UKH

Probably the best limestone crag in the Peak in the HVS-E5 range. But there seems a growing tendency to record new routes here which are just combinations of existing pitches (4 so far). Sometimes with the reasoning that it makes a brilliant combination. Well most High Tor pitches are brilliant anyway.

Nothing wrong with doing combos - Ive done a some myself. There are a lot of possible combinations as many routes criss-cross each other. But do we need to add them all to UKC logbook? Could end up doubling the number of entries if not careful.

Yes there are a few classic established combos on other crags - but maybe time to call a halt to adding yet more combinations to High Tor. Use the guide book to work out interesting combos and do them by all means but try and avoid adding more to UKC. Thoughts?

UKC is a logbook and not a guidebook so i say put whatever you want on UKC. That doesnt mean they should go in the proper guidebook.

I guess people would like to log routes they do. If they do a combo can they do that if it doesn't exist on the log book page?

Contact the moderator with this, see what they think. I tried to add a link up in Ilkley Quarry just so I could log what we did, and it was removed.

Imagine caring this much

Quite agree with not adding yet more silly 'new routes' (especially when they have the cheek to also claim an FA!) where no new rock is explored.

If you do a link of two different routes then log both routes and make a comment about what you climbed. Watering down the actual routes with link ups that few other people are likely to climb seems like a waste of crag page space.

I'm against the adding of combination routes (plus weird eliminates and link-ups) because although it's a logbook, for me it's more valuable as a database to browse crags - and it makes them a confusing nuisance.

Four routes at High Tor is nothing - try making sense of the boulders at Dumbarton Rock or Manor Crag, if you haven't been.

It's going to continue happening, because people love logging climbs accurately (and ticking minor variations and contrived eliminates). As a moderator of crags I've generally accepted them, because ultimately people should be able to log whatever they want, however silly, but it would be nice if it was possible to designate variations and eliminates so that one could choose for them not to appear.

Edit: thinking about it though, this probably asks too much of moderators, and has too many grey areas to work. Oh well, we'll just have to put up with the obsessive loggers...

Some sort of colour coding for eliminates and variations? Guidebooks sometimes have symbols after routes that haven't got a settled grade so something similar for routes of 'secondary/tertiary importance?

Yeah that was my idea but having thought about it some more, I don't think it's a good one. Maybe it would work in a guidebook where the editor has given it a lot of time and consideration, but as the responsibility of volunteer moderators there's too much scope for misuse and disagreement.

Where do you draw the line for a eliminate being too eliminate? Some eliminates are classics.

Certain combination routes are better and more popular than the original lines.

Likewise some variations end up being more popular than the original route.

It just wouldn't work.

Folk would think Dumbarton its ten times the size it is, going by UKC.

I don't see anything wrong with adding good link-ups to the logbooks. A few sport crags I climb at have lots of these and it makes for a useful training log. It does make the crag page confusing though, and gives the impression of more routes than there are. 

Rather than try to police the link-ups and decide what is valid I think it makes more sense to do what a few have on here and add a section to the page just for link-ups.

Can you give examples? It's very easy to link actual routes here using the "insert climb link" box under the box you type into. Do you mean something like Darius/Debauchery (E2 5c) - because you can see from the icon it isn't in the Rockfax guide (app or book) and presumably isn't in the BMC guide either. So unless you are cheap-skating it big time and trying to use the logbooks to find your way round the a crag (which they were never designed for and really don't work particularly well for as they have no pictures or maps) and I don't see how these things can really cause anyone any confusion?

I guess you could delete them, but beyond the logbook entry for High Tor being a bit bigger than it needs to be, what's the actual problem?

Do you never use UKC to browse a crag in an area you don't own a guidebook for, to see how worthwhile it would be at a given grade? Or indeed end up opportunistically at a crag that you don't own a guidebook for? (Is it cheap-skate not to buy a guidebook for an area you'll likely only visit once or twice ever?) Or, tried to find things that you climbed to log them having not paid close attention to what was what while you were there? All examples where having the crag page cluttered with eliminates/variations can be unhelpful and confusing. And, admittedly, of very much first world problems...

High Tor is a bit unique due to its pockety nature. Didn't Pete Livesey say that you could climb anywhere on it at 6a?

UKC is just the place to record connoisseur's eliminates and link-ups. Brean Down Boulder Cove has virtual buttresses devoted to these. Perhaps the same could be done at High Tor?

This has been a useful thread, I had forgotten all the link ups we used to do on the main face. I remember Delicatessen Brown being one off the right side of the belay ledge up the thin flake if that hasn’t been claimed yet. As I’m into my ‘60s now, I can follow up on my plan to start climbing trad again, then Lyme Cryme Donkeys has just come onto my radar!

These are the ones I was talking about Delicate Cryme (E2 5b)Delicatarius (E3 5c), Lyme Cryme Donkeys (E4 5c), Darius/Debauchery (E2 5c)

The former route is actually in the current BMC guide (which I do have). 

I had assumed the crag pages were meant to show existing routes with the ability to add new ones, but I guess it is titled logbook on the menu bar.  

More curious to see what others thought. 

Maybe a competition to see how many possible combinations there are - btw I can recomend Laurin/NIghtmare, Debauchery/Robert Brown etc

On second thoughts it may have been Crags magazine dissing a claimed Livesey new route - "what next a route in the shape of the first ascenionist's initials?" 

I moderate a few well known areas on Peak Limestone so fully understand where you're coming from. 

Rather than clutter each buttress up with weird link ups and eliminates I'll create a new buttress heading at the end of the page for all that nonsense. This makes it much easier for the user to locate and log the climbs they have done. 

Some eliminates and links however are deservedly significant and popular so will be included in the main sectors.

I have actually used the logbooks whilst at a crag a good few times this year because even the recently updated crag entries on the Rockfax app for various of the Peak's less salubrious quarries have been put out of date by routes done last winter and into this year. But in, for example, Goddard's Quarry I use it very much in conjunction with the Rockfax app and often Gary Gibson's website and topos as well.

But I'm not sure I've ever used the UKC logbooks alone to find routes at a crag I've never been to before because it just doesn't work very well for that. I might have managed it at one crag in France, one time, they had probably painted the route names and grades on the rock at the bottom so that's always going to help! But the idea of, say, trying to find a particular route at Stanage by logbooks alone sounds a bit of a nightmare.

👍🏻

I say let the UKC logbook be a mess. Its a melting pot for ideas.