This probably has been brought up before, but I don't see anything immediately looking though here.

I feel like summitpost is inadequate to really do justice to rock climbing areas. This especially is in reference to climbing areas as their whole point is not to summit, but to do a route (note I think summitpost covers alpine climbing sufficiently).

Is there any possibility of getting a rockpost or routepost? Just for sport and trad that is non summit specific?

I do think a site like rockpost or routepost would do well, as sites like 8a.nu are mostly for checking off climbs and often are relatively laconic on describing routes and areas. Also, the primary benefit that summitpost has over other mountains sites is its clean look, copious descriptions, and relative order.

I suppose the same thing could be achieved with new forms that addressed a hierarchy of routes, walls, areas, and regions for rock climbing, but then again, it still has nothing to do with reaching summits.

-Swithich

Sort of like Mountainproject? That site is much more 'route' specific.

Swithich, I think one needn't attach too much importance to the "meaning" of words. F.i., in the case of a sport route, the anchor might be considered as the summit. It's the summit of the route. "Climbing" is also vague, f.i. a train climbs a hill. So, a boulder pb is a route, a sport route is a route, an approach is a route, even a rock may be a route. A bunch of routes can make a rock page, a sector may be a rock or an area, a wall may be an area, etc, etc. IMHO, it all depends on the quality of the info (text, photo). SP is tolerant, and the users mainly willing to help.
Rock on
BK

TacoDelRio wrote:Sort of like Mountainproject? That site is much more 'route' specific.

+1

Swithich, I think Mountainproject should have everything you want/need for rock routes and climbing info.

Also, this looks like a shining opportunity for you to share with the SP community some high-quality rock route pages for your stomping grounds in Washington.

One of the many fine things about SP is that if a community memebers feels a region, for instance, or a discipline, perhaps, is under-represented, then that member can address this by posting information to the site that better represents these areas/disciplines.

Sounds like a call for a division of what's thrown together. I'd vote for the opposite, or perhaps some reorganization. There's "Areas & Ranges" and "Mountains & Rocks" that lump together alpine climbing, mountain hiking, and rock climbing; then there's "Canyons" all off by their lonesome. Seems like canyons should be thrown in with mountains and rocks or they should be three separate but equal things. Just my $0.02 worth.

To the OP-- Although SP includes a broad range of climbing-related activities and objects, the core of the site always has been mountains and will likely stay so for the forseeable feature. The average SP content user seems most interested in the mountaintops.

However, if you look around, it's easy to find great examples of members who have put in a lot of work on technical objects and routes. Some examples that spring to mind right away are Dow's pages on Red Rocks and Zion; MarcSoltan's efforts on Joshua Tree; rpc's pages about crags and routes all over the West; and TacoDelRio's many pages about Southern California destinations. And there's a lot more out there.

Technically, SP could rival Mountain Project with its beta on rock routes (the system of Area-Rock-Route is there), but the membership just has not steered it that way. But SP seems to blow away the competition out there when it comes to information on getting up mountains. Despite the abundance of mediocre and bad stuff, there is also a lot of great stuff.

My suggestion if you want to see more about rock climbing on SP-- Get involved and start creating good pages that reflect your experience and interests. We'd love to see it!

I agree, but look at it this way, the most sketchy part of climbing a route in an unfamiliar area is figuring out where the hell it starts, where it goes, and how you get back to the car. The tiered organization on this site is great for that. The hikers, scramblers, and mountaineers are far more helpful with that info. than the technical climbers. You just have to work off what they already have, which is thorough as a rule. Just don't get miffed that your x-rated test piece is listed in the route section next to an AI 2 gully (and probably gets less hits/votes) and you'll be OK. Aren't you used to being the marginalized minority yet? The only alternative is to form a frat. and with all the drinking and the paddling, there won't be any good beta coming out of that.

knoback wrote: The only alternative is to form a frat. and with all the drinking and the paddling, there won't be any good beta coming out of that.

I love how drinking gets mentioned and the thread is hijacked instantaneously.

Thanks Taco I have seen that. That site is sufficient although I still think SPs layout is more crisp and clean (*gripe*).

Bob, you are dead on. With the "Area-Rock-Route" lineup that would be sufficient to establish something like MountainProject. I guess I was looking the Frenchman Coulee page and was thinking why the author hadn't individually placed the routes (he contained the routes in the text of a route-the feathers-where the feathers should be a rock)

http://www.summitpost.org/the-feathers/158126

I guess it wasn't for lack of being able too. Although, since summitpost is changing and I've only been here a year, it might be anachronistic to look at the authors page. That is I don't know if the "route" and "rock" objects have been as they were when the page was made in 2003 (updated in 2007) or if they even existed at that time.

This might be a summer project (new/updated Frenchman Coulee with proper tier assignment).

-Swithich

Swithich wrote:I love how drinking gets mentioned and the thread is hijacked instantaneously.
-Swithich

Oh, c'mon that wasn't hijacking. It's just a fun way of showing appreciation.
Thanks for the Feather hint, BTW