Upcoming West Coast Events for A Youth Wasted Climbing

David Chaundy-Smart is the author of A Youth Wasted Climbing and will be giving two presentations on the West Coast this month.

Smart was one of the leading Canadian climbers in the 1980s. Along with Sam Cohen, he started Gripped Magazine in the late 1990s.

Published by Rocky Mountain Books, A Youth Wasted Climbing was shortlisted at the Banff Mountain Book Festival.

On Oct. 10, Smart will be visiting the Patagonia store in Victoria, B.C. For more information about the event, visit here.

On Oct. 12, he will be at Book Warehouse on Main Street in Vancouver. For more information about the event, visit here.

“Chaundy-Smart’s description of his youth has all the understatement and dry wit of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. There is a natural rhythm to the book that makes it a joy to read: pure and simple. Bloody brilliant.” – Paul Pritchard, author of Deep Play and The Totem Pole, 1997 and 1999 winner of the Boardman-Tasker Prize.

Smart took it as a compliment when his high school vice-principal told him he was wasting his youth by climbing.

In his book, he tells the story of how he and his brother, Reg, spent the last years of the 1970s fighting suburban boredom to become, in the words of renowned climbing historian Chic Scott, “One of the leading figures in Ontario rock climbing throughout the 1980s.”

With its vivid accounts of short and nasty climbs, dubious mentors, hapless climbing partners, teenage crushes, bad cars, underage drinking and questionable climbing techniques, this is a memoir of coming of age in a simpler era of climbing, told with compassion, humour and insight.

Listen to a conversation between Smart and Gripped editor Brandon Pullan that was recorded this summer on Basecamp Radio.

Smart will be at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in November to give a presentation at the Dirtbag Cafe. Fore more info on the event, visit here.