Colorado Route Info Reorg

I think it makes sense to organize Colorado climbing areas by geographical region, with a separate category for Alpine Areas. Here is a proposal. Comments?

Colorado
Alpine Areas: see Colorado Route Info: Alpine Area Reorg
Boulder
Boulder Canyon: see Colorado Route Info: Boulder Canyon reorg
CU Campus
Eldorado Canyon
Eldorado Mountain
Flagstaff
Flatirons
Central
North
South
Red Rocks (Boulder)
Mt. Sanitas
The Sacred Cliffs
Upper Dream Canyon
Buena Vista
Monitor Rock
Canon City
Hardscrabble Pass
Newlin Creek
Oak Creek Canyon
Royal Gorge
Shelf Road
Table Mountain South
Carbondale
The Narrows
Redstone Boulders
Castle Rock (or South of Denver)
Castlewood Canyon
Daniels Park
Coal Creek Canyon
Pinecliffe
Zebra Rock
Colorado Springs
Elevenmile Canyon (could go under South Platte)
Elevenmile Reservoir
Garden of the Gods
Monument Rock
North Cheyenne Canyon
Old Stage Road
Red Rock Canyon
Ute Pass
Empire
Estes Park: see Colorado Route Info: Estes Park reorg
Fort Collins
Biglandia
Carter Lake
Horsetooth Reservoir
Poudre Canyon
Georgetown
Golden
Clear Creek Canyon
Golden Gate Canyon
Golden Cliffs
Lookout Mountain
Ralston Buttes
Glenwood Springs
Fortress of Solitude
Glenwood Canyon
Rifle
Windy Point
Grand Junction
Colorado National Monument
Unaweep Canyon
Gunnison
Black Canyon
Hartman Rocks
Taylor Canyon
Idaho Springs
Chicago Creek Rock
Fall River Road
Independence Pass
Monitor Rock
Leadville
Hell's Gate/Hagerman Pass
Lyons
South St. Vrain Canyon
Buttonrock Reservoir
Rabbit Mountain
Morrison
Deer Creek Crag
Lovers Leap
Morrison Boulders
Ophir
Ophir Wall
Cracked Canyon
Silver Plume
South Platte: see Colorado Route Info: South Platte Reorg
Summit County
Keystone
San Luis Valley
La Garita Creek
Penitente Canyon
The Stonewall
Witches Canyon
Vail/Eagle
Gilman Canyon
Lime Park

Wow - impressive list Ron!

Reorganizing CO will be a big step, so once we're live it will definitely be something worth tackling. We won't do it until we're officially live though, as we need to wait until we do the final import.

I was also curious about Redgarden Wall ... anyway to break that list up?

Also - you've probably noticed - we combined ice/alpine/rock all in one tree. We figured the "Show Routes" filter dropbox in the left navigation bar (have you played with that?) makes finding specific route types pretty easy. Nothing is tagged alpine yet since that flag didn't exist @ Cb.com

And an important design restriction - Areas can contain other Areas OR Routes but not both . Having both routes and areas within one area was really confusing in the nav list, so we build in that requirement. So something like Boulder Canyon in your list above will still need the individual crags, etc.

Andy Laakmann wrote:And an important design restriction - Areas can contain other Areas OR Routes but not both. Having both routes and areas within one area was really confusing in the nav list, so we build in that requirement. So something like Boulder Canyon in your list above will still need the individual crags, etc.

I did not list ALL the crags in Boulder Canyon; only those affected by the reorg. I'll put together a complete Boulder Canyon hierarchy a little later.

Despite all the time Ron put into creating that mega-list, I strongly dislike that organization structure. I like having all the areas in the state listed under the state, even though the list is long.

It would be annoying to have to click on "boulder" every time I want to get to Eldo or Boulder Canyon area pages - and then to have to back up to "estes park" when I want to check out stuff at Lumpy.

Besides, things start getting grey: Calling RMNP an Estes Park area? There's the whole backside of the park. What about the Indian Peaks - probably closer to Boulder than Estes.

There are other ways to make things more concise. For example, consolidate the three South Platte areas into one. Keep the RMNP and Alpine (non-RMNP) as separate areas.

But someday, b/c colorado is such a huge, spread out state with so many tiny climbing areas (as is california), I think a clickable map of the state would ultimately be the most efficient, easy-to read method of navigating to areas.

Regarding your question of how to break up Redgarden: you could do it by separating it into it's major features (bulge wall & genesis area climbs, roof routes & lower ramp climbs, upper ramp climbs, west facing climbs, and miscellaneous climbs), but again I think it's great the way it is as one long list.

