Favorite Line from a Guidebook / Topo

patrick wild wrote: Strenuous, devious, technical, excelent, finger injury potential.

haha, that's totally one of my favorites!  first guide book i ever got.  still have it.

"Pucker up your sphincter, you're probably soloing" - Don Mellor, Blue Lines 2

All in all the best guidebook I have read and Josh's two page essay about freeing the Hallucinogen Wall is short and sweet. 

If you haven't climbed there, do yourself a favor and go get humbled by the biggest walls in the state. 

Not a specific route but the best picture caption I’ve ever seen! 

Start to Tod Anderson's Devil's Head Climbing book - "Finally, if you have to rely upon the guidebook to determine how many quickdraws to put on your harness you probably don't have the mental faculties for rock climbing and should seek other pursuits."

"shit ton of draws, bring many"

From the old Alan Nelson Tuolomne Meadows topos on a spiral binding, which was out  prior to the Chris Falkenstein bound guidebook, the description for the route "Sunshine" (next to OZ) a notation said "take rat poison here"!  LOL!!

The Umph Slot: “A breath-taking climb. One’s bust and buttock size will determine the grade, 5.7 for beanpoles, 5.11 for the bulbous.” From Rocky Heights by Jim Erickson, 1980.

A lot of true classics here. One of my favorites is from the introduction section on "Navigation" in a mountain biking guidebook to somewhere in California: "After all, being lost is a state of mind rather than an actual physical reality." 

Greg Barnes wrote: The classic chickenwing dyno!

I tried it for shits and gigs and couldn’t pull it off. Has anyone here actually made the chickenwing dyno work?

Out of Jim Erickson's Rocky Heights-A Guide to Boulder Free Climbs, 1980
For Perilous Journey
"This is undoubtedly the most serious pitch in the area.  The route is steep, technical,
and continuously difficult.  A hyper-modern horror.  Don't bother taking a rope."

It still scares me reading this!

Mark Straub wrote:

I tried it for shits and gigs and couldn’t pull it off. Has anyone here actually made the chickenwing dyno work?

Yup...!

This has potential to be the best thread evar!

Also, don't comment unless you have something to contribute. 

"Tick back and forth for several pitches ...". This is the essential part of the two-line description of the 7-pitch South Face (5.8) on Zowie in RMNP by B. Gillette. Despite its briefness and vaguity, it is one of the most accurate descriptions I've seen on any route. Go do it and then read the mountainous load of comments on MP ( South Face on Zowie ) and you'll see why Gillette's description is right on.

“...if you screw up the approach, you could think you were in the man-eating devil thickets in the back country of the planet Baldar."

—Kerry

Also, pretty much John Dill’s entire essay “Staying Alive” from the Yosemite Valley book. 

In "Rocky Heights" Jim Erickson's Eldorado guide book from 1980, the sole description of the route Rush Buick on Hawk Eagle Ridge reads:

"This route is not worth doing."

Edited to add; the current MP rating gives this route 2 stars with Several suggestions to add a third.

“Highly sought after, rarely repeated. A right of passage to the big time” All Along The Watchtower, North Howser Tower. Atkins and Piche Bugaboos Guide

From the page for La Mancha, a 5.7X in the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces:

Some beauties from the Sudlicher Frankenjura:
"Often attempted.  Seldom repeated."  - Trage Wampe
"Hardest 8 between Moscow and Paris."  - Warthog
"Not a free gift." - Sinbad's Rising