SummitPost.org

How many years have you been in SP and what does it mean for you

Just did 11 years in early October. It's an incredible site for mountaineering information for me. In my opinion knowing about any other mountains routes in the world is fantastic and you could organize your next trip by using SP. Even if you like photography is a very good place to store them with captions and share. That's not only for enjoying nice pics but it's so useful for routes' describing. One of SP best things for me is to be able to message other mountaineers all over the world and talk about any other not moutaineering topics as well. It is also very good for improving my English.

Add your time in SP and opinions next...

6 years. I use summitpost as a source of beta for climbing mountains. It's pretty much my guide book. I love the varied input from real people who have actually climbed the mountain. This includes the main mountains page, routes, trip reports and climbers logs. Lots of good information can be found here. I find this more valuable than a single description you'd find in a guide book, plus Summitpost is free! It's also been great to meet some other summitposters in real life as well as having the site to share our experiences with the mountains. Summitpost is awesome!

Not quite 2 years here.

SP to me means motivation-motivation to climb and to learn more about the mountains of the world.

.... sorry, Steve and Tim just cracked me up ...

Over 5 years for me --- I feel like THIS guy every time I go on SP's forums ...

Oh man, I'm coming up on 10 years next year. I'm getting to be an old fart....

Over 8 years now. It's the main source of strife in my marriage.

Almost 2 years.

Well, it's a great place to post fun pages, write stories of my adventures, and post photos of the places I love.

But it's also a great place to get partners for trips. I am very thankful for that aspect of this site.

Jeez... almost 5 years. Excellent source of information and experience. Probably one of the best, if not the best (for what I like to do most regularly). Lots of good people, a few jerks here and there. Try to keep SP at arms length now cause the forums are an incredibly good waste of time... HA!

11 1/2 years, ever since I was in high school......mostly as a lurker (perhaps that should change?), but this site has continued to be my chief source of information for all things mountain, and it's been a tremendous privilege to see how the site has developed over the years from the very beginning. I love seeing good mountain pages and well-crafted trip reports (like from Josh Lewis, for example), and this has provided me with the requisite vicarious pleasure when I've been stuck away from the summits for long periods of time......

Of course, SP still has room to develop - for example, I'm contemplating a move up to Montana next year from San Diego and there are still big gaps in SP's coverage of several important Montana peaks, simply because it's more remote up there! . But I'm grateful to people like "thephotohiker" and "saintgrizzly" for their labors of love in the Bitterroots and Glacier Park, respectively, and I know that others are filling in these gaps as we speak......

The point is, I'm glad that even with the occasional debates about SP's direction and purpose/relevance, there are still those willing to put a lot of time and effort into continuing to make it a quality resource. And I will continue to use SP for the foreseeable future!

Robert Shaw, one of the coolest actors ever. Get him and Steve McQueen in a room, they'd be so cool you'd have to wear a sweater. They rule.

Anyway, me, joined in 2003 after I got a query from someone already at SP if they could use some of my images in a page they were building. Intrigued, I looked in myself and joined not long thereafter.

I appreciate the variety of mountains posted here at SP. Not every peak of interest has to be some 20K ice-laden inaccessible killer monster in Remotistan. There's a good range of peaks, and a good range of writers and contributors. It's a good way to have vicarious fun, too, knowing some places I'll never get to, unless I win a lottery.

I also enjoy the messages from the pretty ladies who saw my profile and want to love me.

surgent wrote:...I also enjoy the messages from the pretty ladies who saw my profile and want to love me.

Hahaha, so true! I guess that's one of the fringe benefits of being a summitposter!

Geez, come the 1st of the New Year, I'll turn 6 years old on this site.

Years ago, someone summed up SP best for me when they described it as a "virtual campfire." It's a place to sit around and share & listen to stories, shoot the breeze, hang out with my tribe.

* I love opening SP in the morning to read about far off places I may never visit...or to start hatching plans to visit in the next couple of years. I marvel at the beauty of the mountainous regions of the world. Opening the "What's new" page is like popping the cork on a new bottle of wine, or opening a gift...always different, usually pleasant.
* It's a blast to read write-ups on routes I'll never climb -- too remote, too strenuous, too technical, too dangerous -- and I can cheer on the authors and subjects of the write-up because, in the end, we wear the same color jersey...we're on the same team.
* The vast majority of the people I have met in person via SP are beautiful folks. Minus the random looser/nutjob/sociopath, it's hard to go wrong with people that love the high country as much as I do. One of these days I even hope to wander further afield and torment my SP friends in Brazil, Italy (Silvia - BEWARE!), Germany...God, wherever I may roam. And once you're "in the foxhole," so to speak, with climbing partners through thick and thin in the mountains, you form an incredibly powerful bond.
* It's a joy for me to share my adventures (and subsequent beta) with others who can appreciate my passions for the mountains. Whether I'm here in my Colorado backyard, snooping around Arizona or the rest of the USA west or someplace further away from home, I can post photos, trip reports, mountains/routes...and never have to answer to anyone here "Why."

The "why" behind what we do, this passion we share, is understood, unspoken. Of course what we do is completely illogical...and I appreciate that I never have to explain "why" I flew halfway across the world to walk up a equatorial volcano, or drove through the night to sleep in my Jeep and wake up at o-dark-thirty to abuse myself for 12 hours non-stop. This is my tribe - they...YOU...understand.

surgent wrote:Not every peak of interest has to be some 20K ice-laden inaccessible killer monster in Remotistan.

Remotistan...Is that a town in Utah? Near where the signs on the highway read: No gas, fuel, monogamy, food, etc. for 140 miles?

About 2 years for me...I think of SP as a great worldwide information database for hiking, climbing and mountaineering and I try to post the best and most accurate information possible.