Books about California

California : Joshua Tree National Park

Rock Climbing: Joshua Tree

Randy Vogel/The Globe Pequot Press
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Randy Vogel's Joshua Tree guidebook is getting a bit dated (it was published in 1992), but it still remains the only comprehensive guide to the world famous area and works perfectly well for getting you to the numerous classics of the area.

The Trad Guide to Joshua Tree - 60 favorites climbs from 5.5 to 5.9

Charlie & Diane Winger
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The Trad Guide to Joshua Tree was written especially for moderate climbers looking for fun routes. It contains detailed maps, directions, and photos for locating each of 60 favorite rock climbs, sun/shade info, descent instructions, and pro suggestions. There is a large, full-color photo of every route, plus other photos showing details of the approach for the more complex areas.

A Complete Bouldering Guide To Joshua Tree National Park

Robert Miramontes/K.Daniels & Associates
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This exceptionally well done guidebook details the myriad boulder problems scattered throughout Joshua Tree National Park. Loads of detail coupled with extensive maps and high quality photos make this a pleasure to just browse through, let alone use to find problems.

The author besides climbing many of the problems, including many desperate FA's, has listed the problems with exacting detail, including GPS coordinates and overview maps as well as organizing the problems in the back alphabetically and by difficulty.

Printed on quality paper stock with a bomber binding, this book will see you through many a season of thrashed tips and sandbagged no-hold desperates.

Joshua Tree West : Quail Springs to Hidden Valley Campground

Randy Vogel/The Globe Pequot Presss
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The long awaited first installment, of three, to cover the ever popular Joshua Tree National Park. Completely reworked with new maps, new photos, more detailed route descriptions with protection recommendations and tons of new routes. Get your copy and see what you've been missing!

Cragcam's Guide to Joshua Tree National Park - a DVD

Cragcam Productions LLC
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A trip to Joshua Tree is too big to plan from grainy black and white photos in a travel or climbing guide book. With over 1200 square miles and almost 8000 climbing routes, there's an incredible amount to see and do in Joshua Tree.

Cragcam's guide breaks park activities into three easy to explore sections; Off Rock, On Rock and In Camp. From the main menu you can select the activities you're interested in for planning your visit to the park and avoid wasted drive time or disappointing long approaches. Day hikes, overnight trips, remote desert floor, palm tree oasis, mountain ascents, top rope areas, isolated crags, classic climbs... it's your vacation, what do you want to do?

California : SF Bay Area

Rock Climber's Guide to Skyline Boulevard

Bruce Morris (2000) MorComm Press; 0-9650234-1-9
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A good book on the Skyline and Castle Rock areas.

Areas Covered..
Castle Rock State Park
Skyline Slabs

Rock Climbing the San Francisco Area

Teresa Black (2002) Falcon Press; ISBN: 0-7627-1143-4
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Teresa Black

Areas Covered..
Beaver Street Wall
Castle Rock State Park
Cragmont Park
Indian Rock
Mickey's Beach
Mount Diablo State Park
Mount St. Helena
Remillard Park
Table Mountain
Sunol Regional Wilderness
Ring Mountain
Mount Tamalpais
Dry Creek Sea Crag
Fort Ross

Rock Climbing Lake Tahoe

Mike Carville (1999) Falcon Press ISBN: 1-57540-088-X
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There are tons of routes in this book, and most of his drawings are quite good. Unfourtunately, there are many areas that the bolting information is inaccurate. Expect many of the dirt access roads in the guide to be closed to cars, and often this makes the approach times twice as long. This book could use an update, and the South Lake Tahoe book and Big Chief book do an excellent job replacing Carville's book for the areas covered. which is concerning because it was published quite recently.

