UKH

I'm keen to know more about the number of rock climbers venturing to mountain crags. My interpretation is that participation on other venues, such as indoor walls and easy access roadside crags, is increasing but trad climbing in the mountains is becoming less popular, resulting in routes becoming overgrown and dirty.

Does anyone have any more info on this, or can you point me to any research? I have found some from the BMC but it seems to be from the 90's. 

Cheers!

Just to clarify - I would consider Raven Crag Langdale, Shepherd's, Stanage (most gritstone edges) etc to be roadside, and crags like East Buttress and Cloggy to be mountain crags.

Why?

Which bit does the 'why' refer to? Why do I want to know, or why do I think less people are going in to the mountains?

I would disagree and say you are entirely wrong. More people go roadside cragging than ever. More people go "mountain"* cragging than ever. I think the proportional increase for roadside cragging is greater though, as not everyone can (understandably) be bothered or want to go on a long walk to go climbing. Hence it appears that less people are "mountain" cragging as it comprises a smaller proportion of climbers overall. Unfortunately all I have is anecdotal experiences, not real data.

* I hate using the term mountain for 99% of things in the UK that is gets used for, but lets go with it as its not the point of this thread

Thanks. I'm perfectly happy to be proved wrong in my interpretation, just keen to see some research if there is any out there.

My anecdotal impression is that numbers on mountain crags are now increading and probably just about back up to the level around 1980 before climbing diversified. Partly due to increasing overall numbers and partly coming back into fashion?

Anecdotal evidence from Cloggy in June - it was heaving, with teams on most of the classics and some of the not-so classics. 

Anedcdotal evidence from the Pass last month. On Saturday there was a constant line of people up Main Wall, and at least 11 teams on Gambit Climb. The next day there were just 3 teams on Main Wall and 1 on Gambit.

Anecdotal evidence from Sunday - Gimmer Crag was the quietest I've ever seen it despite the perfect conditions (and higher crags being clagged in until mid afternoon).

Conclusion: you are right, and also wrong.

Thanks Robert and Simon. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that it's pretty multilayered and complex then!

Walked in to parsons nose the other week and there was a queue of three teams on a particular low grade trad route. It could probably take 2+ hours for a reasonably fit walker.

Dunno, we've made into the mountains more times this year than possibly any other as the weather has been good. Venues: Bla Bheinn, Sron na Ciche, Sgurr Alasdair, Binnein Shuas, Hell's Lum, Buachaille Etive Mor, Garbh Coire, and Buckstone How (okay that's perhaps pushing it perhaps as it's a 10 min walk in but it is high up...) but that's still 7 proper mountain days out and hopefully we'll get some mountain stuff done in the Lakes before the summer ends. 

We did Squareface and Angel's Edgeway at the weekend and for the first time we actually saw other climbers in the coire. We've been in there twice before and never seen a soul. On Saturday there were at least 4 ascents of Squareface.

All the other mountains routes we've done this year we've seen other climbers but with much shorter walk ins I expected that.  Seeing multiple teams in Garbh Coire was quite unexpected though. 

Do you mean to 2+ hours to reach the Parson's Nose? I don't remember it taking nearly that long. Surely more like 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours at the outside?

In general, I probably agree that climbing on mountain crags isn't seen as the starting point for newish climbers, as I think it was when I started.  There seems to me this slightly odd perception that multipitch is a big deal.  However, I think the fact that we've a had a run of pretty crap summers has a lot to do with it too.

For what it's worth, I've climbed on both Gimmer and Dow this year for the first time in a decade.

mmm not sure about that, my last visit to Dow crag midweek there were six parties and some routes had queues on it on the saturday

Mainly why you want to know (research project?)

I see plenty of people on some mountain crags but less than you might expect on others. 

On recent visits to Dow, Scafell, and Gimmer all have been fairly busy. Ash Tree Ledge on Gimmer was heaving. The good weather has of course been a big factor. Now it's damp again the high crags will be quiet. Was on Pillar yesterday and nobody else in sight, then again, the mist was so thick there was virtually nothing in sight anyway!

I think this is a freak year because of the weather. I would not read too much into this year's experience. because  a) conditions have been nigh perfect and b) a lot of people have taken advantage to get up there onto hit routes they have been coveting for years. I suspect that should we revert to a classic UK summer next year the numbers on these crags will  revert to more normal levels.

Mountain crags offer a very different experience and will always have their fans but, certainly proportionately, bolts and roadside crags are the growth areas

You picked a complex topic.  It's difficult to ascertain the trending number of mountain climbers other than by repeated observation.... 

Will you be changing your name to MountainRat11?  

Certainly true in France. I'm a member of a local club here, and networked up with the local climbing scene. I reckon the numbers climbing trad multipitch are < 5%. Counting on walk-in's, commitment/risk, mountain weather. But there's a surely a bigger divide here on the continent.

