Climbing guidebook

Modern climbing guidebooks are increasingly available in digital format, and even as searchable smartphone apps with extensive beta and three-dimensional diagrams of routes.

Certain notable guidebooks played an important role in standardizing the grading systems that are in use today.

[5][7] Certain climbing areas are notable for systemic sandbagging (i.e. most of the grades in their guidebooks understate the true difficulty of their routes), with examples in North America being Yosemite, Shawangunk Ridge (the "Gunks"), and Eldorado Canyon.

[10][11] Guidebooks may be compilations of selected popular or well-regarded routes (e.g. Fifty Classic Climbs of North America or Hard Rock), or exhaustive compilations of all known climbing routes in a region (e.g. the 512-page Lancashire Rock in Britain).

[2] In recent years, many climbing guidebooks have been published in digital format, often for display in smartphone applications as apps.

[14] This medium offers the benefit of continuous updates, as well as rapid searching, and in some cases, GPS navigation and three dimensional diagrams.

[3][11] Some of the earliest dedicated climbing guidebooks can be dated back to the mid-19th century and the Golden Age of Alpinism, with the British Alpine Club's Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers in 1859 being arguably being one of the earliest published guidebooks dedicated to climbing.

For example, Steve Roper's 1964 big wall climbing guidebook, A Climber's Guide to Yosemite Valley, cemented the nascent Yosemite Decimal System as the dominant grading system in North America.