For a long time for me, it was 'Over the Moors'. A whole book full of wild, esoteric locations, and all of them on the doorstep of my childhood home on the edge of the Peak.
Now however, a new challenger has stepped up:
https://www.panico.de/longlines.html
'Longlines: Die ganz großen Klettereien der Nördlichen Kalkalpen'
'Long Lines: The biggest routes of the Northern Limestone Alps.'
This book is an absolute work of art. It's A4 size, with 40 routes included. Each route has three pages dedicated to it: A full size photo topo, a fabulously detailed drawn topo with information on each individual pitch, and then another full page with a full write up of the whole route including approach, descent and pitch descriptions.
Each route is over 500m long with minimum 20 pitches and go as far as 1800m and 53 pitches.
I think it's the most inspiring thing I've ever read.
What are your top guidebooks?
Rolando Garibotti El Chalten guidebook I reckon.
Or The Roaches guide, just because it’s The Roaches guide.
The most useful and one of the nicest guidebooks I've had is the lake district rock red selective guide. It has never left me lost (despite my companions' best efforts) and taken me on more mini adventures than any other single guide outside my local area. It's modest in size and quietly utilitarian rather than inspirational but very effective.
Nick White's 1995 South Devon and Dartmoor guide. Pure esoteric madness... The Hand of Power says it all.
The 1987 Llanberis slate guide by Paul Williams.
Welsh winter climbs by Malcolm Campbell and andy newton. A real sense of exploration and adventure with a foundation of solid straight descriptions. A gem
Long Lines is definitely cool, as is Markus Schwaiger's Zillertal series. (But is Long Lines really a guidebook? If you're going to count that then surely you also have to count things like Parois de Legende)
But by nomination goes to the 2011 Ground Up Slate.
My favourites are:
Over the Moors for the sheer romance of it all.
The Roaches (one with the yellow spine and Andy Popp's section on the Skyline)
Ian Peters North Devon and Cornwall for its spirit of adventure.
Tom Lepperts Ogwen; the ultimate in terse understatement.
A good guidebook is a thing of joy, that informs, educates and entertains. So while the Rockfax guides are supremely utilitarian, they are not on my list of favourites.
Some favourites:
- Rock Climbing in Scotland by Ken Howett. A really great guide covering both lowland and mountain crags. The midge ratings for crags is on the fine line between comedy and tragedy!
- Borrowdale (the old blue FRCC guide from 1978, edited by S. Clark). this was the first guide I ever bought - when I had tried climbing once on a CCF adventure training weekend at Capel Curig, but before I became a climber. It was a gateway into a new and undiscovered world.
- Mercantour Park (Maritime Alps) by Robin Collomb. A wonderful guide to a previously unknown area - covering walking, scrambling ans climbing. I think it is now out of print, but it is still available. One day (maybe when I retire) I'd love to write a new edition of it.
Steve
Ground Up Slate was a good un.
> Nick White's 1995 South Devon and Dartmoor guide. Pure esoteric madness... The Hand of Power says it all.
That and On Peak Rock are probably the only guides I've actually read.
> Long Lines is definitely cool, as is Markus Schwaiger's Zillertal series. (But is Long Lines really a guidebook? If you're going to count that then surely you also have to count things like Parois de Legende)
Yes, definitely! It's not a guidebook that you'd take with you, but I can't remember the last time I did that anyway. Photos and/or printed scans of specific pages. The important thing for me is that it a) inspires and b) give detailed information about routes - this does both!
Staffordshire Gritstone with the yellow spine , the finest guidebook ever.
Everyone's in for a treat once you get a copy of the new North York. Moors guide. It's a beauty.
The Stewart Wilson North of England guide. All the crags no one else wanted but a brilliantly eccentic guide to some curious places and still the only published guide to a few of them
How does it compare to the 2011 Ground Up Slate Guide?
Boulder Britain by a country mile.
The crag intro to rubicon is worth the price of the whole guide, but stuff like the bizarre inclusion of a slippery stream bed in North wales for absolutely no conceivable reason just gives it so much character.
