We are looking for one or two climbers who would like to be our sponsored climbing bums and create content for 27crags.com from the United States during the summer of 2010. The ideal candidate is an amusing blogger, self-starter, able to self-manage and has a lot of climbers as friends on facebook or as followers on twitter.

What we offer

A sponsored climbing bum is not an employee and will not receive a salary. Instead we pay a tax free expense allowance of $12 per day for travel expenses and $0.18 per kilometer driven by car. The total budget for the summer is about $1000 per person.

You may also be able to get other sponsors for the summer. Especially small businesses that provide accommodation and other services to climbers may be interested in supporting your work if you create good web content about their area.

What we expect

We expect our sponsored climbing bums to document the climbing areas they visit during the summer. The expected documentation consists of map markers and topos on 27crags.com and possibly blog posts to support the topos. (Creating topos on 27crags.com is really easy!) Additionally we expect our sponsored bums to frequently post to their personal blogs on 27crags.com.

To be a successful sponsored climbing bum you need your own car and possibly a tent. You also need a digital camera and a laptop computer with a mobile internet connection.

Your application

To apply, please create a user account on 27crags.com, write a blog post and create topos of a local crag or boulder area. Check out this screencast to get a quick introduction to how it works.

Please send your application by email to applications@27crags.com. The application should not contain more than 5 lines about education, work experience etc., but it should contain a link to your blog on 27crags.com, one or more links to topos you have created on 27crags.com and a preliminary schedule and budget for the summer.

The schedule is an important part of the application. It is a good idea to spend one to three weeks in each area. If the area is small and you know it well you may be able to create the topos in one week. For large and unfamiliar areas you need more time. Please include a list of crags and boulder sectors that you would document in each area.

If you know local climbers in the areas you plan to visit you get bonus points for mentioning your contacts in the application.

Climbing hard is not important, but if you have a public tick list on 27crags.com or on another website, please include a link to it.

The deadline

Please send your application before 20 May 2010. If you send your application earlier and then create more content on 27crags.com, please send us an update with links to the new content. It is not necessary to notify us about blog posts though. We'll be following your blog anyway. It is a good idea to share links to your blog posts on facebook and other websites. Attracting a large number of readers is a big advantage.