Getting the most out of Mountain Project
Mountain Project (MP) is a great resource to have at your disposal. I wouldn’t recommend relying on it alone (it is crowd sourced and unverified, after all), but using it to supplement a guidebook can be extremely useful. Here’s a few ways of using data on Mountain Project you may not be aware of.
Checking a route’s recent ticks
An absence or presence of recent ticks can tell you if the weather is good enough to do a certain climb without you having to walk all the way out there. Maybe you’ll get some detailed rack beta or learn if your 60m rope is enough to rappel. While obviously not everyone will tick every route they climb, ticks can also give you an idea about how busy a particular climb has been, what time people are leaving the parking lot, how long the route takes people, detailed rack, rappel, or approach beta, and other things that people may not want to share in a comment. For those super obscure routes you could even message someone who recently ticked it to get the low down.
“Opinions” will allow you to see all ticks (with comments and dates), star and difficulty ratings, plus who has a route on their “to-do” list
Ticks can be a great source for rack suggestions or detailed move beta.
Checking a particular person’s ticks
Your ticks on MP are public by default. If that’s something you would like to change, you can make them private (your name, along with anything you write in your tick will be hidden, but the tick itself will still appear on route pages) If you know someone who writes particularly accurate and detailed rack, route, or rappel beta in their ticks, it can be useful to bookmark their page or export their ticks as a CSV file and open it in a spreadsheet application. You can then search through their ticks to see if they’ve done the route you’re thinking of trying.
Viewing all of someone’s ticks can be nice if you trust their opinions. You can also check their comments and forum posts if you’d like.
It’s kinda hard to search someone’s ticks on MP. Downloading a CSV file will make it much easier to search (though the formatting is somewhat strange),
Weather and “prime climbing season” of an area
Truth be told, I don’t know how MP calculates an area’s prime climbing season, but I suspect it’s just counting up the number of ticks each month. Regardless, this can give you an idea about when you want to visit a crag to get the best conditions (or when to avoid it to stay away from the crowds). This section of the area page also gives information about the average temperature, amount of precipitation, and number of days with precipitation.
Clicking on different months will give you weather data for that month. Not sure how “Prime Climbing Season” is determined, but I imagine it just is a tally of the ticks over the year.
Using the map and sun angles
On an area page, just above the weather information is a map. Clicking on it brings you to a larger map that has two notable features. For one, it shows you the sun angles at different times of year. Instead of just guessing when that the east-facing crag will get morning sun and evening shade, you can have a better picture of what time of day you’ll be able to climb at any particular wall. While this system does change with the seasons, it can’t account for things like surrounding topography, corners, or alcoves. Use it as a tool, not a rule. Ticks and comments are a great way to get more detailed sun/shade information.
Depending on location , you may also see yellow lines across the map. These are GPS tracks that people have uploaded to MP. Click on them to pull up information like length, vertical gain/loss, and a profile. Clicking “Full Details” will bring you to that track’s page where you can download the GPX file, see the submitter, and view comments. You can get to this page on your phone if you go through a web browser instead of the MP app, making it easy to download and then import into your favorite mapping app. These tracks are some of the more obscure parts of MP. They don’t get nearly the same amount of peer review as routes, so be cautious and certainly don’t trust them completely!
Slider, up top highlighted in yellow, allows you to see sun angles at different times of year. “Full Details” brings you to the page you can download the GPX file of a trail.
Profile and button to download GPX track. I suggest doing this on your phone through a web browser, not the app.
At the very top of an area page the GPS coordinates of the crag is listed. These are sometimes wrong, but they’re often right. Use them to import a pin into a mapping app, then use your mountain sense to see if the crag is actually there. After you verify the location you can use this data to get a weather forecast or plan an approach route.
Photos
After a few bad experiences where it didn’t work offline, I don’t trust downloading photos directly through the MP app on my phone. If I want a photo, I screenshot it. In addition to the photos of your objective, make sure you also check out the routes around it and the area page for more photos. You might find a crag overview or some other landmark that helps orient you to the crag and find your route faster.
The route finder
It’s wild how many people ask about routes of a particular grade in an area when MP already gives users the ability to search using many parameters. It’s even on the homepage! Changing the area can be a little difficult if you aren’t already familiar the crag, sub-area, larger area, and state organization. I find it easier to go to the area’s page, then enter the route finder from there. Personally, I prefer to sort by area, then popularity, but you do you.
