Do climb descriptions on mobile app negate the need to buy a guidebook?

My local crag only has a few climbs listed on this site and available on my phone. I thought I'd be doing the community a service buy listing more climbs and adding better descriptions...I'd go the crag, use my friends' guide books, and we'd climb. I'd return without a book, go to use the mobile app, and find it lacking. So, should we all just buy guide books? Is it open season for anyone with a smart phone? Clearly lots of work went into all of our climbing areas, some of which was funded by guide book sales...so where are the metallica's of the guide author world? Do they want me to use my phone at the crag, instead of buying a book? What am I to do?

cell for quick and dirty (and sometimes frustrating)

guide for more complete (topos), historical info, better directions

cant tell you how many times i've gotten absolutely wrong directions from MP

Maurice Chaunders wrote:My local crag only has a few climbs listed on this site and available on my phone. I thought I'd be doing the community a service buy listing more climbs and adding better descriptions...but i'd be using my friends' guide books.

Please only add [quality] route descriptions for routes you've personally climbed instead of plagiarizing a guidebook.

Maurice Chaunders wrote:So, should we all just buy guide books?

I do. I love seeing the full-color photos and the additional "not just routes" information in guidebooks.

Maurice Chaunders wrote:What am I to do?

Your call man! I personally really like guidebooks for the history and more in-depth stories and supplement books with the MountainProject app for new route information, conditions reports and other fun facts not in the books.

Mountain Project is an excellent way to keep posted on current route/crag conditions and what others have to say about routes you've climbed or have yet to climb. It's also a great way to stay involved in the climbing community.

However,
I've attempted to use MP several times in place of a guidebook and I always end up disappointed at the results. Typically, unless a crag/destination is incredibly well traveled (ie world class) then usually only the classic routes end up posted, leading one to have nothing to climb while they wait hours in line for the best routes to open up. Plus, the maps, details and topos included in guidebooks just can't be beaten

BOTTOM LINE: use Mountain Project to supplement the guidebook. This is why their motto is "Beyond the guidebook"

I've watched map/atlas companies stop investing in data updates with some even going out of business. In fact, it's hard to find an atlas now a days that is investing in data updates. Yet I think (and many others as demonstrated by widespread usage) that the modern successors to paper atlases (i.e. Google Maps) are superior for a variety of reasons. The biggest probably being the ability to update data for the version of the map that everyone is using. Paper products are out of date the minute they are printed... That said, digital navigation products suffer from limited battery life and dependency on internet connection (although offline mode can be an option). This can be less of an issue with digital climbing guides as the data is normally downloaded for an area prior to a trip but ultimately can effect their usefulness. The point I'm trying to make is that while some guides are very good and interesting their usefulness is limited in both time and the authors perspective. When you contribute to Mountain Project you are sharing information with the whole community in a way that can evolve as things change. I am personally very grateful to all the guide book authors out there but as sites like this evolve I think we will find this data driving apps that are more current, interactive, and potentially useful than the paper predecessors.

Almost any guide book is more useful than the MP app. I have used the MP app in combination with guidebooks for locations all throughout the US and in no case have I ever found the app to be as useful as the book.

This post violated Rule #1. It has been removed by Mountain Project.

In areas with new routes going up the MP app is invaluable between guidebook editions. But the local guidebook is still irreplaceable.
If traveling, the MP app can be useful finding a few classics and not having to spend a lot of money on guidebooks that will be used once.

Posting routes you have done into the data base is a public service that I appreciate. Subsequent comments can be more in depth than anything you'll find in a guidebook. Although typically history gets short shrift.
The database does seem to be somewhat CO-centric, but hopefully this will change as more routes are submitted elsewhere.

My experience is that route descriptions on the web are usually inferior (sometimes dangerously so) to descriptions in a good guidebook. But Comments on the web about a specific route are often much more valuable than the base description, and sometimes greatly enhance (or correct) my understanding from the guidebook.

Another frequent deficiency of web descriptions is in how to find a route in relation to other routes nearby.

My theory is that the very experienced and careful people who could write web descriptions as good as the guidebook (or better, because of absence space limitations) choose not to because they know how much work it will take to make it really helpful to a wide variety of climbers. Therefore by default many web descriptions are written by people who are less careful and feel like "how hard could it be?".

On a truly collaborative website like CampToCamp.org (focus on Europe climbing and mountaineering), then the more careful people feel goaded into correcting and enhancing that initial effort. The problem on MountainProject.com is that the original careless author "owns" the description, so fixing it gets more cumbersome (perhaps requiring intervention of a Moderator).
So then the corrections and enhancements must be made by adding Comments - (and that approach works as long as readers are savvy about which section of the route is more likely to have reliable information).

Another problem with MountainProject (unless this has been fixed recently) is that, unlike other web discussions on MP, you as author/owner of route cannot subscribe to be notified of each new Comment on your route. So even if you want to be able to improve and correct your Description based on feedback, then you have to remember to separately check the page for each route you've contributed for new Comments.

