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Gunks Climbers, You May Find This Of Interest

rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210

again with the definitive opinions about something you've never seen or used?
go away dude. quit heckling.
you're defensive about your stupid phone - no one cares.

M Mobley · · Bar Harbor, ME · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 911
Kevin Heckeler wrote:Here's a little secret -- many of the holds on a Gunks climb are already painted for you. Just follow the chalk. There, I just saved a few iDrones $20.
yeah but if you are lost and cant find the exact climb on your hit list then what?
Gunkiemike · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Jul 2009 · Points: 3,492
MJMobes wrote: yeah but if you are lost and cant find the exact climb on your hit list then what?
There are hundreds of other climbers who probably can help you out. Can you say "Excuse me, but we're looking for The Last Will be First"?
rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210
Gunkiemike wrote: There are hundreds of other climbers who probably can help you out. Can you say "Excuse me, but we're looking for The Last Will be First"?
There is always this.
For a bunch of "east coast d-bags" we are a very helpful lot.
I've always gotten enthusiastic help when asking other climbers where i'm at and where I need to head for a route, and I'm happy to spend time with someone to get them sorted and on their way.
Same goes for everyone I've ever climbed with in the gunks.
Kevin Heckeler · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2010 · Points: 1,616
rogerbenton wrote:I'm happy to spend time with someone to get them sorted and on their way.
Doesn't even take a minute in most cases.

This is the spirit at the Gunks. I've also shared a lot of ropes at rappels in the past few years. The community of actual climbers (not the tourons with guides or student groups) is actually very cool.
Kevin Heckeler · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2010 · Points: 1,616
rogerbenton wrote:you're defensive about your stupid phone - no one cares.
My phone doesn't need me defending it.

I'm actually heckling the app developers. Don't take personally what wasn't intended for you in the first place. Go away dOOd.
rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210

Heckeler's gon' heckle!

So tired of all these iPhone users bitching about droids...
Oh wait, that doesn't happen! Strike that, switch it.

These threads are like a typical Google search: first half of the first page contains all the pertinent info, the rest is drivel straying farther and farther from the topic.

Time for someone to head back to the hardware store...

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
Kevin Heckeler wrote:This app is certainly in the spirit of painting holds [based on what's been shared], versus allowing people to learn route finding.
I don't know...I actually think the app is a step in what I view as a better direction, away from "painting holds." Showing folks where the route goes but cutting out all the additional information that is often part of verbal descriptions actually leaves more up to the climber, not less.

As for learning "route finding," you don't learn route finding, in the conventional sense of the term, in the Gunks, because many routes don't follow natural lines of least resistance. You aren't trying to pick out the best, most efficient, or easiest way, you are trying to replicate the path someone else took when they discovered the climb, and that someone else might have been trying to maximize difficulty or "interest," whatever that might mean. Someone skilled at route-finding who applies those skills in the Gunks would wander "off route" on many Gunks climbs.

What constitutes "route-finding" in the Gunks is correctly keying verbal descriptions to cliff features so that you head the way the route, which might be quite contrived, is supposed to go. This may well be a skill, and since most guidebooks are still text-based, a useful skill, but it has little to do with navigation in the mountains, and a lot to do with the reading ability of the climber and the writing ability of the author.

The Trapps App bypasses the entire (arguably irrelevant) process of text interpretation and correlation and just shows you where to go with a line. What makes it a substantial improvement over classical topos is that the line is drawn on a cliff photo that is zoomable, so that the climber can orient the line with respect to reasonably local cliff features. An important aspect of this, one the app developers understood, is that the photo has to be taken in a light that reveals rather than obscures local cliff detail. When Dick produced the cliff photos for his guide, the demands of aerial photography at the time required turbulence-free air to reduce vibration and so achieve reasonable sharpness. For the Trapps, this meant early-morning light, which, being flat, can and does obscure huge major features, not to mention smaller ones. The Trapps App developers managed to get afternoon aerial photos that are far better at delineating cliff details then the shots Dick had to work with. They are also in color, which I never thought mattered much until Jerry Handren's Red Rocks guide came out and I saw how much easier it is to correlate color photos with crag features.