Missed a big trick in not including windmore end, being right on the a66, and the best crag in Northern Europe.
If we're allowing ones like Long Lines, then Rebuffat's Mont Blanc Massif guide. If not, the 1989 Yorkshire Grit guide.
> windmore end, being right on the a66, and the best crag in Northern Europe.
...always wondered about that place but have never made the detour...
Massive fan of Philippe Batoux's Mont Blanc guide too. Spent hours pouring over that one.
> Boulder Britain by a country mile.
> Missed a big trick in not including windmore end, being right on the a66, and the best crag in Northern Europe.
Tell me you're not being serious?
Kama Sutra
I got Longlines earlier this year and was so inspired I spent two weeks in Austria this summer with the intention of using it - unfortunately the weather had different ideas; so instead I spent two weeks getting wet in various campsites imagining how fantastic the routes must be!!
Agree. Welsh Winter Climbs is a little gem. A good read on a mild, damp, dreary December evening.
> Tell me you're not being serious?
No, I'm not. But a summer evening on those crimpy highball walls with the crag to myself and the stunning views across the Eden Valley is hard to beat.
Rock climbing yosemite valley, 750 best free climbs by Eric Sloan.
My first one "South East England" reprint of the 1956 guidebook in 1960 and Edited by Wilfred Noyce. Covers most of the main SS outcrops and is full of fascinating history of the early pioneers' ascents on these rocks.
Some delightful advice/instructions like "Rubbers, or kletterschuhe, are the only suitable foot gear, and nailed boots should never be worn", "No special clothing is required, although it is observed that climbers on these outcrops are divided into those wearing the oldest of clothes and those having near immaculate flannels with crease still intact,,,". The hardest climbs at the time were routes like Slim Finger Crack 5c, Edwards Effort 5c, Birchenden Wall 5c, South West Corner (NL), and Unclimbed Wall (NL). With the exception of the NLs, ie "Not Led" most of the hard routes had been soloed or led (ie the same as solo due to lack of protection)
Big emphasis on crack/chimney climbing, particularly at High Rocks.
Lots of good black and white photos in which the lack of erosion, and rope grooves is very striking.
I'll second Over the Moors. Being my 'local' climbing area it doesn't help tame the image of the wild, bleak nature of the hills I call home.. but rather makes them all the more intriguing. I think that I've thumbed it's pages that often that know every route in it, barely need to carry it to the crag any more. Best part is, it's not even mine
BMC Froggatt guide 1978. I’ve got it here as I type, now with a very faded yellow cover, but I don’t think it was that colour when I bought it. It’s got a sticker inside saying ‘supplied by Don Morrison Mountain Sports Specialists, London rd Sheffield’. I got it with a pair of EBs while I was still using a borrowed Whillans harness in 1979.
it was full of the things that dreams are made of and was (and I suspect will remain), the only guide I got near to ticking everything.
> Rolando Garibotti El Chalten guidebook I reckon.
Good shout.
I also particularly liked Michel Piola 's first mont blanc topo guide and von kanels Swiss extrem.
> Nick White's 1995 South Devon and Dartmoor guide. Pure esoteric madness... The Hand of Power says it all.
Not to mention the route descriptions in Hebrew, the terrifying pic of someone jumping off the bantham hand and the entire ladram bay section (there's a reason you haven't heard of it!)
> This book is an absolute work of art. It's A4 size, with 40 routes included. Each route has three pages dedicated to it: A full size photo topo, a fabulously detailed drawn topo with information on each individual pitch, and then another full page with a full write up of the whole route including approach, descent and pitch descriptions.
Hi, how many routes in the lower grades Mischa? I mean proper punting UIAA VI and below
Best guidebook or best read?
For the latter, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Steve Ashton's North Wales 100 Classic Climbs. His route description are unsurpassed!
Other great reads are:
Nick Dixon's Cloggy guide. The Indian Face description is often mentioned but here are many other gems.
