Recently I headed out with my family for a day of rock climbing. As a fairly novice rock climber, I usually make sure to purchase a guide for the area I plan to climb. Then I just throw it in my equipment bag and reference it before starting the climb. On this particular trip, we arrived at the climbing area just after two guys from California. They started pulling out their climbing equipment and I wanted to check that we were in the right area. They confirmed it and so we parked the car. Next I pulled out my trusty guide book to determine where we should set our equipment to begin our climb. Our new friends from California took a peculiar interest in the book.
A lot of people rely on smartphones to provided directions to specific locations. Rock climbing is no exception. Unfortunately we all decided to climb someplace so remote, none of us had mobile phone reception. The guys from California drove to the correct location based off of stored GPS coordinates but didn't have the rest of the information needed to start the climb. They consulted my guide book and found a nice place to go so we would not interfere with each other. They also took a picture of the guide book page for the area in case they needed more help.
Smartphones and the ubiquitous Internet have really cut down on how much printed information we need on a daily basis. However every once and a while you may find that there is no substitute for paper. I am not sure what our new friends would have done had I not come along with my trusty guide book.
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