The Trouble with KAYA

 John Oungst, KAYA's Director of Partnerships for corporation Project 9a, didn't catch me at the best time.  Back in February of 2023 I was living out of my truck near Tucson, Arizona.  I was writing guidebooks on the road, having just finished my Rock Shop Wyoming bouldering guide four months before. 

I was working hard on my biggest book to date, Unaweep Bouldering Vol. 2.  

This was my life at the time because the Unaweep Vol.1 had done well enough to raise my expectations.  It was, and still is, my most successful guidebook.  It had a great opening run on Amazon, was stocked in the local Grand Junction gym and climbing stores including REI.  It did well enough to give me hope that maybe I could write enough books to survive on a combination of guidebook writing and my savings, living on the road until my teaching pensions kicked in.  Enough hope to try and find out.

John reaching out seemed like another opportunity to continue to do what I loved, and make some money while living the dream.  Our Zoom meeting made it all sound great!  I could continue to sell my print guidebooks, put my data up on KAYA for an up front payment, and continue to get a percentage of user fees in exchange for moderating user submissions each month.  A little money would go to the Western Colorado Climbers' Coalition, and everyone would be happy.

But then I received the CONTRIBUTION AGREEMENT.  Their lawyers had made it absolutely sure that Project 9a a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Boulder, CO held all the cards.  If any portion of the data I provided to Project 9a wasn't acceptable to them, they could terminate the agreement without paying me anything and keep the Reference Data including route names, gps coordinates, grade, and any other factual information describing the routes.  The agreement also asked me to waive my right to class action and right to trial by jury, and to state that I shall not take any action that would obligate or bind Project 9a in any manner, and on top of that a Confidentiality agreement which would forbid me from divulging the terms of my agreement with anyone.

I brought up my first concern with John.  He said of course they wouldn't steal my work.  Basically asking me to trust his word, while everything in the legal paperwork still gave them the legal right to do whatever they wanted.  I never signed the agreement, so I am allowed to share the terms I was offered.  This is what they proposed.

I was told that user data was analyzed to see how much time users spent accessing an area and their subscription fees would be divided accordingly.  KAYA would keep 60% of the revenue and I could choose the from the following revenue options:

Option 1: 40% revenue share, no cash upfront, for providing complete data on 2250 problems and moderating content monthly.  

Option 2: 30% revenue share, $500 cash upfront for providing data on 2250 problems and moderating content monthly.  

... continuing in this pattern until Option 5 which offered $2250 cash and 0% revenue share.

I was being asked to provide the name, grade, GPS coordinates, approach paths, available history, written descriptions, maps, and photographs with lines and subarea descriptions for 2250 problems for either a bet on what 40% of the future success of the KAYA Unaweep guide would be, or a $1 per problem payment with no future payments.  Just for context, some of the problems at Unaweep are isolated and a 40 minute hike, one way.  Sometimes a single problem took me multiple trips to find and photograph.  A drive from Grand Junction to Unaweep cost me $10.00 in gas every trip.   I generally needed to work 8 hours to get photos of 25 problems taken in the morning and draw lines and write descriptions for those problems during the afternoon.  I calculated that KAYA was offering me less than $2 an hour for my work, buying the right to keep most of it if I ever decided I didn't want to work with them anymore.  

So I said I wasn't interested in as friendly a way as I could, not wanting to burn any bridges.  John wrote back saying that "The inclusion of Unaweep and all other guides that are in flight right now will contribute to KAYA maintaining the best and highest fidelity data set for outdoor bouldering areas (and eventually sport climbing).... To be transparent with you, Unaweep is part of our Colorado expansion plan and we will likely push forward and seek other climbers/contractors to help collect the data for Unaweep... As mentioned at the start, we always seek to work with a guidebook author first, but if a guidebook author is not interested, we move on to other avenues and individuals to work with to collect the data,"  Basically showing that they will reach out to the guidebook author, but if the author doesn't like their terms KAYA will pay someone else to copy the guidebook onto their platform.  Because the only way the data can be available at a $1.00 per problem is to have someone take it from an already written guidebook.  

