Guidebooks

Having been a late comer to the world of climbing a guide book that can get you to the crag and located at the bottom of the climb you intend to do that day has largely been a given. Not for me the experience of having to negotiate Stanage using that now infamous BMC guide which worked from right to left instead of following the more usual convention - I am used to climbing with a guide book containing photo topos and clearly marked lines on where the route goes. In other words I have been spoilt.

Now with any guide book that doesn't follow the conventions set out above there is always a spot of familiarising oneself with the language peculiar to that guide and how buttresses and features are described - it is simply a matter of interpretation and once you get a hang of this then finding the climb in question becomes that bit easier. However when you are dealing with a sport climbing crag it becomes a whole different ball game - these are often just seemingly blank limestone walls with a series of bolts rising upwards with obvious features being at a premium. Having previously only been sport climbing in the Costa Blanca with the Rockfax guide book clutched in my grubby little paws and three years later to Kalymnos (which not only has a fantastic guide book but also the names of each route and the grade written at the bottom of each route) finding which route was which had not been an issue. Sardinia was to change all of that though.

Sardinia was, at times, a route finding nightmare - hand drawn topos are not that great at dealing with a featureless wall of rock so you have to fall back on the tried and tested method of finding a route that you know is the correct one and counting from there across to the route you wish to climb. From there throw in a bit of common sense to ascertain if it is indeed the route that you are looking for (just in case an extra route or two has been added in) and off you go but what do you do when you can not even find a route to work from? Throw a wobbler out of pure frustration was the chosen method of yours truly.

So the object lesson here is before even thinking of going to a crag make sure that the guide book is one that you can actually use to a meaningful degree. While all climbing involves some form of suffering to a degree, be that mental, physical or both, it should be on the route itself not trying to find the thing in the first place.

NB - I should note here that I don't wish to be seen to be criticising the efforts of guide book writers. Having spoken to people who have been involved with this black art it is a thankless task at best and without their efforts serving to inspire me in the first place the thought of going to climb in some fantastic places would not have entered my head.