It doesn’t need to be a balancing act between losing fitness and getting injured overtraining. Climbing is fundamentally a skill-based sport, and this guide will change the way you look at moving on rock.Whatever your ability, learning to master smooth, relaxed and powerful movement means maximising your enjoyment and performance of the sport. This is the definitive practical guide to improving your rock climbing technique, and making you a more efficient climber. Fully illustrated with over 35 skills exercises supported by online videos, this book allows you to plan out your path to excellent technique with drills and exercises suited to all levels of ability.Written by the UK's leading climbing movement specialist, it’s packed with the knowledge and expertise gained over two decades as a professional climbing coach. Essential reading for all climbers from intermediate to elite in sport climbing, bouldering and traditional climbing.

    

    Tides, Nick’s second book, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut Echoes.Now retired from the strain of work as a prison officer, Nick is free to climb. A lot. Tides is a treasury of his antics and adventures with some of the world’s leading climbers, including Steve House, Kenton Cool, Nico Favresse, Andy Houseman and James McHaffie. Follow Nick and his partners as they push the limits on some of the world’s most serious routes: The Bells! The Bells! and The Hollow Man on Gogarth’s North Stack Wall; the Slovak Direct on Denali; Guerdon Grooves on Buachaille Etive Mor; and the north faces of Chang Himal and Mount Alberta, among countless others.Nick’s life can be equated to the rhythm of the sea. At high tide, he climbs, he loves it, he is good at it; he laughs and jokes, scares himself, falls, gets back up and climbs some more. Then the tide goes out and he finds himself alone, exposed, all questions and no answers. Self-doubt, grieving for friends or family, fearful, sometimes opinionated, occasionally angry – his writing more honest and exposed than in any account of a climb. Only when the tide turns is he able to forget once more.Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.

    This deeply personal and revealing memoir, Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing, is the only one of his books to be published in English.In 2016, Ueli established a new speed record on Eiger's North Face--beating his own record! That same year he climbed all 82 four-thousand-meter peaks in the Alps within 62 days (traveling between the peaks by bicycle), and summited Annapurna's south face in 28 hours. But the dramatic events of the previous two years--the internationally reported conflict with Sherpas at Mount Everest, and the discovery of Alex Lowe's body on Shishapangma--changed him and made him rethink his approach to the mountains.After withdrawing from the sport for a period, Ueli rediscovered his love of climbing, and in this memoir he explains how his perspective changed. While his drive to achieve in the mountains hadn't diminished, an evaluation of his experiences helped him find a new way to process the emotional and mental challenges that shaped his athletic outlook. Structured around key climbs, Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing provides the history of each mountain and route, Ueli's reasons for attempting it, what happened on each climb itself, and what he learned from the experience. It also includes some fascinating insights into his training regimen.Ueli infuses his story with the joy and freedom of climbing and running. He is honest, direct and, at times, exhibits the self-absorption common to many elite athletes. Ultimately, however, his experiences brought him to a place of self-awareness and he was no longer the same climber who first set the speed record on the Eiger's North Face. Ueli was determined that he would take only acceptable risks. Unfortunately, Ueli's bar for risk was still very high--he died while on a training climb on the Himalayan peak Nuptse on April 30, 2017.

    

    Since 1948, the American Alpine Club has documented the year's most teachable climbing accidents, providing invaluable lessons to climbers. In Accidents in North American Climbing, each significant incident is carefully analyzed so climbers can avoid similar situations in the future.In the "Know the Ropes" section, professional mountain guides detail the best practices for traveling safely through low-angle, semi-technical mountain terrain (3rd and 4th class). "Know the Ropes" offers in-depth instruction and copious illustration to help prevent avoidable mountaineering accidents.

    Vantage Point offers a collection of the most inspiring, thought-provoking, and humorous stories featured in Climbing over the past five decades--an anthology that will move you to grab your chalkbag, rope, and harness.