Continue with onX Maps
Sign in with Facebook
Yosimite Guide Book Question - Free Climbs vs Sport Climbs and Top Ropes
|
I'm going to Yosimite for the first time this May and want to get some good guide books. I was going to get the supertopo Yosimite Free Climbs but I also saw they make a Sport and Top Rope book. Does anyone know how much overlap there is between the two books? Are there any sport/top rope routes listed in Free Climbs or should I just get both? |
Eric Ankerswrote: The sport and top rope book is a waif of a volume. The supertopo free climb book is also pretty small, but good if you are just wanting to bang out some moderate classics. Gold standard (until ed comes out with his tome) is the sloane Guide, which has a ton of new classics put up since the supertopos came out |
|
The sport and top rope book is terrible, I found the directions pretty poor and the routes I was able to find had mostly been chopped. The Sloan free climbs book is very well put together with a lot of good information. Going through it always gets me excited for the valley. |
|
You can see the SuperTopo's Table of Contents free online: You'll notice the "Free Climbs" book doesn't have most of the sport climbing (Chappel Wall, Public Sanitation Wall, Mecca, etc). I still really like it for the route descriptions and more detailed topos, though. The Sloan guide is way more comprehensive, but doesn't include route descriptions and the topos aren't as detailed. The indexes do denote bolted and TR-able routes, which is nice.  |
|
Morning, why spend money on a book when you can got most of the info your looking for here is on Mountainproject for free? Just a thought happy climbing Mike A. |
|
Get the Sloan guide, its the best and great book to just thumb through for years. The stories and pictures make it a really fun book to have on the shelf. Sport Climbs and Top Ropes really isn't great, do not buy that book. There isn't that much in it, and, many of the routes involve some trickery to rig top ropes and the sport section isn't that complete. Buy Sloan, you could even pick one up in the valley and enjoy it. If you want to be super prepared, identify areas on Mountain Proj you may want to climb and then use the book for the finer details. |
Mike Arechigawrote: Hopefully physical guidebooks will exist until my hands can no longer hold their pages. Guidebooks are magical inspiration and allow you to really get a feel of an area (unless it’s pure shit like the guy who did the Devils Tower one). I think cracking open a new guidebook for the first time with a pen and some highlighters and blank Piece of paper is probably the highlight of climbing. I had to go back to school for a new degree. All it was was PowerPoint presentation and printouts. I missed “read chapters 4-6” to discuss in class and hated every didactic minute with PowerPoint. MP is the PowerPoint presentation of climbing |
|
I loved having the supertopo free climbs book for my first trip to the valley. I was a newer climber too and all the history and route descriptions were super fun to read. I read that book cover to cover many times during that trip. Worth it just for that in my opinion. |
|
Hey this is a great thread! Awesome to see folks hashing out the pluses and minuses of the various guidebooks. For sure there is always give and take in making anything, and guidebooks are no different so I always appreciate feedback. Keep it coming! Our book came out in 2016, basically because folks were so fed up with the meager amount of routes in the ST book. We updated it 2018, calling it the Revised Edition, and in 2020 made a few minor changes/updates when we reprinted. The ST book is still in it's first and only edition, from 2002. The reason folks still buy the ST book is because it's more portable and cheaper. It's smaller 5x9 size fits in your pack easily, and it costs $20 less than our book. Everyone who buys the ST book complains about them falling apart, so we took the opposite approach and went with an expensive, burly sewn binding, bigger format, tons of color photos so the guidebook can also live on the coffeetable or in your car. Everyone who buys from my site gets the pdf version of the book to save having to lug the guidebook around all the time. I'm not sure what the future has in store for our book. This printing will probably run out this year, 2023, and I'd love to see it evolve. I have lived and worked in Yosemite Valley since 2002 (Chris Mac stayed at my place when he made the ST book, lol), and just made my guidebooks as a community service so not interested in endlessly reprinting outdated material. Is anyone interested on working on a new Free Climbs Select book? hit me up! erik@yosemitebigwall.com ....sounds like the next edition needs more written descriptions, shouldn't be too hard, and I'd love to see the cliff s get grey-scale shaded to make route identification easier. What other ideas are out there to improve guidebooks? Raining cats and dogs in the VAlley today but the Spring Stoke is upon us! Woot Woot! Hope to see Y'all around here before too long! Erik Sloan Yosemitebigwall.com |
