A new BMC Definitive Staffordshire Gritstone guidebook is steadily making its way towards completion. But with the possibility of a select guides, and older definitive guides to the area, what will this guide offer that climbers cannot get elsewhere? Niall Grimes has a look at what the forthcoming guide is setting out to achieve.
When creating a new guidebook, it becomes important to try to think, what about this guidebook will in fact be new? What will it bring to the climbing world that is fresh and informative, and that can’t be had from previous editions? How will it justify itself, and add to the already impressive canon of climbing guidebooks?
A new BMC Definitive Staffordshire Gritstone Guide is now in its advanced stages, with the dots going onto the i’s, before it goes to the designers to be laid out. And with its production has come the need to answer the above question. What will the latest Staffordshire guide add, in what ways will it bring something new, something that the fantastic 1989 guide didn’t have. What will make people want to have it? How will it change your life?
The first thing a guide must do, is the thing that it says on the tin: it must get people to routes that they want to do. Since the publication of Rockfax’s Peak Gritstone East, many people have expressed favourable opinions about their use of full colour photodiagrams as a help in route location. As a response to this, the BMC have decided to use this method for route location wherever possible, and ensure that crag and route location is as straightforward as can be. Phil Gibson’s superb illustrations will be missed by many, but with guidebooks, it is important to always respond to what the public want. Also, there will be lots more location maps and clear access information. Obviously, with the sheer number of climbs in a definitive guide, as well as their spread out nature, diagrams are not possible for all climbs; in these cases, text will be a clear guide to finding climbs.
A lot of work has gone into the text of this guide, the text still being of the utmost importance to guidebook users. However, with clear photographs, it is no longer necessary to give blow by blow accounts of the route, and effort can instead be used to give an impression of the character of a climb. There are very few poor routes on gritstone, and as such, this text has gone to lengths to promote the positive aspects of the climb it describes in an effort to attract routers. There is more to The Roaches than Right Route and Prow Corner; try Flake Chimney, Kestrel Crack or Kelly’s Shelf. Hopefully, good descriptions will excite interest in the more interesting climbs. Here’s some examples: Phallic Crack – Wide at the bottom, thrutchy at the top, with fine climbing in-between. Follow the crack, wrestling the large ‘knob’ on the way to finish up the obvious groove. Very good sport. Raven Rock Gully – A popular and earthy climb, an absolute must. Follow flakes in the back of the gully then squirm through the manhole above. The first route climbed in the area and the start of a great climbing tradition. Encouragement – A beautiful and balanced climb, with a thoughtful first pitch, and a steep second pitch where the less time spent thinking the better.
And of course, as a definitive guide, it must contain an awful lot of climbs. This number includes, of course, all the classics of The Roaches, Hen Cloud, Ramshaw. But many more besides. Lots of climbs live between the headline routes, and while they might not be so well known, they are in many ways just as good. Then there are new routes, and established variations on old ones. All theses are included, and treated in such a way as to try to get climbers onto them, encourage them onto the less popular climbs, away from the less popular areas. You’d be surprised at how many good routes you haven’t heard of, as well as helping to spread the load from climbs that are starting to age from overuse. And it is not enough just to document these climbs. So much of the work in a definitive guide goes into checking out the more obscure routes. Unknown quantities and dark horses have had a light shone on them, and all attempts made to give an accurate indication of their quality and difficulty.
So, you would expect nothing less than superb informative descriptions, clear diagrams and total coverage. But what else will the definitive guide bring to the climbing world?
One anomaly that has always occurred in traditional definitive guidebooks has been their scanty coverage of bouldering. At best, the most obvious problems might get a passing mention. Perhaps this is no surprise, and is merely a reflection of taste and fashion. After all, in these days of free-climbing, you would hardly expect to see the aid routes on a crag written up. But this second class status that bouldering has had in the past (the same position that rock climbing held a hundred years ago), is no longer tenable. Bouldering has, in the past few years, gone from being a way of warming up to being some climbers’ main activity. It has arrived. And with it has come the need for a guide that sees itself as definitive, to apply the same standards to bouldering as it does to roped climbs.