Areas Covered..
Donner Pass
The Emeralds
Truckee River Canyon
Christmas Valley
Echo Pass
Lover's Leap
Phantom Spires
Eagle Creek Canyon
Indian Springs

Rock Climbing Tuolomne Meadows

Don Reid, Chris Falkenstein (1992) Chockstone Press 0-9346414-7-1
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Rock Climbing Yosemite's Select

Don Reid (1998) ChockStone Press; ISBN: 1575401150
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A fairly good compilation about Yosemite's "favorite" climbs. Unfourtunately, this also usually means that you'll wait in line on most of the lower difficulty climbs. The information in the book is concise and accurate, though often approach information is a little cyptic.

Yosemite Topropes

Rob Floyd (1999) Sharp End Publishing; ISBN:
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Now you too can bring your kids to the rocks. Floyd takes a unique approach to climbing books, using interesting little icons to represent information from the slope of the climbs to whether or not to bring your children along. An interesting book, though a little bit too small for a climbing region (Yosemite) containing thousands of routes.

A Climber's Guide to the Sonora Pass Highway

Brad Young, Hope Wolf and Jim Lundeen(2001) YoungWolf GP;
A Great book describing climbs along highway 108. They have gone to great detail to ensure that their topos are excellent, their information is correct, and their ratings and climbs are fair. A good resource associated with this book is their website which contains many updates to the book, as well as new climbs in the area.

Areas Covered..
Herring Creek Dome
Table Mountain
Potter's Rock
5N06 of Sonora

Classic Rock Climbs No. 18 Castle Crags California

Laird Davis, 1997. Falcon Guides
A small sampling of routes in the park (there are a lot!). Very useful to have, but a little route-finding is definately necessary!

Areas Covered..
Shasta Cascade

Bouldering Guide to the Castle Rock Area

Bruce Morris, 2002. MorComm Press
An update to Bruce's A climber's guide to Skyline Boulevard. This book contains a ton of updated information mostly consisting of bouldering in and around the Castle Rock State Park area, but also some updates to climbing rocks and routes from his book. This is a shorter guide, so if there is a debate between his two books, get the climbing guide unless you're a boulderer. The book is still recommended though!

Areas Covered..
Castle Rock State Park

Climber's Guide Pinnacles National Monument

David Rubine, 1995, 2002. Globe Pequot Press

Areas Covered..
Pinnacles National Monument

Bay Area Rock - 2001

Jim Thornburg (2001) Potlicker Press;
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An annually updated book containing somewhat up to date information on many areas in the San Francisco immediate areas. There is lots of beta on many climbs, but sometimes the topos and directions are a little evasive.

Areas Covered..
Beaver Street Wall
Cragmont Park
Dry Creek Sea Crag
Goat Rock State Park
Grizzly Peak Boulders
Indian Rock
Mount Diablo State Park
Mickey's Beach
Mount St. Helena
Mount Tamalpais
Panther Beach
Remillard Park
Ring Mountain
Sunol Regional Wilderness
Table Mountain
Fort Ross
Lake Temescal Park

The Wine Country Rocks 2003

Rock Climbing and Bouldering in Northern California
This smaller book is written by Santa Rosa local Chris Summit specializing in the climbing of Sonoma County. While Chris does need to work on his grammar, this book offers an excellent assortment of climbing in areas that aren't listed in any other guides. Chris's book also offers a better variety of bouldering problems than all the other bay area books combined.

Areas Covered..
Salt Point State Park
Fort Ross
Goat Rock State Park
Mount St. Helena
Squaw Cliff Area
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park
Super Slab
Twin Coves
Dry Creek Sea Crag

South Lake Tahoe Climbing

Chris Macnamara (2004) Supertopo; ISBN: 0-9672391-7-6
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Chris' Macnamara and company at supertopo have put out an excellent book on climbing around the Southern Section of Lake Tahoe. While the topos often leave some things to be desired, the books plethora of pictures picks up the slack.

Areas Covered..
Christmas Valley
Echo Pass
Lover's Leap
Phantom Spires
Wright's Lake

The Wine Country Rocks - 2004. Rock Climbing and Bouldering

Chris Summit (2004). The Wine Country Rocks.
Chris's new version is quite similar to the previous version, though he has fixed up many of the unclear or erraneous sections of the book. If you own his 2001 book or don't own one of his books, this is definately worth checking out. If you own the 2003 version, you might want to wait until the next version comes out.