The result is a wordless topo which, as far as I can tell from so far very limited experience, gives the climber an excellent chance of figuring out the general direction of the route, for all pitches. I see this as a reversion to the most basic goal of guidebooks, to show you where to go without also revealing the mysteries that have to be resolved on the way, and not, as many are saying, some new layer of simplification that "dumbs down" the climbing process even more. It's really the opposite, and if it does not catch on, it will be because a significant number of climbers demand more specific and detailed information, in other words because the climbing community now demands more "paint" on the route than the app provides.

As for the stupid innuendo about motivations for iPhone vs. Android development, the reality is that Chris is a physics teacher, not a programmer or developer, and when he decided to do this, he naturally chose for his initial efforts the smoothest, easiest system to learn, and that is, by a reasonably large margin, the iPhone platform. (I am not suggesting, by the way, that learning smart phone programming from scratch is anything like "smooth" or "easy." I'd hazard that there are extremely few posters on this site who aren't already skilled programmers who would have a snowball's chance in hell of managing this really quite impressive feat while holding down a full-time job and climbing at a high standard.)
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

Of course Dick "borrowed" from previous versions of his own guidebook. I imagine he looked at the Swain book but do not think he used anything from it (the reverse is closer to the truth). I think there was a point at which Ivan Rezucha had a brief account of routes that were new at the time that Ivan turned over to Dick. Dick certainly spoke to many climbers in order to make the information and grading as good as possible, so many contributed to the effort. And of course both the concept and the content of Dick's guides was firmly based on the original text by Art Gran---it all goes back to him.

James Sweeney · · Roselle Park, NJ · Joined Oct 2013 · Points: 30

$15!

It costs $15!

At least look at the product page if you're going to make ANY comment about it.

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
Dana Bartlett wrote:I disagree, Rich.


Fair enough Dana. Care to explain?
rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210

A few thoughts after playing with the app for a little bit:

Pros-
- the color topos are amazing. Starting to really enjoy this vs a written set of instructions. It's arguably less info but easier to remember than a short paragraph of description.

- the topos are especially helpful when there are routes bunched together that merge. Insuhlation/Teeny Face/Obstacle Delusion for instance.

On the Fence-
- not sure how I feel about re-grading some of the pitches.
On one hand, the authors have many times the experience at the gunks that I do so I really feel like I should keep my mouth shut.
On the other, I feel like some of the changes don't add up. An example would be the first pitch of Falled on Account of Strain. Traditionally 5.9, now 10a. IMHO, that pitch is nowhere near as tough as wegtables, simple suff, lost city crack, never never land... There are other changes that struck me as a little odd but I am mostly willing to accept the opinions of those with more experience here.

Suggestions-
- First thing I'd like to see is FA info including dates.
One of the best parts about completing a tough route (for me) is sitting at a belay with my partner hero worshipping the guys who did it in 19?? with 20lb boots and ropes made of pretzel. Plus that FA info needs to be passed down out of respect.

- Id love it if the app bookmarked where you were last instead of returning to the home page each time. Its easier to open the app and hit one button to get to the home page than to hit "topos", scroll scroll scroll, then hit the route you were at.

- regarding searching routes by grade: within a search, once you select a route and then go back to the results the search is gone. Would be nice if you could search for "5.10b" and stay within those results, looking at different 10b routes, until you're ready to move on.

That's my beta so far. Thanks for listening.

SethG · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 291

I've been looking over the app too and I think more and more highly of it. My review follows.

(Full disclosure: I've met Chris Fracchia at the cliffs a few times and he has been very nice about giving me beta on Millbrook. I have previously described him as a "friend" to my blog because he has been so helpful with information. That is the full extent of our relationship. I have no connection to his app or anything else he does.)

1. The app has full color, detailed photos of the access trails and of the base of the cliff with the routes marked. Climbers new to the Gunks will love the app because they will be able to find the correct access trail and the base of their desired route much easier than ever before. And they'll have more complete descent information than ever before too. This is huge.

