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Mike Bolte
Trad climber
Planet Earth
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May 25, 2011 - 11:32am PT
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Here are photos of some mentioned above plus a few more I always liked. "Squeezing the Lemon" - got to like the title. A guidebook to the artificial rocks at U Washington seemed a little crazy, but we used it to tick 'em off.
Used to be the only descriptions of the climbs in the meadows were private writeups and the routes in Ropers High Sierra Guide.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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May 25, 2011 - 12:23pm PT
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Maybe e.c. is ready to fess up the contents of Beckey's legendary little black book he found under Angel Wings?
i'm guessing it's full of dozens of phone numbers for octogenarian strippers.
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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May 25, 2011 - 12:34pm PT
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I finally got around to doing a full inventory. I tried to be as organized as I could about it. Took me 720 pages.
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MisterE
Social climber
Cinderella Story, Outa Nowhere
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May 25, 2011 - 12:58pm PT
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Nice work, Greg!
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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May 25, 2011 - 01:03pm PT
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anees,
you believe that BS in Bjornstad's books?
SUCKER!
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Tricouni
Mountain climber
Vancouver
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May 25, 2011 - 01:07pm PT
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The first edition of Beckey's 3-volume opus on the Caascades (1970s-1981).
Don Serl's Waddington guide (2003).
Dick Culbert's blue-covered Coast Mountains guide (1965).
All three were written by those with supreme knowledge of their areas, and all show the authors' passion and love of their areas.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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May 25, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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The only ones I consider even close to "legendary" are Beckey's Cascade Alpine Guide series. They are about as close to scholarly works as you'll get from a climbing guidebook with extensive geology sections and they cover a vast amount of a very hard to penetrate, much less document, range.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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May 25, 2011 - 01:14pm PT
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Ya hoo, Greg!
Desperate Grace for the Wasatch granite. The Ruckman's guide is pretty darn good, too.
Have enjoyed the New England ice guides. Always nice to have some history. From Shades of Blue to the third edition by Lewis and Wilcox.
Enjoy Selters Ways to the Sky too.
50 Favorites is fun. Despite the less than legendary shot or two of Donini in it (ha ha!). Climbing the wide with pride in the Ruth? That's pretty legendary, actually...(gives me a bit of a chill given the location and rock quality).
Climbers Guide to the Teton Range.
Dome Drivers Manual.
Etc.
Rubberfats 100 classics are great. All of them (only own the Ecrins and Mt. Blanc Range ones).
Desert Rock for sure.
Only briefly held Art Gran's guide to the Gunks but given what folks pay for it, must be "legendary"...
Dockin's Bozeman Rock.
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BrassNuts
Trad climber
Save your a_s, reach for the brass...
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May 25, 2011 - 01:29pm PT
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Monkey Man - Excellent work on your Guide to the Guides!!
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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May 25, 2011 - 01:54pm PT
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Richard Rossiter's Boulder Climbs North and Boulder Climbs South.
Kind of like the Old Testament and the New Testament--pretty much all you need to know.
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wbw
climber
'cross the great divide
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May 25, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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The Ortenberger guide to the Tetons, before his collaboration with Renny, taught me how to find a route by doing a little sniffing around. From those early days, I never once thought a guidebook should "deliver" me to the bottom of a route.
The Bjornstad Desert Rock guide was full of inaccuracies, but if you ever saw his file cabinet of info. from so many different people, that he used to write the book, you would understand why his book was so inconsistent. Eric gave us accurate beta on the Totem Pole, which we climbed before his book was published. I always thought his book was quirky because he would take a height measured in meters, and then convert it to a number of feet that seemed really random. This quirkiness is one of the reasons it is classic and memorable.
Rossiter's guides to Boulder made many of us feel like heros, as he inflated grades on climbs that until then, always had an old school rating.
Whether or not it's legendary, Brad Johnson's guide to the Cordillera Blanca has sure made climbing there a lot less confusing. On my first trip there, using a guidebook by a Scottish guy (David Sharman??) made me more confused than I would have been without. Of course, writing a guidebook to an area that complex and large-scale would be highly difficult.
Bob Kerry's guidebook to Backcountry Southern Arizona also helped de-mystify a highly complex area for which simply finding the route was guaranteed to be cruxy and adventurous.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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May 25, 2011 - 02:39pm PT
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Before Ortenberger's guide to the Tetons, there was
Mountain Climbing Guide to the Grand Tetons
by
Henry Coulter & Merrill F. Mclane
Published in 1947 by the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, this slight book provides a trip back in time to the 1930s and 1940s in America's most impressive mountain range. Does anyone else have a copy? I bought mine at Jenny Lake in 1955 just before joining a group of guys from the Princeton Mountaineering Club for an Ascent of Teewinot.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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May 25, 2011 - 02:54pm PT
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Ortenberger's Teton Guide perfectly illustrates one of my pet peeves with guidebooks. There is far too much history and that makes the book unwieldy. History is nice and guides should touch on it but a complete history of an area should be a book itself and not part of a guidebook.
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o-man
Trad climber
Paia,Maui,HI
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May 25, 2011 - 03:17pm PT
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Walt Frickie's "Guide to Rocky Mountain National Park" wasn't perfect but it was all we had back in the day. We never blamed "Frickies Fables" for our mis-adventures.
Olaf, "According to this we aren't even on Hallots Peak"
Buc " Give me that thing!"
Olaf,"This damn book has got us lost again!"
BUC,"It's a good route,so suggest we keep going!"
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Matt M
Trad climber
Alamo City
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May 25, 2011 - 03:32pm PT
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Ed Websters Guide to the White Mtns of NH. Old School classic
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wbw
climber
'cross the great divide
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May 25, 2011 - 03:37pm PT
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Donini, are you thinking of the Ortenberger/Jackson Tetons guide? My yellowish guide, which I bought in '81, is not particularly thick or for that matter, full of history. Pretty basic in the way he credits firsts, with perhaps a little history on the front end.
To hear about an older guide, from none other than Mr. John Gill himself, makes me realize what a noobie I am. Tip-o'-the-hat to you sir, for those problems of yours at Jenny Lake that always seemed so untouchable.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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May 25, 2011 - 03:38pm PT
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Jim Erickson...Rocky Heights.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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May 25, 2011 - 03:48pm PT
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Mountain Climbing Guide to the Grand Tetons
by Henry Coulter & Merrill F. Mclane...
Does anyone else have a copy?
Kinda like when folks refer to Zion as "Zions", calling them the "Grand Tetons" grates on me a tad. Now I know where that came from....ha ha...
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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May 25, 2011 - 05:17pm PT
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Bonney's field guide to the Wind Rivers. i think mine was an older version...
tell me, just how many guides do you have that describe the proper way to field dress a deer so you can stay in the mountains longer???
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Latitute 33
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May 25, 2011 - 05:47pm PT
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Before Ortenberger's guide to the Tetons, there was
Mountain Climbing Guide to the Grand Tetons
by
Henry Coulter & Merrill F. Mclane
Does anyone else have a copy?
Picked up a near mint copy a number of years ago. A cool little guide and one of the first real guidebooks to an area in North America.
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