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Book review: Escalade. Initiation, Plaisir et Progression by Arnaud Petit (Read 1624 times)

jwi

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Arnaud Petit, former world cup winner, mountain guide and co-author of the mythical (as the French say) Parois de légende has written a curious book on climbing. Richly illustrated with photos and drawings this four part book aims to give something to everyone.

The first part is aimed at complete beginners, and includes things like how to tie in, how to descend, what different part of crags are called, what you call different type of climbing moves, how to not be a complete asshat in the natural environment, and how a complete beginner should train to best progress.

The second part is aimed at climbers who wants to be experienced climbers. “How to onsight 7a” if you will. This forms the main part of the book, which make sense as it is these people who have started to become enthusiastic and actually buy books. The section contains advice on equipment, how to work a route, how to get over fear of falling, how to progress mentally and physically and something on how to nourish the efforts. (Like most books on the subject it contains enough information on how to arrange a session and a week of climbing, but very little useful information on how to arrange a training cycle.)

The third part is aimed at those who want to achieve a high level of climbing. Less than ten pages aimed at the very few climbers who want to achieve the very highest levels of climbing that they possibly can achieve. These people get a serving of tough love from the author.

The forth part contains testimonies from the best climbers in the world (Ondra, Eiter, etc.) and is probably of little interest for enthusiastic consumers of climbing media, but may well be interesting for beginning climbers.

Overall the book made me think of the series of “Tech Tips” that Climbing Magazine used to run. I loved that series, and in a sense this book is like a thematic series of such “Tech Tips” by someone who really really knows what they're talking about.

There is an absolute tonne of tricks and tips in the book aimed at everyone. Beginner climbers are told to tie in with a short loop so that they will be able to brush higher hold when hanging from a bolt that they would otherwise be able to. Intermediate climbers are told how to trim the rubber of the climbing shoe with a razor, or to chalk up the first meter of the rope for short hyper-intense routes so that they can chalk up and clip at the same time. Advanced climbers are told to pour water on warm limestone slopers so that evaporation will cool down the hold, and to do dips in the seat during intercontinental flights.

It is the tricks and tips that I really love about the book, and I keep browsing the book on random looking for tricks (and amusing and subtle put-downs). Overall I think that this is not a book to read from start to finish, except for those that just found a brand new passion in climbing, but more as a book of recipes that you browse when your cooking has gotten stale.

https://www.leseditionsdumontblanc.com/fr/nouveautes/59-escalade-initiation-plaisir-et-progression.html

Muenchener

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The French generally seem to have a different attitude than the "moah fingeboarding/deadlifting"  kick that the entire English speaking climbing world is on. When I was in Ailefroide a few years ago I picked up a special "how to climb better" edition of Vertical with that was focused on just that: how to actually climb better, not how to get stronger. Had articles on various aspects of technique, including unfashionable-outside-of-Font subjects like footwork on slabs. It was excellent, I still dip into it occasionally.

Nothing on how to blow chalk off your fingertips without dropping your Gauloise though.

BicepsMou

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Along the same lines: remember seeing a video from Font with
Guigui Mondet and a very good Swedish climber (from the Erik Karlsson blog) where the Swedish guy is literally powering up a Font slab, and Guigui stating in his nicest French English “you did it the American way!”   :clap2:
One of the best laughs I had on a climbing video for quite some time.

jwi

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