Keeping Busy

With the Gym going strong, I've decided to dedicate some of my down time to typing, editing, and creating tops for a couple of guidebooks I've been working on for for the last few years. These were always side projects for me, and they still remain a nice way to engage my brain with somehting not related to my full-time work.

Of the four works in progress, the one I'd like to finsh before the end of 2011 is the first Climber's Guide to Indonesia. This guide will primarily focus on the climbing areas of Java and will be published in English.

This is one of the more difficult guides to research. Here in Indonesia, the current generation of climbers is heavily focused on Indonesia's National Climbing team and just makes do with what is available for outdoor climbing.  The previous generation climbed heavily and, like climbers in Europe and America, dedicated their time and life tot he sport they loved. A few even lived in their car while they traveled from one area to another. Unfortunately, very documentation was done on what routes they established, where they climbed, and what they did.

For the last year, I've focused heavily on tracking climbers who developed and established routes, but no-one seems to know who they are. I know that the majority of climbing development was done by foreign climbers either visiting Indonesia or living here for a few years as ex-pats.

One Japanese climber, whose name no-one seems to know, was largely responsible for a establishing a few hundred routes. Who knows, maybe someone reading this post will remember his name and I can track him down in Japan with some of my Japanese climbing friends.

With 30 to 40 emails coming my way a week asking me about climbing routes in various parts of Indoneisa, I have no doubt that this will be a useful climbing resource. One that hopefully will be updated once local and foreign climbers see how useful it is to share climbing information.

The other books are also related to climbing areas in South East Asia. Both should help climbers with hard to find information ralted to climbing in the region. More on those soon.