A classic reborn: CMC Press reissues guide book

Education A Classic Reborn

By Gary Landeck, Library Director

From the Climber’s

Guide: early photo of Mel Griffiths, Gordon Williams, and Dwight Lavender.

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It took two years to make, but it’s beautiful. The American Alpine Club Library and Colorado Mountain Club Collection just received the new edition of The San Juan Mountaineers’ Climber’s Guide to Southwestern Colorado, a facsimile of the original published by the CMC Press. Originally published in 1933 by CMC members Dwight Lavender, Carleton Long, and Mel Griffiths, The San Juan Mountaineers’ Climber’s Guide was the first Colorado climber’s guidebook. The book is also considered one of the first “modern” climbing guidebooks—one that provides specific route information and accompanying photographs. Most previous climbing guidebooks were what we would today consider to be general travel narratives. The Climber’s Guide was unique in its approach in how it informed climbers about what to expect when they ventured into the wilderness.

Most of the book’s content came from Lavender’s, Long’s, and Griffiths’s documentation of the climbs they made in the 1920s and 30s. In addition to imparting specific route information, The Climber’s Guide was also cautionary. As Art Griffiths explains in the new edition’s preface, “The well-documented routes to the summits of these mountains helped others avoid the mishaps and difficult route finding that too often occurs in the San Juans.” It was the sense of community and affinity for their fellow climbers that compelled Lavender, Long, and Griffiths to write the book.

The book was never published in the technical sense. The original Climber’s Guide was a typewritten manuscript, complete with handwritten notes and strikeouts. Only a small number of originals were made and today there are only two known extant copies—one at Stanford University (Lavender’s alma mater) and the other in the Colorado Mountain Club Collection. The new hardback edition comes with a slipcase and has been limited to 200 copies. Copy #1 will be added to the Colorado Mountain Club’s rare book collection in the library.

CMC Press Publisher Alan Stark was scholarly in his approach to reproducing the book and faced many challenges, particularly with maps. “The authors used USGS Quads and inked in trails, routes, and reference points, then cut the maps to fit on 6x9 pages without margins. Modern printing standards require a threeeighths inch page margin, so we had to reduce the maps and map scales by seven to ten percent in order to get the complete maps on the 6x9 pages in this book,” said Stark.

John Lacher, a CMC Press Advisory Board member, conceived the idea of republishing the Climber’s Guide. Inspired by the mission of the CMC Press to bring out-of-print guidebooks back into circulation, Lacher recruited the support of Alan Stark, Art Griffiths, the American Alpine Club Library, and business partner Alan Bernhard. Lacher worked closely with Karen Jones, one of the nation’s leading book conservators, as the original book was scanned at the University of Colorado Special Collections Library in Boulder.

To celebrate the release of The San Juan Mountaineers’ Climber’s Guide to Southwestern Colorado, the Friends of the American Alpine Club Library and the Colorado Mountain Club Collection are hosting a special event the evening of Thursday, October 23. If you are interested in attending, details will be posted soon on the CMC website and the library blog at http://aaclibrary. blogspot.com. P