I’ve spent many years curating articles like this — both on the @climbing Twitter account (over 32,000 followers) as well as curating an email newsletter for the Boulder/Denver area called the Startup Digest (which was eventually acquired by Techstars). Here, I spent about three years releasing a popular weekly newsletter highlighting the top events and activities for startups in the region before I handed over the reins to a new volunteer. So I have considerable experience (and enjoyment) building a newsletter and curating content.

So why now after having the initial idea years ago? There are two main reasons. First, my life situation has finally allowed me the opportunity and time to start and continue working on this project in earnest. Second, I feel there’s a large void to be filled concerning climbing news, articles, and overall information.

Many climbing blogs and sites have come and gone, while the total number of climbers has grown significantly. The popularity and growth of email newsletters have also expanded, but there’s not much catering to climbers that are independent of single source media companies like Climbing or Rock and Ice magazines. These newsletters are exclusively a collection of everything they published.

The value of an independent email newsletter (at least in my opinion) is curation without any obligation to a single source.

After only three issues, I’m pleased with the statistics. Both the open rate and click through on the links are way above industry standards (any way you categorize them). So that’s very encouraging, and I’ll be making significant efforts to ensure the content is there to maintain and even improve these stats.

As far as the future, I have no plans other than curating great articles each week. There may or may not be some form of advertising at some point, but for now, the goal is to continue improving the newsletter.

As always, if you have any feedback regarding this project, please leave a comment. And if you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up here: http://www.climbingdigest.com

The post Introducing the Climbing Digest email newsletter first appeared on All Climbing.

From Black Diamond:

It all started in the gym for BD Athlete Carlo Traversi. Now, 15 years later, he’s come full circle, tracing his roots back to where it began, only this time, as the owner of Sacramento’s new premier bouldering gym. But Carlo’s motivation is not only to provide quality plastic pulling, but also to create what he experienced growing up—a communal place for climbers to train and hang out, but also be mentored and taught the valuable ethics needed for the crag. Check out this film documenting Carlo’s journey from the gym to the crag and back again.

The post Video: Carlo Traversi – Gym. Crag. Repeat. first appeared on All Climbing.

Jimmy Webb: Nine Days at the New River Bounty from Kevin Takashi Smith on Vimeo.

From the New River Alliance of Climbers (NRAC):

In November of 2017, Jimmy Webb traveled to West Virginia to compete in the New River Bounty, a unique bouldering competition organized by the New River Alliance of Climbers (NRAC). Climbers were given a list of bouldering projects that had “bounties” placed on them – cash prizes for first ascents. This video chronicles the nine days that Jimmy spent at the month-long competition.

The post Video: Jimmy Webb, Nine Days at the New River Bounty first appeared on All Climbing.

And while I was burnt out chasing newsy type articles, I have a considerable backlog of article ideas that I’d still like to get out into the world.

The popularity of @climbing Twitter account where I curate climbing links, despite not publishing posts to All Climbing for a while, finally inspired me to update this site.

So all that said, I decided to do a reboot of All Climbing (still in-process of course) and wanted to discuss the various aspects covering the why, how, and what of this process. Much of what I’ve had to do to get it back in form, will be useful to others regardless of the site you may be building.

Fixing the site

Unfortunately, there were a bunch of issues to clean up on the site. From tons of comment spam to an old version of WordPress, there were issues everywhere.

During the time I was not actively working on the site (roughly 2014), over 30,000 comments and trackbacks were posted. Sadly it’s incredibly difficult to clean up these comments using the WordPress dashboard. So I had to do this manually using SQL queries on the database. It helps that I have a technical background or this would have been an even bigger problem!

This took many hours, but I eventually found a semi-reliable pattern I could use to remove thousands of comments at a time. Most of the spam came through during specific time windows, so sorting the comments by date and time, I was able to quickly remove them.

To prevent this from happening in the future, I’m going to turn off comments on a given post after sixty days. This is just my first choice to solve the problem as there are many posts on this site that have an incredible thread of comments. For example, these posts were highly discussed: Aron Ralston update, Partial Rupture to A2 Tendon Pulley, and Review: Vibram Five Fingers Shoes.

