UKH

I just had a random look at my profile and noticed that I have been walking the streets of this parish for 20 years on Sunday.

I've engaged with UKC for most of those years with the odd break for no particular reason other than maybe due to looking at Facebook more. Now that I've ditched FB I realise that UKC has the answers to all of life's questions - except maybe 3PS grading and aeroplanes on treadmills.

I've made friends on here, as well as possibly a couple of enemies. I've seen many folks come and go... Sutty and Al Evans RIP.

I enjoy UKC because it's not just about climbing/hillwalking, I feel I can literally ask just about anything and it would yield a response. Also, it's not the echo chamber that my FB feed had become and the debates, sometimes arguments, on UKC appear to be driven by passion and not hate.

Keep it up, you're all doing great.

Happy birthday to me - Cheers Tony the Blade

Happy Birthday!

It'll be 20 years for me in May. Time flies!

Congrats chaps, in a weird, internetty way 🙂I’m not far off 20 years myself and UKC has been there through thick and thin, answering life’s child-rearing, plumbing, religious, philosophical, political, baking, photographic, and occasionally…..climbing questions with knowledge, humour, passion and diversity. With a side order of wind-up-merchantery, banter and weirdness. Long may it continue. 

Wow, me too! Sept for me. If only we had a pound for every hour wasted away on the Friday night drinking threads over those 20 years

Happy UKC Bithday! You’re 5 months older than me.

Must be getting close to 25 for some of us. I resisted a profile for a while longer than most and I registered in april 02.

Approaching twenty too.

My profile still says "climbing for 1-3 years"...

Don't feel the need to update it 

Missed my big 20 last Christmas. Incidently Sutty was a climbing partner in the early 70s, and Al was a drinking partner in the late 70s. Both sadly missed.

Happy birthday! 

Congratulations.!

Where can I find my registration date?

Under your profile picture…

Excellent. I'm over 20 then I will join the club

Happy birthday!

Sutty, Norrie and Al are my early memories of this site. Not sure what happened to Norrie?

Accident on Ben Hope?

My mate posted about Norries death on this site, April 2019, wasn’t a climbing accident.

You're probably thinking about Andy Nisbet and Steve Perry, or possibly Malcolm Slesser.

Ben Hope, a dangerous mountain!

Happy Birthday!

I joined Jan 2002 just for Norrie.  I'm still here.

Slesser died on Ardnish i think.

Some lovely comments here - it looks like in en-vogue with my 20 years timing.

Happy birthday everyone else that is celebrating time here in UKC world.

Happy UKC Birthday!

Just checked mine and I'll be 22 on UKC in July, pretty crazy!

Thanks for the comments too, I've been working for UKC for longer than I've not in those 21 years.

Thanks for all the great comments.

I think I can probably out-long-stay everyone although I notice that I don't have the lowest ID number which does belong to the late Al Evans with id=14 (I am id=15). Not sure how he got in before me but happy to have him remain with that particular honour.

My profile says created 1 June 2001 although I was there before that since the registration system post-dates the actual users on the website. UKClimbing.com actually first appeared in 1994!

Alan

So what happened to numbers 1-13, or are they not numbers but free men?

It's supposedly my 23rd UKC birthday in June, but noting Alan's comment, I am sure I was around in 99/00 or even before?

Probably test accounts. There's only 19 accounts with 2 digit IDs left though

2000 surely? I'm 527 but my profile says I registered on 17 October 2000. 

I started my PhD in October 1999 and my supervisor let me use his office when he wasn't there - 4 out of 5 days IIRC! I think I discovered UKC almost straight away - which sort of makes sense as I think I remember discussion around whether having to register was a massive infringement of our rights to anonymity as "netizens". 😆

Oddly, I'm 294, but it says I registered 11/Jul/01...

I'm sure I posted before that, as I came here whilst MtnUK died.

Odd indeed. Those dates are both correct. That probably means that the creation of the profile, was not the same as the creation of the login id. We possibly imported logins from the old system.

There is a waybackwhen for Rockfax from December 1998 - https://web.archive.org/web/19981203001413/http://www.rockfax.com/

whereas UKC oldest is April 1999 - https://web.archive.org/web/19990429185845/http://www.ukclimbing.com/

At that time I think that Rocktalk was also hosted on UKC as a subsection of The Chat Room and it appears to have some sort of login enabled. That could well be where the id numbers come from.

