New Bouldering Guidebook for Portland/Seattle Northwest

Just wanted to put the word out that Pacific Northwest Bouldering is now available at climbingguidebooks.org

The guide includes areas from Bellingham, WA to 'the Bettermilks' in Central Oregon and focuses on new areas around Portland and the Columbia Gorge as well as Seattle. The guide is a full-color book and nearly 500 pages. It's roughly as thick as a phone book--not that anyone uses a phone book--but you get the idea.

Thanks everyone for the incredible amount of help and support over the past few years. It would not be possible without the help of the great bouldering community here in the Pacific Northwest.

Cheers
Rob H

This guide is awesome!
Full of sooooo much goodness.
Can't wait for the Oregon Bouldering one!

Wait wait wait....theres bouldering in Oregon? ;)

Grading is beyond inaccurate (climbs in this book seriously have V2/V9 ratings...wtf?), directions to places are terrible and sometimes just plain wrong, and when you plug in coordinates of areas you'll end up with a pin that is 30 miles from where the actual climbing is.

Hi, I can't speak for the Oregon sections but the Washington portion of the guidebook seems to be off a bit. Can you explain the v2/v9 grade for me. Also, where did you get the names/grades of the problems? I didn't see any sources or collaboration for grades, names, or locations.

Hi guys and thanks for the input. It means a lot to me to have accurate, current beta so thanks for reaching out to me.

Just to clarify: I assume you are referring to the problem Slippery Slope V2 or V9. at Larrabee in Bellingham. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I mention in the description of that problem that if you do the left or right side of the wall on that really long boulder that those two traverses are V2 individually but if you link the two traverses with a hard mid-section it bumps the grade to V9. I should have been more clear on that, sorry for any confusion. I will update that for sure.

To answer your question the names of the problems at that area were double checked with the original guidebook done back in the 90s and the Alpine Institute up there was unbelieveably helpful in refrencing names and grades and even provided me with the old out-of-print guides to cross reference. I credit these sources in the beginning of the guide as well as in the actual chapters. It was awesome for them to help out and I can't thank them enough.

About the GPS: I double checked every GPS in the guide to assure that they all mark the correct spots so I'm not sure what one is incorrect but please let me know so I can update it.

Since there were some questions about directions and history here are a few samples of the maps, GPS etc for anyone interested:

I also added an additions page to my website so I can update any info necessary. I am happy to evolve this guidebook and add any corrections or additions anyone wants. Here is a link to the additions page:
climbingguidebooks.org/paci…

I don't check MP all the time so if anyone has any additions to this post or to the guidebook please direct them to the link and page above and I will gladly add them.

Thanks again and happy Turkey Day!
Rob Holzman

The Washington information is pretty bad. I'm not sure about the Oregon areas. Following the information in this book to find boulders in the Seattle area will be a very straightforward way to get lost and frustrated. I'd wait for less comprehensive (fewer areas) but more detailed guidebooks to come out (written by local developers that actually put the sweat in to explore and scrub). This book is a waste of money.

I took screen shots of the whole thread, if Rob deletes the thread I will repost will all the info already stated. Not sure what Rob's agenda is here, but I think it is safe to say that this book is not worth your cash.

I can't speak to anything in Washington, or about FAs, or old grades vs. 'new' grades (the problems I've climbed seemed to be accurately graded) but I've found three places in Oregon based on the guide and haven't had trouble.
That being said, if I'd got lost based on bad guidebook directions, I'd be pissed too.
Complaining about grammar seems whiny to me. Complaining about bad directions/bad grades does not.

walex wrote:Perhaps the Oregon stuff is more accurate. I can only speak to Washington where the information is definitely incorrect and false on multiple levels. There are two areas in particular that are described as directly next to each other when in fact they are separated by 20 miles of highway and 10 miles of forest service road. Also, if you don't want to care about grammar or spelling, write a blog. Don't publish a book where you clearly didn't even use spellcheck. So yes, for $40 I think it's unacceptable that "the" is spelled "teh".

My gut instinct is to say that you're being too harsh. But yeah, $40 at least deserves that basic level of spelling.

On the same token, it seems like there's a lot of raw data there that, with much editing, could turn into a pretty good guidebook.

A note from the Landlord: there is a person, or small group of people, creating fake accounts and posting about how they think this book is terrible.

I have no problem with legitimate criticisms of the book (or anything else for that matter), but fake accounts will get killed (and your posts deleted) immediately.

Update 1/1/15: The people and comments I deleted are in fact from real people that seem genuinely concerned. I know nothing about the book, and am not defending it or trying to protect it. But these guys know each other and are creating accounts just for the purpose of trashing this book, which still seems suspect even if their intentions are good.

Pacific Northwest Bouldering is an awesome guidebook. Period.

Sure, there may be a few mistakes here and there but I can't imagine doing one of the largest most comprehensive bouldering guidebooks out there without having a few errors.

