Rock Climbing Lake Tahoe

After a few years of delays, it's good to see the new edition of Mike Carville's guide to Tahoe climbing come out (the first edition was called "Climbing Tahoe Rock"). I had been working off tatty photocopies of the 1991 edition for quite a while, so having a sturdy, well-bound book finally to hand is a relief.The major new feature of this guidebook is a set of excellent topos hand-drawn by Mike Clelland. These are among the best topos I have seen in any climbing guidebook. Unfortunately, about 20% of the topos remain the vague and confusing outlines last seen in the 1991 edition.Directions to crags are generally good, but route descriptions rarely extend beyond names and approximate indications of the lines of ascent. Carville's alternative to the star ratings common in other guidebooks is a "recommended routes" section at the beginning of each description of an area, which makes navigation back and forth through the book an annoying necessity; this also makes it less easy to decide which routes might best be skipped by climbers unfamiliar with the area.As far as new routes go, this version doesn't seem to add a lot of material over what was in the 1991 edition. There is now a section on ice and mixed routes, which I don't recall seeing in the earlier edition (but I wasn't interested in ice climbing then).Carville has clearly put a lot of work into the new edition of this book, and while it's not the best guide I've seen, it is certainly good enough to get you to some crag where you'll find whatever challenges you please.