As some of you probably already know, I'm pretty much addicted to the climbing website
http://www.8a.nu/. It combines two of my favourite things; climbing and numbers. I like how it attempts quantify climbing by attaching a score to the routes you've climbed. It does a fairly good job I think, there are some things I would change like making trad climbs count more, not weighing onsighting quite so highly in routes, and eliminating onsighting all together from boulders. But despite this I think its a cool way of charting progress over time, and also making comparisons with friends. 8a.nu gets a lot of criticism for trying to rank climbers on a national and global scale, which is never going to be accurate since not all climbers are registered on 8a.nu, although it is getting more and more popular by the day. One of my goals for 2008 was to finish the year in ranked in the top 50 combined, but that didn't happen partially because I didn't improve my bouldering as much as I wanted, a lot of good new climbers joined, and already registered climbers like me improved their level. I think I finished the year in 86th, 1 spot ahead of Micah! As fun as this is to compare with other climbers I know its not really accurate. What I really like about the site (apart from their awesome database of crags and climbs) is being able to see the routes I've logged in the past. Now that I've had my scorecard for a few years its really cool to see my progress over time. Recently I retroactively added some routes and boulders to my scorecard (that I kept record of separately) from 2002 and 2003, before I started my scorecard so that I'd have a more representative trend over time graph.
Below are my trends for routes and bouldering.
ROUTES
I like how it shows a gradual constant improvement each year. This level of improvement is not really sustainable though. For example if I were to improve at the same rate I did from 2007 to 2008 withing three years I would be ranked above Adam Ondra #1 in the world. What I hope is that that I'm still be able to improve a little bit more in the next few years and maybe level out above the 10,000 level and stay around that level for a long long time. The reason I have the same points today as I did in 2008 is that I haven't logged any climbs in 2009 yet that would rank in my top 10, and none of my 2008 top-10 climbs have expired yet.
BOULDERS
The bouldering trend tells a much more interesting story I think. I shows a lot more variation from year to year, that I think reflect changes in my personal circumstances. For example my score goes way up in 2003, this was the year I started Uni at Stirling and had a lot more access to bouldering spots, Wolfcrag was walking distance and Dumbarton not too far away. Then in 2006 my score actually dips a bit. This was the year I moved to the US and climbed a lot more sport routes. I didn't have any local bouldering areas anymore and only got out bouldering 5 days at Squamish after I arrived at the US that year according to my scorecard. Then the following year we discovered Leavenworth bouldering, I spent a lot more time up at Squamish over the summer and made a trip down to Bishop and my score goes way up.
I think I've still got a lot of room for improvement when it comes to bouldering, but right now I would say I'm more excited for route climbing. I think if I keep trying to improve in bouldering in a few years I could definitely break the 8000 point barrier and maybe even 9000 points, but it really depends on personal circumstances where I live, how much time I have for climbing etc. Having a scorecard definitely feeds my excitement for climbing and improvement, but sometimes I do have to question whether I'm climbing for the fun of climbing, or just climbing for points?
The bouldering trend tells a much more interesting story I think. I shows a lot more variation from year to year, that I think reflect changes in my personal circumstances. For example my score goes way up in 2003, this was the year I started Uni at Stirling and had a lot more access to bouldering spots, Wolfcrag was walking distance and Dumbarton not too far away. Then in 2006 my score actually dips a bit. This was the year I moved to the US and climbed a lot more sport routes. I didn't have any local bouldering areas anymore and only got out bouldering 5 days at Squamish after I arrived at the US that year according to my scorecard. Then the following year we discovered Leavenworth bouldering, I spent a lot more time up at Squamish over the summer and made a trip down to Bishop and my score goes way up.