Ecopoint Climbing - The community platform
By Lena Müller
When I started to go climbing more by train and bike a few years ago, I kept running into difficulties. Be it in choosing the area, planning the journey or implementing bike transport on the train. Unfortunately, there was also no information on sustainable travel to climbing areas.
After Deniz Scheerer and I subsequently published the free climate-friendly climbing guide for Tyrol last year, which is based on our experiences with sustainable climbing in Innsbruck, I kept dreaming that information for climate-friendly climbing trips would also be freely available. This is because I have also repeatedly reached my limits during my vacation climbing trips. Out of these experiences the idea for the "Ecopoint" community platform was born. The Ecopoint concept expands the Red Point concept to include travel by fair means (such as public transportation, biking, or walking).
The Ecopoint platform
The idea of the community platform was to provide Ecopoint information on a freely accessible website where all climbers can contribute their Ecopoint knowledge. The Ecopoint platform is thus aimed both at climbers who want to learn about sustainable climbing but also at those who want to share their experiences to inspire and inform others to climb more sustainably.
The Ecopoint map
The Ecopoint community can contribute to the community platform in many ways: through sustainable climbing trips, helpful web links that make Ecopoint climbing easier, Ecopoint movies, or even sustainable guidebooks. The heart of the community platform is in any case the Ecopoint climbing trips:
The website was founded by the non-profit association IG Klettern und Bergsport Allgäu e. V.. I am very happy that my dream of the Ecopoint community platform has come true and that I was allowed to implement the website together with IG Klettern. I hope that our project can contribute to promoting sustainable mobility in climbing.
A big thank you also goes to the climbing community for the positive feedback we have already received - it has made all the work all the more worthwhile! I am very excited to see how the website will continue to grow over the next weeks, months and years and how more and more Ecopoint trips, tips as well as inspirations will accumulate.
Many thanks to our supporters: the VAUDE Sport Albrecht von Dewitz Foundation, the German Alpine Club, Ortovox and Protect Our Winters Germany who made it possible that the website is available for free.
If you would like to support the project with a donation or share your Ecopoint knowledge, check out www.ecopointclimbing.com!