Areas Covered..
Salt Point State Park
Fort Ross
Goat Rock State Park
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park
Squaw Cliff Area
Super Slab
Twin Coves
Mount St. Helena
Dry Creek Sea Crag

Rock Climbs of Placerville, CA

William H. Cottrell (2003) El Dorado Publishing; ISBN 1-891119-03-6
This excellent book describes two areas around Placerville, and is by far the best resource for both areas covered. Excellent overhead views and detailed topos leave little desired, except more pictures perhaps?

Areas Covered..
Cosumnes River Gorge

Big Chief Area Climbs

Marek Hajek (2005) Maximus Press; ISBN: 0-9676116-7-9
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A new book for Big Chief, finally answering my rantings on the current published information on Big Chief. This book has it all, photographs of almost all the rocks, excellent topographic information on approaches and wall locations. Edited by Marty Lewis (I know him from his Owens River Gorge books, though he has another on Mammoth Area climbs), this book keeps with his style, which is the more information, the better! This book lacked in only one area: it is so narrowly focused, since there are other walls quite closeby... But maybe that

Big Chief Area Climbs

California : Central Coast : San Luis Obispo

California Central Coast Climbs: San Luis Obispo, by Tom Slater

California Central Coast Climbing: San Luis Obispo

Tom Slater
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This is the most current guidebook available for San Luis Obispo County. It is available in many small shops around California, including:

Mountain Air Sports
667 Marsh St
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
(805) 543-1676

California : San Diego County

Southern California Sport Climbing (3rd edition)

Troy Mayr/Maximus Press
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Troy Mayr's 3rd edition includes sport climbs at Poway Crags and Mission Gorge.

Southern California Bouldering, 2nd

Craig Fry
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This guide covers the myriad boulders that provide convenient climbing from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

California : Central Coast

Rock Climbing Santa Barbara and Ventura

Steve Edwards / Falcon Guide
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From Amazon.com:

"Santa Barbara and Ventura counties have long been known as sublime tourist areas, but the rock climbing and bouldering along the California's south-central coast are just beginning to attract the attention they richly deserve. From the sweeping walls of the Echo Cliffs to the awesome overhangs at the Owl Tor, from classic problems at Painted Cave to the vast boulderfields atop Pine Mountain, the many routes and boulder problems described in this book will appeal to a wide range of tastes and abilities. Written by one of the area's leading activists, Rock Climbing Santa Barbara and Ventura provides first-hand information to more than 50 scenic and uncrowded climbing areas not to be left off your tick-list."

Sport Climbing in the Santa Monicas (Southern California Climbing Guides)

Louie Anderson / Maximus Press
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A rock climbing guide to the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. Lavishly illustrated with maps, topos and action photos. A sport climbers paradise with a year round climate.

* Paperback: 250 pages
* Publisher: Maximus Press; 2nd edition (July 2003)
* Language: English
* ISBN: 0967611660
* Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.5 x 8.5 inches

California : High Sierra

Ansel Adams - American Experience

Ric Burns - Director (c) 2002 Sierra Club and Steeplechase Films
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Not particularly a film about climbing, but rather the life and works of Ansel Adams - whose plates of the High Sierra and the Yosemite remain as the datum-point of California mountain imagery.

Parts of this documentary capture the haunting spirit of the High Sierra like no other film before.

If you need a reason to join your local PBS, or The Sierra Club, this is it. Just the thought that my few measley bucks contributed to this gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

The High Sierra - Peaks, Passes, and Trails

R.J.Secor 2nd edition (c) 1999 The Mountaineers
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R.J.Secor's bumper book of fun for the Sierra is still the quintessential High Sierra guidebook for people who want to get the big picture, and learn all about a mountain range bigger than the entire Alps.

