So far this winter has proved to be one of the best in recent years for winter climbing with many of the best crags being in great condition. To coincide with this Rockfax are pleased to announce a new performance book dedicated to winter climbing.

Written by Neil Gresham and Ian Parnell, the book follows on from the very successful Trad Climbing + and Sport Climbing +. Once again the book main aim is to give advice and show you the techniques required to push your climbing to the next level.

The book is currently at the printers and is due to be published towards the end of January. We are expecting to get stock in the week beginning 26 January and will hold the special offer price of £17.95 until the end of January (RRP £19.95). Specialist retailers should have their stock by the weekend beginning 31 January.

• Order now
• Check out the sample Ice Chapter

The El Chorro guidebook has been published today, hopefully in time for everyone going out there for Christmas. Stock should be arriving at the online distributors tomorrow morning (Thursday 11) and they will get these sent out before the weekend (13 and 14).

Obviously we are dealing with the Christmas post however we hope that all UK online orders will arrive either by the weekend or early next week. UK shops should get their stock early next week. Online orders going further into Europe will probably take at least a week to arrive but these too will be sent out next week.

The book looks great and we are very happy with it. The main author Mark Glaister is currently back out in El Chorro, this time simply to enjoy the climbing. His mate is bringing some copies direct via EasyJetso there should een be a few copies in El Chorro by this weekend.

Thanks to the new printers - John Browns in Nottingham for sorting the books so quickly.

Now it is on with the new edition of Western Grit!

For the second year running a Rockfax guidebook has won the prestigious Mountain Exposition Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Last year it was Deep Water, and this year it is Lofoten Rock.

John Harlin, a judge at Banff and renowned mountain author described the book as “perfect”. You can read his full report here.

Chris Craggs was unable to attend the ceremony but sent over  a speech which was read out in which he especially thanked co-author Thorbjørn Enevold:

“…And most importantly to Thorbjørn Enevold the climbing guide who lives and works in Lofoten, where he runs the NNKS (North Norway Climbing School), and who was instrumental in getting Ed Webster to write the classic 1994 guidebook “Climbing in the Magic Islands”. Our incidental meeting when we first arrived in Lofoten, was a fortuitous one (Sherri hired me guide of the first time ever to do the scary Svolvaer Goat). When he discovered I worked for RockFax he was wary, but I sent him a copy of our most recent guide and he later admitted – he realised straight away that “I wanted to be on that train”. His local knowledge and network of contacts ensured that the guide was up-to-date and accurate. He knew from the start what kind of a guide he wanted and subtly shunted me in the ‘right’ direction.
Thanks for giving me the chance to write a guide to this fantastic part of the world – your part of the world – and for making us welcome there.”

This is also the third year on the trot that this award has been won by a British guidebook since the BMC won with Burbage, Millstone and Beyond in 2006. which just goes to show once again what a great state UK guidebooks are in. Here are some more thoughts on this.

The new El Chorro guide is now in its final stages and will be going to the printers next week. We have produced a sample chapter download of the Arab Steps chapter. This shows the new ‘Lofoten’ style which has been very well received - huge topos, lots of colour and even more inspiring photographs. In the first week since we introduced this download it has been downloaded 583 times!

The book will be available for pre-orders from next week at a special offer price.

El Chorro actually featured in the 5th ever Rockfax publication, produced in January 1994. It was a set of 7 yellow cards, folded together and stuck into a plastic wallet. I think we sold it for around a fiver.

This was the second ‘topocard’ guide that we produced. The first was to Yorkshire Limestone, and the last was to Mallorca. It was an early experiment in providing climbing information in different formats, in this case that meant affordable (or cheap!) and quick to produce. I suppose in many ways this format was a precursor to the downloadable MiniGuides we introduced in 2002. One thing is sure when you look at the 1994 topocards - guidebook publishing has come  avery long way since then!

We are pleased to announce three new publications, one of which is available immediately, and two books for later in the year.

Firstly we have Daimon Beail’s latest addition to the deep water solo information covering Mallorca. Daimon wrote a MiniGuide called Mallorca Psicobloc in 2006 which covered the three big cliffs of Porto Cristo (Cova del Diablo), Cala Marcel and Cala Barques, plus a few smaller venues. This information was then adpated and updated by Daimon, working together with Mike Robertson, in the award-winning book Deep Water. Since then Daimon has been hard at work documenting many more areas which are now fully covered in this new MiniGuide - Mallorca Deep Water Soloing. This makes a great companion to the book Deep Water and is essential reading for anyone going to the island with a view to tackling some DWS action.

The next print publication will be a full guide to El Chorro. This great area last appeared in a print Rockfax in 2001. Despite rumours to the contrary climbing in the area remains as vibrant and active as ever, and there is also a wealth of new crags in the vicinity which are gain coverage for the first time in a Rockfax. For those looking for a ahcnage from the Costa Blanca or Mallorca, El Chorro should be on the hit list for this winter. Expected publication date is late November but we’ll say early December to be safe.

The final publication of the year is the third in the series of ‘plus’ books - Winter CLIMBING +. This time we will be focussing on all aspects of winter climbing, from ice to mixed, mountain safety to waterfall climbing. The book is being written by two of the Country’s leading winter climbers - Neil Gresham and Ian Parnell.

