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.

    Caldwell's odds-defying feat was the culmination of an entire lifetime of pushing himself to his limits as an athlete.This engrossing memoir chronicles the journey of a boy with a fanatical mountain-guide father who was determined to instill toughness in his son to a teen whose obsessive nature drove him to the top of the sport-climbing circuit. Caldwell's affinity for adventure then led him to the vertigo-inducing and little understood world of big wall free climbing. But his evolution as a climber was not without challenges; in his early twenties, he was held hostage by militants in a harrowing ordeal in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Soon after, he lost his left index finger in an accident. Later his wife, and main climbing partner, left him. Caldwell emerged from these hardships with a renewed sense of purpose and determination. He set his sights on free climbing El Capitan's biggest, steepest, blankest face--the Dawn Wall. This epic assault took more than seven years, during which time Caldwell redefined the sport, found love again, and became a father.The Push is an arresting story of focus, drive, motivation, endurance, and transformation, a book that will appeal to anyone seeking to overcome fear and doubt, cultivate perseverance, turn failure into growth, and find connection with family and with the natural world.

    Their four books of lightweight Himalayan expeditioning are here published in one volume for the first time.

    In 1969 we even walked on the moon. And yet as late as 2000, the earth’s deepest cave—the supercave—remained undiscovered. This is the story of the men and women who risked everything to find it, earning their place in history beside the likes of Peary, Amundsen, Hillary, and Armstrong. In 2004, two great scientist-explorers are attempting to find the bottom of the world. Bold, heroic American Bill Stone is committed to the vast Cheve Cave, located in southern Mexico and deadly even by supercave standards. On the other side of the globe, legendary Ukrainian explorer Alexander Klimchouk—Stone’s polar opposite in temperament and style, but every bit his equal in scientific expertise, physical bravery, and sheer determination—has targeted Krubera, a freezing nightmare of a supercave in the Republic of Georgia, where underground dangers are compounded by the horrors of separatist war in this former Soviet republic.

    It was the perfect place for young nonconformists to drop out, hang loose, and channel their energy into climbing the valley's largely untouched walls and cracks. Many of these "misfits" were the finest rock climbers in the world. Some even shaped the future of the sport. And by the end of the decade, climbers from around the globe were coming to Camp 4 - gathering spot for the creators of the "Golden Age" of Yosemite climbing - to see what all the fuss was about. Climber and author Steve Roper spent most of ten years living in Yosemite Valley with its intriguing inhabitants. Camp 4 is his take on the era's top climbers and the (sometimes whimsical) influences behind their achievements.

    Laced with the inimitable blend of wit and wisdom that have made him fly-fishing's foremost scribe, "Fool's Paradise" chronicles the fishing life in all its glory (catching your biggest fish ever) and squalor (being stranded in a tent during a soaking rainstorm). In Gierach's world, both experiences are valuable, and both evoke humor and insight.Fishermen everywhere will understand Gierach's quest to discover and explore new waters (and then not to divulge the best locations to anyone), the unlikely appeal of winter fly-fishing ("the ice fishing shanty served the dual purpose of group therapy and the neighborhood tavern"), how impossible it is to predict the best fishing ("Everything that happens is entirely familiar, but I don't always see it coming"), or even the absurdity of the entire exercise ("day after day, you're casting a fly that doesn't look like anything to fish that aren't hungry and may not even be there"). Braving trips on small prop planes and down "Oh-My-God" roads alike, Gierach and his fishing buddies pursue bull trout in British Columbia, steelhead in the Rocky Mountains, and pike so fierce that a wise fisherman wears Kevlar gloves for the obligatory trophy photo.But as with any activity that depends on unspoiled wilderness, change is constant. Gierach sees this happening both in the landscape ("You never get to point at a meadow full of browsing mule deer and say, 'You know, all this was once condos.'") and at lodges that now require guests to sign liability waivers ("[I] had a brief vision of herds of lawyers coursing over the tundra in search of litigation"). Just the same, he is always awed by the experience of nature, or as he puts it: "You're on a lovely, remote wilderness river in the Alaskan backcountry. There are people who would make this trip and not even bring a fishing rod."Musing on the enduring appeal of fishing, Gierach theorizes, "We're so used to the fake and the packaged that encountering something real can amount to a borderline religious experience." Equal parts fishing lore, philosophy, and great fish stories, "Fool's Paradise" may not be a perfect substitute for actually being out on the water, but it's surely the next best thing.

    In "To Be Brave", learn about his oppressive childhood and his first climb, an ascent from the hardships of his youth when he discovered the beauty and intensity associated with America's mountains and rock walls. In his second installment, "Fail Falling", you can follow Robbins through his first ascents at Half Dome in 1957 and Yosemite Valley's Sentinel Rock.

