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Do you want to climb in the sun or shade?

Original Post
matt severini · · Salt Lake City, UT · Joined May 2013 · Points: 5

Hello MP community. I am sorry if this has been suggested before. I have done some searches and couldn’t find anything. This is my first real post on here, but I have been following along for a bit. I have spent a lot of time at camp in the morning on trips sorting through area and route descriptions (both in guide books and on mp) trying to find which ones will be in the sun or the shade depending on temperature. I feel like I am probably not the only one. So I was wondering:

Is there any chance we could create a searchable, sortable property on routes or areas that designates the direction they face? Does anyone else think this would be useful? I understand it would take a while to be populated. It is only a minor inconvenience as it is frequently (but far from universally) listed in the area description, but it would be so nice to be able to sort on. I also understand that occasionally there are multiple aspects to a crag or even a route which may pose some challenges. In my very limited experience however, that is more the exception rather than the rule, and we could find some way to handle it.

Edited to mention guide books.

FrankPS · · Atascadero, CA · Joined Nov 2009 · Points: 276

Many guidebooks have sun/shade info. MP is not an adequate substitute for a guidebook, although some people try to use it as one.

Eric Engberg · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Apr 2009 · Points: 0
FrankPS wrote:Many guidebooks have sun/shade info. MP is not an adequate substitute for a guidebook, although some people try to use it as one.
+1
matt severini · · Salt Lake City, UT · Joined May 2013 · Points: 5

Ok makes sense. I guess I have just gotten too used to having everything searchable in the internet age.

Ken Noyce · · Layton, UT · Joined Aug 2010 · Points: 2,648
matt severini wrote:Hello MP community. I am sorry if this has been suggested before. I have done some searches and couldn’t find anything. This is my first real post on here, but I have been following along for a bit. I have spent a lot of time at camp in the morning on trips sorting through area and route descriptions trying to find which ones will be in the sun or the shade depending on temperature. I feel like I am probably not the only one. So I was wondering: Is there any chance we could create a searchable sortable property on routes or areas that designates the direction they face? Does anyone else think this would be useful? I understand it would take a while to be populated. It is only a minor inconvenience as it is frequently (but far from universally) listed in the area description, but it would be so nice to be able to sort on. I also understand that occasionally there are multiple aspects to a crag or even a route which may pose some challenges. In my very limited experience however, that is more the exception rather than the rule, and we could find some way to handle it.
I agree with adding it, who cares if guidebooks have the info or not, it's a single entry into the MP database for each area. Easy to implement and would be extremely helpful.
Nathan D Johnson · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Mar 2013 · Points: 402
kennoyce wrote: I agree with adding it, who cares if guidebooks have the info or not, it's a single entry into the MP database for each area. Easy to implement and would be extremely helpful.
I agree.
Nick Wilder · · Boulder, CO · Joined Jan 2005 · Points: 4,098

We do plan on adding this. Any good ideas for what the data would show? It doesn't seem obvious to me. When cliffs are sunny is too dependent on season. Our best idea is:

Primary direction: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, etc. - check all that apply
AND
Is this area shaded (trees, etc) - checkbox on/off

Nick Stayner · · Wymont Kingdom · Joined Mar 2006 · Points: 2,315

Finding your crag on on Google Earth and then using the "sunlight across landscape" button along with the date/time slider will do exactly that. There are a lot of variables within a given crag, but it can give you a really good idea.

I agree it would be a useful feature. On many of the cragging routes I've added, I put that info in the "season" field and state "AM sun", "PM sun", "all day shade" etc... and let the user extrapolate what they will from it.

W L · · NEVADASTAN · Joined Mar 2010 · Points: 851

Definitely agree that aspect is more important of a factor than whether the route receives shade or not. Sun angle in Spring is quite different than fall...and winter far different from summer.

Eric LaRoche · · West Swanzey, NH · Joined Aug 2011 · Points: 25

If MP wants to improve and add some attributes they should check out the online guide for Red River Gorge. They have if it stays dry during rain, the concensus rating and quality with charts to show the distribution of the votes, they even include the angle of the climb which is awesome. redriverclimbing.com/RRCGui…

SteveF · · Fort Collins, CO · Joined Aug 2007 · Points: 32

I agree that predominant aspect would be better than sun/shade. One cool way to add this info could be an interactive compass rose with two dials that allow you to select the aspects covered. Then you could extract simple N, NE, etc from the compass rose for searching.

An alternative to having users submit this info manually would be to encourage mapping of walls in something like OpenStreetMap. Then aspect could be extracted easily and you'd have a nice map of the wall too.

I also like the shaded/ not shaded checkbox idea.

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

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