They aren't offering the guidebook author what it actually costs to collect the data in the first place.  They only offer the guidebook author the amount it would cost them to pay someone else to copy/rewrite the guidebook onto their platform.  Being the original guidebook author requires reaching out to first ascentionists, days of hiking, mapping and photographing all the lines, figuring out the best access, setting up meetings with land managers, and figuring out where to draw the problem lines based on written descriptions, personal climbing attempts, or Youtube videos.  Selling the books doesn't pay enough to actually make it worth it for the money alone, but by the time my Bouldering in the Wind River Range went out of print I'd collected about $8.00 per boulder problem documented.  Guidebook authors write books for a variety of reasons, profit isn't the largest reason.  Any job that pays minimum wage is almost guaranteed to provide more profit per hour than guidebook writing will.  But writing print guidebooks by yourself pays at least eight times better than doing it for KAYA, and that's even when you refuse to have ads in your guidebooks, like I do. 

Skip forward to a couple weeks ago.  Matthew De Santis contacted me to tell me he had recently partnered with KAYA and Zach Alexander to produce a digital guide for the Rock Shop. 

(Matt is a climber who I freely shared my unfinished Rock Shop guidebook with in 2020.  Zach is a climber I shared my unfinished guide with so that he could write a new print guide, but he left Lander without completing the project.)  

 Matthew said  the last thing he wanted was for me to feel ripped off for my hard work.  I got on my phone and a quick search brought me to the KAYA Rock Shop guidebook.  My daughter Sierra signed up for a trial subscription, so I could check it out the full version without sending KAYA money.  I found user submitted videos that stand start my favorite F.A. "Nexus" presented as legitimate ascents.  I found mapped lines, with descriptions, but lacking photos.  And I found a few things I liked about the guide. It was nice of them to copy all the F.A. information from my book so the climbers that found, cleaned or at least established the lines get the credit they deserve. They have a few new problems. They also mentioned my efforts and my physical book in the area introduction.  Honestly, their incomplete digital guide will probably help me sell more physical books.  But I still feel ripped off.  John Oungst said that KAYA always reaches out to the guidebook author first, but they didn't reach out to me this time.  They say a percentage of the profits go to the Central Wyoming Climbers Alliance, but they never contacted the Alliance to see if they approve of making the Rock Shop available on KAYA.  I confirmed this with CWCA leadership.

The Rock Shop is an area I helped to develop.  I kept track of what got done up there as it happened.  I waited 5 years to finish my guidebook due to the concerns of a local climber, and then camped there for two months in the Fall of 2022 to finish the guide.  I finished the guide because Zach Alexander had moved away, and no one thought he would be back to finish his guide.  If Chris Marley or Justin Iskra or Steve Bechtel wanted to write the next guidebook I would have happily handed the project to them, but they didn't seem interested. I wanted the lines and history to be remembered, I wanted to share the place with motivated boulderers, and I hoped to make a little money for a project that made sense for me to finish. 

Matthew De Santis doesn't want me to feel ripped off, Zach Alexander hasn't explained himself despite my reaching out twice.  But this experience has not left me feeling respected or appreciated.  I feel ripped off because my work was stolen. No one contacted me until the KAYA guidebook to the Rock Shop was already available, despite most of the information on the app coming from my efforts.  Getting my information through Zach is still taking my information.  And it's obvious to me that my new published guide was used in its creation. 

So where do we go from here? I imagine problematic scenarios and questions arise. Whose responsibility  is it to address area sanitation and access issues when information and promotion of an area is available from multiple sources?  Can Matt really get the area info taken down if problems arise, or did he sign the agreement banning him from binding Project 9a in any manner? Is he legally unable to disclose anything about what his agreement says?  

KAYA hopes to one day be "The guidebook for North American bouldering and sport climbing"  I understand the motivation to be a part of it.  Everyone likes quick, easy access to climbing information, but this venture capital-funded branch of Project 9a is unsustainable.  It only exists by profiting unfairly off of the work of others, and just because that can be done legally that doesn't make it right.  They aren't behaving well.  They sometimes don't seek permission from authors, and they don't accept "no" as an answer when they do.  They've got lawyers, and money (7.98 million in venture capital according to PitchBook), and they feel entitled to use any method necessary to grow their business.

I can't see a good end to this.  John Oungst, Austin Lee, Marc Bourguignon and Dave Gurman have created a parasitic business model.  It reduces the incentive to write new guidebooks, and it won't make the money venture capitalists hope for unless it can create a type of monopoly of climbing information.  If it does that, subscription rates will rise and the sport will be reliant on an unethical corporation.  If it can't do that, it will probably get sold to a sketchier business eventually, and your data will too.  The KAYA guides could easily disappear like the old online Dr.Topo and BoulderTopo.com guides did.  But I still have those guides, because I printed them.  That's not an option for KAYA guides. Subscription services can just disappear at any point. Where will the routes and history be found then?