Josh Janes wrote:Despite all the time Ron put into creating that mega-list, I strongly dislike that organization structure. I like having all the areas in the state listed under the state, even though the list is long. It would be annoying to have to click on "boulder" every time I want to get to Eldo or Boulder Canyon area pages - and then to have to back up to "estes park" when I want to check out stuff at Lumpy. I think it's great the way it is as one long list.

I agree; you don't want to require multiple mouse clicks to select a new area in the state. However, if the "Other Areas Nearby" navigation menu showed all subareas, you could access each area with a single click. Or the navigation menu could show a "flattened" list in alphabetical order, which would look very much like the current menu.

Instead of putting RMNP and Indian Peaks under Estes Park (the nearest city), perhaps they should be in a separate Alpine Category: RMNP, Indian Peaks, Mt. Evans, Pike's Peak, ... Logical rather than geographical organization may be better here.

I like having areas grouped by region, but only if it doesn't make navigation more difficult.

I'm very excited to build a clickable map of all areas - but we'll need GPS coords for them all first (so we have to wait until we're live and the data is stable. There's a tool on the "Edit Area" page that lets you click a map to set the location, so hopefully it will be easy to set.

Ron Olsen wrote: Instead of putting RMNP and Indian Peaks under Estes Park (the nearest city), perhaps they should be in a separate Alpine Category: RMNP, Indian Peaks, Mt. Evans, Pike's Peak, ... Logical rather than geographical organization may be better here. I like having areas grouped by location, but this should only be done if it doesn't result in more clicks needed to navigate to any area in the state.

This is something we struggled with earlier this year on cb.com. If you remember in the RMNP area there were many routes that weren't in the park at all, such as Ellingwood Arete on Crestone Needle, etc. A Non-RMNP area was created for this. I think a general alpine area could work and I'll try to figure out a plan for it. However, as Josh mentioned earlier we need to be careful that by reorganising the Colorado site it doesn't end up having more clicks to get where you want to go.

The other way to do it is just to list everything alphabetically and have a long list of areas but fewer clicks to get there. Hopefully, over the next couple of weeks as more people come online to check out the site we will get a better feel of what people prefer.

Regarding areas such as Eldo and inparticular Redgarden wall, it could be broken into smaller areas, but I'm not sure whether it would help. Is there a reason why it needs to be broken into smaller areas if the first place?

re: Redgarden (and other big lists).... if you guys don't think it should be broken up, then I'll defer to you on that one. Personally, I find scrolling way down to find a link more annoying then one or two clicks - but that's me. Arguably, scrolling is just as much work as clicking - so that is something to think about as you layout the areas.

fyi - I live in Jackson Hole (yes, it WAS -33 here last week!), so I really can't help with the Colorado layout. You guys do what you think is right....

btw - you can play with moving stuff now (admins at least)... on any area or route (Edit -> Change Locations). Worth testing some...

When we're live, and you guys have a proposed layout, I might be able to whip up a web tool that'll make moving a large number of things a little easier.... so let me know when you get there. It could be painstakingly slow with the existing tool...

Andy

John McNamee wrote: This is something we struggled with earlier this year on cb.com. If you remember in the RMNP area there were many routes that weren't in the park at all, such as Ellingwood Arete on Crestone Needle, etc. A Non-RMNP area was created for this. I think a general alpine area could work and I'll try to figure out a plan for it.

I put together a proposal for Colorado Alpine areas in another topic.

I'd like to see things organized in a multi-level hierarchy, but still have single-click navigation to any node in the hierarchy. The problem with hiding lower levels of the hierarchy and requiring multiple clicks is that a user might not know where to look for a particular area.

Hopefully the wizards working on this site (Andy, Nick, Myke) can figure out how to do this!

One of the big problems with cb.com is that it's hard to figure out where routes are in relation to each other. That's why beta photos showing all routes on a crag and left-to-right lists of routes are so useful.

Breaking a big formation like Redgarden Wall into smaller areas would let people know which routes are close to which other routes without having to look it up in the printed guidebook to the area.

Another thought: Assign a "route number" for each route on the crag. Numbers are assigned in a left-to-right fashion. For complex crags, numbers could follow those in the refererence guidebook to the area.
Users could have the option of viewing routes in numerical (left-to-right) order, as they would appear in a printed guidebook. This could eliminate a lot of the confusion in figuring out where things are at a particular crag.

I think that the rocks should stay organized as rocks. To the beta user- one NOT necessarily familiar with the area, they will know the rocks by the name of the area, not by the name of the nearby town. Afterall, is Castle Rock Nederland, or Boulder?
Is Eldorado Canyon Boulder or Golden? Is RMNP AllensPark or Estes Park?

I'd loathe to try to organize by city- imagine the cross referencing.

Maybe a 'map' with numbered crags and cities on it would solve the whole problem. Set it up as a clicable sub feature to every area/state, and maybe zoom in/out features. Probably l;ots of work to draw the map, but once you have the graphic, the coding should be as easy as pie. Plus, it solves all of the above concerns.

