recording climbs

Originally posted by Wild Bill
I need only 37 feet of vertical climbing to reach a milestone: Sometime today I'll reach and pass 10 miles or 52,800 feet of vertical climbing.

What benefits, other than tracking milestones such as Wild Bill's 10 miles of vertical climbing, can be had from recording information about your climbs?

I keep a log more to track problems that I encounter, record the location of excellent climbing trees, and to identify the species and unusual characteristics of trees I climb. I orginally added the amount of vertical climbing done on each climb about a year after I got into this sport (five years ago on the day after Thanksgiving), so I could have an idea of how much effort I was putting into it, and then my wonderful ego got the best of me and I kept adding to the running total. I have kept the logs on my home computer, with one for each year.

Some climbers have a form they fill out after every climb that includes all the same info, along with a lot of other stuff I don't bother with.

If I really, really want to get technical, I can do what's called a "tree map" for each tree I climb. That usually requires about a dozen ascents into the one tree, hauling up tape measures, compasses and things like that to get the exact height, distance and angle from the trunk of even the tiniest little suckers.

Gee, I could bore you to tears with those old freshman biology terms like "apical meristem."

Or, I could just climb the damned thing, hang out on a sweet limb for a long time in the autumn sunshine, and stare blankly out across the blue waters of the lake to the beautiful mountains a few miles farther north. In fact, that's exactly what I did after climbing those last 37 feet toward my 10 miles of vertical climbing. It was a great day...!

Congratulations, Bill! Ten miles of climbing--quite an accomplishment!

By my reckoning, that's an average of about three climbs per week . . . probably not at all difficult for you, having seen the way you ascend.

I guess you'll be up to about 12 miles by the time I see you next year back here in Virginia; I'm looking forward to it!!

Again, congratulations.

Awesome accomplishment, Wild Bill, you deserve to brag a little!

I keep a log because I'm still a novice, and it is a good learning aid. Writing the entry after a climb is like a self-debriefing; it organizes your thinking and helps you to identify what you learned that day. For me, writing something down really improves the chances that I'll remember it, which is exactly what beginners need since they are constantly learning things to do or not do.

I always throw in stuff like what tree I climbed, what the weather was like, the rough altitude gained, the particular equipment used and how it performed, etc. When I go back and read my logbook, not only do I reinforce all the lessons learned, but each climb comes back to me in a much more vivid way than if I was relying on memory alone. Of course, I'm old and have a poor memory.....

I think that keeping a log is a great idea for anyone!

Brad