WARNING: DO NOT TRUST DPM CLIMBING (new owners)

Although I’m telling you about DPM Climbing please do not go to DPM’s website – more (or sudden) traffic will make Google think it’s a good resource.

From 2011 to ~2017, DPM Climbing was a rad climbing site run by climbers. They had in-depth articles, helpful reviews, and a huge video section. Those owners have since moved on and do not own/run DPM anymore.

The old site is gone and the site is now full of gear recommendations that are beyond sketchy. They are so ridiculously bad it’s almost comical. If this was an April Fools site, it would continue to be funny. The humor ends when thinking about new climbers who could possibly believe this content is true.

The content on DPM Climbing now is misleading and dangerous.

Please do not go to the DPM site now (and we won’t link to it in this post) because Google will think you like the content because you’re visiting the site.

Instead, I’ll add some screenshots. Here are two frightening examples of their recommendation of “Best Climbing Rope”:

red underline and red text are my additions

More DPM Climbing Recommended Ropes:

I am fairly certain that the new owners do not understand the danger of their recommendations. It seems most likely that they did an Amazon search for “Climbing Gym Rope” and assumed all of the search results would be good for rock climbing.

In fact, one recommended rope has a con listed as: “There are concerns about its suitability for rock climbing.”

I don’t know what to do about the misinformation on this site.

I’ve debated for months what to do. I’ve reached out to other editors of prominent climbing magazines and blogs and nobody has had any suggestions on the best next steps.

Sadly, there is no contact information available on DPM’s website (all the contact links are broken or default placeholders) so I cannot reach out to the owner directly. I looked up the Whois information on the domain, but it’s private.

Andreas and I have both written comments on the new DPM site explaining why this content should be removed and/or replaced but our comments have likely never been read and/or they will never be approved for the public.

Since there is no internet police, I am not sure who to report this to, or if there is any way to have this content removed or changed.

I have been scared to post publicly about this (on this blog, or mountain project, or r/climbing), because I don’t want an influx of climbers going to see the new DPM site, which would move it up higher in Google’s traffic rankings.

I’ve thought, maybe if I just leave it alone, it’ll go away. Or I wonder: if the recommendations are so bad, is it possible anybody believes them?! But then I find old links to DPM, on this blog, and other sites. And it makes me scared that Google, and new climbers, could still believe DPM is reputable.

After talking to the editor of Alpinist magazine, I think it makes sense to give a warning to the climbing community. And maybe somebody else will have a better idea of what we can do, or somebody knows a friend of a friend that can get in contact with these new owners and let them know that their recommendations are absolutely dangerous.

If you have any ideas of what can be done to correct this, please comment below. Or, if you don’t want to publicly comment, contact us via WeighMyRack/contact (our email and phone are in the sidebar or you can use the contact form there).

Note: If you would like to see examples of actual climbing ropes, you can go to our site to see real dynamic rock climbing ropes here: weighmyrack.com/rope. Or you can use other trustworthy websites like Outdoor Gear Labs, The Gear Institute, Switchback Travel, and more.