Climbing and mountaineering books on sale

• Tuesday 5 January 2021

If you're feeling the January blues and need some cheering up, then why not check out our newly updated special offers list? Our January sale now features even more climbing, mountaineering, walking and running-themed books and guides at special discount prices.

We've reduced the RRP of each book and you'll still be entitled to your extra 20% off and free UK shipping.

NEWLY ADDED

NOW £12.00 // Chris Bonington Mountaineer is a photographic autobiography, documenting over sixty years of climbing the world’s most beautiful and challenging mountains. In this 2016 revised edition, which features over 500 photographs, we are given a frank perspective into the surreal, majestic and occasionally tragic corners of his incredible mountaineering career.

NOW £8.00 // Lake District Trail Running is a comprehensive guide to off-road running in the Lake District National Park. With 20 runs, from 5.1km to 17km in length, this book is suitable for runners of all abilities.

NOW £12.00 // 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.

NOW £16.00 // Great Britain Mountain Biking is a comprehensive area-by-area guide to the best of British mountain biking. Authors Tom Fenton and Andy McCandlish have compiled everything you need to know about the best places to ride mountain bikes in England, Scotland and Wales - the ideal companion for planning weekends away.

SIGNED HARDBACKS

SIGNED HARDBACK EDITIONS NOW £8.00 //  In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland. In Sky Dance, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way.

SIGNED HARDBACK EDITIONS NOW £16.00 // Martyn Farr's The Darkness Beckons charts the history and development of cave diving, from early underwater expeditions in France in the late nineteenth century, through to cutting-edge dives across the globe, where iron-willed individuals are pushing the limits of equipment and techniques in the pursuit of exploration. Featuring over 400 breathtaking photographs and illustrations, and with a foreword by renowned American cave diver and explorer Bill Stone, it is an inspirational read for anyone with an interest in exploration and adventure.

BATON WICKS

Classic guidebooks and mountain literature from legendary authors.

NOW £8.00 // Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker were at the cutting edge of mountaineering during the 1970s and early 1980s. Talented writers as well as climbers, they left two legacies. One was their great endeavour, their climbs on high peaks with bold, lightweight and innovative methods; the second and more lasting achievement was the books they wrote and left behind. The Boardman Tasker Omnibus brings together four books in which the two men describe their remarkable climbs, expeditions and first ascents. The books have become mountaineering classics; incredibly popular and brilliantly-written accounts that set the standard for mountaineering literature.

NOW £6.00 // A climbing book like no other, A Dream of White Horses mixes climbing tales with an intense personal story of one of the great characters of the British climbing scene.

NOW £6.40 // 200 Challenging Walks in Britain and Ireland is a collection of the finest wild walks in the British Isles. The routes are selected from the classic and definitive Walks series of guidebooks: Classic Walks, Wild Walks and Big Walks. Whether you are an accomplished mountaineer or first-time hiker, the walks featured will allow you to discover remote isolation, negotiate technical scrambles and enjoy quintessential hill expeditions.

NOW £8.00 // Climbing Ramabang, Gerry Galligan's first book, is a bold and expansive travel diary recounting his assembling of a small team of Irish mountaineers and their attempts on unclimbed mountains and unexplored valleys in the remote corners of the Indian Himalaya. The Alpine Fourthousanders are fifty-two magnificent mountains that make up one of the mountaineering world’s major tick-list challenges.

NOW £4.00 // Calculated Risk is a fictional portrayal of the world of mountaineering, of climbing the most demanding routes at a time when climbing was still emerging from its primitive inter-war and post war austerities and such routes were a stark struggle against the elements. The realities and tensions of big-time climbing, firmly focused on the Alps and the Himalaya, are revealed with greater clarity through the medium of fiction.

NOW £5.60 // Dermot Somers’ short stories have attracted international acclaim. His collection At the Rising of the Moon won the Boardman Tasker prize and was awarded the Banff Mountain Book Festival’s Literature and Culture Prize. Collected Short Stories brings together twenty-three of Somers' tales.

NOW £8.00 // A helpful guide which lists 500 routes from 40 main areas and eases the task of finding cliffs in the south-west by presenting readers with clear location maps.

NOW £8.00 // In this inspiring biography, Tony Smythe writes a full account of his father’s extraordinary but turbulent life as one of Britain’s most renowned mountaineers.

