Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills

9/24 Although a bit dated, this book is worth your time. You need NOT be an avid climber, information resented well and many topics are needed by you.

This book has managed to condense all the fundamentals of (outdoor) climbing - from rock to ice- and to present them in an easily understandable and concise format. I found it invaluable as a beginner and have continued using it as a reference book. If you take climbing seriously, you will probably buy some other books on more specialized techniques down the line, but this book is where you should start. Nothing essential is missing. The book is also very good at pointing out all the ways you could possibly make mistakes, so you don't make them. FYI, this book does not go so much into training for climbing as it does the skills and knowledge you will need to climb. (For rock climbing, the best book on *training* I've found is "Performance Rock Climbing".) It also does not go too much into first aid, but the publisher of this book also puts out a book on wilderness medicine if you are interested...

As summer season is approaching in the northern hemisphere; many mountaineers are getting ready to climb again.Whether you are just starting out with hillwalking or you sharpen your icetools weekly, this is the one book that rightly is known as 'the bible of mountaineering'. You will never know too much about the versatility of mountaineering and I recommend this book for every climber, hiker or armchair mountaineer.Over 500 pages filled with clear drawings of techniques and knowledge.Everything from building a snowcave to using a 'Texan prusik' and rockclimbing technique is covered. Mountaineering is not just one of these disciplines, it's always a mixture of everything and therefore it is good to have knowledge on all aspects before you head out into the wild, whether it's Denali or that big boulder in the park.This is the only book around truly covering 'Mountaineering'; it's a classic and if all great mountaineers own a copy and still read it, why shouldn't you?

Here in Seattle -- where mountaineering is almost a religion -- Freedom of the Hills is to climbing skills what Fred Beckey's Cascade Alpine Guide is to climbing routes: the bible. It's the fundamental textbook for the Seattle Mountaineers' climbing curriculum, reputed to be the most thorough and rigorous in the Pacific Northwest and perhaps in the country. Virtually every sentence in Freedom of the Hills has a piece of information that has helped me in the mountains. I've re-read portions so many times that my 1979 copy is more tattered than your grandmother's New Testament. Since I first read Freedom of the Hills I've climbed dozens of peaks in Washington's Cascades and Olympics -- on steep snow, ice, technical rock, and glaciers, you name it. I've been through the Ptarmigan Traverse, up eight peaks in the Pickets, and atop Rainier three times. To put it bluntly, if I'd attempted these climbs without the knowledge and skills in this book, by now I would certainly be dead. So, before you go up there: Take a class. Read this book. Stay alive. . . . Okay, I gotta go. I'm buying four more copies of this book right now to send to friends in Colorado.

I have a huge, thick copy right here and it is the bomb. Want to know somethin' about the mountain experience? Everything is here in the book. Every serious and safe climber has read from it. Read it, you'll see why it's the best source to turn to. Even Alex Lowe calls it "an essential...remarkable compilation." Yeah Baby! :) Read & Climb On!

I own a first edition copy of Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills, as well as the current edition, and several editions in between. I can not imagine a person being interested in Mountaineering, Rock Climbing, Ice Climbing, etc.and not wanting to own a copy of this book, especially now that it is available in the more affordable paperback edition. I first started rock climbing in 1971, before it became as popular as it is today, most, if not all, of what my climbing partner and I knew of climbing, from technique to equipment, came from Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills. Of all the climbing/mountaineering books that I own, Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills never seems to make it back to its spot on the bookshelf