But this is the only trade-off I can make at this point to minimize future spam issues and the massive amount of work involved to clean them up. I’ve used Disqus on and off over the years, and I feel like it’s never really helped this issue. If anyone has any suggestions though, I’m open to better solutions than completely turning off comments after a specific time period.

Finally, I also took the opportunity to improve the permalink structure and added SSL to the site.

What’s planned

As for what’s coming and what I have tentatively planned, it breaks down into four areas:

1. Twitter — First, I’ll keep curating links on Twitter. This is the everything bucket, with a much higher dose of news than on the blog. Basically, if I find it interesting and it’s related to climbing or the outdoors, I’ll be sharing it. To date, the average is less than one Tweet per day.
2. Articles — I plan to have regular articles, though I’m not sure on the frequency. Likely no more than a post per week and way less news-focused that it used to be on the site.
3. Videos — I love watching climbing videos, and I know you do as well. I plan to highlight a video on a weekly basis, assuming there’s something I find super interesting. This is highly curated and the best of what I consume.
4. Email newsletter — Finally, I’m starting an email newsletter called the Climbing Digest. This email will essentially be curated from everything I post on the blog and Twitter, with some extras included. So if you follow on Twitter and read the site, you’ll still get value from the email newsletter.

The big picture here though is that I’m never going to post for the sake of posting on a regular basis, which is a trap I most definitely fell into back in the old days.

Over the years, my passion for climbing has never faded, but I’ve found my related interests have grown to include more mountaineering, skiing, trail running, and even mountain biking. Anything that involves playing in the mountains is fair game to write about at this point. Hence the new tagline: “Everything climbing, mountains, and the outdoors.”

I’m happy to be back and hope you’ll join me for the ride.

The post Site reboot for All Climbing first appeared on All Climbing.

From Black Diamond:

BD Athlete Will Gadd has been putting Black Diamond gear to the test for over 20 years. He was an early proponent of our revolutionary carbon fiber ice tools—now known as the Cobra—and has been questing to the top of ice formations around the world with prototype ice gear ever since. From climbing Niagara Falls with prototype ice pitons, to going big in Greenland with extra-long special-made ice screws, Gadd is always willing to put it all on the line for the sake of adventure … and invaluable feedback to the designers and engineers here at BD. Recently, his latest hare-brained idea involved multiple innovations—as well as his own Canadian ingenuity—and was captured in this film. Check out Gadd’s latest gear testing exploits as he takes the formidable spray ice of Helmcken Falls … with natural gear.

The post Video: Will Gadd Takes On Helmcken Falls with Natural Gear first appeared on All Climbing.

The post Louder Than Eleven and ClimbingNarc’s Talkshow #1 The Show With No Name first appeared on All Climbing.

StatsMix took TechStars founders out for a day of climbing in Boulder Canyon recently. I spoke about the relationship between climbing and building a startup in the following video taken during the trip (starting at 3:27 in the video):

"Be Fearless. Today" The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 3 from Megan Sweeney on Vimeo.

If anyone is interested in trying out StatsMix, we’re currently in private beta so just leave your email on the StatsMix site and I’ll get you in as soon as possible.

The post Climbing and Startups first appeared on All Climbing.

Dougald MacDonald recently launched a new site focused on the Colorado backcountry called Colorado MoJo. I caught up with him to ask some questions about the site.

What prompted you to start a new website focused specifically on Colorado outdoor pursuits?

I started Colorado MoJo because I couldn’t find anything else online that covers all the outdoor sports I love, close to home. There are lots of great outdoor sites, but they’re mostly sport-specific. Most people I know don’t just climb…they also ski or mountain bike or hike 14ers. There was a need for one site that covers multiple backcountry sports, and exclusively in Colorado.

