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Climbing, Adventure, Gear & Choss
The Future of Climbing Guidebooks
So during my morning reading today I came across a company that is offering guidebooks for climbing areas on your iPod. Just the other day a friend was talking about how he thought this was the future of guidebooks, and now it seems he may have been right. They have a very limited offering for now, it appears to be a local area close to where this company is located, but future plans include guides to:
Castle Hill, New Zealand
Joe’s Valley, Utah
Hueco Tanks, Texas
Squamish, British Columbia
Red Rocks, Nevada
Skaha, British Columbia
Stonehenge, NSW
Mt Yarrowyck, NSW
Basically you download this thing onto your iPod, and then you can scroll through chapters, viewing photos and info for all the routes. It seems like a cool idea, although I have to admit I like the simplicity of a book, that wont break if I drop it or get it wet. Still, I could see this catching on, as more and more people adopt phones like the iPhone, which they might take out climbing anyway, so why not have the guide on there?
Right now they seem to be focused on bouldering, and for each guide, you get:
-Directions
-Detailed overview maps showing the areas
-How to get to each area and all the boulders in each area
-A picture of every boulder, and problems
-Small area maps for quick orientation
-A list of every boulder and its GPS location.
Maybe once they come out with a guide for an area we climb at we can pick up a copy and check it out. Seems like they might be on to something here…
3 Responses to The Future of Climbing Guidebooks
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I’ve thought about using my iPhone to do a similar thing using mountain project. However most climbing areas (near me) are not in high cell reception areas so I haven’t been able to do it very much. Like you point out I’m not sure how I would feel about bringing my $300 phone and using it around the crag. Something to think about I guess.
Few days ago I was thinking about this type of project too. Instead of a collection of image files, I was thinking an iphone app, which would add more functions. However, as climbing narc mentioned, I would be hesitant to bring my expensive device and climb with it. And to be honest the screen is still too small, a photocopy still has its place.
My question is how the hell ‘Flashed’ is going to make a castle hill guide?
Will they use an existing guide to quantum field or spittle (the only fields with guides) and produce some crap rip off?
I can not imagine scrolling through all the boulders at Flock Hill on an Ipod! there are around 5000 problems….