Guidebook Values

[johndavidjr]

A comprehensive book published by the Am-m-m-erican Alpine Club in early 1980s for C-c-c-connecticut (long out of print) had the local FA crouwd quite upthet. Un-p-pleasant violenthe ensued, of the "punch-em-in-the-n-nose" variety, t'was claimed. Most unbecoming indeed!

 

He of the Bloody Nose (author) was regarded in thome thircles at the time as just a t-tad unhinged. In my only p-p-personal encounter, I did find him v-v-erging on paranoia, and rather un-p-p-pleasant. Many years later, he was in any case, the subject of an actual court in-j-j-unction, related to his rather m-mad, b-b-bolt-chopping propenthities.

 

The FA controversies of 30 years ago held for me, however, little personal interest, for reasons that sh-ould be obvious, and m-may have r-r-regardless, in some m-measure been subsequently corrected by more judicious authors in possession of a s-somewhat greater degree of m-m-mental stability.

 

My particular dislike (mild & quite different) is for the countless & relatively recent guidebooks that take off in various ways, from template of "50 Classic Climbs," which is itself n-n-nonetheless a veddy nithe book, dethspite its g-g-g-genesis in the rather disolute m-m-moral and cultural character of C-c-c-alifornia.

 

Problem in my view, is that these authors see their task as somewhat akin to selling soap. This genre seems to orid-ginate in the main from authors' strategy to get hith or her name in print, thuth puttting the cart, as it were, waay in front of horth.

 

[billcoe]

The ass clown is a gentleman who moved to my hometown from the state of IOWA in the late 2000's (after 2006 before 2010) with big Christopher Columbus ideas about how he needed to present to Oregonians that their First Ascents and continuous repeats of routes were somehow Void and that anything he touched was a claim at a new FA. His guidebook is still in production but includes at least one area that I've been putting the real info together with the real First Ascentists for at least 5 years before he even came to the area.

 

It has taken me that long (5+ years) because the area holds 100+ boulders and 3+ cliffbands all spread out, and its Original Development team consists of 15+ people, most of whom don't live in the area any more. But that has not stopped me from waiting to attach names and grades to routes and problems without consultation from the Original Gangsters who are still hanging around here. It would have been very easy for myself, and others at certain points in 2001, 2003, 2006 etc... to attach whatever information I wanted to to already organized Guidebook Material...Much like our Hawkeye Jackass has done, which sucks...

 

Its a valid defense to say that one would attach new names and give their subjective grades to routes and boulder problems with no printed material available and very little communication with the initial developers. But if the REAL INFORMATION is being shoved down your throat, the names of the Initial Developers are being given to you and the years of their ascents are being acknowledged, and you still publish misinformation, you are an idiot and you should be condemned and castigated IN PUBLIC! If you are trying to publish a responsible guidebook then you have the responsibility to research the topic to the best of your abilities, and if someone presents to you the real information - you have to make changes.

 

 

I have email forwarded a link to this forum to the person who is doing this. Hopefully he is getting the message without me naming names.

 

In all honestly I believe this person is attempting to utilize this climbing area and his publishing to it as a shameless source of self-promotion in an egotistical drive to keep pace with a very shallow climbing scene that cares little for history and cares a lot about big number sends and ME first climbing attitudes. The areas first official publication does not need to get wrapped up in some bullshit like that. Its not fair to the area or its Initial Developers.

 

Based on this idiots rational I'm going to go claim the First Ascents for Hood, Thielsen and Rainer this summer. They're going to be all me. I'm renaming them, re-grading em, whos in?

Interesting...but I can say that if there is no guide to the area, it will probably still sell. In fact, it will eventually become the real facts and the truth more than likely unless folks come out with a real version. On Mountainproject Peter Franzen said:

If you write an "underground" guidebook, don't get all annoyed when people don't know about it and follow its conventions. Lots of people climb at The Garden who are totally unaware of any guidebooks, especially undergound/secret/low-profile ones..

I think that's on the money, and as this is private land, highly and strongly suggest that you guys quietly talk to these folks directly about your concerns. I suspect these guys are not assclowns at all, but probably just good dudes who are super enthused and jazzed on the place. Maybe there shouldn't be a guidebook at all and the Mountainproject posts pulled. You guys really need to talk this over a beer or 3 looking each other in the eyes.... with no name calling too .

 

Good luck!

