23 August 2012

August Rant

Yet again it has been awhile. I think I'd actually given up on this whole blogging thing. It seems so passe. Every beatnik with an arts degree is writing one. Some are interesting some are merely cyberspace junk, floating around social media sites like disused Russian bedpans from Mir.

It's not like I didn't have things to write about, I just figured no one gave enough crap to read it. Like a tree falling on a deaf mans house......did it really fall if no one heard it? I guess so because it squashed his house. I was never any good with these analogies or Confucianisms. What I'm trying to say is, if I wrote something that no one read is it worth writing. Probably not. That said, a few people of late have asked about the Captains. Expressions of dismay when loading our site and being welcomed by news from 12 months ago were not uncommon. We have been slack and boring I agree. So without further ado I am going to take us back to our roots with the only thing blogs are good for. Rants about things no one cares about.

NOWRA Sportclimbing Guidebook by Rod Young.

Holy shit this thing is a piece of crap. When this "guide" was published last year it came out to a lot of criticism. Most of this rice slinging was on Cockstone.org so I didn't take any notice because what do beard strokers know about Nowra right? Well this winter saw me escape the cold of Natimuk, in a maneuver commentators have likened to Snake's escape from LA. I headed north to the home of the mud-and-smut climbing of Nowra. I needed a guidebook, so I bought the new one. I was excited. I walked all the way home (2 mins) before opening it, planning on sitting down next to the fire opening a beer and getting my psyche on. I was bitterly disappointed. Immediately I regretted spending $45.00 on this "guide". Maybe I have been overly privileged with guidebook awesomeness from Open Spaces (Araps, Gramps Selected), Dave and Chris's bouldering and recently the Rocklands Guide complete with GPS locations. Maybe so, however these guidebooks are great to look at, entertaining, get you psyched and scream applied effort from authors. I personally saw the effort Davey P put in, spending countless months walking around the Grampians, grading, photographing (yep with artificial lighting when required - effort) and ultimately compiling. All this through winter mostly on his own with at times no money for fuel to get back to civilisation. This is what makes a good book. In stark contrast this new Nowra guide fills my nostrils with an aroma I'd imagine MS paint would smell like when it dries. Rather fitting as that' is pretty much the extent of technology used to create maps and mark out routes on shitty photo topos. I guess it's a step up from photocopying a photo and marking routes out with a white out pen. Just. As for the maps......holy Moses riding a camel. Even though a kid learning to finger paint at Yoralla has drawn them, at the very least North could have pointed to the top of the page - like all other maps!


Map of Nowra from Guidebook
So a guidebook is designed to give visiting climbers information about the general area, the crags within it and the routes that are there. Basic stuff like, Name and Grade, start and finish points and if lucky some history i.e. FA name and date. Basic Stuff. However Mr. Young has decided, perhaps because he is getting old or something, to alter the names of the routes in attempt to either change reality or history. Either way its lame. From all accounts climbing back in the day was a rebellious entity. Attracting personalities that were at the fringe of society. This is how I like to see it anyway. And Nowra was the shit hole south of Sydney where these punks went to glue up, chip and crank hard. For me, getting to name a route or problem is just as important as getting the first ascent. Yep you might be first, but you might also be the only one to try it. So the name is what really matters. It can express political, sexual, musical, theological, relationship or any other ideas that you have at a given time. A collection of words that can allow you to reminisce a time just by hearing their combination. So for someone compiling a list of said names, to go and change them because he is offended by them is akin to changing the lyrics to a song, or censoring a movie, or taking tits out of porn. 'Sperm Bitches' while a largely successful porno in its own right is also the name of a classic bouldery testpiece at South Central first climbed and named by Paul Westwood in '95. For me the name conjures up images of the lads listening to The Sexpistols and running amuck. Hitting up the pubs and picking up some scraggy Nowra lasses in an attempt to navigate the perilous seas of disease. If this is totally off the mark, I could not care as it is a more inticing image than the one conjured when reading the new family friendly name 'Spam Beaches'. WTF?! What the hell is Spam got to do with a Beach. Tinned spice ham doesn't belong anywhere bikini clad chicks. Ruined Image. Shame R. Young, Shame.


Stop the alteration of HISTORY!!
Nowra Girl in Action
So Nowra crags in places don't have obvious lines and it often seems that you follow the bolts as much as the features. For this reason, a guide should make clear where these lines go. A hand drawn topo with bolts and anchors clearly mark is a cheap, clear and easy to follow option. This Nowra guide has some of these little beauties, but predomintly it is filled with photos from wierd angles (I realise nowra is difficult to photograph hence hand drawn are sometime better) with MS paint lines marking the routes. In some cases the lines are not drawn on the correct part of the rock, or the photos don't show the anchor. Most of time this is not an issue, however if a route had a previous anchor and now extended and the grade of the climb corresponds to the extention and reasonable guide would in the route description make note of this. This Nowra guide fails in this area. I fell for it. Thought I'd done a route. Climbed it to the double bolt anchor level with the ones on either side. The photo topo not only showed the line in the wrong spot and didn't show the anchor. It also failed to mention that the route was extended past this original one and therefore was graded accordingly. The crux I found out two weeks later was in fact this extention. You can blame people (me in this case) for not seeing the bolts over the bulge, but I feel that for visitors who don't have first hand knowledge of such things, a guide should come into its own under these circumstances. This one does not.


Wheres the anchor?
So That all said. Here are the pros and cons of this guide book.

Cons.

1. Looks Shit
2. Expensive
3. History has been altered with the changing of names
4. Maps are retarded
5. Topos are in some cases worse than a sqeeze of lemon in the eye.
6. Large Font means more paper. Yep more trees plus its heavy for amount of info you get.

Pros.

1. Has a Photo of Philby in it on Brother in a Body Bag, 28 - Go Phil!




One Final note




- Grosey

2 comments:

  1. Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks!

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  2. Nice Joshy, good to see you whinge in type as well as you do in person... But I do agree with you, altering names is outrageous and is completely against the grain of climbing. Don't be censoring, you middle aged douche, do something else with your time. And finally, welcome back to the blogosphere where mediocrity reigns supreme...

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