CC 1926 Snowdon and Beddgelert guide, with memorable descriptions of routes like Lockwood's Chimney
The introduction to Laycock's 1913 Some Gritstone Climbs.
As regards the former and the functionality as guidebooks at the crag or on the mountain, personal favourites are:
Hamish ManInnes and Iain Clough's 1969 Winter climbs Ben Nevis and Glencoe. Parsimony incarnate. A world of classic routes in the slimmest of volumes.
On Peak Rock. The entire guide was worth buying if only for the wonderful crag selection table in the appendix.
Peak Gritstone East. The first (and best?) of the modern style of guides.
Ground Up North Wales Rock. A lifetime of climbing in an inspiring and compact volume.
Not loads. There's some but it's mostly V or harder. Hardest is 'Schrei aus Stein' in Gimpel in Tannheimer Tal - goes free at 7c although I believe it can be done with some aid at 6a+. Got that one (the free version) on the cards for next spring. 20 pitches!!
I would also recommend this guide. Excellent writing.
> Nick White's 1995 South Devon and Dartmoor guide. Pure esoteric madness... The Hand of Power says it all.
This!
> For a long time for me, it was 'Over the Moors'. A whole book full of wild, esoteric locations, and all of them on the doorstep of my childhood home on the edge of the Peak.
Probably a winner for me even though my copy has never been used in anger. I'd like to give credit to one of its antecedents, though, the 1965 Tony Howard Chew guide, the one which inspired my weekends from that time onwards. "A wet misty day at the Ravenstones" as a photo caption says it all and brings back a multitude of sensory memories.
Also we had a travelling library once a fortnight come to visit and for some reason there was a copy of Llanberis South on its shelves which I devoured in anticipation of my first ever trip into the mountains and I think my attachment to the Nose ( as opposed to the Three Cliffs ) dates from then.
And I'm surprised to see that no-one has mentioned Paul Nunn's Rock Climbing in the Peak. It may have been flawed in some ways but everyone had a copy and mine was used to the point of destruction. And I doubt there was ever a book which encouraged as much post-climbing-in-the-pub-debate.
Go, get it on the cards for next year! I spent a large part of the summers in 2013/14/15 up on those edges soloing and occasionally with a partner. It's wonderfully remote considering how easy it is to get too.
Best day was probably hiking up from Edale to Kinder Northern Edges to try Natural Born Chillers (E6 6a) on a shunt because I couldn't find a partner. I spent a couple of hours cleaning and working it, and just as I'd managed to do the necessary double lap that I required before leading a bold route, I saw climbers making their up the hill across from the pass.
Turned out the guy I asked for a belay had never caught a lead fall before. Not a problem, I tell him, just keep the rope close and hold on really tight. Thankfully he didn't have to, because I did.
These days I'd probably know better, but back then I never fell off anything anyway.
Picture here - I reckon he would have caught it. Only had one cam that fit the break properly so as you can imagine I placed it rather carefully!
https://www.ukclimbing.com/user/profile.php?id=173094#&gid=1&pid=2
> And I'm surprised to see that no-one has mentioned Paul Nunn's Rock Climbing in the Peak. It may have been flawed in some ways but everyone had a copy and mine was used to the point of destruction. And I doubt there was ever a book which encouraged as much post-climbing-in-the-pub-debate.
I still have the Death Guide. "Flawed" is a bit of an understatement!
Oh to be young again!
I'm sure most people would want at least two (preferably three) cams in that break. And the most well-seasoned of belayers. But thankfully you made it OK. Ultimately that's what matters most.
Mick
> it was full of the things that dreams are made of...
Paul, you've nailed it. This is the essence of a great guidebook.
Heartening to see so many favourites listed on this thread, in an age where many people simply want topos, preferably on their phones.
Was in the Count House a couple of years ago and, in the evenings, most people were sitting, quietly reading guidebooks. It seemed charmingly quaint. We were all over 60 though!
Mick
> For the latter, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Steve Ashton's North Wales 100 Classic Climbs. His route description are unsurpassed!