[Checat]

I'm not sure if herbal-tee is Peter Franzen but i've pmed whoever commented on this site to that they "have the ability to make correct changes on rc.com". If this person is really interested in getting things right, I'll even add more content to Rc.com along with the fixing of erronous stuff, see if rc.com can take it over the top-

 

At this point I think its a matter of fighting bad info with good info. if the right info is as readily available as the misinformation whether it be web or printed - at least there is a start to getting the correct nostalgic names, grades and FAists...

 

Gardeners, *throw out those cheesy new fake monickers, get ready for

 

-Scratch and Spliff Boulder

*Whorf

*Scratch and Spliff

*Illustrious Buddha

-Sonya Boulder

*Sonya Traverse

-PB's Scratchy Balls Boulder

*PB's Scratchy Balls

*Oak Sucks

-The Bubbler Boulder

*The Bubbler

-Boys in the Woods Boulder

*Boys in the Woods

-The Ship

-The Meth Lab

*_____'s Magic Bus

*Leave it to Jesus(thats a new one that stuck)

-Angry Grandma Boulder

*Angry Grandma

*Angry Mom

-Francois Boulder

*Francois

*Big Fred

*Slopedon Milosovich

*Family Affair 5.6

*Backside Baldo

-Azian Boulder

*Hula (the original, that will never have another FAist)

*Oregon Arete

*Full Stroke Dyno

*Double Pad Start

*Azian Crack 5.8

*Into the Light

-Fight Club Boulder

*Fight Club

-Mini-Me Boulder

*Mini-Me

-Undertow Boulder

*Undertow

 

and it goes on and on and on...

 

if you run into me out there and I hear locksnuff or mockternal or any of that other bullshit- don't be surprised if you get clocked in the head...

 

 

 

[AlpineK]

Last weekend while cragging in Leavenworth we discussed guidebooks.

 

They often appear to be coffee table books and lack the functional design of something you throw in your pack on your way to a crag. Ya ain't looking for a glossy, beautiful, and heavy reference book at the crag.

 

A light book that can handle a beating is more important.

[genepires]

what are some examples of the "bad" or heavy guidebooks?

 

Back in the cheap days, I would photocopy most guidebooks (I know...BAD me). But that allowed me to pull out selected pages easily. Most parking spots in l'worth only had a couple pages of routes accessed.

If the weight of the guidebook is too much, photocopy the pages from your store purchased guidebook that you need for the day. 85 sheets ($8.50) would cover the icicle area. A cheaper option is to make your buddy carry the guidebook and the beer.

[AlpineK]

Well the 11worth guidebook came was with us. A coffee table version might be nice, but a 3 ring binder style would be better. All kinds of reference material for work comes in that style.

 

Sure you can copy and take a section of the guide based on where you're climbing. On the other hand while at the crag the subject might come up, "Should we go somewhere else, or what should we climb tomorrow?" With a guide you can make plans.

 

As for making your partner carry the guide things would be a lot easier for you if your partner carried the rope and rack too.

[Off_White]

So, my main takeaway from JohnDavidJr's tale is that Ken Nichols has a speech impediment?

 

Bill Coe is right when he said "it will eventually become the real facts and the truth more than likely." The names I capriciously applied to various things in a guide I wrote and edited for San Diego County in 1978 became the facts, especially when others print that info in their later guides. That's why there is a boulder at Santee named the Butt Plug, among other bits of hilarity appropriate to my 19 year old self.

 

Hell, I still think its funny.

[johndavidjr]

My implication is hopelessly subtle and impossible to parse, but concerns how this talk may be lame (please search fictional character "Anthony Blanche" and author "Waugh").

 

Paranoid guidebook author that I mentioned was subject to much nastly gossip; mostly well-founded but mostly now long forgotten.

 

I've not checked the thirty-year-old Connecticut police reports, but given my experience with alleged assailant, I am credulous....& not entirely unsympathetic.

 

"Literary" rather than personal values, are in my view, more interesting. Suck-up-to publisher books are far more common these days....Nichols at least, whatever his many and strange & objectionable faults, didn't do THAT.

Assume current and future local authors have and will consult and correct his work........Perhaps one day there will be published "Seleted Classic Excellent Climbs of Connecticut."

 

 

Actually there already is something like that in form of a chapter of "Classic and Selected Greatest & Most Exellent CLimbs of New England & New York" or something. Why NOT?? is home territory of Wiessner & Washburn, House etc. Etc........Gave it away..

