In the 1996 guide this route was credited to DN Greenop, E Ivison, P Magoriam, 15th April 1961 with a note that “a similar line had been climbed in 1957 by AH Greenbank and P Moffatt”. In the 2014 guide the route has been credited to Greenbank and Moffatt. However, ‘similar’ is not the ‘same as’ and, as there does not seem to have been any new information come to light to support this change, the record should have been left alone. It should be changed back to as it was for future guides. This sort of thing seems to have resulted from the desire to cram the entire first ascent history of a climb into one line under the route heading. This has also has resulted in a total loss of the chronology of the first ascents. In my view, all future guides except the selected guide should revert to having a proper first ascents list, annotated as necessary.
Route Comment: Gargarin
Posted by: Stephen Reid, 09.08.2019
It is important to have a record and that cannot be properly fulfilled with the one line first ascent details under the route name. However, it does present problems, given the number of routes in some of the guidebook areas. For example, in the forthcoming Duddon Valley guide, there are 1250 routes, which in a dedicated section in the book could take 30 pages.
My feeling is that the first ascent notes should be on the FRCC website.
Hi John,
There are two major problems with “putting it all on the website” – a view often aired by others.
1. Who is going to do it, and who will maintain it? I take it you are not volunteering?!
2. What happens when there is a change of website provider and the first ascent pages get lost (as happened with so much stuff that was on the old website and mysteriously vanished when the shiny sparkly new one appeared).
The proper place for this stuff is printed in the guidebook, where it will always be accessible to anyone who wants to find it. If you took out all the individual first ascent details that currently go with the routes and put them back in a chronological list, then you would (with the extra lines here and there, as in the case with Gargarin) not have that many more pages in the guide than they would take up anyway. Maybe 10 or 15? A price well worth paying for preserving the history of our sport in my view.