Totally agree, and indeed I would add Snowdonia Scrambles (no-one said it had to be pure climbing, did they?).
Between Steve Ashton, Paul Williams, and John Barry you get the best of walking, climbing and mountaineering all year round in 4 small guides that together open up near-infinite possibilities. Happy days!
b
There's also Steve Ashton's walking books which have some brilliant writing in. There's a bit in Ridges of Snowdonia where he describes the end of a full traverse of the Rhinogau finishing in the dark and getting lost in gardens in Barmouth. The final two paragraphs here are great:
https://tinyurl.com/u5z98oo
Also, either that book or his hillwalking one has a section on Cadair Idris that starts with a bizarre vision/poem/stream of consciousness. I can't find it online but it begins something like: "I see the boychild looking through the Idris Gate..."
I don't have either book to hand to check but it's just brilliantly strange.
I suspect I would want the same, right now. At the time though I was very much in the habit of not falling off ever, so the rope made very little difference. I wasn't really conscious of this though, and around the time it became apparent - onsight soloing E5 and headpointing E7 with basically no gear - I realised it was an ultimately self-destructive choice and distanced myself somewhat from bold climbing.
It always sneaks back though... Usually in the mountains, many metres above the last placement. Something in the brain just shifts into a different gear, and the rope becomes nothing more than an accomplice to the act until the next placement appears.
Funny how that works.
Sometimes in those moments you seem to live more intensely that you could have ever imagined. And they can stay in your memory forever. But it's a tricky balancing act - in every way!
Mick
Pause and Tubbesing's Zuercher Hausberge kept me very happy for a few years in the early to mid 90s.
South West Climbs
Pat Littlejohn
With the groovy font for the title. Lots to inspire and aspire to, maps and photos to actually find the climbs and descriptions which both intrigue and intimidate.
Since its purchase I now live in Torbay and wonder what influence it has had on my life.
Chris
Ha! Keith Ashton's finest hour seconding Sam up that - or so he told me.
The old 1970s Lancashire guide and Yorkshire Limestone guides inspired me to get out and explore but the guidebooks I probably loved most weren't climbing guides at all. I got 'Pennine Underground' by Norman Thornber and subsequently all the various incarnations of 'Northern Caves' as they became available. With each new edition from the early 1970s onwards it was possible to plot the ongoing exploration of the caves of the Dales and other areas then go forth, explore them and fantasise about finding even more.
On a different note - what about the best guidebook REVIEW I've ever read? I can't remember now where I saw it but it was by Phil Kelly (probably) about one of the Lancashire guides of the 1980s and had me wetting myself (laughing). If anyone could reproduce it it would be good to see again.
If we are allowed caving guides than Mendip Underground latest edition (5?) is great.
That's kind of you, Tom. 54 years ago now! The only guidebook crags in Chew before then were Wimberry, Dovies Edge and Quarry (Waterfall route), and Ravenstones. And the teenage Rimmon lads and lasses had it all almost to themselves!
> Nick White's 1995 South Devon and Dartmoor guide. Pure esoteric madness... The Hand of Power says it all.
+1 such a great whacky guide!
Totally agree - my Strava feed has the occasional ironic "I was having a slight problem with the light..." run as I blunder off something in pitch black darkness 30 years on from reading that! See also "the combined weight of Hebden Bridge School and their not inconsiderable packed lunch" not troubling the Cantilever.
The Cadair section is page 151 on the link you sent, by the way - "I saw a boy child running through the avenue of trees, his long hair writhing in the wind like serpent tails". Thanks for reminding me!
b
Original Rockfax Lakes bouldering for me. Opened a world of wonder for me.
Re Tom Leppert's Ogwen guide, I had a minor epic soloing an obscure Diff using it and hitching home got picked up by a climber so had a rant about how top end climbers couldn't grade easy routes, "and the guidebook writer probably didn't even do it anyway". The reply was "I am the guidebook writer" (and he had done the route). Great guide (although the Mike Bailey one is even better). Still think that Diff has a 4b move on it though.