Tony - I think organizing climbing areas by region can be useful to the visiting climber. If someone is planning a visit to Boulder or Colorado Springs, regional organization would make it easy to see which climbing areas are nearby. Perhaps a clickable map is the best idea of all.

Regarding Castle Rock and Eldorado Canyon, both are in the Boulder Area. Rocks stay organized as rocks. The hierarchy I'm proposing is

Colorado
Boulder Area
Boulder Canyon
Castle Rock
...
Eldorado Canyon
...

Colorado has lots of climbing areas; organizing them by region is useful (e.g. South Platte, Estes Park Area, San Luis Valley). This mirrors the organization of Colorado guidebooks: there are guidebooks to the South Platte, the Estes Park area, and the San Luis Valley.

Regional organization is done in Utah. climbingmoab.com became the Moab Area, and climbingsaltlake.com became the Wasatch Range and other areas close to Salt Lake City:

Utah
Moab Area
Climbing areas near Moab
Wasatch Range
Climbing areas in the Wasatch Range
St. George
Climbing areas near St. George
...

Regional organization will bring some order to the big list of Colorado climbing areas, and should not result in making the site more difficult to navigate.

Not that the reorginization in Utah makes any sense - considering Zion & the VRG are just as close to Vegas and SLC.

Clickable maps - like the one on chockstone.org - that's the ticket - super fast.

To test the geographic organisation concept I created some new "areas" and moved some of their respective rocks into them.

New areas are: Golden, Colorado Springs and Alpine.

Organization of something as amorphous as rocks in Colorado is tough.

Ron's list is a reasonable direction that could be chosen.

However, some things may be confusing. E.g. listing Castlewood Canyon under Colorado Springs? separating Big Thompson Canyon from Monastery but not listing Combat Rock? Lower Dream Canyon? Naturita? Ouray? Durango? Telluride? that area west of Grand Junction? Grey Rock? Pinecliffe & Coal Creek Canyon? Zebra Rock?

Also, as crags are found or miscellaneous ones don't fit under current categories, we get problems. E.g. Deville Rocks, Castle Mtn, Sheep Rock, Deer Mtn, MacGregor Slab, various roadside cliffs, etc.

Also, the distinction between "Alpine" and non-alpine is challenging.

We need to keep things flexible but findable without narrowing things down based upon perspective. We're still in the earlier stages of reorganization....

Hi Leo
Welcome aboard! Reorganising rocks is going to be a fairly big job so if we end up doing it we need to be sure we are doing it for the right reasons.

That being is it going to make rocks easier or harder to find, than currently on the current cb.com site? So far, there is only a few people commenting, so I really think we need some more feedback from the community before we decide to make a change or not.

Initially, I wasn't that keen on reorganising based on geographic location, prefering the current alphabetical listings. However, since spending a fair bit of time looking at the other sites and also looking at how mp.com works, I've come around and think it would work well. I have also done some work on what Ron has started and changed some of the locations, etc. For example I would not list Castlewood in Col Springs, since it is really located in Castle Rock. Eventually clickable maps would be a good way to go, but right now I think it is worth throwing these ideas around.

Once I've finished the list I'll post it up here for comments.

I'm going to be away most of the first two weeks of January, (Salt Lake) but I'll have a notebook with me and I'll log in from time to time, so I'm guessing that a lot of this stuff may not happen until after the change over to the new site on Jan 15.

Hopefully we can all get together in the new year for a few beers...

Cheers

John

Leo Paik wrote:Organization of something as amorphous as rocks in Colorado is tough. Ron's list is a reasonable direction that could be chosen. However, some things may be confusing. E.g. listing Castlewood Canyon under Colorado Springs? separating Big Thompson Canyon from Monastery but not listing Combat Rock? Lower Dream Canyon? Naturita? Ouray? Durango? Telluride? that area west of Grand Junction? Grey Rock? Pinecliffe & Coal Creek Canyon? Zebra Rock? Also, as crags are found or miscellaneous ones don't fit under current categories, we get problems. E.g. Deville Rocks, Castle Mtn, Sheep Rock, Deer Mtn, MacGregor Slab, various roadside cliffs, etc. Also, the distinction between "Alpine" and non-alpine is challenging. We need to keep things flexible but findable without narrowing things down based upon perspective. We're still in the earlier stages of reorganization....

Leo,

The above list is a first attempt at a reorg and certainly could use improvement; all suggestions are welcome.

As John mentions: Castlewood Canyon should be placed under Castle Rock, not Colorado Springs.