Lofoten Rock has now been published and very proud we are of it too! As with Northern England - our first book of 2008 - Chris Craggs has been the main author and this publication marks the end of a period of about 4 or 5 years of effort by Chris on the two projects. When you combine these two books with Eastern Grit published in 2006 and Costa Blanca published in 2005, it is an incredibly impressive quartet of 300-plus page guidebooks to have in your portfolio. Congratulations to Chris, and also to Thorbjørn Enevold who is the co-author in this case.

Lofoten Rock represents another step forward in Rockfax publication style. We have adopted a much more lavish approach to topo size and our use of photography and the books look even more impressive and rich in colour than they used to, if that is possible!

Take a look at the preview chapter here.

Spot the Puffins - The hidden ‘Easter Eggs’ in the Costa Blanca Rockfax proved to be very popular so we thought it time to provide some extra guidebook-reading entertainment again in the shape of hidden Puffins. There are 20 of them spread across the various locations - some of them are fairly obvious, some less so, and one or two are near impossible to find - mind you we said that about the Easter Eggs and still they were all found by someone (although not the same person). We have prizes for the first 10 people to send me an email with the location of all 20 puffins although, having seen the finished book, I am willing to bet that no-one will manage it.

Last week, Chris and I went down to the printers in Nottingham to see the first sheets of Lofoten Rock roll off the press. Since then the rest have been printed and I received a set of unbound ‘running sheets’ yesterday. This is always a good moment when you can see the appearance of the finished pages for the first time. No matter how many screens versions and proofs you look at (and both of these have come a very long way in the last 16 years!) the only thing that really looks like the finished product is … well, the finished product. I think the impact this time was more dramatic than any previous guidebooks I have done simply because of the amount of stunning images this book contains.

We made a little video of the printing which you can see here.

We are also doing our best ever web offer throughout May - £5 off for all orders placed online from here.

Projected delivery times

UK online orders - week beginning 19th May

Rest of Europe - week beginning 26 May (far less predictable though)

Lofoten - local stock should arrive in the last week of May.

Such is the pace of things these days that one book has only just flown the nest (Northern England) and we are already well progressed with the next. Lofoten Rock as a project has actually been bubbling under for several years now, ever since Chris Craggs started visiting there waving his trusted weather wand. His statistics are: four consecutive summers since 2004, 18 weeks in total, less than 12 wet days, only 2 wash out days (I’ve had more rain during that time in France!)

All the while Chris has been beavering away getting the information together to produce the next guidebook to this wonderful climbing destination. Working together with the locals, especially Thorbjørn Enevold, he has managed to get a virtually complete set of photos and descriptions for all the major routes on the Islands. There are massive unrepeated five-day mixed aid and free routes on places like Storpillaren; major World classics like Vestpillaren (N6 about E1) on Presten; beautiful sustained slab climbs like Bare blåbær (N5- about VS 4c) and Solens sønner (N6 about E2 5c) in Djupfjord; plus remote peaks in the West, sport crags dotted around, bouldering, walking and beautiful beaches to relax on.

Putting it together into the finished book is my job and, not only been pretty easy this time, but it has been about the most enjoyable book I have ever worked on. The photographs of these huge granite walls are just so inspiring. Virtually every route line that weaves up them has me eagerly climbing it from my desk chair, dreaming about that holiday that we want to take up there (just as soon as I can steal Chris’s weather wand!)

The book is due for publication in May and we are well on schedule. It is looking really good so far and (as ever) I reckon this is going to be the best looking guidebook we have ever produced. For these big cliffs we needed big coverage so we developed a new ‘full page bleed’ style to cope with the extra large crag photos. The results are spectacular as you can see in the free Djupfjord download.

After a frustrating delay of a couple of weeks we now have copies of Northern England. The books arrived at Rockfax HQ this afternoon - online orders will be getting processed early next week, Cordee will have their stock now also. Most shops who pre-ordered will get their stock by next weekend.

The book looks great and the printers have done an excellent job as usual, despite the difficult circumstances with the binders.

So we did make February after all, only they had to add a day on to the month for us to make it!

For the first time in the last ten years we have encountered a slight hitch in the final printing process for one of our publications and by a curious twist of fate we have also been quite lucky.

Printing often involves work with two independent contractors - the printers and the binders. Binders tend to be large operations that run round the clock and have very full order books, printers are more flexible. This means that the crucial stage when promising the delivery of a book is making sure that the binders slot is booked well in advance. If you do this then the publication date tends to be fairly predictable.

Everything was on schedule for a publication date of around 18 February when we sent the finished book to the printers on 21 January. Then there was a delay in the paper delivery from Spain but this only slowed down the printing process, we were still on schedule for the binding slot. Then, on Monday 4 February, the binders we were booked into went bust (this seems to happen with binders more frequently than other businesses).

The upshot of this is that we have had to find another binders which has delayed the publication of the book for a week or two since they are all booked up at this stage. Apologies to those who pre-ordered the book - you will still get your copies before anyone else.

The lucky break was the fact that the paper didn’t arrive on time since, if it had, then our printed unbound copy would have been in the binders when they went bust. This would probably have meant that it would have been impounded until the receivers had finished doing their thing which could have delayed the book for a lot longer than a couple of weeks.