Crack Climbing by Pete Whittaker scoops Guidebook award in Banff Mountain Book Competition 2020

• Thursday 10 December 2020

Pete Whittaker's guide to Crack Climbing has won the Guidebook award in the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition.

Announcing the winner of the $2,000-dollar prize, Pete Takeda of the 2020 competition jury said, ‘Their lives no better author on crack climbing than Pete Whittaker. Erudite, witty, and himself a master of the medium, Whittaker brings clarity to free climbing’s most complex game. Crack Climbing is the first in its class—a definitive, comprehensive, and entertaining study of the joys and pains of ascending rock fissures in all shapes and sizes. Accompanied by excellent diagrams, inspiring images, and engaging anecdotes from current and historic masters, Crack Climbing offers insight and inspiration to beginners and experts alike.’

Crack Climbing was published by Vertebrate Publishing in January 2020. Hard Rock, Ian Parnell's timeless representation of British rock climbing, also published by Vertebrate Publishing, and Down: The complete Decent Manual for Climbers by Andy Kirkpatrick were also shortlisted in the Guidebook category.

A key part of the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, the Book Competition celebrates mountain literature in all its forms with $20,000 awarded annually across eight categories, selected by an international jury of writers, adventurers and editors.

The category award winners are now eligible for the award's Grand Prize which will be announced on Thursday 5 November when the category awards will be presented to the winning authors.

Vertebrate titles have scooped Banff category awards on several prior occasions with Art of Freedom by Bernadette McDonald winning the Mountain Literature Non-fiction prize in 2017; The Bond by Simon McCartney winning in the Mountain and Wilderness Literature category in 2016, and One Day as a Tiger by John Porter winning in the Mountaineering History category and then claiming the Grand Prize in 2014.