There are troubles with KAYA.  They haven't behaved ethically or reasonably, and I don't think it's in the best interest of climbing or climbers to support them.  Think about what they do, and then think a little harder about how they do it, and what ends it will lead to.  Then avoid using KAYA.

I'm interested in reading your KAYA stories in the comments, and to talk more on this topic if you're interested, be it private conversation or for a podcast.  Please get in touch. 

Sad Fact: KAYA and Pocket Outdoor Media (which rebranded to Outside Inc. in 2021) both got a lot of their funding from Zone 5 Ventures.  Zone 5 Ventures helped Pocket Outdoor Media acquire Rock and Ice and Climbing magazines so they could be discontinued in print and turned into the current digital only (ad filled clickbait site) Climbing.com, and the same entity provided seed funding for KAYA.

Sad Fact: Outside Inc. also bought GAIA.gps.  Post-acquisition, subscription fees increased, and the app created default social profiles leading to a privacy backlash. New technical problems appeared too.   

Useful Vocabulary: "Enshittification" is the gradual decline in the quality of a product or service, particularly online platforms, as they shift from prioritizing user experience to maximizing profits.  Online platforms have a strong tendency to get worse over time.

A Tale of Two Expeditions, and my packing list.

 It's hard to convey what makes these adventures worth the time and effort.  To visit these places requires a Wind River Reservation fishing permit, a long windy drive up a potholed road, and a full day's effort with or without pack horses to get in, and another full day of hiking to get out.  Jesse made the trip from Seattle.  I drove up from Grand Junction, and we both did it twice.  We did it because it is worth it.  The exploratory aspect, the romance of heading into the mountains for days to see what you will find, the slightly hallucinatory effect that this much wilderness, nature, scale and solitude can have on you. The fun bouldering feels like an incredible bonus.  If you're interested in seeing my packing list for an expedition like this, I put it at the end of this post.

Cathedral Lake, Wyoming 2021

The trip was Jesse Brown's idea.  He wanted to do a horse packing bouldering trip into the Winds.  It wasn't a completely original idea.  Todd Skinner and crew bouldered around Mt. Hooker from a horse pack supported camp when they weren't busy climbing the big wall, and I'd paid a deposit for horse packing back in 2010 for a trip to the Cirque of the Boulders before the other developers backed out.  But this was the first horse packing trip with bouldering as its main pursuit, that actually happened, that I was aware of.

Jesse Brown psyched to hike in without a big pack!

Cathedral Lake was just below some incredible looking boulder fields on Google Earth, horse packers go there regularly, and it has established camping areas with a bear box.  The more the merrier with alpine bouldering, and having more people helps distribute the cost of the horses and wranglers.  

  

Regular Organic Pads fit on the horses well.

Jesse and I invited friends.  Josephine made the trip to see the Winds.  Andy made the trip to climb, but also to get photos.  Nick wanted first ascents.  I was excited to see new boulders and hopefully put up something cool.

Collin came in excited for all of it.

We hiked in, it started to rain.  We searched for blocks in the rain.  Boulders were plentiful, but not the quality we hoped for.  It was cold too.  We hung out by the fire when it wasn't actively raining, and sat in our tents when it was.

The next day started wet, but things dried out in the afternoon.  Nick went exploring early and found blocks to develop by himself at the base of Cathedral.  The rest of the crew got started on a nice set of blocks in a saddle just north of Cathedral that we called the "Badger Boulders." We actually saw a badger in them when we arrived.  We put up 7 problems, and I made this topo for them.

This was my favorite.

Then we hiked up valley, finding even better boulders and views!

We couldn't stop exploring, but I did take time to put up one line in this valley.  A V2 called "The Outlier."

Josephine was feeling wiped out by the hiking and altitude.  So she waited for us down valley while we explored.  We found her asleep on a rock when we returned.  I guess she wasn't that scared of the bears.

The next day was rainy.  So Nick, Andy, and Collin hiked out early.  They'd planned on 3 days of bouldering, but because of the weather only got one good afternoon.  

The next day was dry and Jesse, Josephine and I went back to the coolest block we saw up valley.  I put up this line, the highlight of my trip, and Jesse put up an exciting V3 up the left arete called "The Mountains are Calling"

The horses allowed us to pack in incredible food, which was nice, but expensive.  We paid $500-600 per person after tip.  Is it worth it?  It depends on how much you need to suffer to get $600 I guess.  My big pad wouldn't fit on the horses, so I still needed to carry a lot of weight myself.

