Going climbing but need a partner to go with? Looking for someone with a little local knowledge? Our new Expeditions feature might be just what you need.

Add an Expedition to Bouldr, and it will be made available on our Explorer for other climbers to see and message you about.

Adding your Expedition

We have tried to make adding and finding Expeditions as easy as possible. To add a new Expedition to Bouldr, simply:

• Browse to or search for the crag you want to visit
• Click on the “+ Expedition” button in the sidebar
• Add a title, leaving date/time and a brief description of your Expedition
• Save
• Wait for other Bouldrers to get in touch!

Talk to Us!

If you have any thoughts or comments on our new Expeditions feature, please either message me directly, or post to our feedback forum. Let me know what you think!

I have just finished pushing the latest and greatest version of Bouldr out onto our server, which includes a major reworking of the explorer, among other things. Take a look, and let me know what you think. We have set up a four-question survey here for your feedback.

New Features

• Search from the Explorer
  We have changed the explorer to include a search box in the top-right of the screen. From there, you can search for a particular crag or climb, and the explorer will zoom to your chosen result.

• Location Search
  The new search feature also includes a location search, meaning that you can make the explorer center on various towns, cities, and regions all around the world.

• Larger Images on the Explorer
  The old explorer would only give you small thumbnails of the climb you were looking at. After a little reorganisation, we have increased the size of the climb images, and added more information to the climb display on the explorer.

• Bigger server
  Our old server was beginning to feel the strain, so we have now upgraded, and doubled our capacity, meaning faster page loads and (hopefully) a better experience for all.

Bouldr has been in need of a little TLC lately, and we’re pleased to announce that we have just finished deploying the latest version to a brand new server!

We’re hoping to get at least one new release out each month this year, starting today with the following:

New Stuff

• A bigger map, and easier navigation of climbs
• The explorer view can now be printed for a customised climbing guide
• Tick list for every member

Fixes and Improvements

• New server - should make Bouldr more responsive
• Speed improvements to the explorer
• Lots of back-end things that are far too dull to go into here

Coming Next

• Turbocharged explorer - we’re going to overhaul our caching to make searching even faster
• Protection from spammers and other forms of moron
• Anything that is suggested and that we like / can do for the next release.

Hope you all had an ace new year - keep the suggestions coming!

- Matt

1. Check your way down

Topping out on a highball problem then realising you have to downclimb it too is no way to enjoy climbing. By checking your downclimb, you’ll be able to avoid this nasty situation (Asking for help from the top is a little embarrassing to say the least!).

2. Check for glass

Some places (Hobson Moor Quarry is especially notable for this) are frequented by morons that break glass bottles against the rock face. Since I dynoed onto a patch of broken glass, I always check the holds by climbing the way down, and brushing any glass fragments away. This applies to other nasties - bird crap, cigarette butts, and other horrors to put your hands in always seem to occupy the holds you want to use on the way up.

3. Make sure your spotter is paying attention

Having a spotter is a good idea - especially if the problem leaves you exposed - however, if your spotter is looking the other way when you come off, then your fall won’t be helped, and you’re also in a good position to fall into them! A quick word to make sure they are watching is all that is needed, and it could easily prevent an embarrassing and painful fall.

4. Make sure you have a decent landing

I have spoken to a few people that have fallen onto a bad landing, with injuries ranging from a sprained ankle to full-on broken bones. A crash pad can help you out here (I personally use Alpkit’s Phudd), but if you don’t have one, finding a problem with a flat, rock free landing helps almost as much.

5. Stretch out

This makes sense for most physical activity; a quick stretch (not necessarily half an hour of yoga) can prevent cramp, increase blood flow and allow you to climb harder than just diving into the problem at hand. It also gives you an opportunity to consider the problem, and work out the moves before you start.

As part of our desire to provide a top-notch service for climbers to share and find climbing information, we have created a new service whereby businesses can add themselves to our explorer (for free, of course): Bouldr Advertising.

The idea for this came from a time when I was meant to be off to the Roaches for a days climbing with a couple of friends. Unfortunately for us, and as is typical for England, the weather took a nasty turn as we arrived - no climbing to had on that day! Luckily for us, we hadn’t travelled much of a distance to get out there, but for visitors from other countries, I could see that this would have been a big issue. Our backup plan was to find a climbing wall nearby, but as we had no idea as to where one may be, we ended up trekking back to Manchester to get to the MCC.

We want to ease this problem by creating a directory of climbing walls, gear shops, trainers, and other such related businesses, so that if this were to happen again (which is more than likely), we could quickly find a nearby wall and get directions to it; This is where our business browser tab comes in.

If you represent a business that is related to climbing in any way, please do take a look, and add yourself to our site. Similarly, if you know anyone that has a climbing related business that could benefit from a little free publicity, let them know!

In response to much feedback, we have just uploaded a new Location Browser to Bouldr.

One of the problems we had with our old system is finding the locations we’re interested in from the explorer. The new browser gives you a bunch of links and a drop-down selector at the top of the page to allow you to quickly drop from a world view to looking at a specific crag or area. Also, when you move the map, the location updates accordingly, so you always know where you are looking.

Take a look at it (its at the top of the page on the explorer), and let me know what you think.

I thought that we had screwed up somehow, but after a little testing, I came to realise that something much worse had happened.

I get a whole load of messages from climbers that are using Bouldr, and every single suggestion is read, discussed and often ends up being put on our ever-growing list of things to do. As ever, use the forum or just message me directly, and I’ll try to get back to each message individually.

David over at newclimber.com has just put a nice little review of Bouldr up; take a look at this blog - it makes for a pretty good read.

Following on from my last post, we now have our first wiki-implementation on Bouldr.

From now on, anyone that is logged in can make changes to the climbs on Bouldr, so if you find errors, omissions or you have extra information to add, you can update the climb yourself!

There are a couple of other improvements and fixes - most notably the back button now works correctly in the explorer (Though this can only be fixed in IE and FireFox at the moment).

OK, having had a decent number of climbers contributing to Bouldr over the past few weeks, we have come to realise that we need to make a rather fundamental change in order to allow Bouldr to reach it’s maximum potential.

The Problem

Say somebody adds a famous climb to Bouldr, but they add it in the wrong place. This is no good for anyone. Bouldr contains incorrect information, and it really needs fixing. Currently, the only way of having the error corrected is to message the person that posted it and tell them of the error. This obviously has a couple of problems - even if they get your message, they might not be bothered, and the problem will never be fixed.

The Solution

We’re moving to a Wiki-style editing method. Each climb will be editable by any registered user, with a history of changes and a page for discussing the changes appended. If we do this, then any climber will be able to make corrections, revert erroneous modifications and discuss changes for any climb.

Comments?

As ever, we’re looking for as much feedback, criticism and comments - we’re building Bouldr for you, so tell us what you think, and I’ll try to get back to everyone individually. Use the comments, the forum or just message me directly.