1986

                                                               Fifth Edition: 1999

 

                This comprehensive guide to hundreds of trails, roads, routes and peaks in

                the high country of southwestern British Columbia is the successor to Dick

                Culbert’s highly acclaimed Alpine Guide to Southwestern British Columbia 

 

Bruce Fairley threaded together and edited one of the earliest and most comprehensive books of Canadian mountaineering with the publication of Canadian Mountaineering Anthology: Stories from 100 Years at the Edge (1994). Fairley had published an earlier book, though, that had filled the need for a mountaineering guide book that brought together both climbing and hiking. 103 Hikes in Southwestern

British Columbia was a bumper crop seller, but those keen to do scrambling and climbing were eager from something much more. The publication of Dick Culbert’s A Climber’s Guide to the Coastal Ranges of British Columbia/Alpine Guide to Southwestern British Columbia needed updating and Fairley heard the call and replied with finese and insight.

 

The 1^st publication in 1986 of A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern British Columbia was amply and ably rewarded with many a sale—climbers and hikers were more than pleased by the synthesis of both forms of mountain trekking. In fact, the tome was so popular that by 1999 a fifth edition left the publishing tarmac. Climbers, scramblers and hikers needed a book that brought together a variety of approaches to mountain trails, peaks and alpine destinations.

 

The fifth edition of A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern British Columbia is a beauty of a tome---informative, researched well and replete with many a well known and new not so well known climb and hike. The book begins with an ‘Index Map’ that deftly divides southwestern BC into a variety of regions, has a fine article on ‘Climbing in Southwestern British Columbia: A Brief History’, highlights 27 not to be forgotten trips in the Lower Mainland, draws in Vancouver Island, has an article on ‘Vancouver Island: Introduction and History’, then lists 5 mountain keepers not to miss on the Island. There are, in short, 32 challenging yet scenic treks in this innovative mountaineering guide.

 

Fairley begins his ‘Introduction’ with these telling words: ‘In 1974, Dick Culbert began his Alpine Guide to Southwestern British Columbia with the statement that “The Coast Mountains of British Columbia contain some of the least hospitable terrain on earth”. While this remains true, they also happily contain some of the most attractive alpine regions on the planet. It is the purpose of this guide, based on Culbert’s pioneering work, to describe access to and routes and climbs in this high country of the southwestern corner of British Columbia’. It can be safely said that Fairley more than accomplished the goal set for himself and the reader in the ‘Introduction’.

 

A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern British Columbia has scattered throughout the tome superb black and white photos, routes up mountain faces, maps aplenty and approaches by vehicle and foot to trial heads. Each mountain often has a variety of routes to the high perches and Fairley lists and describes such ascents well. Many is the book and booklet that lists walks and hikes, fewer still are the books on scrambles and climbs, rarer still books on the more demanding climbs in BC such as Don Serl’s The Waddington Guide: Alpine Climbs in one of the World’s Great Ranges, but Bruce Fairley’s 5^th edition of A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern British Columbia is a minor classic and gem that all hikers and climbers should have in their library.

 

Berg Heil

Ron Dart