One of the things that has been eating all of my free time recently is a new app I’m building for Bouldr on the iPhone. The idea behind the app is to give you a geo-aware climbing guide in your pocket - something I’ve wanted for a long time now!

Though it’s not ready yet, it is nearly there, and I need to gather a few climbers around in order to get the final bits of testing done.

If you own an iPhone, and would like to be part of a limited beta test, please follow @bouldr_app on twitter, and I will contact you all through that.

Just a quick note to let any Bouldring tweeps know that you can now follow Bouldr on Twitter.

If you do follow us on Twitter, you’ll get notifications for any new blog posts, along with smaller morsals that wouldn’t warrent a post of their own. This is more of an attempt to reduce the noise, as my own twitter account tends to include quite a bit of nerd guff and personal gubbins.

We’ll be monitoring the account, and we’ll try and read / respond to every message sent to us through that.

This has taken far too long to get deployed, but I finally managed to get it sorted last night: The climbers tab in the explorer is back, showing you the approximate locations of climbers on Bouldr - one of our most requested features. Hopefully, this should make it a little easier to find new climbing partners near your regular haunts.

I’m actually sitting on a whole load of updates for Bouldr at the moment, but finding the time to test and deploy them has proven to be nearly impossible. I’m hoping to get a few more releases out there over the next few weeks…

Thanks to everyone that has left suggestions or voted on our current set of todo items over on our new feedback page - we’ve now finished developing a couple of the suggestions on there, and I’ve just deployed them onto the main site.

Weather Overlay
The explorer now includes a new bar at the bottom, so if you are zoomed in enough on the explorer page, you can now see a four day forecast for that location.

Terrain Maps
We’ve added shaded terrain maps as an option on all of the maps - to enable them, just click on the ‘Terrain’ button at the top of any of the map pages.

Restyled Newsletter
The old newsletter format was making some mail apps render the newsletter in an unreadable way (dark grey text on a black background), so we’ve changed the styling to fix this problem.

As ever, if you have any more thoughts, or you want to see something added to Bouldr, then please do drop into our feedback forum, and vote on existing items to get them put to the top of our list or suggest a new idea for consideration.

In order to keep better track of the sort of things you lovely people want us to add to Bouldr, we have set up a better feedback forum at http://feedback.bouldr.net.

If you’d like to see something added to Bouldr, or you want to know what we’re working on, then head over there right now!

Better Newsletters

We have updated our newsletter system to keep you better updated with the latest updates and changes on Bouldr. From now on, you can opt to receive the latest updates on a weekly or monthly basis (this is optional, of course - you can turn off these updates at any time).

Latest changes added to the profile page

In addition to having the latest changes sent to you by email, you can find an up-to-the-minute list of changes right in your profile page. This includes climbs, partner requests and blog posts.

Location search on map pages

On any page with a map, we have added a search box that you can use to quickly search for locations, meaning you should now be able to locate the appropriate area much faster than before.

Backend Improvements

We’ve rewritten our map clustering system, and tweaked our server somewhat, so hopefully Bouldr will be a little more responsive, for now and the forseeable future.

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.