Just hazarding at a bumbling jerry pace from where i had parked. Im sure you could do it in an hour from the lay-by if you liked a good sweat sesh. 

I was just talking about walking at a reasonable pace when fit, and not busting a gut. Mind you, when I went up there to solo the Parson's Nose and the C y D arete I was 27 years old (now 68).

A starting point would be to ask what % of your own activity is on such mountain crags - for myself climbing days of the year must be less than 10%. More tiring and  more organization. ANyone better this ??

It's just so weird seeing people 'disliking' being told how long a walk takes on average. I see now that Paul Williams in 'Snowdonia Rock Climbs' gives it 1 1/4 hours, and Steve Ashton, in '100 Classic Climbs: North Wales', gives it ... 1hr 15mins.

Anecdotally... we were on Cloggy in June at the start of the fine weather, had Great Slab to ourselves. I don't think that would have been the case in 1970 when I last did it.

My recollection is that popular trad routes were a lot busier 50 years ago... but that is anecdotal!

Anecdotally, I recall that Great Slab was VS ...

A quick check of logged ascents (as an example) of Great Bow Combination on Cloggy shows more ascents this year to date, than in recent years. Whilst this may reflect the UK summer up to now it goes someway to disprove your interpretation. For my own part a few weeks ago we went to climb Terminator on Lliwedd, at least four other teams were already on other routes and even someone on a real mission soloing up and down routes; (also annoyingly one team had even carted a sodding drone up to film their heroics but that's another story!).

A novice I've been climbing with recently considered the walk-in to Birchen unreasonable. Anecdotal, but perhaps some of the climbers coming from an indoor climbing background see 'climbing' as the thing they want to do rather than something which fits into the wider picture of being outside in the hills, and so are less inclined to make the effort on long walk-ins?

I think the Welsh mountains are in vogue, whereas the Lakes perhaps not. Despite all the climbing I've done over the last three years, all I've done in the Lakes has been winter or scrambling (and not much of it either). Despite them both being equidistant from me, the added time of getting around the Lakes makes myself, based in New Mills, plump for Snowdonia every time. I'd love to go and do some of the classics up in the Lakes, but the thought of the drive round to Wasdale, or Borrowdale, or the seriously long walk in from Langdale (which I have done, in winter!) really puts me off. Even for multi day trips the amount of time spent travelling between different valleys seems like a pain. Whereas I had a 5 day trip to Wales, based out of a campsite near Caernarfon and everything from sea cliffs to high mountain crags were no more than 35 minutes away, with the Pass a mere 10 (or 45, if a Pete's Eats breakfast was on the cards).

Edit - and this is coming from someone who quite likes a good walk!

You could do your own research? Have a look at the public logbooks over, say, 20 years for mountain crags v roadside crags on UKC? I'm sure the stats would be interesting especially as many folk retro-log.routes 

Just a thought 

You could do your own research? Have a look at the public logbooks over, say, 20 years for mountain crags v roadside crags on UKC? I'm sure the stats would be interesting especially as many folk retro-log.routes 

Just a thought 

There you are, making an thoroughly sensible suggestion, qualified by 'just a thought', and the thoughtless disliker strikes again!

Eh?  Whats your point mate?

Didn't want to come over as all dictatorial but the obvious research might not have occurred to the OP.

I often Like or Dislike and I'm clever enough to press the right button. Im also brave enough ro write responses and not hide behind buttons. 

I've been doing some work on visualizing UKC logbook data for Scottish Winter climbing, so with a bit of a tweak to my algorithms I can provide a bit of hard data. (Apologies for the formatting - limitation of the forum).

For the impatient - here's a plot:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/62eyyxx77ibro2u/mountain_trad.png?dl=0

Log counts include only Summer Trad climbs, and where possible I've eliminated duplicate entries (where two named partners both log a climb)

So, in absolute numbers, we have the following number of logged climbs for Cloggy, Ben Nevis, and Gimmer

Crag/Year | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017
----------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|-----
Gimmer    | 175     | 294    | 276  | 319  | 270  | 299  | 308  | 294  | 367     | 284
Cloggy    | 86     | 81    | 192  | 153  |    120  | 374  | 204  | 77      | 113     | 75
Ben Nevis | 18     | 27    | 24   | 29   | 39   | 46   | 67   | 36      | 33     | 12

While obviously not everyone who climbs a route logs it on UKC, we can use the logbooks as an estimator with a couple of assumptions

• The number of logged climbs is proportional to the actual number of ascents in a given year, and that proportionality does not vary between different crags. That is, if twice as many people logged climbs on Gimmer as on Cloggy, we assume that there were in fact twice as many ascents.
• The proportionality does not vary over time, that is, if the logbooks represent 10% of all actual climbs in 2008, then it also represents 10% of all actual climbs in 2018. 