2. There are new routes and variations. This will be of great interest to experienced Gunks climbers. For example, I am keen to check out Dog Bite City (5.10a), a new variation that splits off from Classy and heads through a roof to the right towards Pink Laurel. I'm also interested in a new link-up called King MF, which matches some well-protected bits of the neglected route Water King (5.10R) with the crux portion of the ever-popular MF (5.9). I've already checked out another new route in the app, not listed in any prior guidebook, called Erogenous Zone (behind the Twilight Zone buttress) and it was great fun! There are many more.

3. High-res topos of the entire cliff. This is another draw for new and experienced climbers alike. I know I'm more likely to do certain routes that I was unsure about before, because with the app's high res photos I now have a much better topo and am more sure about where the routes go-- Ruby Saturday is an example of one such climb for me.

And sometimes the app creators have given beta on the topo that I never had before. This info may make me more willing to try a challenging pitch, as in the second pitch of The Winter (which is above P1 of the Spring and is just called The Spring in the app-- Chris and Tom straightened out the lines). Chris and Tom have included an escape route variation that avoids the crux of this upper pitch, so now I know I can bail off to Shit Creek if I find it too hairy. This is just one example; the app has lots of useful stuff like this.

4. Accuracy. To the extent that I've been able to tell-- my experience tops out in the 5.10 range-- the lines on the topos are very accurate. I have some quibbles, but very few. And there are some variations that are left out, but this is inevitable.

5. Grades. Chris and Tom have adjusted some grades. These changes are minor and are well within the range of reasonable argument. To the extent I feel qualified to have an opinion I agree with their changes sometimes and disagree at other times. I think this adds to the fun of the app. Grades are subjective and we'll never agree on everything. But with Chris and Tom you get the sense that when they've adjusted a grade the grade still makes sense in the overall Gunks picture. They haven't changed grades so haphazardly as to throw the system entirely out of whack, as was the case with a different guidebook that will remain nameless.

6. Completeness. I still think Chris and Tom should add the Sleepy Hollow area to the App. It seems to me that if you are selling an App that is a guide to the Trapps you should not exclude an entire portion of the cliff. This is the only major criticism I have of the app and they may now plan to remedy this situation in due course.

Apart from Sleepy Hollow the list of routes is comprehensive. At first when I noticed a few pet routes of mine were missing I thought there was more of a problem with completeness. But now that I've really gone through the app in detail I think there are very few missing lines that really matter. (Some of the "missing" routes are actually in the topos as variations, see below.) Of course the missing routes can be added in an update with ease-- all Chris and Tom have to do is to climb a few more routes and add the lines. The entire cliff is photographed already, so they have the foundation in place and can add things as they wish. There are many no-star routes that are not listed, but the list of significant omissions is so small it could be fixed in a weekend. This is just my subjective opinion, but for me the surprise omissions are:

Handy Andy
Uncle Rudy
Gaston
Mr. P
Stop the Presses/Osteopath
Turdland
Jim's Gem
Hans' Puss
Moby Dick/Android
Lichen 40 Winks

And that's about all I could come up with. You can judge for yourself whether these are significant routes or not. Some are unpopular, but good, and a few are multi-starred classics.

I also noted in a previous post that many climbs in the app are missing upper pitches, and this is true, but when I pored over the app looking for upper pitches that I thought were improperly excluded I had a hard time coming up with any. For example, I've done the second pitch of Raunchy and it's terrible. Likewise for the second pitch of Precarious Perch. I'm not sorry that they're absent from the app. No one does them anyway. Maybe the third pitch of Morning After should be in there? Maybe the second pitch of Higher Stannard? The Birdie Party traverse is missing and should really be in there. I could probably name a few others, but very few.

My point is that most users aren't going to be missing the stuff that isn't there.

6. Ease of use. The app is very clear and easy to navigate. You can search by names or ratings and it is a very simple matter to click through to a route's base photo, then to its description, and then to the cliff topo. One issue: several popular, independent routes have been relegated to variation status in the app. Some examples: Herdie Gerdie, Wonderland, and Bitchy Virgin. The user may initially think these routes are missing because they are not in the index. You can't search for them by name or grade. But they are in the app, buried as variations behind nearby climbs.

