The Changelog: July 2025

Web:
Leaderboard added to Route stats ("Opinions") page for top 10 users with most ticks.

iOS:
New build (4.6.9) has been released on a 7-day rollout. This includes:

1. Fixed delete function for downloaded areas
2. Area updates available more frequently (approximately every week on Friday or Saturday)
3. Top photo (upper left photo) on a route card is now tappable for full screen

Hi Zander, 

Sharing my perspective on the new leaderboard feature. The leaderboard feature feels pretty out of touch with climbing culture. As a long-time climber who spends a lot of time with other climbers, I wouldn’t say that in my experience we share stats like the number of times we climb a route. In fact, repeating a route multiple times might mean it took several attempts to send it cleanly. I wouldn’t really want my name prominently displayed for every time I ticked an attempt on a certain route for instance.

Worse, beginner (or even experienced) climbers might start to think getting on the leaderboard is a “thing” and repeat routes for the sake of some contrived status—IMO—like being on a leaderboard. This could maybe negatively impact climbing areas, more rapidly polish the rock, lead people to hog routes, etc. Even worse, this new feature actually changes climbing culture down the line to be about repeating routes (??) to get on a leaderboard. (???)

I don’t see why a leaderboard would resonate with the climbing community or how it adds value to the site. I’m curious what MP’s thinking was behind this new feature? Do you have any insight to share about this decision?

Thanks!

Thanks for letting us know what’s happening, Zander.

I honestly cannot see what good can come out of having a top 10 leaderboard for each route. Like Erin above, I can think of a few negative outcomes from making that presented.

In terms of adding features, why not make public poll on MP?  Tick leaderboard vs “View All” thread view option…Hmmm, I wonder which one would win.  

Oh, in that screenshot, it shows a tick in the future (Dec 2025). Can that bug not be fixed?

Agree with the other posters. Pointless feature...unless I get MP points for appearing there. Nevermind, get rid of those too 

agree the "leaderboard" seems like a poor feature, on harder~ish sport routes all it does is show who is chuffing the most with the repeated lead fell/hung.

Hey Zander, 

Is adding GPS coordinates to individual climbs a new thing? Is there a way we can manually input GPS coordinates when posting areas/subareas too instead of having to find it on a map as well?

I've updated my chrome extension, Mountain Project Stats Enhanced, to remove the leaderboard from the stats page for people (like myself) who don't find it super valuable. The extension also adds dates and sorting to the other tables on that page.

Thanks everyone. We're reconsidering the Leaderboard feature. It was on a list of suggested improvements under the goal of "better beta" by showing the folks who are the most familiar with a given route, based on Ticks, so that users have an idea of who to reach out to or whose Ticks to look for. It went out with a few other changes so we didn't consider some of the consequences you all shared. Really appreciate the quick feedback. 

@Tal yes, Admins asked for the ability to input coordinates manually for routes and we're looking into doing the same for areas. 

If you do decide to keep the leaderboard, then I think fell/hung should be excluded and private users should be excluded as well. Honestly top ropes should probably be excluded too, but I don’t know how to deal with routes that are top rope only. Maybe it’s time to add a selector for top roping and following that specifies if you hung or climbed free? 

I don’t think it’s most useful feature but I also don’t hate it either. I kind of doubt that many people will try to climb a route more to show up on the leaderboard. I assume many people probably only use the app and will never see it anyways.

Zander Göpfertwrote:

Thanks everyone. We're reconsidering the Leaderboard feature. It was on a list of suggested improvements under the goal of "better beta" by showing the folks who are the most familiar with a given route, based on Ticks, so that users have an idea of who to reach out to or whose Ticks to look for. 

Perhaps this functionality you're looking for can still be achieved in a better form factor.

Imagine a panel on an area page called "Friendly faces" or "climbers who frequent this area". Users that appear should be top contributors to routes (thus capturing route developers) and users with a high volume of ticks on many routes (rather than many ticks on one route), both should factor in recency to avoid highlighting someone who moved to Ohio 3 years ago. Don't give users visible "points" or a ranking. Just alphabetically show the top users. Make this an opt-in feature for users to appear in, so random people don't start messaging other random people just because they're active at a crag. If enough of the top users don't opt-in, just scrap the panel for that area instead of highlighting users with few ticks.

Or maybe this idea sucks i dunno. I thought of it on the toilet. I think it better solves the problem you built Leaderboard for. IMO I do not see a use for the Leaderboard. Though I don't think it will lead to fire and brimstone falling from the sky.

I agree with the posters above that the leader board creates more negatives than positives. I hope it gets canned.. I think we have to be more aware of overly funneling people  more and more into a select group of popular climbs and areas that are already getting overused and polished to hell. Encouraging people to do laps to get social media points is not going to help our areas or climbing culture.

As one who lives in an area with soft rock, many visiting climbers, and quite a few locals, the thought of focussing traffic on sacrificial routes for any reason, much less for social media prestige, saddens me. Please make this ill-conceived leaderboard idea go away. 

Thanks for the discussion and feedback on the Tick Leaderboard, we decided to roll it back. Check out the other updates and changes in the August Changelog post.