    As the Vietnam war took more and more of his friends, and many of those who returned sank further into drugs and despair, Stan looked for meaning and found nothing. His life's purpose lay thirty-three hundred miles northwest, deep in the Tozitna River Valley in the heart of Alaska's frozen interior. Deadly cold, famine, grizzly bears, and one unruly sled dog with a grudge kept Stan on the knife's edge between survival and death. Humbled by the power of nature, the Boston greaser who was destined for prison found a new life in the wild, where one mistake can prove fatal. This is the true story of Stan Zuray's incredible journey; the reformation of a man's heart and mind in the forbidding darkness of Alaska's endless winter.

    Chris Spealler is 5’5" and 140 pounds. Such daunting facts would make most declare defeat before trying. Chris didn’t buy the odds, though. Instead, he forged his own modern-day David-and-Goliath story. Speal is Chris’s account of struggle and perseverance, despite being "too small." What others did with ease, he seemed to do with sheer grit and will. And his actions put him among CrossFit’s elite. His is not a story of a gifted athlete whose natural talent granted him acclaim, but rather of one man who refused to back down and inspired an entire community in the process.

    Kevin’s mum, Anne, was not there to answer his call but she never let her son down. From that fateful day, April 15, 1989, she embarked on a remarkable 24-year battle to see justice done. Convinced of a cover-up by the powers that be, she left no stone unturned in her quest to uncover the truth. It was a campaign that she fought to her dying day, succumbing to cancer at the age of 62 in April, 2013. Anne’s efforts had not been in vain. Just months earlier, a historic breakthrough saw the original inquest verdicts quashed, following a public apology to the Hillsborough families by Prime Minister David Cameron. Her daughter Sara, Kevin’s sister, was with Anne every step of the way. Now, with the help of personal recollections penned by her mum in her final months, she tells the real story of Anne’s remarkable journey – her spirit in the face of the many setbacks and her defiant refusal to accept defeat. Anne’s final message before losing her fight for life was ‘I never walked alone’. This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever fought for justice in the name of the 96.Copyright: All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holders, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

    

    Autobiography of Hermann Buhl, whose solo, unaided climb of Nanga Parbat is thought to be a greater achievement than Hillary and Tenzing's climb on Everest.

    In his memoir of a fishing trip through the Alaskan wilderness, Lou Ureneck brings to life the struggle to reclaim the trust of his teenage son, Adam, following his divorce. Told against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilds, "Backcast" is the remembrance of a fishing trip that carried a father and son from the mountains of Alaska to the Bering Sea. Along the way, nature transforms from friend into foe, and their struggles are played out against the poignant emotional battle raging between the two as they descend the river headed toward confrontation. On their journey, the two encounter nature's dangers -- bears, violent river currents and ruthless, punishing weather -- as well as the hurts that exist between them, the reasons for divorce, the absence of a father and the withheld love of a son. Dipping his hand into the river of his own life, Ureneck recounts his own fatherless childhood, the influence of his mother's boyfriend who helped him learn to fish, and the realization that he himself had done the one thing he always promised himself he would not do: He ended his marriage in divorce. Part adventure story, part reconciliation with life's unexpected turns, and part commentary on the healing power of nature, "Backcast" explores the world of a man confronted by the hard choices divorce can bring to create a moving meditation on fatherhood.

    A crucial piece of gear is MIA. You've wandered off route into dicey terrain. An injury leaves you or your partner in need of help. Climb long enough and finding yourself in a jam far from help is inevitable. In Climbing: Self Rescue, two long-time climbing instructors and guides teach how to improvise your own solutions, calling for outside help only when necessary.Because few climbers carry fancy (and expensive) search and rescue gear, all skills taught in this book use the items typically found on a climbing rack: rope, carabiners, slings, and cord. Text, illustrations, and photos explain knots, belaying and hauling systems, rappelling, ascension, passing knots, how to safely assist and rig an injured climber, and more. Roughly half of the book is devoted to real-life climbing scenarios and solutions ranging from moderate to severe. Because real-life situations rarely unfold as they do in practice, Climbing Self-Rescue teaches how to analyze and improvise your way out of a crisis.

    Foreword by Steve Dudley, Executive Director of the Continental Divide Trail Alliance.An avid outsoorswoman, West Point graduate and former Captain in the U.S. Army, Jennifer Hanson - with her husband Greg Allen - set off to thru-hike the 2,400-mile Continental Divide Trail. Together they traversed:* Arid ranchlands of New Mexico* Snow-capped mountains of Colorado* Red Desert of Wyoming* Glacier National Park of MontanaDuring their hike, Jennifer learned that she had lost her father to cancer, and, within three weeks, her husband was forced to leave the trail due to an injured nerve in his foot. Jennifer finished the last nine hundred miles of the trail - alone.Hiking the Continental Divide Trail: One Woman's Journey is the story of their incredible summer and is filled with courage, humor, stunning scenery, local personalities and the simple joys of backpacking. In addition, it is an invaluable resource for those planning their own section- or thru-hike of the CDT. Appendixes include:* Thru-hike Preparation and Timeline* Equipment and Clothing List* Food List* Itinerary and Supply Points* Map List and Sources* Complete Index