Don't Funnel Climbers

Funneling data, funnels climbers

make your climbs commensurate and your climbers funnel funnel your climbers and your climbers extract your climbers extract beat down the classics and don't return the other trails overgrow nobody gets hooked the history is forgotten nobody's attached turnout at cleanups and local org meetings dwindle

Digital guidebooks have a big problem that we should try to get past sooner rather than later.

When you reduce the dimenions of what you communicate, beware of what stands out.

Digital climbing guides, especially those that operate at scale have a big issue. They want to pull the levers and do things and there are three levers that community developers always reach for: density, quality, and approach.

It's not possible to not influence climbers at all, so just try to do it in a way that's more healthy for the community as a whole. Help draw climbers to hidden gems and don't spent the editorial budget promoting the climbs people are alreay drawn to. This helps people better understand the area, and offers climbers a better chance to connect.

Quantity

Why bother with an area that has 50 climbs when you can go somewhere with 500? (you're only climbing for an afternoon)

Density

This often shows up in two ways, grade density (this crag has tons of 5.10s or this sector is loaded with v5s) less frequently climb density 40 routes in within 500 yards of each other.

Quality

Stars, stars, stars!

Approach

This is a less-frequent offender, but it's worth a mention. Guidebooks should probably air towards warning about horrendous approaches instead of emphasizing the shortest