> The Cadair section is page 151 on the link you sent, by the way - "I saw a boy child running through the avenue of trees, his long hair writhing in the wind like serpent tails". Thanks for reminding me!
So it is! For some reason I thought it was at the start of the Cadair chapter. For those interested, revel in the sheer beautiful weirdness of this (starts after the blue line):
Martin Morans 4000 metre peaks in the Alps. An incredible piece of work.
Is there a list of the routes in Long Lines anywhere?
If you follow Mischa's link to the publisher and download the sample PDF there is a route list after the sample route...
Haha, guess grades were tougher then! The Yellow Slab was our introduction to Diff mountaineering.
Which route are you talking about?
I was expecting Pause to get a mention at some point, but not necessarily that particular one of his works. (Assuming it's the same Pause?)
Thanks for the link Mischa, I could do with a book like that to inspire me to get back into climbing again. I will have a think about what guidebooks I found inspiring.
The mid 90s Scottish winter climbs. It has inspired quarter of a century of adventures and is built to a size and standard which means it is still use able today.
Not sure about best, but three memorable and useful ones.
Rock Climbing in Wales by Ron James about 1970. Probably the forerunner of our current selected climbs guides. Actually just Snowdonia and Anglesey. Rather big format, full of pics of variable quality, useful tips and plenty of the original aid points(!). Esoteric modification of some grades.
Skye Scrambles, SMC, Noel Williams, current. Long introductory section with weather, geology etc. Great variety of strolls, walks, scrambles and even easier rock climbs, even a cave. Brilliant for anyone going to Skye occasionally and aiming at a particular level.
Current comprehensive CC Swanage ( and Isle of Wight) guide compiled by Scott Titt. Modern, good photodiagrams. Includes useful climbs and crags omitted by Rockfax.
> I was expecting Pause to get a mention at some point, but not necessarily that particular one of his works. (Assuming it's the same Pause?)
I mean Michael Pause the son? He and Tubbesing wrote the book that I used for so many weekends in my few years in Switzerland.
I also have one by his father Walter 'In Eis und Urgestein: 100 klassische Gipfeltouren in den Zentralalpen'. An absolutely lovely book, but I didn't get to it while I was there, except for a failed attempt on Gross Dussi, repeated a few years later when I returned.
Ah. I was thinking of Pause Snr's legendary Im Extremen Fels
Pinnacle Rib was just about my first multi pitch too,but I'd been forewarned about the Yellow Slab by Showell Styles's comment "If it was at the top of a pitch on Dinas Mot it would be VS". 4b I reckon.
The route I mentioned is Three Pitch Route on Gallt yr Ogof, still Diff in the current guide but with no description. I scribbled HS 4b in my copy of Leppert's guide but did it again in the 90s with less wibbling and reckoned S 4a. It's only a couple of moves but they're not easy.
If only I had that one, much less that I tried to get ticks from it while I was there.
> Original Rockfax Lakes bouldering for me. Opened a world of wonder for me.
Wonder why I got a dislike for this? Tell us why ya sad act.
Paul Ross's Borrowdale guide because it seemed so modern and different from the early FRCC guides. It had an iconic soft front cover which soon fell off but it was so modern and 60's and lots of pegs were mentioned. We all knew it would really piss off people like Allan Austin and FRCC establishment.
And two others that seemed different and radical when they came out. The first the Climbs in the Peak Chew Valley guide, mainly because of the action photographs which had never before appeared in guidebooks in the mid 60's. Tony Howard became an instant climbing superstar to two novice Rochdale 6th formers.
Slightly later, that blue flimsy Pete Crew guide to Gogarth. It was so minimalist and understated. On our first visit we did Boysen's Ampitheatre Wall and I've never been as scared in my life getting off the top of a route. I suppose it was produced very quickly because there had been considerable media hype in the mid 60's re this secret crag on Anglesey. There was very little info on how to get on and off the crag.
