A sample page from the next edition
For the last few weeks I’ve been really focused on making significant progress on the next version of Bouldering in Ireland. I’ve been working on it sporadically since Covid and haven’t, up until now, been able or prepared to give it the time required to finish it. There was always something more urgent (and commercial) on the go.
Incomplete projects are frustrating, with lots of effort spent, but nothing to show for it, and this one has been nagging at me for years. With two books already published this year, and rather than starting a brand new project I’ve decided that I should finish this one before I move on. So I’ve given myself until Christmas to produce an updated guide.
But what form should this updated guide take?
This question has been in the back of my mind for years and in the front of it the last few weeks. Is there significant demand for a print guide? And if there is what form should it take? Should I go with a digital guide and forget about print? If so what platform? Should I be trying to appeal to the younger generation? Do they have any interest in a print guide? Is this all just an exercise in nostalgia?
Now, I don’t know the answers to these questions, but what I do know is that I have put in a lot of effort already and would like to produce something.
A while ago I shelved the idea that the 3rd edition of the guide would cover the whole island, the next edition – covering Dublin and Wicklow – will be volume 1 of the 3rd edition. But to be honest, I don’t think that there will ever be a second volume. The effort required to re-document the whole country is a bridge too far for me.
Digital guides
Digital bouldering guides have been around for ages, but they haven’t completely taken over and globally it seems that no particular app has emerged as a clear winner. In Ireland 27 Crags (recently rebranded as The Topo) is popular and there is a good amount of information on it, particularly for the more popular areas, for example Glendo or The Scalp, with 233 and 186 documented problems respectively.
I have used The Topo a lot when updating the guide. It has been very useful, particularly the grade voting feature, the results of which I have deferred to for grading many problems. The only real issue with it is that the information is messy, the areas aren’t clearly defined and grouped together, a lot of problems exist in isolation, they are not placed in an area. It’s definitely a solvable problem. In fact, it has been solved in the Glendo chapter of the new guide, I’ve spent considerable time organising things.
The real question for me is should I become a premium author with The Topo and add all the information from the print guide to the app? This would result in all the topos becoming available to subscribers only (€49.90 a year). Now no one likes to pay for things, particularly if they were once getting it for free, even if the quality of what they are getting is significantly better. So this would make some people unhappy, how many I have no idea? I also have no idea how many would be happy to pay for good information.
I feel like I’m making a decision in a vacuum.
But I’m definitely going to produce a print version of the guide soon. It might take a lot longer to decide what to do, if anything, for a digital version.
A change of approach with the print guide
It’s been a long time since the last edition of the guide was published (2013!) and the bouldering scene has changed a lot in that time. Back then there were a lot of people interested in exploring and climbing new problems. So I took the approach of including a lot of smaller venues that had untapped potential as well as some they were relatively insignificant in the hope that they would draw people to the area and encourage further exploration.
Some of these areas have been further developed in the last decade or so, but some haven’t attracted much interest and probably never will. As a result I think that the rationale of including a lot of detail of more obscure areas isn’t the best way forward. The community has moved on. So the next edition won’t go into document every single problem in every single area and will focus more on the popular areas that see more traffic.