It is being modelled on the very popular West Country Climbs with the intention being to cover all the major crags in the area from the Ormes, through the mountains and on to Gogarth. You can read more detail about what the book covers on the book page here.

Progress has been amazing over the last couple of months with the team able to take advantage of some surprisingly good weather windows. On a glorious Saturday a group of us got up early to trek up to the Cromlech in morning light and capture the cover photograph of Alexandra Schweikart on Left Wall.

Jack Geldard on the cover photo shoot.

Your Feedback

Since there are so many of us with warm memories about climbing in North Wales, it is a great time to give your feedback on grades, stars and general route comments. The book page here has links to most of the crags being included in the guide so, let us know what you think before the book goes to press.

The example spread of Craig yr Ogof from North Wales Climbs.

The example spread of the walls of the Cromlech from North Wales Climbs.

The Ormes of Llandudno are also being covered.

We have just published a small update for the France : Ariège guidebook which covers an extra crag for the Ax Les Thermes area.

Download it here

Ax les Thermes – Piscine – More Routes
To the right of the routes in the guidebook (p263) is a small selection of routes. The ones on the far right are a useful addition to easy routes in the area. As intimated at in the guidebook, there has been some confusion about the names of the routes here, though some are painted on the rock.

Map: By PANONIAN (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Altai Rock

From the lowland roadside crags in the Kuraysky range to the soaring multi-pitch mountain routes of the North Chuyskie Belki, there is a lifetime of adventure to be found in the Altai. All of the major ranges and regions will be covered, including the recent bolted faces in the Saylyughem near the Mongolian border. The crags around Irbistu in the South Chuyskie Belki probably contain the highest concentration of climbing in Russia, challenging yet memorable days out are guaranteed.

Free Download Sample

As a taster we have produced a MiniGuide to one of the great crags in the area which is free to download. The Central Earth crag – so called because it is about as far from the coast as possible on Earth – has been developed with three great lines up its striking corners.

Get the sample topo now

Clay Conlon nears the top of the majestic Karohshi Corner – a classic Severe on Central Earth crag in the South Chuyski Range.

The 1998 Peak Bouldering Rockfax

Fifteen years ago Rockfax unveiled its original Peak Bouldering guidebook. This was one of the first guidebooks to comprehensively cover bouldering in the Peak District, and such was its popularity that you still see well-loved copies being used today. They have even been sold on eBay for inflated prices in recent years.

Later this year we will be finally producing the new edition of this book. Since 2000 bouldering has undergone a massive growth in popularity, and the Peak District is now generally considered to be the most popular bouldering destination in the UK. The new book will bring everything up to date with many new venues, loads of new problems plus all the old well-loved spots being covered.

The new book due out this summer

Grading
One of the big changes in this book will be the grading system we use. The debate about V-grades or Font grades for bouldering has been ongoing for years without a definitive worldwide resolution at this stage. We have decided to use a dual system which will hopefully keep everyone happy by presenting all harder problems with both a V-grade and a Font grade. For the lower-grade problems we are going to use V-grades with UK tech grades since these tend to be more familiar to less experienced boulderers coming from a trad climbing background. The split will be between V2/font 5+ and V3/6A which also represents the divide line between orange spot problems and red spot problems.

More information on the book here

News update May 13 - The book will not be published this summer. Now that we are working on it we have uncovered discrepancies with many of the low-grade problems and it is taking a lot of time to sort these out. The new predicted date is before Christmas 2013.

Download the Costa Blanca Xtra MiniGuide Now

This MiniGuide contains 4 of these crags and two extra buttresses from covered crags. It also has Morro Falqui which only ever previously featured in a MiniGuide, and El Picayo, which is a nice-enough little crag but a bit distant from the main areas (see photo). Also of note is the fact that we think we have finally got a decent and accurate approach description to Alcoi – possibly the hardest crag to find anywhere.

El Picayo which is near Montessa

The MiniGuide is available in a two-side-printer paginated booklet version (A4-Booklet), and a single-side-printer version (A4-Paper).

Crags Included (links go to Rockfax Database) - Sierra Magdelena, Ibi, Sector Cumbre (Sax), Foradà (Extra Sectors), Alcoi, Morro Falqui, El Picayo, Baranc de l’Avern

The book looks great and we hope the record number of people who pre-ordered the book will have received their copies very shortly. The stock is being sent out around the country to local specialist climbing shops right now and most of these should have copies in by the weekend of 16/17 Feb. Non-specialist shops are not likely to have any copies for several weeks despite what their web sites might say.

New Special Offer

Although the pre-order special offer has finished, we have replaced it with a new one. Each purchase from this web site of the new book now comes with a free version of the Costa Blanca Ridges Mobile MiniGuide. This should provide a handy companion for those wishing to attempt the ridges and not carry their heavy new shiny Rockfax print book with them.

This is our second Mobile MiniGuide after Gower Sport Climbing back in October
2012. The format isn’t really ground-breaking but is a useful stop-gap between printed PDFs and a full App version.

The information in this MiniGuide has been slightly updated with a bit of feedback after version 1 and a slight modification of the way the text descriptions are presented. It covers the same five ridges – El Realet, Espolón Central, Bernia, Toix and Segaria.

The new Spain : Costa Blanca Rockfax print guidebook actually covers four of these ridges as well with the same information and this Mobile MiniGuide just adds a portable version plus the bonus Segaria Ridge.

We are now offering the Costa Blanca Ridges MiniGuide for free with every online purchase of the Spain : Costa Blanca guide from this web site.

Order now at a Special Offer Price of £24.95 (RRP £29.95)
Update: 13th Feb – The offer has now ended and the pre-orders have been shipped.

• Books should be delivered to UK addresses by Friday 15th February.
• Books to else where in Europe should be there before 27th February but may well be there earlier.

NOTE – We can’t guarantee this delivery date and a dump of snow in the wrong place could stall the process but we are currently pretty confident that the books will arrive on time.

Crags Included

Links go to the database (new crags since 2005 in bold)

Murcia - Leyva, Mula, La Panocha, Orihuela
Alicante - Marín, Salinas, Sax, Peña del Corb, Peña Rubia, Foradà, Reconco, Agujas Rojas, Cabezon de Oro
Benidorm - Sella, Castellets, Puig Campana, Ponoch, Vall de Guadar (Echo), Bolulla, Abdet, Guadalest
Calp Area - Bernia, Altea, Mascarat, Castellet de Calp, Sierra de Toix, Peñón de Ifach, Olta, Pinos
Xaló Valley - Peña Roja, Murla, Alcalalí, L’Ocaive, Font d’Axia, Pego
Gandía Area - Gandía, Salem, Bellús, Aventador, Montesa

Click for map of Rockfax publications

A new updated version of our print catalogue is now available. This has information on all our currently available publications and you can download a copy here.

This document is kept up to date and includes future publications as well as a European map showing the location of all our printed books. You can see this map by clicking on the image to the right.