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Filter map to exclude boulder problems?

Original Post
Chris and Freda · · Reno, NV · Joined Feb 2014 · Points: 66

We are planning a climbing trip this summer, so I was browsing the map to find climbing along our expected route. Unfortunately, with the thousands of boulder problems being entered into mountain project, it is impossible anymore to find climbing areas by browsing the map; I just get boulder after boulder after boulder.  Am I missing something? Is there a way to filter the map so we can find climbing?

The map has basically become useless for finding climbing due to all the bouldering entries.  Would it be possible to start a ‘Boulder Project’ - like the Hiking Project - to split out bouldering from climbing?  It seems that, ultimately, there will be far more bouldering problems documented than climbing, simply because boulders are everywhere.  It is already nearly impossible to find climbs among all the boulder entries; shortly it WILL be impossible to find climbs, turning ‘Mountain Project’ into ‘Boulder Project’ just by default. 

Nick Wilder · · Boulder, CO · Joined Jan 2005 · Points: 4,098

Actually we once had a "Road Trip Planner", which was basically the existing map, with a bunch of filters on top that would let you select Sport/Trad/Boulder and preferred difficulties and highlight matching areas.  It got almost no traffic and I decided not to re-build it when everything else got recoded in the last couple years.  Sorry!

For now, if you stay somewhat zoomed out, it should only show the larger climbing areas, which might help a little bit.  Not much, I know.

Caveman Y · · NO VA · Joined Nov 2017 · Points: 925

That would be a great feature, I have driven right past crags when climbing in states that I happen to visit because I couldn’t pick them out from the boulders 

Chris and Freda · · Reno, NV · Joined Feb 2014 · Points: 66
Nick Wilder wrote: Actually we once had a "Road Trip Planner", which was basically the existing map, with a bunch of filters on top that would let you select Sport/Trad/Boulder and preferred difficulties and highlight matching areas.  It got almost no traffic and I decided not to re-build it when everything else got recoded in the last couple years.  Sorry!

For now, if you stay somewhat zoomed out, it should only show the larger climbing areas, which might help a little bit.  Not much, I know.

As always, things change :). You were ahead of your time before, but perhaps something less sophisticated could be done fairly easily - just a simple include/exclude boulders checkbox on the existing map would be extremely useful. Actually, the entire ‘route search’ function really needs to be able to exclude boulders. This really wasn’t a problem until recently, but with so many boulder problems being posted, it is rapidly making both the search and the map nearly unusable for climbing. I would guess that folks looking for bouldering would also be delighted to be able to exclude climbing routes as they must be having the same difficulties finding just boulders. 

Ehren Stellrecht · · Onalaska, WI · Joined Apr 2017 · Points: 10

Including/excluding would be really helpful!  I'm sorry I never checked out the "Road Trip Planner" while it was available.  Filtering out boulder problems would be nice, but some other layers like difficulty, sport/trad, and so forth would be very welcome in my mind.  I think a height filter and pitch number in this AND in the route finder would be cool too.  Just an idea.

Ron Birk · · Boston, MA · Joined Sep 2009 · Points: 6,033

I would really like this too. Also when looking for recent routes. I see hundreds of boulder problems and hard to see the few trad routes I am actually interested in.

Matt Goodman · · Duluth, MN · Joined Sep 2013 · Points: 55
Nick Wilder wrote: Actually we once had a "Road Trip Planner", which was basically the existing map, with a bunch of filters on top that would let you select Sport/Trad/Boulder and preferred difficulties and highlight matching areas. It got almost no traffic and I decided not to re-build it when everything else got recoded in the last couple years. Sorry!

@Nick Wilder - please revisit this! In my opinion, this would be the most significant improvement to the UX that Mountain Project could make. 

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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