My First Summer in the Sierra

John Muir, published by the Sierra Club
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Muir gleaned some of the truth of the Universe just by merely existing in it's wild and beautiful regions (can it be that simple?) - his idea that everything is connected predates Sagan and all scientific observations.

This volume in the John Muir Library Series is the most popular of Muir's works: the naturalist's account of his first visit to the High Sierra and the Yosemite.

Close Ups of the High Sierra

Norman Clyde (c) 2004 Spotted Dog Press
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Norman Clyde was the most prolific first ascentionist in the history of climbing in this range - so it's a good idea to read what he thought of climbing here. An expanded and illustrated edition of Norman Clyde's classic, with new stories added for the first time.

The Last Season

� Copyright 2005 Eric Blehm - HarperCollins
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This, the story of the life and mysterious disappearance of Randy Morgenson, High Sierra Backcountry Ranger, makes for a compelling read - and along the way describes some of the places we've either been or would love to be - some hauntingly so, or perhaps it just my sense of nostalgia.

It's a great read.

A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra

Edited by Hervey Voge (c) 1954 Sierra Club
The entire range including climbs in the Yosemite! Out of print, try to find it at used book stores. Contains mountain plates by Ansel Adams himself.

The Climber's Guide to the High Sierra

Steve Roper (c) 1995 re-issue Sierra Club
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The final version of Hervey Voge's original. My first guidebook to the High Sierra and one you could actually take with you - I think I read it more lying in a tent than at home.

The Good, The Great, and the Awesome

Peter Croft (c) 2002 Maximus Press
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Peter Croft's down to earth route descriptions will inform and entertain you. Another "select" work which also contains roadside cragging, and eateries in the local towns.

Climbing California's High Sierra

John Moynier, Claude Fiddler 2nd edition (c) 2002 The Globe Pequot Press
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Originally known as 100 Sierra Classics this book is somewhere halfway between the select works and the full blown Secor guide. Contains schematics and historical data etc.

Climbing California's Fourteeners

Stephen F.Porcella & Cameron M.Burns (c) 1998 The Mountaineers
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Routes on the peaks of the range which are > 14,000ft. Contains historical information and useful schematics of the more sterner stuff.

High Sierra Climbing

Chris McNamara (c) 2004 Supertopo
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Yes, yet another Sierra select featuring detailed topos of "26 of the best" rock climbs in the backcountry.

Mountaineering in California

Clarence King (c) 1997 Yosemtie Association
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Great fun! A ripping Victorian yarn (true story nevertheless) about how famous explorer Clarence King and two of his buddies made an epic excursion from west of the Great Western Divide over to the High Sierra crest in order to bag the highest peak, and managed to bag the wrong one! Written in the days when the American public were hungry for tales of exploration and adventure instead of being just plain hungry.

Missing in the Minarets

William Alsup (c) 2005 Yosemite Association
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The Search for Walter A. Starr, Jr. (sub-title)

A real page turner for those of us interested in climbing history, I won't say any more.

Starr's Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region

Walter A.Starr 12th edition (c) 1974 Sierra Club Books
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Lovingly prepared. The original guide on how to get in and out of the High Sierra, originally published in the 1930's and still quite valid today, thanks to the conservationists. Any edition is worthwhile and used books stores often carry more than one - the older the better.

California : Los Angeles County : Stoney Point

Urban Rock - Stoney Point Bouldering & Top-Roping

Chris Owen (c)2004
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3rd Edition - Updated with more boulder problems, also contains extensive top-roping.

Southern California Bouldering

Falcon 2.00 edition (January 1, 1995)
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Local climber Craig Fry's extensive guide to bouldering in SoCal, contains Stoney Point problems also.

Stoney Point Guide

Hellweg & Fisher. La Siesta Press (c) 1982
The old yellow book is out of print - but you may be able to find it at a used book store, or a middle aged climber's bookcase.

California : Tahoe Vicinity : Indian Springs

Rock Climbing at Indian Springs

Brad Brothers
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Indian Springs is a fun little crag with a lot of variety. There are traditional, sport and top rope climbs and this is a great area for beginner to intermediate climbers. The guide book contains 45 climbs ranging from 5.2 to 5.11 and shows slab locations, climb ratings, slab illustrations & pictures plus climb descriptions.