Regarding The Monastery, Deville Rocks, Combat Rock, Big Thompson Canyon, MacGregor Slab, etc.,
I've addressed the reorg of the Estes Park area in another topic: Colorado Route Info: Estes Park reorg

A simple way to handle Alpine/RMNP vs. non-Alpine (Estes Park):
If it's in Gillett's RMNP guidebook put it in Alpine/RMNP. If it's in Gillett's Estes Park Valley guidebook, put it in Estes Park.

Lower Dream Canyon is accessed from Boulder Canyon; I think it should be listed under Boulder Canyon. See Colorado Route Info: Boulder Canyon reorg

Regarding Naturita, Ouray, Durango, and Telluride: they should be included as separate geographic areas. The list I proposed above only included rock, not ice. Ice areas should be incorporated in their proper geographic location.

Pinecliffe, Coal Creek Canyon and Zebra Rock are included under Pinecliffe on cb.com. A reorg for mp.com:

Colorado
Coal Creek Canyon
Pinecliffe
Zebra Rock

I think the cb.com catch-all "Miscellaneous Crags" should be junked and each crag put into its proper geographic area.

Regarding the "hard to find" issue: Nothing is hard to find on mp.com; just Search for it. From anywhere on the site, you can find an area, rock, or route just by entering it in the Search box and clicking Search. Look at the results, and you're where you want to be with one more click of the mouse.

Geographic organization will not make things more difficult to find.

John, reorganization has pluses & minuses. Any new system takes some time to create, problem shoot, & learn. It'll take a while looking at this to figure out this new site's strengths & weaknesses.

Ron, I didn't mean to imply that you thought this was a final list. Obviously, it is not. Merely, I was saying it was a reasonable starting point. I did not intend to put you on the defensive. There are many ways to approach how to organize things.... No one way is right nor wrong.

Actually, many of those areas you mention are rock areas, not ice areas under this discussion. Ouray, Telluride, Naturita, Durango all have rock climbing. There is a dirth of information coming out of that part of the state. I just am amazed how much rock we are blessed to have within our state. More than a lifetime's worth for any individual, even Kor!

IMHO, miscellaneous is still very useful as many crags may initially start as something that does not fit under a current category. Things can be reorganized later once we have a chance to figure out how to better organize things. That way, there is less of a bottleneck because things don't fit. Not everyone will know or agree upon where each crag or route should go. In fact, quite a few entries have come in incorrectly initially but have become more useful as the organizing continues. E.g. much of the Lower Dream Canyon info came in that way and became more organized & useful with subsequent organization. Climbingboulder.com grew quite organically and amorphously into a very useful site.

Actually, things can be harder to find, for instance, if you are just searching but don't necessarily know specifically what you are looking for. I have had success finding information & beta with the pull down menus existing on the current pulldown menus without knowing in advance what I was looking for. Search functions help once you know some specific information about what you are looking for.... I'm not saying geographic organization is bad, it is a relative term....e.g. organizing Castlewood initially under Colorado Springs when it is an hour from there. Given there are so many Castle Rocks in the state of Colorado, that may not be as helpful as Denver or South Denver.

Leo Paik wrote: Actually, things can be harder to find, for instance, if you are just searching but don't necessarily know specifically what you are looking for. I have had success finding information & beta with the pull down menus existing on the current pulldown menus without knowing in advance what I was looking for. Search functions help once you know some specific information about what you are looking for....

I've addressed this issue in the "Table of Contents" thread: Table of Contents

Leo Paik wrote:Actually, many of those areas you mention are rock areas, not ice areas under this discussion. Ouray, Telluride, Naturita, Durango all have rock climbing. There is a dirth of information coming out of that part of the state. I just am amazed how much rock we are blessed to have within our state. More than a lifetime's worth for any individual, even Kor!

It's probably a good idea to add these towns as areas under Colorado, and provide a brief write-up about the climbing in that region. That may stimulate people to add climbing areas and routes to the database.

Leo Paik wrote:IMHO, miscellaneous is still very useful as many crags may initially start as something that does not fit under a current category. Things can be reorganized later once we have a chance to figure out how to better organize things. That way, there is less of a bottleneck because things don't fit. Not everyone will know or agree upon where each crag or route should go. In fact, quite a few entries have come in incorrectly initially but have become more useful as the organizing continues. E.g. much of the Lower Dream Canyon info came in that way and became more organized & useful with subsequent organization. Climbingboulder.com grew quite organically and amorphously into a very useful site.

It's OK to keep Miscellaneous Crags as a temporary holding place, but crags should be moved to their proper area as soon as possible. If there is no proper area, one should be created.

On cb.com, there are 13 crags in Miscellaneous, and they've been there a long time. The new structure on mp.com will make finding a proper home for a Miscellaneous crag a lot easier.

I rearranged the boulder region as a test to gather feedback, etc. Its just a rough outline to test the concept, and inparticular whether it makes navigation easier or harder.

I also did some work on the Estes area, and south platte.

John