Crack climbing is a highly technical form of movement in which climbers position their hands, feet, and even their entire body in cracks to make upward progress on rock. An advocate for the sport’s aesthetic lines, physicality, and technical know-how, author Pete Whittaker teaches more than sixty Crack School Masterclasses each year and was featured in the popular climbing film Wide Boyz. This detailed and comprehensive guide teaches step-by-step techniques and tips, including for:
Jamming (finger, hand, fist, foot, arm, leg, body)
Crack types (chimneys, liebacks, underclings, roof cracks)
How to safely lead and place protection
Efficient positioning and movement
Strength recovery while climbing
(From Mountaineers Books website)
Contents
Preface
A Note
Before We Begin: Key Terms
Key to Illustrations
Chapter 1 - Five Rules of Crack Climbing
Chapter 2 - Finger Cracks
Chapter 3 - Hand Cracks
Chater 4 - Fist Cracks
Chapter 5 - Offwidth Cracks
Chapter 6 - Squeeze Chimneys
Chapter 7 - Chimneys
Chapter 8 - Stemming
Chapter 9 - Roof Cracks
Chapter 10 - Placing Gear
Chapter 11 - Equipment
Chapter 12 - Taping
Acknowledgements
Index
Notes
2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition Winner - Guidebook 2020 National Outdoor Book Awards Honorable Mention - Instructional
In Mark Synnott’s unique window on the ethos of climbing, his friend Alex Honnold’s astonishing free solo ascent of El Capitan’s 3,000 feet of sheer granite is the central act. When Honnold topped out at 9:28 A.M. on June 3, 2017, having spent fewer than four hours on his historic ascent, the world gave a collective gasp. The New York Times described it as “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.” Synnott’s personal history of his own obsession with climbing since he was a teenager—through professional climbing triumphs and defeats, and the dilemmas they render—makes this a deeply reported, enchanting revelation about living life to the fullest. What are we doing if not an impossible climb? Synnott delves into a raggedy culture that emerged decades earlier during Yosemite’s Golden Age, when pioneering climbers like Royal Robbins and Warren Harding invented the sport that Honnold would turn on its ear. Painting an authentic, wry portrait of climbing history and profiling Yosemite heroes and the harlequin tribes of climbers known as the Stonemasters and the Stone Monkeys, Synnott weaves in his own experiences with poignant insight and wit: tensions burst on the mile-high northwest face of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower; fellow climber Jimmy Chin miraculously persuades an official in the Borneo jungle to allow Honnold’s first foreign expedition, led by Synnott, to continue; armed bandits accost the same trio at the foot of a tower in the Chad desert . . . The Impossible Climb is an emotional drama driven by people exploring the limits of human potential and seeking a perfect, choreographed dance with nature. Honnold dared far beyond the ordinary, beyond any climber in history. But this story of sublime heights is really about all of us. Who doesn’t need to face down fear and make the most of the time we have? (from Penguin Random House website)
Contents
"The Hon is going to freesolo El Cap" -- Crazy kids of America -- A vision of the stonemasters' lightning -- Stone monkey -- Crashing the gravy train on the vertical mile -- The secret weapon, Mr. Safety, and Xiao Pung-- Non-profit -- Secret dawn walls -- Amygdala -- The source -- "Her attitude is awesome" -- Fun.