The other issue is that many of the best sites are forum-driven, and you have to read through a mountain of posts every day to get the most out of the site. With Colorado MoJo, we sort through all that information and only publish the real gems, the must-reads. Essentially, it’s a daily online news magazine.

Have you encountered any specific challenges launching a site focused on the Colorado backcountry?

Just lack of time. There is so much to cover, but this is still very much a part-time gig.

What types of content will Colorado MoJo publish?

All Colorado. Mostly backcountry. I started the site with the sports I know best: rock and ice climbing, mountaineering, hiking, backcountry skiing, and trail running. We’ll expand from there, but only when we have real experts to manage those pages.

The site is designed to be about 50 or 60 percent news, 25 or 30 percent inspiration and how-to information, and the rest off-beat, unpredictable stuff. We take a pretty broad definition of “news.” In climbing terms, that might be new routes or access issues, but it also includes first-person stories about cool climbs, epic tales, and photo- and video-driven stories.

We’re building a library of Classics, and we want to create mini-guides to climbing areas that aren’t well known. Obviously, a lot of this information is already available at sites like Mountain Project or Summit Post, but we think there’s an opportunity to present it in a fresh and possibly more useful way.

Please talk a bit about what you don’t cover and why.

The main thing at this time of year is we’re not covering resort skiing and climbing gyms and indoor competitions. Nothing wrong with those things, but Colorado MoJo is focused on the backcountry. That said, something like the Ouray Ice Festival would fit in our pages.

We’re not covering mountain biking or paddling yet, though that could change in 2010. And we’re not doing gear reviews. I think we’ll eventually start covering equipment, but not until we can do it in a way that brings something new to the table. There’s not a lot of truly Colorado-specific gear.

How many contributors do you have so far? Any trends you’re seeing with what is being submitted?

I launched the site in late November, and until now I’ve either written or solicited most of the stories. I’ve been getting some great contributions from climbing and ski guides around the state. They really know their local areas. I’m hoping to have a couple of regular contributors on board very, very soon, and that will broaden and deepen the coverage, especially in skiing.

How can my readers contribute? Any content type or activity that is currently under-represented?

We need to set up better ways for readers to contribute, but the door is definitely open. We’re looking for stories about new routes, epic adventures (in Colorado), and just great days out in the hills. Photo essays or video clips are super-cool. I’m also looking for Classics and mini-guides. People should contact me directly if they have an idea: mojo@coloradomountainjournal.com.

Lots of times, people post a story or report at one of the big forum-based sites and it immediately gets buried. We can lay out a reader’s contribution in a way that will really showcase it, so it will stand out from the crowd, and it will be highlighted for much longer on Colorado MoJo than elsewhere.

On a personal level, what are your favorite aspects of the Colorado backcountry?

Well, I’ve always been a climber first. I’ve been climbing for more than 30 years, and what keeps me going strong is variety: I like mixed routes in the mountains as much as sport climbs at Shelf Road. But, as I said before, I just like to spend lots of time in the mountains, and so I also love skiing, hiking, and trail running.

Anything additional you’d like to share with All Climbing’s readers about Colorado MoJo?

The site is brand new and still developing, and we’re eager to hear from readers with story ideas and suggestions for what they’d like to see at MoJo. Drop me a line! We’re also on Facebook and Twitter, and those pages get updated even more frequently than the main site.

Dougald MacDonald has been skiing since he was 3, hiking since he was 5, and climbing since he was 16. He moved to Colorado in 1987, specifically for the mountains. Dougald was the publisher and editor in chief of Rock & Ice magazine for a number of years, and was the founding publisher of Trail Runner magazine. These days, he’s an associate editor of the American Alpine Journal, and writes most of the news for Climbing.com. Dougald also writes frequently for Outside, Backpacker, 5280, Men’s Journal, and many other magazines. He also wrote the book Longs Peak: The Story of Colorado’s Favorite Fourteener. He also writes a personal blog for the past five years at (http://themountainworld.blogspot.com).

The post Interview with Dougald MacDonald of Colorado MoJo first appeared on All Climbing.

(via Colorado MoJo, Prana)

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