Alan

Where do you find your ID number?  My registration is a couple of weeks after yours.

Go to your profile page.

Examine the URL in the browser.

You are 151

https://www.ukclimbing.com/user/profile.php?id=151

I think the remaining anonymous issue was more about risks of work having evidence of posts from work for quite a few of us.

I've searched my full name and found a post in Sept 2001 under username of "steve", on a Peak BMC area discussion of a request from Whitehall outdoor centre to place stakes at Windgather (which I opposed as a member of a BMC affiliated club).  I was posting a good while before that.

I thought the initial forums were hosted under Rock and Run!?

I've tried searching some old users and can find nothing earlier than Oct 2020 on a search.

Crikey, I though I was a fairly early bird, registering (under another name) in April 2004. But that one says id=11619, so late to the party indeed.

Dec 03, No 9588 here.

I could have been somebody if I'd invested my time in my career, rather than aguing about the merits of hobnobs over digestives for the last 20 years.

There's an epitaph for our times.

I am a pup!!! Only 18 years of UKC age. I always knew some of you lot were old farts!!!!

😉

My first alias was my nickname back at home. It was a bit unfortunate in English “Riquet” so changed it. I introduce myself to climbers by my UKCname. If they don’t recognise me first by it! Something to do with the stupid accent I believe.

O to be well known for my climbing prowess, my scintillating chat or unparalleled beauty…nope!!!

Ah, thanks very much.  Still took me while to figure out how display the full URL on macOS but I have it now.

There some forums on RandR and Rocktalk on the Rockfax site. We were using the same developer at the time so he just moved Rocktalk to UKC and the RandR forums to there and designed a new bespoke system.

Alan

Is there a way to find out my very first UKC post? Or better still, my first thread? (I realise they may both be the same thing, funnily enough I can't remember what I wrote yesterday let alone 20 years and 3 days ago! 

10527 here. Wonder what numbers the membership is up to now.   It'll be my 20th the day after Valentines. 

Latest user ID is 401,673.

Our Search Older posts only goes back to 2013. The older ones will be there though however I am not sure how to find them.

Alan 

I checked in the database. It's here: https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/winter_climbing/where_to_snow_hole_on_the...

Now you've done it...

Nope ... just search for some old characters...  as I said I got back to 2000 (...oops just noticed I wrote 2020 above in error).

Jings! and Crivens!

That one guy's pandemic anti-vax sockpuppets probably account for a couple of thousand of those.

Yep! 🙄

A friend of mine, who I used to climb with, was a fairly prolific poster on here. He sadly died a few years ago and eventually his profile seems to have been deleted, but his posts remain so I occasionally stumble across his voice when I’m searching old threads. There’s a good twenty years worth of him on here. 

Thank you Alan - that really was a blast from the past.

This photo was my second winter climb - a winter skills course with a guide provided by Alan Kimber. The route referred to by Harry the Owl.

I meant Paul - apologies.

Checked in and I'm 15 years young!  I was also pleased to note that I am only 39 according to my profile : )

I remain a youthful 19 1/2 / 13977. Got to wait until August before I come of age but for now I am basking in my last days as a teenager. Are you not jealous, you old farts?

A massive thumbs up to UKC from me, for what it appears to stand for and for how it goes about what it does. I must enjoy it here (I really do) or I wouldn't have stuck around, but I often ponder on how narrow the distribution of ages/genders/ethnicities etc might be on these forums and on how can these could be made wider than I suspect they are. Partly a UKC issue, but possibly more so an issue for the wider outdoor community in the UK.

Apparently No. 269.  

I think I was working in Cumbria at the time, briefly, and then headed back ‘south’. I was about 35 and had only been climbing a few years and was still hugely obsessed (I’m sure we all know that phase). The Lakes is still my favourite place to climb, of anywhere. 

I have had to slow down due to a 5 year old (late in life) and rarely post nowadays. Sadly, my last post, an enquiry about climbing in Kaly with said 5 year old (with allergies) went unanswered. 

Anyway, I’m still here but more lurking than posting. I’m sure a good few recall JCT and ‘that’ era (I even featured in an article about UKC in one of the climbing mags, a different username then, to my embarrassment).