This book tells the story of the history of Mount Assiniboine and the surrounding area. Mount Assiniboine is a beautiful mountain located in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park in south eastern British Columbia. -- Provided by publisher
Contents
First Nations History at Mount Assiniboine ; Part One: The Discovery of Mount Assiniboine (1800-1910) ; Part Two: The Wheeler Years (1913-1927) ; Part Three: Strom's Half-century: Part I (1928-1950) ; Part Four: Strom's Half-century: Part 2 (1950-1983) ; Part Five: The Renner Years (1983-2010) ; Part Six: A New Generation Takes Over
A Poetry Book Society Recommendation 2016. 'When we climb alone en cordee feminine, we are magicians of the Alps - we make the routes we follow disappear'. The poems of Helen Mort's second collection offer an unforgettable perspective on the heights we scale and the distances we run, the routes we follow and the paths we make for ourselves. Here are odes to the women who dared to break new ground - from Miss Jemima Morrell, a young Victorian woman from Yorkshire who hiked the Swiss Peaks in her skirts and petticoats, to the modern British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who died descending from the summit of K2. Distinctive and courageous, these are poems of passion and precipices, of edges and extremes. No Map Could Show Them confirms Helen Mort's position as one of the finest young poets at work today.
Contents
An Easy Day for a Lady ; How to Dress ; Miss Jemima's Swiss Journal ; Ode to Bob ; Height ; The Fear ; Scale ; Beryl the Peril ; My Diet ; Difficult ; The Old Dungeon Ghyll ; Hill ; Black Rocks ; Descent ; Prayer ; Kiss ; Solo ; Nordwand ; Home ; At Night ; Above Cromford ; Route ; Dear Alison ; Engineer ; Lethal Roy ; Bloodhound ; Skirt ; Rachel in Attercliffe ; King's Cross ; Ink ; What Will Happen ; Ablation ; Hathersage ; Kalymnos ; Loutro ; Alport Castles ; Eagle Owl ; Royal Mile ; Kinder Scout ; Murmuration ; Big Lil ; Lil's dream ; What the papers said ; Lil's answer ; Lil's last word ; Tom Hulatt's Mile ; Heinrich Harrer's Motorbike ; How Much Can You Carry? ; Everest ; Oxygen ; Beck Weathers ; Sherpa ; Lene Gamelgaard ; First ; Rope
Mick Fowler's second set of climbing memoirs, follows Vertical Pleasure (Hodder, 1995). Here the celebrated mountaineer records his expeditions since 1990. Despite work and family commitments he has maintained a regular series of 'big trips' to challending objectives around the world with a sequence of major successes. -- From inside cover
Tides, the award-winning follow-up to Nick Bullock's critically acclaimed debut book Echoes, is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one's life to climbing.
Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second book, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut Echoes. Now retired from the strain of work as a prison officer, Nick is free to climb. A lot. Tides is a treasury of his antics and adventures with some of the world’s leading climbers, including Steve House, Kenton Cool, Nico Favresse, Andy Houseman and James McHaffie. Follow Nick and his partners as they push the limits on some of the world’s most serious routes: The Bells! The Bells! on Gogarth’s North Stack Wall; the Slovak Direct on Denali; Guerdon Grooves on Buachaille Etive Mor; and the north faces of Chang Himal and Mount Alberta, among countless others. Nick’s life can be equated to the rhythm of the sea. At high tide, he climbs, he loves it, he is good at it; he laughs and jokes, scares himself, falls, gets back up and climbs some more. Then the tide goes out and he finds himself alone, exposed, all questions and no answers. Self-doubt, grieving for friends or family, fearful, sometimes opinionated, occasionally angry – his writing more honest and exposed than in any account of a climb. Only when the tide turns is he able to forget once more. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing. (from Vertebrate Publishing website)
Contents
Prologue - living scared
love and hate
immortal?
nothing more
the cutting lap
the rain
the emotional tightrope
bad shit
deception
the web
cravings
death or glory
slave to the rhythm?
bittersweet desire
strange eden
how soon is now
you only live twice
the cathedral
trapped
evening redness in the west
into the shadow
similar to a scottish quarry
best before
death of paradise
the pitfalls of a peroni supermodel
what were his dreams?
balloons
that's rowdy, dude
over the top
flames
dreams and screams
just beneath the surface
the light of the moon
the mountain soundtrack
please queue here
dawn to dusk to dawn
threshold shift
postscript
acknowledgements
Notes
Signed by author
Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival winner for Mountain Literature (non-fiction) Jon Whyte award