THE GOALS OF THIS SITE

     10/10/2010: See text below for the story of how this began.  Since this sites inception the World Wide Web has gone through many changes.  More than ten years after the beginning, my plans have waivered a bit as life got in the way.  If my plan of attack had held, we would have thousands of pages instead of hundreds.  Work, worship and play seem to get in the way of the site thus additions and upgrades come slow.  If God leaves me on planet Earth for a bit longer, it will continue to slowly grow and improve.  Some pages are from my original attempts back in Y2K when web design software was not as intuitive and my abilities were less than inadequate.  I am still behind the learning curve so my site is going to remain simple.  If someone wants to jump in and help, I do have an extra set of keys to the joint.  The pay is low and the hours long but I do keep the dishes washed and toilet clean myself.

    4/15/2000: Over the past few years I have surfed the net looking for cool climbing websites.  Other than a couple of commercial sites that I have found entertaining the majority are quite boring.  Sites with very little content that is seldom updated seem to be what I find.  One of the exceptions is www.seclimbers.org where our new webmaster sleeps as little as I do.  Thanx Robert.  Look on my links page for other quality sites.

     Most important to me has been the poor representation of Southern climbing.  Whether it be the national climbing press or independent website designers, few have done much to showcase the true spirit of Southern climbers.  Everywhere I travel most people ask if we have any good rock climbing in the South and assume that there is no ice climbing.  We'll here it is, in your face, the finest region for climbing in the world. (Considering any big mountain craving you may have is as close as the Atlanta Airport)

    I started building this site on April 15, 2000.  It has evolved quickly but I have only touched the tip of the iceberg.  I have the photo collections of three avid Georgia climbers right now.  This includes photos from over half of the 50 classics.  Just wait for me to really get started on mountaineering, so many trips and so many summits.

    Presently I am less than 1/10th of the way through the archives in my possession.  After finishing these, other prolific Southern climbers have promised me their collections.  I also have hundreds of route topos to scan when time permits.  All photos will eventually be captioned, most areas will contain directions, some selected route info and most importantly an attempt at a historical record of Southern climbing.

    My true love is ice climbing, so that is what I am focusing on first although some days I just grab-bag in the pile for variety.  Eventually most of the United States will be included because I have the photos to support it.  New climbing content is added as time permits.  I will also be adding pages on most things that interest me.  I hope that my reloading page will become a technical masterpiece over time.  This project will probably encompass years of work so bear with me and please forward any suggestions, photos, corrections, or cool web features you may have.

     I keep coming up with new topics to add and it seems to be getting away from me.  While some of the sections have lots of content others are just getting off the ground and are place holders more than anything.  There are many other topics to be covered eventually so this deal will probably take the rest of my life.  I originally thought that I could do this site in 200 pages but have already exceeded that and have close to 2,000 planned in my current flow chart.  Feel free to send suggestions for new topics and content for existing pages.  

     In order to use this site you will need to have have Adobe Acrobat Reader  installed for .pdf files.  You must also have Java Script enabled to see my web addresses.  I have been forced to do this because so many web bots were finding my e-mail addresses and were spamming me terribly.   If you have a copy of Windows in which Mr. Gates screwed you and left Java out then follow the link below to install it on your machine.  I also have a link to install Acrobat Reader also.

     There are many folks to thank for helping with this site.  This is a list of folks off the top of my head and I apologize to anyone left out.  Jonathan Hollada, Peter Hajek, Greg Allen, Shannon Stegg, Tim Akins,  Erik Lennhoff, Oskar Nilsson, Markus Nilsson, Roger May, Jimmy Dodson and Robert Smith.

   All of the copy and photos on this website are copyrighted either by me or the folks that may have provided content for my use.  Duplication of any material contained on this site, without expressed written permission is not only uncool, it is a violation of law. 

Thanx,

Michael

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