Page 10 - 20145 AMA Spring

Book Reviews
Written by Tomo Thompson
Aquick note of thanks to Vertebrate Publishing who do a sterling job of publishing some culturally and historically important books from the UK climbing and mountaineering scene AND give a 30% discount to members of the AMA. Some of these books are theirs, some are from other publishers, all are from my obsessively large bookshelves ....
Statement - Ben Moon by Ed Douglas
Yes, yes, yes I know it isn’t in the photo, it wasn’t in print when I wrote this. On 14 June 1990, at Raven Tor in the Derbyshire Peak District, twenty-four-year-old Ben Moon squeezed his feet into a pair of rock shoes, tied in to his rope, chalked his fingers and pulled on to the wickedly overhanging, zebra-striped wall of limestone. Two minutes later he had made rock-climbing history with the first ascent of Hubble, now widely recognised as the world’s first F9a.
Born in the suburbs of London in 1966, Moon started rock climbing on the sandstone outcrops of Kent and Sussex. A pioneer in the sport-climbing revolution of the 1980s and a bouldering legend in the 1990s, he is one of the most iconic rock climbers in the sport’s history.
In Statement, Moon’s official biography, award-winning writer Ed Douglas paints a portrait of a climbing visionary and dispels the myth of Moon as an anti-traditional climbing renegade. Interviews with Moon are complemented with insights from family and friends and extracts from magazines and personal diaries and letters. I’ve ordered mine!!!
Mont Blanc - the finest routes Philippe Batoux
Some books quickly achieve “coffee-table” status for their sheer size and the quality and structure. This is one of them.
Mont Blanc – The Finest Routes is a collection of the 100 must-do climbing routes in the Mont Blanc Massif.
Modern alpinism is a multi-faceted activity for which the Mont Blanc Massif is the perfect playground. Classic routes to which every mountaineer can aspire are surrounded by the towering rock
interesting itineraries, this book presents a modern selection of 100 must-do routes, ranging from historic classics to more recent lines, described in order of increasing difficulty.
Author and mountain guide Philippe Batoux provides a comprehen- sive account of each route, outlining its history and atmosphere and giving all the technical information needed to climb it. These written descriptions are complemented by photo diagrams and detailed topos. In addition, every route is illustrated with superbly evocative photos that make best use of the book’s large format.
The routes were chosen for the quality of the rock, the reliability of the in-situ gear, the beauty of the surroundings, the prestige of the summit and the enthusiasm the route inspires.
Preference has been given to routes in the modern idiom, whether they are gullies that only form in winter, difficult free climbs on high- altitude cliffs, long ridge scrambles or traverses of major summits. There are routes here for all tastes, from famous classics such as the Cosmiques Ridge on the Aiguille du Midi, the American Direct on the Petit Dru, the Whymper Couloir on the Aiguille Verte, the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses and the Kuffner Ridge on Mont Maudit to more recent gems such as Je t’ai conquis, Je t’adore on Pointe Lépiney, No Siesta on the Grandes Jorasses and Le Vent du Dragon on the Aiguille du Midi. A thing of beauty.
Beyond Limits - a life through climbing by Steve McClure
So what’s this bloke ever done on err .... oh alright then.
To be honest i didn’t quite “get” the book until the accident (am I alone in not previously knowing that McClure had a genuinely horrible climbing accident ???). The book took off then, for me anyway. There will never be a book about crap HVS climber, they’re all about the very best, and McClure is the best of the best. A genuinely interesting read and a compelling case for committing your all to the thing that dictates and shapes your life. I know this is a short review but really, seriously, go buy a copy.
One Day as a Tiger - Alex Macintyre and the birth of light and fast alpinism
John Porter
What to say ..... err ... it won the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Literature Festival. Let me begin with the words of God ....
‘A book on climbing both humorous and perceptive, as close to the essence of our life as you can get.’
Doug Scott
I must have been in my early teens when I saw a plaque on a footbridge in Cumbria dedicated to a bloke called Alex Macintyre and inscribed with the words “better to be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a lifetime”. We didn’t have the internet back in the mid-80’s so it was a fair while until I realised who he was. On reading this outstanding book I was struck by just what might have been if that single rock hadn’t snuffed out one of the finest, brightest, wildest, most driven mountaineers Britain has ever produced, on Annapurna in ‘82. Not only focussed on Macintyre this deep and engaging book chronicles a period when Britain genuinely did rule the world of cut- ting-edge, highly ambitious first ascents on the global mountaineer- ing stage. An outstanding book.
faces, huge mixed walls,
precipitous ice shields, serrated ridges and narrow gullies that define the
massif’s harder climbs.
In order to attain these prestigious
summits via the most