Jesse went out for a hike on his own at the end of our Cathedral Lake trip.  That's when he discovered an amazing zone that became the focus of our next summer trip.

The Hemingways 2022 

Another horse pack supported trip organized by Jesse.  This time to a valley south of Cathedral Lake.  He invited his friend Greg, who brought his family for a bit of fishing and bouldering.

I decided to carry all my own gear and food in myself.  I wanted to see what I could do, and avoid the high  cost of horses.  My pack was heavy, but when I saw the valley and the boulders, the burden was worth it.

One key to making the expedition work, was my ultralight tent. I set up the tent, and then Jesse and I hiked our pads into the boulder field.

We hung the pads for the night.  No one else was in the entire valley, and they were safe from critters.

The next morning we hiked in, just carrying our day packs.

At first we were disappointed by the unexpectedly high amount of snow.  Many of the featured overhangs Jesse photographed on his hike the year before were buried.  We made the best of our situation, climbing some lines that might only be possible over snow landings.

The next day was a rest day.  I bathed in water warmed by the sun running over rock slabs.  Amazing!

The next climbing day I put up my favorite line of the trip.  It starts where it does because it's where I could reach the horizontal crack.  Traversing right, just to then traverse back left seemed silly, so I didn't.

Jesse put up a classic!

And I added one more interesting line.

Greg was surprised how good the boulders were.  He ditched his fishing to spend an afternoon developing this nice block with his daughter.  They did four good lines up this block V2-V4.

Jesse climbing "Dirty Sally" V2

I was surprised at how well my expedition bouldering system worked for a five day trip.  I've used it many times since.  Everything I needed, nothing I didn't.

In a plastic bear canister I put five days of food.  For me that's ten packets of instant oatmeal for breakfast, ten Starbucks Via instant coffee packets.  One package of hard cheese, one bag of crackers, 16 oz of beef jerky, peanut M&Ms, 8 cliff bars, and 5 freeze dried back packing dinners.

Two Nalgene water bottles, iodine tablets for water treatment.  

Day pack with climbing shoes, chalk, athletic tape, brushes

Puffy coat, hoody, one pair of pants, one pair of shorts, 2 t-shirts, 4 pairs of socks and underwear.  Camp Suds to do laundry and for bathing in a stream, toothbrush and paste, wag bags

Headlamp, Compass, Map, Rain Coat, Pocket Knife, Pen, Small Journal, Phone, Extra Battery and charging cord, Insect Repellent, head net, hat, sunscreen, backpacking stove, and one fuel canister, lighter, emergency matches.

Hiking Poles (required for the tent)

Gossamer Gear Tent called The One.

Inflatable sleeping pad

Ultralight plastic ground cloth

Down Sleeping Bag

Approach shoes

A couple cams and slings for hanging your pad.

Stuff everything into an Organic Backfourty Big Pad, and start hiking.

That's all you need for a five day bouldering expedition into the Winds.  

Thanks go out to Jesse and everyone who came along for making these trips happen!

Rocklands, South Africa 2021

 

I haven't been keeping up on this blog.  Have any climbers kept up with their blogs?  People are primarily still on Instagram, despite it being an inferior platform with inferior content.  Quantity over quality, delivered with no effort at all, just spilling out at us, like soft serve ice cream.  Anyway, I'll be blogging regularly again (in addition to posting on Instagram) and there's a lot to catch up on!  Starting with my trip to Rocklands, South Africa in 2021.

At this point I'd been divorced for a year.  My non-romantic adventure buddy, Josephine, had invited me on a trip to the Seychelles.  There were some big rocks to explore on the Seychelles, but it was a long way to fly for granite that could be amazing, but might not be.  I decided to make sure I'd get some amazing bouldering by adding a stop in Rocklands to my travel plans.  Then Covid restrictions made the trip to Seychelles from South Africa impossible.  So my Rocklands trip was extended to three weeks.

I'd wanted to visit Rocklands ever since Chuck Fryberger's film Specimen came out in 2006.  I had summers off, but I also had a wife, two daughters, two dogs and a job caretaking for a Quaker meetinghouse on the weekends.  So I couldn't figure out how to make it happen.  Fast forward to the summer of 2021. I could easily leave for three weeks, by myself, for just the price of one plane ticket.  I hadn't wanted or expected to be single, but I was, so I decided to make the best of it.