Allan Austin's 1966 FRCC Langdale guide. We'd been starved of info since the day I started in Feb 1965 thanks to the dilatory nature of the FRCC guide book publication system which had left us trying to source copies of the out of print and anyway woefully out of date 1950 guide book - I found mine (still have it) in the beck in White Ghyll, all wet and pulpy, but it dried out. A short time before publication we somehow got hold of a copy of a not for publication graded list of route names by Austin. I remember being mouth-wateringly intrigued to find out where these new routes were; Astra, Cascade, Arcturus, Golden Slipper, Gibli, Man of Straw, Poacher, Gandalf's Groove et al. Then Austin's little red book arrived and all was revealed. A revelation.
> My favourites are:
...
> The Roaches (one with the yellow spine and Andy Popp's section on the Skyline)
Ta very much.
I'm sure lots of people have a Roaches guide autographed by The King and Lord of the Roaches. He didn't give much choice, roaming along the crag foot brandishing a biro in one hand and the infamous axe in the other.
Was wandering around Bergzeit yesterday & noticed that Long Lines is only twenty euros - absolute bargain compared to normal Panico prices.
So now I have some holiday reading for Christmas week - thanks for the recommendation!
The '90s Glencoe guide. It means a lot to me, as I learned to climb there. The book is as much a high quality work of literacy as well as a comprehensive guide. I love Ken Crocket's section on the early history of the area and the introduction to Rannoch Wall is ingrained in my memory: "There can be few cliffs in the country that offer mid-grade climbs of such amazing verticality and exposure....."
Close second - "On Peak Rock". Again a great read as well as a useful guidebook, especially for the naive visitor from Glasgow!
Another vote for the Ground Up slate guide.
Going back a bit (for me), Bancroft's Recent Developments was a real bundle of fun, though it makes me laugh more now than it did then.
I'll second a vote for Recent Developments, the contents of which represented a fantastic hitlist for those active in the Peak in the late '70s, though it might also qualify as 'Guidebook with most undergraded routes' too.
The Staffordshire Grit guide from 1981 was pleasingly quirky too.
A bit different to the axe he was wielding at a climber at the foot of the Mincer that I witnessed in 1978. If the climber hadn’t untied, I dread to think what would have happened. A very unsavoury incident which left me very wary of the man!
I seem to remember a similar book on display at the Guides / OHM in Chamonix about ten years ago. Similar Routes around D / TD across the length of the alps, which included topo’s and general description. It was a hard back book with a maroon cover possibly in French. Not the extreme alpine rock book by Pause or the grand courses book
Does any one remember this book or have I just dreamt it up ?
And he gave me shit beta on Piece of Mind (still undone, well by me anyway).
Mick
He took us in for tea and cakes in the early seventies, but I think his wife was still around then.
> He took us in for tea and cakes in the early seventies, but I think his wife was still around then.
I would have thought it would have safer to take him on axe or no axe than risk a cup of tea.
Interestingly, he didn’t move in there until early 1978 after he bought the place at auction and was extremely antagonistic to climbers from the off: I was there two or three times a week and was often confronted by him. He later realised his mistake when he started to befriend climbers as the Peak Park became antagonistic towards him.
The best guidebook I've ever acquired for nothing on Christmas Eve is - as of today - Walter Pause's Ski Heil, die 100 Schönsten Skiabfahrten in den Alpen (The 100 best ski descents in the Alps) from 1961. Was sitting in a giveaway box next to the recycling bins at the end of my street.
I start ski lessons on the 4th, should have most of them ticked by Easter
You are probably right. I checked my dates and although I had climbed there in early 70's I'm not sure I met him then. I remember the threatening behaviour as late 70's when I was there more often. Maybe it wasn't him a bunch of us had tea with.
Night climbers... for me, if that’s allowed. Read a first edition (borrowed) in my first year where I could reach out of the window and touch one of the drainpipes used. Felt part of something for the first time in my adult life.
I have a first edition of the JM Archer Thomson guide to Lliwedd (gift from wife) and have thumbed through this loads of times.
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