The forthcoming Staffordshire guide seeks to redress this anomaly, and has set itself the task of creating a definitive record of bouldering in the county. This has been quite a task. Many of the main areas were already documented in Allen William’s Rockfax bouldering guide, but more than twice that number have now been recorded for the new BMC guide. These include many brand new circuits in areas such as Ramshaw and The Roaches, many areas not noted for their bouldering such as Gradbach Hill and Back Forest and Nth Cloud, and other bits and pieces scattered along traditional climbing areas that have went undocumented in the past.
As well as assuring that this keeps the guide definitive, the new bouldering record has two other purposes. With bouldering becoming more and more popular, it is becoming less and less an elitist activity. Now we’re all at it. In a lot of the newly documented bouldering, the thrust has been to open the activity up to climbers at all levels, and not just the top. To whit, the number of boulder problems in the lower grades has swollen, a fact that will hopefully encourage more climbers to explore this activity. The other aim is to get boulderers away from the honeypot venues of Newstones and The Roaches. These areas are starting to age under the pressure, and spreading the load away from these can only be a good thing, not just for climbers, but for the environment.
This last point brings on another main aim of the new Staffordshire guide. In these days of increased numbers of climbers using the outdoors, we can no longer ignore the impact that we are having on the very environment that we love. Wear and tear below climbs, polished footholds, broken drystone walls, loss of access, crammed parking, litter, chalkmarks, wirebrushing, damage to holds. We can all point the finger, but ultimately, we all play our part in it. The forthcoming Staffordshire guide has set itself the task of doing all it can to inform and educate climbers both on what they shouldn’t do and why, and how they can best go about minimising their impact. Many misdeeds- wirebrushing, walking over restricted land, disturbing birds etc., are often done out of ignorance. Climbers have long been recognized as being sympathetic to the issues of the land they use, and it is hoped that by informing them of the facts, the good situation we currently enjoy can continue. Using bouldering mats, cleaning dirt off feet before climbing, always using the approved approaches, cleaning off chalk- these messages and more are seen as as much an integral part of the new guide as grades, and will benefit all involved in the area. Much consultation work has taken place behind the scenes between the guidebook team and organisations such as The National Trust and the Peak District National Park, where mutual respect has been earned, and while the climber on the crag may never be aware of this, this is the reason why we can still climb on crags such as Back Forest and the Newstones.
History is also seen as being an important part of the role of the definitive guide. The forthcoming BMC guide will continue this tradition, not just through its first ascent lists, but by trying to bring historical knowledge into the text to bring something new to the climbing experience. History is a big part of British climbing. What was the first route on the crag, which are the Whillans routes, what was that named after, who was Seigfreid Herford? This will be done in a way, so as not to burden the text with too much information, but just enough to enrich what a climber can get from doing a route.
Another exciting new feature that will appear in the guide will be some suggestions of climbs to help climbers in their selection of routes. This helping in route selection is a very important role of a guide. As much as anything, it is another effort to save climbs from destructive wear and tear, as the same few routes are climbed over and over. A hint of what else is worth doing can only help, and stars don’t always help in this department. The first of these was Richie Patterson’s Ramshaw Crack School, a list of climbs compiled as an attempt to school the fissurephobe through a curriculum, from Diff to E6, that will help overcome fear of the fist. Other lists include Roaches Slab Exams, Top Ten Obscure Classics, Roof Warriors, good routes for pushing grades on and a very useful selection of routes suitable for introducing new and inexperienced climbers to the harsh realities of outdoor climbing, by pointing out the more friendly well protected routes, suitable for cutting teeth on.
The forthcoming BMC definitive Staffordshire Gritstone guide has set itself high aims. New technologies and new formats as used by selective guides have shown other ways guidebooks can look. This guide must take the best of these ideas and use them. Yet it must also take all the things that make traditional definitive guidebooks such special things, history, and a huge number of routes. Combining these characteristics will produce a very special guide. Then add to all this the special knowledge that can only be gained from the years of experience of the area’s keenest climbers, knowledge of access, wildlife, bouldering, unknown routes, knowledge of grades, and what you will have at the end is the best guidebook to an area that you could possibly have.
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