Get power the German way: New training book, new guidebooks and MORE
Kraft means power, something those Frankenjura-steeped German climbers know all about. This new training book/DVD combination Gimme Kraft! is all about attaining it.
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• Women Who Dare: North America’s Most Inspiring Women Climbers, 264 pages. To be released November 5. See excerpt in the issue of Rock and Ice now at the printer. This book is a giant, lavish photoessay, a series of illustrated interviews with experienced women climbers from across a spectrum of genres and eras. Forewords by Sasha DiGiulian and Steph Davis, with the author-adventure photographer Chris Noble writing a prologue and profile introductions.
The featured women are: Lynn Hill, Sasha DiGiulian, Emily Harrington, Lisa Hathaway, Steph Davis, Kitty Calhoun, Robyn Erbesfield Raboutou, Alex Puccio, Lisa Rands, Beth Rodden, Angie Payne, Alison Osius, Lauren Lee McCormick, Madaleine Sorkin, Kate Rutherford, Jacinda (“JC”) Hunter, Nancy Feagin, Brittany Griffith, Elaina Arenz and Dawn Glanc.
Pre-orders are available at http://amzn.to/Hc1EJx. Paperback list price $24.95, pre-order discount $18.83.
• NYC Bouldering. As long ago celebrated in a classic article by Josh Lowell in Rock and Ice, great boulders, not to mention strange urban adventures, lurk in Central Park, Morningside Park, Saint Nicholas Park, High Bridge Park, Loony Bin Boulder, Fort Tryon and Inwood Park. This 128-page guidebook covers 300 boulder problems.
The author, Gaz Leah, is a well-traveled climber and a UK “transplant.” Marriage brought him to New York, where, he says, “I had absolutely no idea what to do with myself. I started bouldering around the city because I had no money, and started documenting simply as something to make me feel productive. I started to think about making a book to give away and then figured if I could use this to preserve climbing in NYC and create a strong community, it would be great. So that’s what I began to do.”
Available at http://gazleah-climbing.blogspot.com, which links to http://www.sharpendbooks.com, $19.95. Also available on chesslerbooks.com. A portion of the proceeds goes to the Access Fund.
The guidebook briefly lists the City’s vaunted climbing gyms, a cool half a dozen of which are located in or near the city. On the author’s blog are also pictorial reviews: for Brooklyn Boulders, Chelsea Piers, The Cliffs, MPHC, Reebok and The Rock Club (good enough for Sasha DiGiulian, Vadim Vinokur, Ashima Shiraishi…). These informal blurbs are full of friendly inside information and basically advise you on where (and where not to) go, what place might be small but where the staff offers all kinds of creative events, and more.
• IceLines – Select Waterfalls of the Canadian Rockies, by Brent Peters, 152 pages, to be released in mid-December. Full route information and stellar photography for 53 of the best waterfall ice climbs in the Canadian Rockies, and abbreviated information for another 212 climbs. Contains history and anecdotes from first ascents and ascentionists, also tips from experienced Rockies’ climbers.
One comment on the Facebook page, from Patrick Delaney, says: “I believe [the book] may redefine how all future Rockies guide books, or electronic beta sources are designed. This guidebook is useful or everyone… Beginners, traveling climbers and locals.”
See https://www.facebook.com/icelinescanadianrockies, (publisher website not yet available), $25. Pre-order information to be posted soon.
• Rock, Paper, Fire, an anthology of the best writing produced by the The Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing Program, includes: “a range of risk-taking that includes a mad solo ascent of The Troll Wall in Norway, a hair-raising Himalayan climb with the great Ueli Steck, a melancholy journey through Ireland’s County Donegal, and a sailor’s soul-expanding voyage down the coast of the Baja.”
The 304-page book debuts this week at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, known for its wrap parties.
Contributors are: Christian Beamish, Barry Blanchard, Ian Brown, Fitz Cahall, Maria Coffey, Niall Fink, Charlotte Gill, Don Gillmor, Niall Grimes, Karsten Heuer, Katie Ives, Bruce Kirkby, Andy Kirkpatrick, Bernadette McDonald, Helen Mort, Jan Redford, Wayne Sawchuk, Erin Soros, Steve Swenson, Masa Takei, Jon Turk and Freddie Wilkinson.
See http://www.banffcentre.ca/press/54/rock-paper-fire-the-best-of-mountain-and-wilderness-writing. $21.
• Climbing Fitz Roy 1968: Reflections on the Lost Photos of the Third Ascent (October 2013) by Yvon Chouinard, Dick Dorworth, Chris Jones, Lito Tejada-Flores and Doug Tompkins. Have you ever read Dorworth’s “Night Driving,” the long, loony, lyric and epic ode to adventure? You should. Do you know this classic tale of the three Yosemite rock climbers who drove overland to Patagonia, a six-month journey, to climb the Fitz? You really should—it is the climbers’ version of our Roots. The mountain had only been climbed twice when these four climbers (with surfing and World Cup ski-racing skills thrown in) set off on their wild “funhog” trip. They came home with the first ascent of the southwest buttress in 1968 [aka The Californian Route, South West Buttress, and the third ascent of the peak]. 
See http://www.patagonia.com/us/shop/provisions-books?k=1H-aw. $35.00 hardcover, $14.95 e-book.
• The Modern Explorers, a coffee-table compilation of writings on wilderness exploration in the 21st century, edited by Robin Hanbury-Tenison and Robert Twigger. The 39 essays include a gem by Karen Darke, who at 21 was paralyzed from the chest down in a climbing accident on a Scottish sea cliff, and who realized a lifelong dream in adaptive-climbing El Cap; Stephen Venables on the Siachen Glacier; and Chris Bonington on Shivling. Thamesandhudsonusa.com, 304 pages, $44.95.
One final note. Speak French? Marco Troussier, longtime route developer and a Chamonix guide at the famous ENSA (l’Ecole Nationale de Ski et d’Alpinisme), is looking for an English translator for his two books: http://www.ibex-books.com/auteurs/marco-troussier/.
If interested, please contact him at verdonboy@live.fr.