California : Redwood Coast

Bigfoot Country Climbing

Written and published by Eric Chemello and Paul Humphrey.
Bigfoot Country Climbing includes the coastal climbing from Moonstone beach to Promontory as well as limestone climbing at Trinity Aretes, Cecilville, Marble caves and the Caverns. Well drawn topos get you where you need to be. It is available at gear shops in Arcata and Eureka.

California : Sierra Eastside : Whitney / Lone Pine Area : Alabama Hills

A Rockclimber's Guide to the Alabama Hills

Michael Strassman/Range of Light Productions
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Although published in 2002, this still remains the most comprehensive guidebook to this high desert playground in the shadow of Mt Whitney.

California : Sierra Eastside : Bishop Area : Owens River Gorge

Owens River Gorge Climbs (10th edition)

Marty Lewis/Maximus Press
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The latest, greatest edition of THE guide to the fantastic climbing of the Owens River Gorge details over 700 routes in this popular area. Lots of new routes as well as updated information on older routes affected by the rising Owens River.

California : Sierra Eastside

Mammoth Area Rock Climbs

Marty Lewis & John Moynier/Maximus Press
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This is the latest version of the guidebook and is a marked improvement over previous editions with better binding, better paper stock and lots of excellent photos. Details such crags as Clark Canyon, Dike Wall, Benton Crags, Rock Creek, Bear Crag and more.

California : High Desert : New Jack City

Southern California Sport Climbing (3rd edition)

Troy Mayr/KDA
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The latest installment of this popular guidebook covers various areas around Southern California and features extensive (but not complete) coverage of New Jack City.

California : Los Angeles County : Santa Monica Mountains

Sport Climbing in the Santa Monicas (2nd edition)

Louie Anderson/Maximus Press
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Well written and easy to use, this guidebook details the many newer crags in the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding area. Covers Echo Cliffs, Tick Rock, Black Flower, Boney Bluff and more.

California : Tahquitz & Suicide Rocks

Rock Climbing Tahquitz and Suicide Rocks (3rd edition)

Randy Vogel & Bob Gaines/The Globe Pequot Press
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California : Riverside County : Riverside Quarry

Climbers' Guide: Riverside Quarry

Louie Anderson (self-published)
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The current edition to this popular crag details the ever-growing list of quality climbs to be done in this suburban playground.

California : Redwood Coast : Trinity Aretes

Big Foot Country Climbing

Eric Chemello and Paul Humphrey.
This guide is available at local outdoor stores and covers the limestone and coastal climbing on the Redwood Coast.

California : Los Angeles County : Angeles National Forest : Williamson Rock

Southern California Sport Climbing - 3rd Edition

Troy Mayr/K. Daniels and Associates copyright 2004
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This guide gives you all the beta and covers all the major areas from San Diego to Santa Barbara.

Areas covered: Williamson Rock, New Jack City, Echo Cliffs, Keller Peak, Devils Punchbowl. Holcomb Valley Pinnacles, Big Rock, Frustration Creek, Malibu Creek, Santa Barbara, Texas Canyon, Mission Gorge
Poway Crags, Apple Valley and Point Dume.

California : San Bernardino Mountains : Holcomb Valley Pinnacles

Southern California Sport Climbing Guide (3rd Editon)

Troy Mayr/KDA
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Covers a portion of the Central Pinnacles more popular crags (Claim Jumper Wall, Motherlode Rock, Coyote Crag etc.) as well as select crags in the Southern Pinnacles (Lost Orbit, Parking Lot Rock).

California : San Diego County : El Cajon Mountain

El Cajon Mountain Wall

Chris Hubbard/Perpetual Press (2005)
A photocopied homemade guide with photos, drawings and topos to El Cajon Mt. in San Diego County. Simple yet effective, but the durability might be an issue.

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