Rock Climbing

by Don Mellor, Ron Hildebrand (Illustrator)

Smart, instructive, and beautifully designed, every book in the Trailside Guide series contains the essential information readers need to master outdoor activities and have fun in the process. Norton proudly reissues these best-selling guides with fully revised "Sources & Resources" sections (including where to find the Web sites, gear, services, books, clubs, and organizations that make for foolproof outings); updates to reflect the latest in gear technology, wilderness medicine, and first aid; and advances in techniques. Climbing has become a hot sport thanks to indoor climbing walls in big cities and small towns all across America. But conventional climbing guides have failed to keep pace with the sport's surge in popularity. Rock Climbing is designed to help beginners go beyond their first experiences at a climbing gym and gain the skills they need to get out, rope up, and climb! It explains safe climbing techniques in a logical step-by-step sequence with special emphasis on transferring techniques acquired indoors to the wider world of actual rock faces. Full-color sequential illustrations, stunning color photographs, and the author's field-tested teaching approach clarify all the fundamentals, including gear, knots, top roping, leading, anchors, belaying, and rappelling. Whether readers are getting started at the local gym or aspiring to head to the big mountain faces, this guide will give them a rock-solid foundation to build on. You can take it with you: Trailside Guides are designed to be used on the trail. Their handy size makes them easy to take along on outdoor adventures. Picture this: Trailside Guides show you how it's done. Each book has more than 100 color photographs and dozens of informative, full-color technical illustrations you'll refer to again and again. Buying Guide: Each Guide has all the information readers need to make informed decisions about what gear is available, and what they should buy. Step-by-step: Tutorials take readers through every aspect of a given outdoor activity. Each Guide covers planning and preparing for a trip, getting in shape, technique, safety, and first-aid tips, and how to have more fun along the way! Easy to use: Trailside Guides provide information quickly. Every book contains detailed illustrations, information-packed sidebars, and a complete index and bibliography. Technique tips: Any physical activity is more fun when it's done right. Trailside Guides are written by experts and contain lucid explanations that help the reader quickly achieve proficiency. It's a big world out there. Get into it with the Trailside Guides. Color photographs and drawings throughout

Genres: Nonfiction, Climbing

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rock Climbing: A Trailside Guide by Don Mellor (W.W. Norton & Co. 1997) (796.5223).

Be careful here, and hold on tight while you read this volume. I know nothing about the mechanics of rock climbing, so I checked this book out of my local library to help me decide whether this is an activity I wish to take up. Here's an important bit of information which the author kindly included opposite the title page: “Warning: Climbing is a dangerous sport in which you may be seriously injured or killed.”

Allrighty then. Maybe I'd better pay close attention to the instructions.

What quickly became obvious is that surviving this activity depends on whether the novice can precisely manipulate various esoteric hardware items (e.g., jumars, ropes, carabiners, etc.) while attempting to retain fingerholds and toeholds on rock faces far above the earth.

This is not the sport for dilettantes or for those with only a casual interest in clamoring about on cliffs and other high perches. And that rules me out. My rating: 7/10, finished 8/30/19. (3382)

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up from the library to try to get a bit of background information, tips/tricks, and places-to-start with this new hobby of mine. It was a bit of a back-up, as I was originally looking for one of these two -- but sadly their selection was thin.

Though I was reading it as fail-over and though parts of it did feel a bit dated, I got quite a bit out of reading this book. As I'm new to the sport, I was mostly looking for information about basic techniques, some specifics about the gear, suggestions for training -- that sort of thing. This book seemed to focus on outdoor climbing which certainly whet my interest but did not help me with my immediate, gym-based goals. Nevertheless, it was worth plowing through the first half of the book to get some of those core tips for the basics.