

Show HN: Are you a Climber? I made a site for you. - csytan
http://www.thrutched.com/

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bgraves
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.

~~~
MrMatt
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 :)

~~~
weaksauce
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.

~~~
MrMatt
I wasn't looking to threadjack here, but thanks for the feedback :) I'll have
a think about that - the app did originally just get climbs in your locality
from the web service, but I changed to the cache-only due to coverage
problems. I'll see if I can come up with a hybrid.

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csytan
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
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 :].

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yason
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?

~~~
bhickey
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.)

~~~
weaksauce
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.

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Bostwick
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.

~~~
csytan
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 :)

~~~
Bostwick
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.

~~~
csytan
I made some changes based on your suggestions.

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deutronium
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!

~~~
csytan
Cool, I'll check it out.

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iloveyouocean
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.

~~~
csytan
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.

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ccoop
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

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JonnieCache
I have a couple of climbing friends, link sent.

~~~
csytan
Thanks, appreciate it!

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

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

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amuresan
Good stuff, thanks!

