Show HN: Are you a Climber? I made a site for you.

http://www.thrutched.com/

by csytan • 16 years ago

20 34 16 years ago

csytan8• 16 years ago

It's an community news site with some features borrowed from HN and StackOverflow. These are two sites I value for their high quality discussion, which I aim on bringing to the climbing community.

It runs on appengine and tornado: https://github.com/csytan/webnodes

egabrielova• 16 years ago

As a casual climber, I find this idea fascinating - the climbing community is both very social, and on an individual basis very invested in personal growth (a climb is often seen as a 'problem to solve', if you will).

When I first saw the site, I thought it was just a video aggregation tool and was confused as to why I would want to use it - signing in + reading the community values made your motive clear.

One valuable tool to any given climber is a "location tip" - e.g., where can I go climb when I am in such and such area. Is this area any good for climbing, or is it a mixed bag? What kind of rock am I dealing with? I think it might help to make this potential value more immediately obvious.

Will forward to climber friends :].

JonnieCache• 16 years ago

I have a couple of climbing friends, link sent.

csytan8• 16 years ago

Thanks, appreciate it!

deutronium• 16 years ago

Cool site, it would be nice to have a Google Map for each climb.

Also on http://www.lakesbloc.com (a site which focusses on Bouldering in the Lake District) they have guides showing various routes and their difficulty, something which would be really handy to have!

csytan8• 16 years ago

Cool, I'll check it out.

bgraves2• 16 years ago

I'm mostly a gym rat, but there's an excellent bouldering spot nearby. I'm not too interested in top-roping or lead climbing...it gets too expensive too quickly.

I know this is off-topic, but I've contemplated this question for years. Why aren't there better technology services/products for outdoor sports in general? I've attempted a few "adventure sport" themed projects, but they never seem to take off. I think there's a paradox between my love for technology and my love for the outdoors. I enjoy both immensely, but they don't go very well together.

Best of luck! I would be interested in hearing some stats (daily reach, submission stats, etc.) when you have them available.

csytan8• 16 years ago

Technology seems to be made for more technically inclined subjects before being brought to other areas.

For example, when I was an undergrad, math and CS subjects had great coverage on the internet (great wikipedia articles, downloadable pdfs), whereas Biology was much more spotty.

MrMatt5• 16 years ago

I second your experience in getting traction for outdoor sports apps/sites.

My own site, Bouldr, has had a bit of traction, but nothing significant, and monetizing seems to be a really tough problem in this field. Our FB page has > 17K fans, and there are a few thousand registered users on the site, but it's got to the stage that I'm not really sure if I should continue the app (I'm going to for the time being, but the thought of closing up has crossed my mind more often recently). Dr. Topo closed for similar reasons.

Anyhow, if you like, I'll Tweet and post on our FB page about your app - hopefully you'll have more success than me :)

weaksauce3• 16 years ago

Hello Matt, I assume you want some feedback on the app so I will give it here, if not you can disregard. My buddy showed my your app and it was at a stage where you had to download all the routes that you were interested in before hand on a computer. I think a really great thing about the iPhone is the discoverability of things while you are on the go. For instance we went to pirates cove in corona del mar on a whim and we didn't have all of the routes downloaded so we couldn't use the app as we really wanted to. I do like the aspect of caching the climbs so that when you are off the beaten path you can get to the saved ones without service. I really like the routes showing up on the screen with a picture and the actual line going up the face. That kind of beta helps a lot and it's easier to find the climb than a drawing of the face. On the website I do like the map aspect but I don't know if I like that as the main navigation. you might want to cultivate the areas a bit more like how mountainproject or rc.com does things. Cheers to your app and I hope that you find success with it! I love rock climbing and anything that brings some exposure to it is a good thing.

csytan8• 16 years ago

That would be awesome!

I checked out your site and I have some suggestions if you'd like:

- Organize by area instead of climb. Usually climbers will stay in one area for the whole day, so it'd be nice to have a list of boulder problems or routes that they can quickly access or print off.

- Seems like this could be a great way for new areas to be documented! Have you thought about lettings users enter more specific data? Things that climbers care about include: sport or trad, # of draws, grade, weather conditions, rope length required, etc.

Unfortunately I've got no advice for monetization, but since you are pretty far along already I wish you good luck and hope you'll keep at it!

bgraves2• 16 years ago

Bouldr is DEFINITELY one of the sites in the "Should be incredibly popular, but isn't" category. I'm a member and can't really figure out why it's not as popular as it should be.

Best of luck! Keep up the good work.

Bostwick2• 16 years ago

It's an interesting idea for a site, and, as a climber myself, I love seeing more of the climbing community brought online.

My main criticism is the design. It leaves much to be desired, and as a result I can't seem myself using this much right now.

Some advice: This might be better announced on the communities over at rockclimbing.com, climbing.com, 8a.nu, and the various climbing rags (dpm, rock&ice, urban climber). Have you announced thrutched.com on those forums?

It's good for a first iteration. I'm interested to see how you improve the design. I really like the idea of a climbing video aggregation site.

What I think would be both cool and a useful addition to the climbing community would be a replacement for 8a.nu that wouldn't look outdated in 1996 and allowed to you keep track of training as well as tick lists. Kind of a combination of crossfit's beyondthewhiteboard.com and 8a.nu.

On a a side note: I've seen climbing mentioned by a few others on HN. How many people here climb? I'm based in NYC right now, so I <3 the Gunks, and sometimes NH.

csytan8• 16 years ago

Thanks for the feedback Bostwick,

Is there a specific part of the design you would like to see improved? Yeah, I'm planning on announcing over on other forums too :)

Bostwick2• 16 years ago

The main complaint I have, and this is extremely vague, is that the design looks "amateur". It's minimalistic, but not because you've deliberately chosen to make it so, but rather, because you don't know what else to put on the page.