[alpine glower]

Hi Checat, I have recently been following much discussion of this said area online. I am sorry to inform you my friends and I frequented this area in the mid to late 70's and into the early 80's when in high school and home from college. If you are talking about "The Garden" outside of Sweet Home, we referred to it as The Enchanted Forest, there were a few more trees in the area then. The four of us all from the wrestling team took to climbing after reading climbing and bouldering in a magazine. One of the guys Richard I belive had seen or visted the area before so after that we cleaned and scrubbed hundreds of hidden problems through out the area. I really felt like we were pushing some grades, but hell we were just four boys from Sweet Home High. We only named the most classics, and most of those names have escaped me. A few stick out, but since you are obviously so concerned with your names I'll let you keep yours. I've seen what I belive are your rude comments on mountainproject.com, and will not do the same to you for simply re-naming some silly little boulder problems. I went out there this past winter when I was in the area and was amazed by the trail system. I hope to move back to Sweet Home soon to be close to my parents. I have recently gotten back into climbing and bouldering so I might see you out there. I really hope you do not take such a harsh tone at a crag we so greatly cherished.

 

Cheers

 

Doug

 

 

 

P.S. I just read your comment about violence at the crag due to re-nameing the boulders. What do you think I should do to you? I am in awe.

Edited July 6, 2010 by alpine glower

[alpine glower]

And also Checat (who ever you are?) if I am reading this correctly you seem to imply you may be writing a guide book. If this is the case, I really hope you do not publish flase information. Your also going to need some gross attitude adjustments if you ever expect me to help you correct your information in any way.

 

Doug

[billcoe]

Welcome to CC.Com and back to climbing Doug! Good luck with it all....I'm surprised that these guys are doing guidebooks for an area on private land at all. I guess that maybe the moss will be kept down with more people though....

[Checat]

Alpine glower-

 

i'll prob follow this with pm but whatever

 

It would be a blessing for the raging debate over the garden to break down to controversy over the implications of First Ascent in regard to the Late 1980's early 1990's crowd, the group that you were involved in with the implied 1970's early 1980's timeframe, and even Shapp's OSU crew that fell somewhere in there (as he insists). This is all looking at a history to The Garden, err Enchanted Forest... from a historical perspective. My frustrations are with the projected names, grades and "FAs" of a group of climbs whose personal histories go back as far as 2006/2007.

 

My personal history with the area goes to 2001. Those are not my names, their not my FA's. They were what were given to me then (01, 02) and now.

 

In regard to violence at crags, maybe it was too much to assume that it should be assumed the comment is tongue and cheek. If your a personal friend of mine you know that what I'm getting as is constantly having to roll my eyes whenever I hear a 2009 monicker and grade to a problem or boulder that I've known to be something else since 01.

 

If what your saying is true in regard to a 70's history, if what Shappart has said in regard to the 80's history, in collaboration with what has been gathered for the 90's; concurrent to what I thought before - the Garden is as rich with history as it is with poison oak.

 

To go to the next extent, there would be great value in cross-referencing the problems and find out where the Willamette Valley was progressively during the changeover from when the 5.10 scale ended, what problems were being done at 5.9+ then later discovered as V this and V that. Its amazing what climbers achieved in obscurity before the modern expanded grade scale came into fruition.

[Checat]

Shapp,

 

this is when you come in with your list of usual suspects from the mid-to late 1980's (was that right?)

 

Could you sum up what grade range you were climbing? (5.9 hard to V5/6?) I'm having a hard time remembering when the pro's broke the V5 barrier let alone when weekend warriors were crushing through the V5/V6 threshold? This distinction is pretty important for the garden because the place is all about its extreme difficulty for some...

Edited July 6, 2010 by Checat

[justinp]

Welcome to CC.Com and back to climbing Doug! Good luck with it all....I'm surprised that these guys are doing guidebooks for an area on private land at all. I guess that maybe the moss will be kept down with more people though....

 

I’m surprised that there is so much drivel on this thread about a bouldering area that a handful of OSU gym rats visit on a regular bases. Hey Paul why don’t you just talk with homeboy as suggested earlier and work together instead of trying to slam on him via this site.

 

As Bill alluded to the idea of a “quintessential guide to the gardens” is kind of a silly idea and a waste of time IMHO. When did they rename the site cascade boulders? Just sayin...

 

[Checat]

I'm glad that anything having to do with the garden and bouldering on cascadeclimbers is a silly idea and a waste of time to you. No they never renamed it cascade boulders but last time I checked there wasn't a "No Bouldering Allowed" disclaimer as you entered the site.

 

Seems like their is enough people interested in the topic that its continued, and meeting someone who bouldered there in the 1970's is unbeatable.