I was looking in my thread archive for something else, so I dug out my oldest thread.

I found ID#1 was SharkeyBoy. ID#3 was Al Downie (with a profile).

hmmmm... looks like #1 might have been some artefact of rendering username emails (was 'email.php?u=1', vs 'profile.php?u=1'); found a few others also ID#1, in bold, but with no profile '?' link.

There were three types of username formatting: underlined name with raw email address hyperlink; bold underlined username, with email.php?u=[x]; and those with a ? profile.php?u=[x] for those with profiles.

I found an email.php?u=40, so they weren't all u=1...

This is around June 2001. A 'Profiles Suck' thread started 27/06/2001...

I first appeared with a profile 12/07/2001...

I met you in Les houches in summer 2004 and you were saying exactly the same thing then as you are now - you'd posted a question on here about ingredients to make a cake a few weeks earlier and couldn't believe the high quality of responses you got back. Happy birthday mate!

Oh man, Sutty passed? sad to read that. I don’t post much or visit often. I think poss close to 25 years since I discovered the site.

Crikey, that's some memory! 

Cheers buddy

Just for you...

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/rock_talk/sutty_rip-720442?v=1#x9221785

Talking to Sutty in person was like a conversation with a history book that told jokes and helped you out.

Please link that if you can... I tried to find it with no luck. Searching for Al Dowie or JCT was how I'd often refound early threads in the past.

22 years for me.  Heaven knows how much work time is in there !

I think you've had the same profile pic for most of that time Graham! :⁠-⁠)

You baby.

I'm hitting the 22 year mark trolling these forums. And like you, I miss quite a few who, have gone been banned or passed away yet made these forums vibrant during the Wild West days when we got a bit rufty tufty.

Probably the best tradition that I started.

How's life in the Peaks District?

Missing North Shore Station much?

But how many times have you been banned for stuff?

Probably !  maybe time to dig out something more recent.

I'm not sure, 4 or 5 times I think, all back in the day when I was a wrong 'un.

There were also other characters that come to mind... who can forget DJViper (Is he still on here under a different pseudonym?), and then there was 2Pints (I think he got a slap at one of the meets that I organised. And let's not forget our own love story... Alex (Only A Hill) and Hannah (Mrs Only A Hill - although she had an earlier name that escapes me).

I was a good boy and only got banned twice.

This site has so many happy memories and good on-line friends made over the years.

Hopefully Alex and Hannah are still in the land of Victorian Bliss making flower arrangements.

Well, I parsed my archived threads from 2001 to 2009 to pull out profile IDs.

5232 IDs found (including some duplicates)...

Accommodating the changing (bloating...) format of UKC html pages, have now extracted up to December 2013. 6865 IDs found.

21 in  10 days time 4245, but that seems a tad late to me,

i came from uarsey (uk.rec.climbing) still hav ducans tshirt (well mine, but his design)

Not quite the Peak, Belper so about 30min from the south side but yea, it’s great thanks, quality of life is so much better. Do more walking now than I’ve ever done, 8/10k a day, doggo and me.

I miss the people and the structure of the railway life but overall, my time had come to an end, I’d done enough - 34 years. Enjoying a much slower life these days.

I can remember contributing anonymously here on Sept 11th to the effect that it would be best for the US to go out and win hearts and minds and befriend the weak in the world rather than setting out on a mission to squash and destroy in response to the attacks.  Went well ...

Are you getting this from the Way Back Machine?

Hannah was Little Miss No Idea. 

Her online persona always came across as a bit odd to me.

No, from locally saved threads.

I think we chatted at one point about my attempt to automate this process with curl, pulling the list of threads from a search/profile list/My Topics. But curl needed to provide login info, and I couldn't figure out the form to provide that for UKC.

Some people write diaries. I record my online musings and email...

The few people I know or knew on here are quite different in person from their online personas. Oddly three of the most abrasive characters to grace these pages are friends of mine (well, two of them as one is dead) and they're even worse in real life. 😃

BTW, looking at the first few hundred IDs, I would guess that they were renumbered alphabetically at some early point, since there is a very strong alphabetical ordering, with the odd erratic; possibly name change after the reordering.

Never heard of you and neither has Nevis the Cat. 

Congratulations old chap. 

seem to be

https://www.alexroddie.com/