I also agree with Roger that when you do a search and then click through to a specific route, if you press the back arrow you should go back to the search result and not to the main index. I hope they'll fix this in an update.

6. Price. This thing costs something like half the price of your average guidebook. It is so worth the money. If I were new to the area I'd also buy Dick's book. I'd want his descriptions, which Chris and Tom have not attempted to match. Their app is about the topos. Taken together, Dick's book and the Trapps App give us a high res color guidebook akin to the modern guidebooks now available for Eldorado Canyon and Whitehorse/Cathedral.

I'm going to enjoy using the app at the cliff.

climber57 Jones · · Saint John, NB · Joined Nov 2012 · Points: 60

Aid

Kevin Heckeler · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2010 · Points: 1,616
rgold wrote:As for the stupid innuendo about motivations for iPhone vs. Android development, the reality is that Chris is a physics teacher, not a programmer or developer, and when he decided to do this, he naturally chose for his initial efforts the smoothest, easiest system to learn, and that is, by a reasonably large margin, the iPhone platform.
Here we are less than 2 months later and the android version is now released. So is it hype regarding the android platform being difficult for developers? Or maybe they were just eager to get the app out the door?

play.google.com/store/apps/…

I'll wait for the price to drop in a few months/year, but at least now I can't bitch about exclusiveness! ;)

And yes, this app has good topos. In the end, the app's sales will determine if it's worthy of any recognition and serves any use. I know I've seen more and more climbers with their phones out in recent years. The market is there. We've also seen climbers with the wrong guide looking for climbs (Near Trapps at the Mac Wall). I don't think any app can fix stupid.
Benjamin Brooke · · San Pedro, CA · Joined Apr 2012 · Points: 1,050

why not just parlay these new aerial photos into a totally new complete guidebook(includes zoomable topos for smart phone). The developers of the app seem experienced enough. They are offering some new grades. They are adding some new climbs. They are drawing routes in to reflect how they are currently being climbed (or not climbed). I personally dont think there is anything wrong with the guide i have (williams'), but it clearly isnt as modern as ADK Rock or Red Rocks by Handren. rgold bring up a good point about the old aerial photos - sometimes they are helpful, often times for not much more than finding the start. And he is right - the route finding in the gunks is being able to translate what williams writes onto the climb at hand. It can be tricky at times, but works out for me the vast majority of the time.

So i don't think there is a desperate need for a new guide but it is only a matter of time before someone cashes in... with all the gunks visitors a new modern guide to the trapps would be a cash cow. these guys already have the aerials and the knowledge. Why not pass the torch?

Bill Kirby · · Keene New York · Joined Jul 2012 · Points: 480

The photos in the Gunks app are taken from the base of the route.

BigA · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Aug 2012 · Points: 0

Bill, if you tap past the base photo you will get an aerial photo taken from a helicopter

Kevin, I don't think the android programming difficulties were hype; they hired someone versed in android development

Kevin Heckeler · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2010 · Points: 1,616
BigA wrote:Kevin, I don't think the android programming difficulties were hype; they hired someone versed in android development
Ouch!

I probably need to give them a pity purchase at some point then. [my prior posts were a bit disingenuous since I haven't really the need for the guide, but now that I stuck my big foot in my mouth I mind as well pay up, right?]
Kevin Heckeler · · Las Vegas, NV · Joined Jul 2010 · Points: 1,616

So the app is okay, for a visitor probably makes life a lot easier. Biggest complaint aside from the the price is the lack of a few routes, most notably Hans Puss and The Nose. Hans is a high quality, popular climb, and The Nose is a quality climb (certainly better than some of what was included in the app). There's probably plenty more examples, as the app doesn't break 300 routes and there's more than 300 in the Trapps.

Other gripe, descriptions for some routes are poor at best. Take Middle Earth for example (a classic moderate), no route description for pitch two or three, and only a wide out shot/topo. I pity someone trying to get started on pitch 3 based on this app alone.

Keep in mind this is what I found doing a cursory 10 minute review.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

Northeastern States
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