So I'm coming to prefer to post my route descriptions to CampToCamp instead of MP, because then my author/owner status is not "in the way" of smart people who want to improve on my work.

Ken

Maurice Chaunders wrote:I thought I'd be doing the community a service buy listing more climbs and adding better descriptions...but i'd be using my friends' guide books. So, should we all just buy guide books?

Well my understanding is that it violates Copyright law to just copy phrases or diagrams out of somebody else's guidebook. I assume that if the managers of MountainProject.com were aware that that had been done, they would remove the descriptions from the MP website and MP phone app.

Some contributors to MP get around this by paraphrasing the guidebook -- and often do a bad job even in that.

My view is that I prefer to support local guidebooks (which sometimes contribute to maintenance of anchors and access of the crag), and I do not want to aid (in the delusion of) the many visiting climbers nowadays who think they can be safe while saving money by not purchasing a guidebook.

I make two exceptions:

• Truly great long routes where the existing guidebook descriptions are obviously deficient, often because of space limitations to handle the complexity of a route with multiple options.
• One crag I know well where the longtime main guidebook author just has not kept up with serious marketing and distributing of the multiple books for multiple sectors. So there's one sector with only three or four good easy climbs -- which would be just right for some visitors. But those visitors would need to purchase a whole separate book just to get those. And that book (last I checked) is not available on the obvious Web booksellers, or in many bookstores in the region of the crag. So I have put careful route Descriptions (including how to find the routes) up on the web for those three good easy climbs.

Ken

kenr wrote: Well my understanding is that it violates Copyright law to just copy phrases or diagrams out of somebody else's guidebook. I assume that if the managers of MountainProject.com were aware that that had been done, they would remove the descriptions from the MP website and MP phone app. Ken

I edited my post, so hopefully there's no confusion about my intentions...I didn't mean I was going to sit down and transfer the guide book to the mobile app. That being said, every climb I know at the crag, I know because I read it in my friend's book, or they pointed it out to me, after having discovered it in a guidebook. I can't help but feel that, though it is a service for the community, it undermines the value of a guidebook.

kenr wrote: Another frequent deficiency of web descriptions is in how to find a route in relation to other routes nearby.

This is the main reason behind my inquiry; thanks for all the insights

This site is so plagued by shit content (hey, look what was just posted to WPOD today: mountainproject.com/v/white… ), that I always buy a guidebook for areas I care about. MP is a great supplement, and even a good option for just swinging through an area. Unfortunately, due to inaccuracies, banter, spray, and use of the site as if it's facebook...it'll never be a total guidebook replacement.

how the fuck did anyone ever get off the ground, let alone find their way to the crag prior to the 21st century?

yo Maurice, help me understand. your willing to update the MP route guide for your local crag with detailed beta and then shell out 5-bucks to MP to view/access your own work/beta?

what would make more sense.

there are a coupla open-source android apps out there that would allow you to create and publish your own content. dump it out onto google play. Charge a nominal fee/donation of say $1 applied towords your local climbers alliance, access fund, or any humanitarian cause. thatd help your efforts, boost traffic and involvement. or just pocket the cash. such end-user apps are out there, I've been using one for surf forecast/beta and one for canyoneering (colo plateau region).

think like a pre-21st century hardman and get after it.

Points.

Guidebook's battery can't fail.
Guidebook will still work when you drop it.
Guidebook doesn't have an area of service.
Guidebook is often written by "certified FA hardman" -vs - the Gumbies of MP.

I love what MP provides, but prefer the traditional heavy physical copy for reasons listed.

This weekend I got pretty disoriented in the NRG mostly due to trying to use the MP app as a guidebook. Fortunately there were some helpful people around to point me in the right direction. Try it out, but you might wind up hiking around for forty minutes looking for a route.

They work better in combination IMO. I find guidebooks are generally better for locating climbs, topos, finding nearby climbs, etc. Most of the time that's all you need.

However, if you want more information about a specific climb (especially long climbs), like detailed pitch-by-pitch descriptions, specific gear beta (e.g. "#4 camalot useful for the belay on P2"), and conditions-related information (either weather-related or "the bolts on P2 belay have been replaced"-type stuff), MP can help you out there.

For places I climb at often, I usually buy the guidebook (I also just kind of like leafing through guidebooks) and also have the area downloaded to the MP app on my phone.

If I'm just passing through an area or don't plan to climb there much (e.g. bouldering at Big Bend in Moab for a day or something before climbing a tower), I will just use the MP app rather than drop $40+ on a guidebook I'll use three pages of.

We've long been worried about the sometimes-poor-data problem on MP, and the lack of people's ability to improve it.

By coincidental timing with this thread, we just made this announcement:
mountainproject.com/v/new-f…

We are in this for the long haul, and the data on MP should now get better and better over time, as should the app, as should batteries, etc. But in the interest of full disclosure, I often still buy and enjoy guidebooks when I'm going somewhere new, and use the app for further information.