$40? I'd pay $60 since it has dozens of bouldering areas I've never heard of. Considering all the sweat and tears that went into putting this thing together I figure it's worth the coin. Also there is nothing else published for nearly all of these areas.

Just my two cents.

That's pretty low to f*** with someone's book like that. Maybe you should put all that effort and energy into climbing?

kerwinl wrote:I took screen shots of the whole thread, if Rob deletes the thread I will repost will all the info already stated. Not sure what Rob's agenda is here, but I think it is safe to say that this book is not worth your cash.

Let me guess, you have a guidebook for the same area in the making but weren't quite on the ball enough to get yours out before Rob got his out?

I'd like to point out that the author specifically created a page (listed above) to accept corrections to the book. If anyone has found errors I'm not sure why you would come on MP to bitch (not stating any specifics by the way) and not send said corrections to him so that they can be added. He has made it clear (graciously so, in my opinion) that he is willing to correct errors.

My name is Pablo Zuleta. The past 4 years I have been developing boulder problems in Western Washington with a group of friends, which include Jesse (whose comment was deleted) and Kerwin who have posted prior. During this time, I have been meticulously documenting the new climbs with the intention to share the information with my future guidebook.

Several years ago, I operated the expouldering.com blog where I had posted free preliminary maps for an excellent new area that I developed with friends called Morpheus. My maps were taken from the blog by Rob Holzman and used in his book after many requests to leave them out. I insisted to Rob that if he elected to go against my wishes and still use the maps, that I QA/QC the Morpheus Boulders to ensure the information and FA information was correct. Rob promised me and the local developers that Morpheus would be left out, but then proceeded to publish the information behind our backs. We were initially more than willing to work with him because above all else we wanted these areas that we had put so much time into properly represented.

Many passionate people have posted strong and accurate negative reviews for the Western Washington portion of this book above. The passion derives from the fact that a major part of the technical (names, descriptions, maps) information in this guide is incorrect for Western Washington. No credit was given to the developers and many of the climbs they developed and carefully named and graded have been renamed by Rob with fake names and grades.

I cannot speak for the climbs in Leavenworth or Oregon, but the Western Washington portion of this guide disrespects the local developers and Next Ascents put a for-profit book out. Like all
published work, this guide can be rightfully critiqued in both its technical information and grammatical content.

Beyond this, the guide book includes my name on the inside cover without my consent to give this ream of paper credibility. I in no way assisted in the development of this guide and want my name removed from this book's inside cover immediately.

I encourage climbers considering the purchase of this guide to browse it before purchasing it. Perhaps pages 10, 167, and 181 are a good place to start where he discusses that the pages of the book make for a good frisbee and toilet paper.

So now I put the question to you, if you plan to use the Western Washington portion of this book, do you want to spend $40 on a guide that is wrong in its technical (names descriptions, maps) information, was not even spell-checked and was published against the will of the local area developers?

-Pablo Zuleta

Developers in the Seattle reached out to Rob and offered to review and edit Seattle areas before his book was sent to the printers. Rob never replied, and the quality of the information for the areas around Seattle suffered. Making up problem names and grades for the Seattle areas is pretty inconsiderate to the developers. The locals have put a lot of time into exploring and scrubbing, and deserve some input on how the areas are presented. Additionally, Rob should have reached out and asked the people that posted pictures (like mine) on Mountain Project for their permission to use them in the book.

I like that he attempted to put out a huge comprehensive guidebook, but I wish that Rob would have had a seattle area developer review and edit those sections. Taking the time to put out accurate information and topos for the Seattle areas is better for the climbing community even if it takes longer to get the book out to print. Not all developers care but making up names and grades for other people's hard work is not cool with everyone. Rob, if you put out a second edition, please get in touch with the Seattle developers. I know that some people up here will help, like me.

Pablo,

So you are doing a bouldering guidebook too then huh? Am I correct in assuming that you are the one who created the fake accounts above? And the posts above that were deleted by MP? So you could talk smack about the Northwest Bouldering guide?

That's how I understand it. You guys could have just posted what you just did to begin with, but you go the 12 year old girl route. Pablo, if you think you're the first person to develop routes and not write the guide book, read a guide book. Guide books are written by climbers for climbers, to complain about typos is absurd and a 40$ price tag for a comprehensive book seems to be the going rate these days, unfortunately.

I bought the guidebook from PG, it does seem like a lot of it is "borrowed" from various distributed online info and other guidebooks without too much proper credit being given. No book is perfect but this one has a lot more errors in washington than i would consider acceptable. The idea of a comprehensive guidebook for the PNW seems like a good idea, but it comes off somewhat as a book not written by locals compared to even the super outdated central washington bouldering guidebook

None of those profiles are fake, they are all real people, just not people that regularly post on mountain project. They had to make profiles to comment.