I wasn't worried about Covid, because I was fully vaccinated.  The idea of flying half way around the planet did bother me.  I know that climate change is real, and I don't want to contribute to it.  But as I flew over New York City at night, with it's miles and miles of millions of lights, and with cars streaming along arterial highways like red blood cells, it hit me hard that I couldn't do anything to stop climate change.  Even if the plane I was on crashed so everyone on it stopped contributing to climate change, that wouldn't slow down climate change by any measurable amount.   Seven billion people would just keep emitting carbon.  New technology or cataclysmic events are the only things that could help the planet stay stable at this point.  My flight to South Africa no longer felt significant as I saw the scale of human endeavor spread out before me.   The mountains make us feel insignificant in comparison to the nature world, but cities can show us even more clearly how small we really are.

Then I arrived at the Newark Airport and had to spend the next 48 hours there.  One missed flight due to an earlier flight delay to Denver.  And then a cancelled flight from Newark because the airport kept us on the runway too long so the pilots timed out.  The lines were so long, sometimes there was no one at the service desk.  I found out that United Airlines gives rich people a special hotline so they don't need to deal with this bullshit.  It made me upset about the world.

The line at 2 AM after a cancelled flight in the Newark airport.

I had to spend a full night trying to sleep in an airport intentionally designed to keep anyone from lying down.

I was so worked.  I recommend avoiding the Newark Airport.

After 3 days of travel I landed in Cape Town and the world was bright again.  I rented a car, got to my place in a de Pakhuys guest house, and accidentally slept in until the late afternoon.

I expected a wild Rocklands landscape like the opening shot of this post.  What I woke up to was a bouldering resort.

I set my cheap rental pad under the first good boulder I saw.  It's called Poison Dwarf.  You can rent cheap pads, or if you get to know people you can grab pads from your country's storage area.  Ask around.

The sun set quickly, but luckily other climbers brought lights.

The quartzite at Rocklands is so climbable!  This one medium sized block has eleven steep problems on it.  And the stone is so solid.  Everything I tried was high quality fun!

I went back to my guest house and posted to Instagram.  

A few minutes later I got a message from Graham "You here?!?!? Lezzzz rage!"

I couldn't believe my luck.  Not only was Graham at Rocklands, he had a full crew from Bishop along with him.  I went from traveling alone to being part of the crew!  Their psych and beta helped me climb some really fun lines!  And I supported the crew whenever I could.  Graham, Annie, Clarky, Ilah, Ian, and Lisa, the entire crew was great, and I was so psyched to get to know everyone.

Lisa climbing a line out an arch called "Sex Etiquette" 6C

A shot of me climbing the same line.

We had rainy rest days when I didn't get photos.  The flowers and waterfalls were beautiful when the sun came back out.

We all hung out a lot!  At South African barbecues called "braais" and in the sauna Nalle and Scott Noy built by the river.  Graham attempted to get good shots for my dating profile when I wore my shoes designed by Jason Mamoa.

We visited a lot of different zones and I got some photos I like. Here's Ilah climbing "The Roof is On Fire" 

Sometimes bouldering is like site seeing, Ulan Bator 7b+ is one of the most beautiful lines ever!

Another highlight of the trip was climbing with Nalle.  Nalle put up the hardest boulder problem in the world, the world's first V17, in 2016.  He's a legend, and he was developing entire sectors at Rocklands during the 2021 season.  

Nalle sending an interesting 7c.

I watched him put up this line.  He rapped and cleaned this line in ten minutes and climbed it in the next ten.  It's probably 7c+, but I'm not sure what he named it.

I wanted to learn from Nalle.  So I paid attention, and here are a few climbing related lessons I picked up.

- Think through boulder problems before getting on them to experiment.  Don't waste any energy.

- Heel hooks can be dynamic.  In some situations they can slide, in others they can be repositioned from a higher hand position.

- Support others early in the session and get to your thing at the end of the day.  Be patient.

While Nalle developed 7c+ and harder, I was happy with 7a+.

My favorite project was at the Fields of Joy.

It was 7b, and I managed to get it done on my last session of the trip.

I'm not going to explain everything I saw or did, because this is a climbing blog.  But seeing the baboons was incredible.  They climb so well and bark at you from the cliffs.  A part of nature telling you to go away.  I didn't listen.

The birds and deer, and new flowers you see there are all so interesting.  The people are kind, and seemed happy to me.  I recommend checking out the rock art areas, and giving yourself some time to see more of South Africa.  Neel's Cottage was also a great place to stay, with friendly owners at a lower price than de Pakhuis.  

That's all the advice I have for this post.  Make the trip happen!