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…