Here's the table adjusted to show the change in logged ascents together with those for Stanage Popular, since 2008

Crag/Year | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017
----------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|-----
Gimmer    | 1.00 | 1.68 | 1.58 | 1.82 | 1.54 | 1.71 | 1.76 | 1.68 | 2.10 | 1.62
Cloggy    | 1.00 | 0.94 | 2.23 | 1.78 | 1.40 | 4.34 | 2.37 | 0.90 | 1.32 | 0.87
Ben Nevis | 1.00 | 1.5  | 1.33 | 1.61 | 2.17 | 2.56 | 3.72 | 2.00 | 1.83 | 0.67
Stanage   | 1.00 | 1.21,  1.42 | 1.71 | 1.40 | 1.41 | 1.58 | 1.40 | 1.54 | 1.51

Roughly, I think we can say that if anything the popularity of Mountain Trad is outstripping that of roadside crags like Stanage. For a more thorough analysis we would need to take weather conditions into account ( we could, for example, look at rainfall measurements from local weather stations ). For example, the Summer of 2012 was extremely wet, apart from the North West of Scotland which had a drier than average Summer ( See https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-anomalies/#?tab=climate... )

Thanks for all your thoughts and research folks. Given me a much better picture.
Cheers

Here's a wee graph of your data the mountains...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/140532469@N08/43923900691/

2013 appears to have been an exceptional year for Cloggy

Indeed, Great Wall alone has 20 logged ascents for that year. It was also a very dry summer, much like this year.

I wonder also if it was a bit of an "enthusiasm spike", the previous Summer having been very wet.

I should clarify that I mean popularity in relative terms, that is the year on year change. In absolute numbers logged ascents on Stanage far outnumber the mountain crags.

Loads of mountain routes being done. A good way to see this is to:

Click on "Logbooks" scroll down to "Conditions" and then click on "Mountain Rock Conditions"

Pages and pages of ticked mountain routes, maybe you can put these into some kind of graph?

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/conditions/uk_mountain_rock/

Pete

Thanks - didn't know that existed

But whats Stoney Middleton doing in there

I think it depends a lot on the mountain crag. In the Lakes I regularly find, Gimmer, Dow, Scafell, The Napes, Combe Ghyll very busy, but Pavey Ark, Pillar Rock, Scafell East Buttress, Gable Crag, Eagle Crag and Grey Crags (Buttermere), and all the Eastern Crags very quiet. 

I come to the conclusion that, as ever, crags go in and out of fashion.

I haven't noticed anything similar. Gable Crag has seen loads of action with this year's weather - everyone I talk to has been up there. Pillar is never going to popular, as with Eagle. And Pavey? Everyone loves Pavey! I was up there last night in fact for a quick potter...

Aye Jon, I think it depends on when you go to some of these. But there doesn't always seem to be an obvious pattern. In the last two weeks I've had Gimmer crammed on a rainy mid-week afternoon, but only one other climbing pair there on a sunny Saturday. I've not seen anyone at all on Gable Crag this summer, but I do tend to go mid-week.  As you say, Pillar is never going to be popular.

If you were able to park further up valley, near blacksail, that would be superb for Pillar, so many excellent mountain routes up there.

60+ routes HVS and under up there.

For me, the fact you cannot park further up the valley is one of the things that makes it so special.

I *nearly* got to Boat Howe this year...which is just slightly nearer than I got to going to Pillar. Roll on the next heat wave - I know I'll have a great time up there, but I also think I might get back to the Wasdale Head after the kitchen has closed

Are there any routes on newly classified mountain Miller Moss, aka Little Lingy Hill?

You're missing out the other obvious venue type, of which the UK has the range and quality to equal any other place in the world - sea cliffs. Trad climbing at Pembroke seems as busy as ever, but a major growth area as it becomes better documented is DWS. It's not uncommon to see teams tackling routes up to 25m or more in height, and applying sport climbing fitness with trad boldness on testpieces around the coast. Most are climbed ground up (or should that be soup up?) and what I like is that many require good tactics, planning and judgement to make them safe, just like trad climbing really.

So perhaps if mountain crags are a bit quieter, it's because some of the bold are currently elsewhere?

I do tend to find even in the summer we have just had that a lot of the climbing off the beaten track is very quiet places like Corvus and to be fair even middle-fell have been pretty quiet maybe people dont like the hike out  

The hike out to Raven Crag Langdale?!

jcm

People are walking slower nowadays too

Maybe people have been forsaking Corvus, which goes in any weather, and heading for crags that require a good dry spell?

I'm certainly not! It probably would take me at least two hours (at nearly the age of 70) to reach the Parson's Nose now.

In my area in France it's not only the mountain crags (I'm thinking Pic Saint Loup), but bolted crags too (e.g. Claret) which are deserted when the climbing walls are bulging.

But I certainly ain't complaining!!

There's a big thing here about trad being a big deal and too advanced. Oh, and if the bolts are more than 2m apart heaven forbid.