:

There is a difference between being Tyrolean, i.e. from the Austrian Land Tirol, and South-Tyrolean, i.e. what German native speakers generally understand to be the province of Bolzano (Italy). The book says "Tyrolean" I think, which is misleading as he was born in Bressanone (aka Brixen).

In reply to Lawrence:


The App has been in testing for about a year. As a functioning App it is virtually finished. What we are busy with now is getting the data sorted so that when we release it, there will be a lot of crags on there. We are also working on making the Android version in parallel since all the actual design work has been done on the iOS version.

We are aiming to launch later this year with the following crags straight away:

Costa Blanca
Dolomites
Lofoten
Mallorca
North Wales Climbs
Peak Limestone
Pembroke
West Country Climbs
Dorset
Western grit
Cote d'Azur
Ariege
Haute Provence
Languedoc

Possibly Yorkshire Limestone (depending on how that book progresses), then Eastern Grit following when the new book comes out next year, and Clwyd after that. Peak Bouldering is going to require a different approach so we are delaying that until we have the rest working. El Chorro and Northern England are also going to be more awkward since those books are in an older format.


Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

is the plan to sell e-content separately or will each new edition book have a code to get the app version?

regardless of how u do it well done for investing!

In reply to alasdair19:


Content will be sold separately since it is very difficult to link purchases. Including a code in a book is a ridiculously expensive procedure so we only know who buys a book when they buy it direct from the Rockfax site. We may look at issuing coupons for these purchases but we only sell a small percentage of our books direct. In the reverse direction we have zero ability to know who buys an app since that info is protected by the App Stores.

The App will allow us to sell crags individually for a very small amount.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan

that sounds like a great model best of luck with the roll out.

regards
Alasdair