Six years ago, I would have told you that the idea of writing an instructional book about sport climbing was a ludicrous idea. Sport climbing is pretty self-explanatory, right? The most complicated thing to learn was threading an anchor, and it seemed any Luddite with 10 spare minutes should be able to figure that out. This was when I carried hexes up single pitch routes.

Through the years, I have learned that sport climbing is far more complex than I could have imagined. At the risk of sounding like an uphill-in-the-snow-both-ways-octogenarian, I learned most of these complexities the “hard way.” If you are new to the game, Andrew Bisharat’s Sport Climbing: From Top Rope to Redpoint ($21.95, mountaineersbooks.org) can save you a lot of the work of trial and error. Even if you’re an old hand, I can almost guarantee there are gems within its pages well worth the twenty bucks it costs.

One of the most useful parts of the book is the candid discussion of hangdog tactics. Clipping in short, clipping up, boinking, and stick clipping to name a few, are some of the essential tools Bisharat discusses which will make you project routes more efficiently. And though there are other books about technique and training, the section on climbing efficiently, perhaps one of the most important skills the sport climber can learn, is something I wish I had read many years ago.

Unless you are psyched about suffering on peaks with unpronounceable names, forget The Freedom of the Hills. Sport Climbing should be your bible. — Arnold Braker

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