Friday, October 03, 2008

Bouldering CO - the worst guidebook in the world

There are errors of every shape and kind on essentially EVERY page of this atrocity. The author talked to essentially no developers over the years, chose to rename and grade problems and boulders whatever he liked, ignored the precarious issues that jeapordize access to alpine areas, provided descriptions of boulders and problems that are ON private property, provided descriptions of areas that no longer exist (dynamited 7 years ago), etc. The list goes on and on ... I couldn't make this stuff up.

I don't want to sound like an elitest here, but buy and carry this paperweight around at your own peril. You and Bob will be laughed at again and again. Trust in knowing you will be armed with misinformation of the highest order and the most unhelpful guidebook ever to grace the shelves of any climbing shop. A lot of us tried to get Falcon to reconsider publishing it in it's current format, to no avail.

I wish I didn't feel compelled to write this as I am not usually of the anti-guidebook ilk, but I did.

Continue to share good information and history with friends. If you know an area's history and problems really well, put it up on the web for free.

Peace.

4 comments:

Tom Markiewicz said...

I went to Bob's slideshow in Boulder Thursday and wrote up this review on the whole issue:

http://www.allclimbing.com/archive/2008/10/bouldering-colorado-slideshow-with-bob-horan/

Peter Beal said...

Chip I got a copy from Falcon and saw so many errors just last night after getting home from a conference that I will tell Falcon that they need to start over.

chuffer said...

I've reviewed it on 3 separate occasions, twice at Neptune's.

I laughed/scoffed out loud so many times, I'm sure the employees thought I was insane.

Anyone who buys this guide will regret wasting their $50. Just use Benningfield's old guides (which admittedly aren't perfect either - no guide is) and get tours from knowledgeable folks for the other areas.

Peter Beal said...

See my review at my blog. In essence I agree that the book is pretty useless.