What I'd like to see would be: (1) a better header, and (2) some sort of sidebar explaining the site.

(1) The half-vignette at the top of the page is ruined by the placement of a blue logo in the line of focus. Lose the vignette, and expand the logo to fill the top of the page.

(2) A sidebar would serve the purpose of (a) explaining what the site is for, as it's not immediately clear from the domain name or scanning the page. I've been in the climbing community for ten years, and I have no idea what the slang "thrutched" is supposed to mean. You could also add a call to action like "Submit your climbing link!"

Finally, a pet peeve. Can you change "next page" to something else? It sounds too blog-like as it is.

That said, your site certainly looks a lot better than digg did in v1.

amuresan• 16 years ago

Good stuff, thanks!

Aegean• 16 years ago

large size of fonts are affecting how much you can see in a page with a single glance. I would keep them smaller.

iloveyouocean• 16 years ago

I assume you are familiar with videoclimb.com ?

So here is my take: There are already many climbing 'community' sites; everything from internationally to locally scoped. These sites feature discussion of all kinds from gear, safety, routes, videos, etc. Thrutched seems to be attempting to capture the niche of climbing videos. But here is my question: How can you talk about the videos w/o entering into discussions of other topics (safety, routes, etc)? I think you immediately enter a situation where, despite choosing a niche, you are judged against all the other larger, more established sites; and come out as lacking.

It seems like you need to rapidly build an active, dense seed community if Thrutched is to take-off and endure. But I dont know how you would go about doing that.

csytan8• 16 years ago

Yup I've heard of videoclimb.

You made me realize I've been posting way too many videos. I'll try to post most articles.

yason• 16 years ago

What is it with hackers and climbing? The relation pops up regularly.

Hackers and martial arts I get somehow, been training myself somewhat. But for some odd reason climbing is a total black spot for me. Does not grok. Can someone briefly explain what's the hacker appeal in that?

aplusbi• 16 years ago

I think hackers are attracted to outdoorsy sports, and non-team sports. Plus there is a lot of climbing gear to geek out about.

bhickey• 16 years ago

It isn't just "hacker types." In my experience most climbers I've met have been: programmers, engineers, biologists and doctors (sometimes a laywer will slip in.) There may be a selection bias here due to the fact that I began climbing in college and lived in Boston.

It's an extremely technical sport and the focus is on physical problem solving. Plus the rush is incredible...

(If anyone wants to climb in the UK/Europe, drop me a line. I can follow mildly hard and weaksauce lead.)

weaksauce3• 16 years ago

what lead...? I will have to keep you in mind if I travel to Europe.

Also, climbing does get expensive so the people that do it are the people that can afford it or are dirtbags just living in a van at camp 4. I do agree that those types are drawn to climbing though. I think it has a lot to do with the problem solving aspect of climbing.

rdouble• 16 years ago

Nerds are especially fond of sports where it's possible to make extensive spreadsheets comparing the quality and price of all the gear one has to buy in order to participate. There are endless variants of ropes, harnesses, carabiners, chalk pouches and other miscellany needed for climbing. Also, those creepy gorilla toe shoes inexplicably found on every third sysadmin can do double duty as climbing shoes.

MrMatt5• 16 years ago

I find climbing requires absolute concentration - it fills your consciousness to the point that you can only really think about the problem or route you're currently working, which is pleasant when it displaces all of the other things you've got in the back of your mind as a programmer.

I suppose this is a similar to developing a drinking problem, but far healthier.

weaksauce3• 16 years ago

There are a few reasons that I can think of off the top of my head.

1. Climbing is a mental sport. It's mostly overcoming your fear of falling and trying to figure out the most efficient way up the rock. Every climb is a "problem" and a lot of the climbs are not straight forward and require thought to the best way to do it.

2. More thinking. Getting into the trad climbing you are responsible for setting up your gear and making sure that it will hold in a fall. There are a lot of rules and best practices here so hackers tend to like this aspect.

3. A lot of hackers are looking for exercises that they can do and that is fun. If you look at stereotypes for hacker types there are two main ones that I can think of: tall and lanky, short and overweight. The short and overweight are at a distinct disadvantage in climbing but the tall and lanky are "built" for it.

4. Good way to meet people. Climbers tend to be an welcoming group(unless you go to a gym with a lot of gym rats but outdoors it's better usually.)

5. you get to geek out about the gear. marvel at the amazing simple but powerful design of the modern spring loaded camming systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device

6. I am sure I could think of more but those are a first pass approximation.

spuz• 16 years ago

Simple, hackers like solving problems and improving themselves. Climbing is nothing but solving problems and self-improvement with a massive adrenaline and endorphin high as reward.

maurits• 16 years ago

Simple :-)

As an alpine climber who spends at least 6 weeks a year being cold, wet and hungry, the coding I do the rest of the year, in a nice climate controlled room with ample food and coffee close by, is simply a holiday.

I feel climbing is mostly a mental game, where your mental aspirations meet your physical limitations. Also, life is simple, it revolves around sleeping-eating-climbing where the rhythm is only weather dependent. Not to different from the code-code-sleep-code-more pattern.

Without getting to serious, both require commitment.

ccoop• 16 years ago

Great stuff. Lots of people have commented on why more outdoor sites haven't taken off. I'd point you all to www.mountainproject.com

gergely• 16 years ago

I would love to subscribe to RSS feed but there aren't any :(

Show HN: Are you a Climber? I made a site for you.

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