Personal Climbing/Mountain Journal

[Fairweather]

Does anyone keep one? What type of format do you use? I have a journals that cover most of my trips over the past 25 years, but it's really just a couple of paragraphs, on a separate page for each adventure, contained in four cheap spiral bound notebooks mentioning peak, route, partners, date(s), conditions, and some semi-poetic thoughts. I would like to revise it, put it into something nice and durable, but it seems like things should remain in their original pen and format - as ugly as that may now seem. Is anyone ever gonna read the things I wrote? Waste of time? Any thoughts? Are pictures enough? What do you use?

[cj001f]

I've got a box containing yuppy Moleskines, notebooks, notepads and cocktail napkins with descriptions of the adventure and random other detritus thrown in. The random bits - boarding passes, trail permits, wilderness permits, receipts from post adventure meals adds the extra bits that stimulate great memories each time I open it.

 

one of the coolest items to discover in the papers of my grandfather was my greatgrandfathers journal of a bicycle trip across Europe in 1911 - with pictures, including with Alpenstock on a glacier in Chamonix. It was simple looseleaf sheets, but quite amazing.

[JayB]

Good question. I suppose that depends upon what you'd like to pass along and who your anticipated audience is.

 

My much-beloved grandfather on my Dad's side (my Mom still tears up on a regular basis whenever he's discussed) died when I was four, and consequently I only have a few fleeting memories of him. I probably would have devoured any written material that he left behind, irrespective of how it was written or organized but, so far as I can tell, there was none.

 

I'd say write first, ask questions later, on the off chance that the folks that are closest to you may take some comfort from or find some inspiration in what you've left behind.

[Off_White]

Seems like Lowell Skoog keeps one, he can cough up some great detail on routes he did a long long time ago. Not a bad idea, but I've sort of gone the brown-paper-sack-full-of-slides route myself.

[Lowell_Skoog]

Seems like Lowell Skoog keeps one, he can cough up some great detail on routes he did a long long time ago.

 

Yeah, I've kept a journal of trips since 1973, when I was still in high school. For a while I used books that REI sold, called "Climbing Notes". They had entries for route name, rating, gear, approach notes, climb description, and so on. I quit using them and went to three-ring binders, which are a lot more flexible. My journal now contains more than 1800 pages. Most of it is of interest only to me, but I suspect my son may someday find it interesting.

 

Over the years my journal has been quite useful for planning trips. I record route notes and travel times, making follow-up planning more effective. The only problem is that sometimes I'm too lazy to look in the journal and I make the same mistakes over again.

 

These days it seems like many people use personal websites or bulletin boards in place of a journal. I don't. I occasionally post trip reports on the web, but my journal contains much more information, stuff that would be inappropriate or boring in a published report.

 

One really important thing, if you keep a journal for a long time--you need a good index! I maintain an index with one line per trip (searchable using 'grep'). Each index line records the journal page, year, month, destination, and the people I went with. I've climbed some peaks in the Cascades more than a dozen times and without the index, it's really hard to find the journal entry you're looking for.

 

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Edited to add: I also have an index for my photo collection. My photo collection and journal complement each other, of course, but I maintain them separately.

[mikestuckey]

Online versions, done at a free blog site, have many advantages. You have access wherever you have access to the Web. You can share with others or not. You can put in photos, they are easily searchable, etc.

[wayne]

I keep a hard journal and a computer file .Anyone keep a file list on the major routes they've done? Post it in an attachment!

[sk]

i have been keeping a journal for 20 years. climbing is mixed in with everything else so it isn't really searchable. it is just a bunch of papers and note books that only mean anything to me.

[Lowell_Skoog]

Online versions, done at a free blog site, have many advantages. You have access wherever you have access to the Web. You can share with others or not. You can put in photos, they are easily searchable, etc.

 

Yeah, I can see how that would be handy. But if the site gets hacked or goes out of business, you're hosed. I've seen it happen. I don't trust web-based content to be permanent.

 

Having started my journal on paper, I've decided to continue that. I have my own website, so I can publish stuff if I want to, but I consider the journal to be the ultimate source material.

 

This topic reminds me of an issue that is likely to become more prominent as the first "on-line generation" grows older. Say you have a website that you've put a lot of effort into. Say you'd like the information in the website to survive after you are gone. What do you do? If you have family, they might keep the website alive. But what other options do you have? If you can link up with a long-term organization, they might preserve the information for you. That's the philosophy behind the Northwest Mountaineering Journal, which lives on The Mountaineers website.

 

I foresee the need for "digital archive" services in the future, the on-line equivalent of a museum or special collections library, where people can donate their on-line materials and the hosting organization will preserve it "forever." (Of course, anybody who has worked with real libraries and museums knows that nothing is forever, unfortunately.)

[plexus]

one of the coolest items to discover in the papers of my grandfather was my greatgrandfathers journal of a bicycle trip across Europe in 1911 - with pictures, including with Alpenstock on a glacier in Chamonix. It was simple looseleaf sheets, but quite amazing.

 

That's very cool and probably worth more to you than some heirloom china. I have a journal my grandfather kept in WWII. I could care less about the case of silver or what ever knicknack that comes my way. The leather book is a way for me to reconnect with my family's past.

[AllYouCanEat]

My journal began as a mostly climbing journal, but over the years contains less and less since I spend time making a website and have too little energy or time to maintain something else. I do carry a journal on climbs occasionally and for a while I made sort of a scrap book, but for times sake moved from that to a computer. They all take effort and it is difficult to remain consistent with any of them.

 

I liked the scrap book the most where you tape stuff in as well as write a little but I gave it up after a short time.

 

Doing what skoog is doing sounds pretty cool also.

[lizard_brain]

Plain ol' Excel spreadsheet (I'm a geek) - Fields: Date, Destination, Activity (climb, snowshoe, ski, backpack, training slog, etc...), Partners, Details (gain, mileage, details, stories, comments, etc...), Drive times (door to TH, and complete drive description), and a column with a running total of my elevation gain for the year.

 

Hundreds of entries, easily searchable, kept it for years (since 01/01), I email it to myself to back it up once a month or so. I also have a website with the pictures I've taken since I got the digital camera.

 

I said I was a geek.

[Bill_Simpkins]

Excel spreadsheet.

[JohnGo]

Keeping a climb journal is absolutely a smart idea! I have mine as a single large Word doc, with hyperlinks on the first page or so. That serves as the "index" and table of contents, letting you go to the peak you want with one click. With a Word doc, you can easily add digital photos and Google Earth images as well as the text. Mine has peak, route, date, partners, conditions, pro used, and a catch-all paragraph or two of "what worked, what didn't". It's nice to look back at previous year's entries and see what I have learned in terms of gear, technique, route selection, etc.

Keeping it in a digital format allows you to easily share via email with others. Blog based might be cool as well, just be sure you can back it up in case the blog site shut;s down some day.