NOW £8.00 // In this candid biography, Boardman Tasker Prize-winning author Bernadette McDonald relates Charles Houston’s mountain adventures, the ups and downs of his varied medical career and the associated challenges of family life.

CLIMBING

NOW £16.00 // Peak Rock is a celebration of significant developments at the cutting edge of rock climbing in the Peak District, from the day that James W Puttrell first set foot on rock at Wharncliffe in the late nineteenth century, through to modern day ascents on the area’s gritstone and limestone crags.

NOW £8.00 // Fontainebleau ‘Off-Piste’ reveals the locations of over 3,000 of the best problems graded at Font 6a and above, and highlights 250 problems of outstanding quality. Some problems found on circuits, others are set apart and easily missed. This guide ensures that doesn’t happen.

NARRATIVES

NOW £10.00 // First published in 1925, and reissued now for only the second time, The Fight for Everest 1924 is the official record of E.F. Norton, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine's expedition to Everest. The compelling narrative by Norton and the other expedition members presents a gripping picture of life in the Himalaya. 

NOW £7.20 // In early 1978, an extraordinary new invention for rock climbers was featured on the BBC television science show Tomorrow's World. It was called the 'Friend', and it not only made the sport safer, it helped push the limits of the possible. The company that made them was called Wild Country, the brainchild of Mark Vallance. Within six months, Vallance was selling Friends in sixteen countries. Wild Country would go on to develop much of the gear that transformed climbing in the 1980s. Trenchant, provocative and challenging, Wild Country is a remarkable personal story and a fresh perspective on the role of the outdoors in British life and the development of climbing in its most revolutionary phase.

NOW £10.39 // Hugh Norton’s sensitive and knowledgeable biography chronicles the remarkable life of his father, E.F. Norton, a renowned Everest pioneer and military leader.

NOW £8.00 // Unknown Pleasures is a collection of works by the climber and award-winning author Andy Kirkpatrick. Obsessed with climbing and addicted to writing, Kirkpatrick is a master storyteller. Covering subjects as diverse as climbing, relationships, fatherhood, mental health and the media, it is easy to read, sometimes difficult to digest, and impossible to forget.

NOW £8.00 // In All But One Barbara Swindin describes, with verve and honesty, her attempts to reach the summits, her triumphs and shortfalls, and her slowly dawning awareness that she just might become the first British woman to climb them all.

NOW £9.60 // Andy Pollitt, one of Britain’s most iconic climbers, tells his roller-coaster story from the UK to Australia in a sports autobiography like no other.

MILLRACE OUTDOOR

NOW £8.00 // The Millrace Outdoor range of titles are beautiful to hold and read. Distinctive, lively and eccentric, they are full of ideas and dry humour. These are lovely little books that you will want to keep.

WE RECOMMEND ... Ben Macdui is Britain’s second highest mountain but its visitors are few in comparison with the 100,000 or so who trudge up the Pony Path on Ben Nevis every year. For Ronald Turnbull, however, Ben Macdui is a true mountain, preserving ‘the fundamental mountain mysteries’. He has explored it from every angle and in The Life and Times of the Black Pig takes you to the summit by seventeen different routes.

WALKING

NOW £6.00 // High Point is Mark Clarke's account of his experiences and the challenges he faced whilst on his journey to visit the highest point in each of the eighty-five historic counties in Great Britain. It is rich with historical information and observations about Britain’s counties and serves as an indispensable guide to the historic and modern counties of Great Britain and their highest points.

NOW £6.40 // Bringing literature and a love of the English countryside together, this collection of 20 circular routes in the north of England gives readers the chance to explore the physical settings that inspired some of Britain’s greatest writers.

RUNNING

NOW £5.60 // The Good Run Guide is your companion to the great running to be found in some of the most scenic locations of England and Wales. Run through the stately grounds of Chatsworth in the Peak District; traverse Hadrian’s Wall on the Scottish Border and visit the breath-taking castles of coastal Northumberland. Explore coastal coves in the north Cornwall; summit Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales or escape the hustle and bustle of the City along the banks of the Thames.

GENERAL OUTDOORS

NOW £4.00 // The Adventure Toolkit is the pocket companion for leaders of groups in the great outdoors. Packed with practical advice, useful tips and fun games it is an essential point of reference for keeping groups engaged, safe and entertained.