 

I'm much more interested in "working together" or collaborating with someone who was sending stuff in the 1970's 80's and 90's then someone repeating routes in the 2000's and then calling them new. That has much more intrigue and interest than someone repeating stuff 9 years after I did and then telling me I climbed his problem. Its not my legacy I'm looking into. Its the climber who came before me.

 

It's be great for alpine glowers story to check out. Vhard in the 70's, where does the Willy Valley's bouldering check in for its time and place? Behind Gill obviously, but concurrent with Smoke Blanchard and Dale Bard in Bishop, maybe? Do the Gardeners of the 1970's compare to J-trees scene at the time (John Long, Lynn Hill, Bachar etc...? How difficult did our 1970's problems compare to the earliest stuff at some of the earliest bouldering areas like Hueco, Gunks etc... Were we way behind these areas at the time or right to par?

 

 

Why do people on this website make a point comment on something that they apparently don't care about. If you didn't care about it, why did you post? I ignore many things I don't care about and I certainly wouldn't waste my time posted if it was "a silly waste of time" to me.

[justinp]

Why do people on this website make a point comment on something that they apparently don't care about. If you didn't care about it, why did you post? I ignore many things I don't care about and I certainly wouldn't waste my time posted if it was "a silly waste of time" to me.

"So SORRY to INTERRUPT. Please...Proceed."

 

Let me help get you back on topic, then I’ll happily bow out of this gem I enjoyed this part!

 

if you run into me out there and I hear locksnuff or mockternal or any of that other bullshit- don't be surprised if you get clocked in the head...

[shapp]

Checat,

Don't draw me into this crap. This has degenerated into something of a massive waste of space. I don't really give a fudge about what you call the Garden. I have merely pointed out that several of us climbed out there in the early 1990s, I am not sure of what we called it then, but it wasn't the Garden. I am not a boulderer. I am a climber.

Edited July 6, 2010 by shapp

[Checat]

So sorry to bring you into anything and waste your time. Simply remembered that last time the topic came up you had a whole list of OSU dudes. Thought it was in the 80's, thought it was earlier than the 90's. Not a boulderer ok. I'm getting on the cliffs out there now, so its not technically only a bouldering area right?

[billcoe]

I'm getting on the cliffs out there now, so its not technically only a bouldering area right?

 

Good on you for finally getting to the real meat and potatoes! About time someone did some real climbing. Can you imagine all those many wankers from the 70's, 80's and 90's that were there before you walking right past those cliffs and ignoring them to go boulder! Crazy dudes them.

[Checat]

Actually I would be stoked to find out that people were climbing the cliffbands... and what better forum than a website forum that dug up a Sweet Home Husky of 1970's clout. No one to this point has laid claims to 5.8 and 5.9 crack lines - Mr Alpine Glower?

[alpine glower]

Mr. Checat, since you continue to remain anonymous even in a personal message consisting of blabbering off twenty differnt names of no relevance to your identity, I will respond you to you over this fourm. Due to your exremely poor attitude and arrogance, I want to make it clear I have absolutly no intention of helping you or your friends with a guide book. Especially about an area on private land. This is what I will tell you. As you seem to care so much about grades. To possibly put it in prespective for you, we easily kept up and even climbed harder than Chris Jones during the few times we got to boulder with him. We wrestled and the forest became our gym, and eventually our passion for a while. We did a fair amount of roped climbing on the cliffs in the area and I remember some moderate cracks that we climbed. Nothing was written, nothing was told, few names were given, almost all forgetten, numbers had no relevance. We didnt care if any one had climbed there before us. None of this ever even crossed our minds. Your ideals of climbing and bouldering are far far differnt than what we had going on then and there. I was hoping to someday capture the magic once found there in the forest but now that idea seems rather far fetched if I ever run into any of your gang out there. I don't want to have to worry while I am at the crag.

[alpine glower]

Mr. Billcoe, thank you for the kind welcome! Now it looks like I will be looking for other areas close to the Sweet Home area to get back into it. We enjoyed the Menagerie a little, though I recall being rather scared up there. Any suggestions? The moss was all part of the game, we loved every second of it!

 

Cheers

Doug

[alpine glower]

Mr. Shapp, I echo your first statement. I almost now wish I have never spoken up. Though I feel it necessary to voice my opinion against the guide book.

[Julian]

How is it the one Oregon crag that doesn't result in online bicker-fests is the only one that ranks as a world-class area? Or is that just because all those arguments got settled with fisticuffs in the parking lot and at the Grasslands back in the 80s and 90s?

[Checat]

It has smithrocks.com

 

you sendin in the south yet...carolinas, tenn., you 've got some granite and some sandstone in your future don't you?