Southern Pisgah Rock and Ice (new NC guidebook)

I am so pysched to have this out in the world after pecking away at it for 7 years. Although a few of us worked closely on compiling beta, the book was written by generations of NC Climbers over our 50 plus years of climbing rock and ice in the southern PIsgah region. If you get your hands on one, I hope it helps enrich your experience in these wild places. If interested, www.grounduppublishing.com 
 

Looks great Mike. Thanks for your efforts in putting this together.

Amazing work, Mike!

The book is fantastic, looking forward to trying some new climbs! 

I had the chance to flip through it yesterday (my climbing partner's copy arrived already). It's a gorgeous book and I plan on picking up my own copy soon.

The topos are great, the sheer number of crags it "adds" to our options in the area is fantastic, and the writing is stellar. Of what I read, I particularly enjoyed the John's Rock retrospective.

Thanks for orders and kind words! I'm also always all ears on corrections and updates and will post then on the Ground Up website

I thought I knew the area pretty darn well.  I was wrong.  If you climb in NC, BUY THIS BOOK !  Thanks Mike for bringing so many obscure areas into the light and for the fabulous histories of the better known areas.  Your best book yet !  Now get to work on Cashiers Valley.    ;)

This book is excellent, and is absolutely a must-have for WNC climbers. Thanks, Mike, for all the effort!!

Sean Cobourn wrote: Your best book yet !  Now get to work on Cashiers Valley.    ;)

Agreed! And after Cashiers... tackle Linville Gorge! ;) 

Wes Whitaker wrote:

Agreed! And after Cashiers... ! ;) 

Nah...nobody climbs there...

BaileyK Kirkland wrote: A new detailed guidebook would take away from the adventure/wilderness feel that makes the area special.

Yes, because the only way to have a special adventure in the wilderness is to thrash through the rhodos without a guidebook, wondering where the hell you are.  And if there were a guidebook, everyone, including those who want a rhodo-thrashing adventure, would be forced to read it.

Bump for a lot of hard work. I wish I had a book like this when I lived and climbed in WNC.

Re: Cashiers/ Linville guides...
Bailey, thank you for the thoughtful post. I share many of the same sentiments. In publishing previously unpublished areas, I agree that it somewhat changes the feel of the first time or two you are in the area. There are a few nice crags within the Southern Pisgah region that I purposefully left out of the guide for that reason. I have focused on more comprehensive coverings in Ground Up guides because it spreads people out at the crags, pays homage to the history and dedicated individuals, and gives modern climbers more options.

Linville and Cashiers crags have been published since the early 1980's. There is even a guide out there for the Gold Coast published a few years back. The current select climbs is about to be out of print, leaving an obvious hole here. If an updated guide of either of those locations happened, it would be an amazing feat and I would certainly support it if the community at large supported it (that won't ever be unanimous but any I welcome any thoughtful feedback). Trampling of natural resource, questionable public access, over crowding, overwhelming lack of local support, etc are reasons I would want people to sway away from making any info public, either on Mountain Project or in print.  I have never felt crowded at an NC cliff, with the exception of easily avoidable camp or guided groups. Between the sporadic Linville info out now coupled with the Avenza map app, I am hard pressed to see how a guidebook that would change anything about Linville or Cashiers. It will always be a wild adventure getting to either side of the gorge, and Cashiers cliffs being tamed by a book.... never. All that said, I don't know of an author for either spot but would love to work with someone on compiling all the known info in one cohesive guide, even if it were just an updated version of all previously published crags.  

Another personal motivation for publishing guidebooks is that I have seen it help public access to areas. For example, when the Bald went from private land to CRSP land (and partially  CCC owned), there was literature out there within the park system that only previously published routes in the most current guidebook would be permissible for climbing. At that time, only Selected Climbs existed. Luckily, Sean and I, and many others throughout the community, acted quickly and published an updated version called 'Rumbling Bald Rock Climbs'. Compare the two guidebooks and imagine if only the Selected Climbs routes were open. In volunteering with the Carolina Climbers Coalition for the past 10 years, showing land managers that there is a precedent and history of climbing in specific areas has only encouraged access. Other folks may have different experiences with that, but that has been my experience. Online formats have not had as much benefit to public access that I have seen and are not held in as high regard as printed material (in the CRSP case, especially). Additional positives have been for search and rescue teams; the more resources they have for documented areas, the better for everyone involved.

Hopefully these positives outweigh any of the negatives of having a guidebook for an area. I admittedly have a biased opinion as to the justification of helping compile these resources. I love the creative process, involving other's talents, and improving public access to wild places. I'm open to other opinions and enjoy the conversation. 

I think a Linville guide that just provided updated, accurate information on Table Rock, the Amphitheater, Shortoff and maybe Hawksbill would be awesome.

The selects guide is almost laughably inaccurate at this point--shortly after I moved to NC, I got "lost" getting to Cave route because the selects guide references nonexistent rail ties, for instance. Multiple people on this site have complained about not being able to find NORTH RIDGE for crying out loud, and it's probably because the topo in the Selects makes it look like one big cliff face, not a series of broken faces.Those areas are well traveled and established, a more accurate guide would have a positive impact with no real negative effect--they're already the "accessible" Linville crags.

...of course, this is all off-topic to this thread, which is about how AWESOME the new Pisgah book is. I still haven't made it out to any of the "new" crags, but I'm excited to--and who hasn't looked up at John's Rock while using the hatchery port-a-john and wondered what it went at?