Banff Mountain Book Competition Categories announced, climbing book lovers take note

The 2022 Banff Mountain Book festival has released its list of category finalists. Category winners will be announced at the festival in Banff in the first week of November.

Climbing book enthusiasts will find a lot of interest here, with Lauren De Launay Miller’s largely previously untold history of women’s climbing in Yosemite, Katie Ives’s very literary tour of imaginary peaks and their role in climbing, a beautiful book on Scottish climber and rescue pioneer, Hamish MacInnes, guidebooks to Alberta Bouldering and climbing in the Cascades and many other titles.

Mountain Literature

Edward Feuz Jr.: A Story of Enchantment
D. L. Stephen, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2021)

Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams
Katie Ives, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2021)

The Mountain Path
Paul Pritchard, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2021)

The Fox of Glencoe
Hamish MacInnes, Scottish Mountaineering Press (UK, 2021)

Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing
Lauren DeLaunay Miller, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2022)

Mountain Fiction & Poetry
$2500 – Sponsored by the Town of Banff

Fossil
Siddharth Pandey, A Published Event (Australia, 2021)

A Path of Shadows
John Porter, Little Peak Press (UK, 2022)

Native Air
Jonathan Howland, Green Writers Press (USA, 2022)

Environmental Literature

Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water
Kazim Ali, Milkweed Editions (USA, 2022), Goose Lane Editions (Canada, 2022)

Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods
Lyndsie Bourgon, Greystone Books (Canada, 2022)

The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis
Arno Kopecky, ECW Press (Canada, 2021)

Adventure Travel

A Year in the Woods: Twelve Small Journeys into Nature
Torbjørn Ekelund, Greystone Books (Canada, 2021)

Lost in the Valley of Death
Harley Rustad, Penguin Random House Canada (Canada, 2022)

The Farthest Shore
Alex Roddie, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2021)

Windswept: Walking in the Paths of Trailblazing Women
Annabel Abbs, Tin House (USA, 2021)

Mountain Image

Above
Thomas Crauwels, Thomas Crauwels Fine Alpine Photography (Switzerland, 2021)

Forest for the Trees: The Tree Planters
Rita Leistner, Dewi Lewis Publishing (UK, 2021)

Overexposure: A Story about a Skier
Chad Sayers, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2021)

Matagi
Javier Corso and Alex Rodal, Oak Stories (Spain, 2021)

There and Back: Photographs from the Edge
Jimmy Chin, Ten Speed Press (USA, 2021)

Guidebooks

Classic Cascade Climbs: Select Routes in Washington State 
Jim Nelson, Tom Sjolseth and David Whitelaw, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2021)

Peak Bagging Wainwrights 
Karen Parker, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2021)

The Alberta Bouldering Guide 
Ian Holms, Analog Art House (Canada, 2022)

The Packraft Handbook 
Luc Mehl, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2022)

Mountaineering Article

In Search of the Light 
Leigh Ann Henion, Washington Post Magazine (USA, September 2021)

Lost Souls
Michael Wejchert, Outside Inc. (USA, September 2022)

The Girl in the Gully 
Astra Lincoln, Climbing Magazine (USA, September 2022)

The Hardest Climb
Eva Holland, Maclean’s Magazine (Canada, May 2022)

Climbing Literature

Books whose primary focus is on climbing froctom the categories above are eligible for this award. Winner will be announced in mid-October.

Grand Prize, The Phyllis and Don Munday Award

Awarded to the best title chosen from the winners in the above categories.