u/genuinemerchandise

I'm a bit of a GIS geek and also very keen on hunting down, exploring and documenting new boulders and crags. Up until now I've been using a combination of scouring bing maps for boulders (better imagery than google maps) to find potential boulders the heading out and recording everything in google maps (easier to pin things) whilst taking photos on my phone of all of the lovely rock I find but with zero way to actually link them to any of the points I've recorded.

I wanted something that would allow me to record all the various things I think about when developing and adding new routes to boulders and have it all in one convenient place where I can add new boulders/areas/routes and easily look up photos of the boulders, whether It's worth going back to them etc.

Introducing QField for documenting boulders/crags: Or a way to record new crags, boulders within them, routes on the boulders and photos of the boulders in one handy place. It's like Boolder but for youself, customisable and open source. It can theoretically be shared through the cloud between multiple persons, I've currently just got it set up locally on my phone for my own use. Took me a day or two to set up in QGIS desktop but theoretically all anyone else needs now is QField app and a copy of the files to get going in minutes,

If anyone would like to try this for themselves let me know and I'm more than happy to share my project with you and walk you through setting it up. Also open to constructive criticism and exuberant praise.

https://preview.redd.it/gca458uv7hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=a67e4c468fd7298a8a7ea99c3e946592c29013e7

Features:

Add crags - Including automatic counts of how many boulders and routes are in the crag currently. Simply draw a polygon around an area, name it then add boulders within that area.

https://preview.redd.it/3yvnftqx6hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=148c1094209dfa345f6df5bf30b486f34a609276

Add boulders - Describe it, rate it, name it, add a photo of it (not tested yest but have used this feature for ecological surveying), add routes to it and automatically have it count how many are on it. For those developing, have you actually checked it out, did you just recce it, did you clean it, did you actually climb on it, is it worth coming back to? Add potential boulders you've spotted on walks, through satellite imagery etc and have them all logged in a sing convenient place to check them out.

https://preview.redd.it/6aysm3sb7hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=a5e29310153920dcfe303cb5f11f5ba535162a27

https://preview.redd.it/p6snpg787hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1be37cbe92c23b829cff1a27a416ce9af8eb008

https://preview.redd.it/x4eilzgq7hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=9227cd980e62eafa9a2072c6e2f49fd878c83628

Add new routes - Automatically updates with names of the crag and boulder you've added it to. Rate your routes, describe them, grade them and claim your place in history by recording your brilliant and better than other peoples FAs

https://preview.redd.it/5sq1799l7hah1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0c2cbe90b055e0fec25460d7082dd8c4dbae943

It can also be set up to record your tracks so you can map out access to crags accurately (haven't trialed yet). Useful for re-discovering faint deer trails or avoiding bogs that you ploughed your way through on the first visit etc.

Let me know what you think!