Guidebook

GUIDEBOOK

Rock Climbing

Smith Rock State Park

The comprehensive guide to the place that brought sport climbing to North America― a full-color, thoroughly updated new edition

NEW EDITION BOOK TOUR 2023

With the upcoming release of the third edition of the Smith Rock climbing guide, schedule a time for Alan to visit your gym, retail outlet, club or university as part of his book release tour (beginning August 2023). Available in August 2023, the long-awaited, completely revised third edition of Alan Watts’ definitive guidebook to Smith Rock offers over 800 new routes, with hundreds of new photos, maps, and topos.

New Routes

The third edition of the Smith Rock Guidebook contains all new routes established through the end of 2022 (and a few from January 2023). Any future new routes will be detailed here, including a detailed description, photo topo, and first ascent information.

Corrections

In a guidebook containing upwards of 100,000 minute details of routes (including bolts, descriptions, and first ascent info) even 99% accuracy translates to 1000 errors, despite my very best efforts. Here I will keep an ongoing tally of all correction, whether bolts counts, grades, first ascent details, or anything else that seems amiss.

Route Stories

Each of Smith Rock’s 2271 climbing routes tells a story, far beyond the confines of a guidebook. How did a route get such an odd name, or how did it evolve over time? In sharing the whole story, I’ll connect with the climbers that did the first ascents.

Rebolting

Smith Rock’s oldest bolts are now 70 years old, and some of these are still in place. Bolts from the birth of Smith’s sport climbing era at now 40 years old. There’s been a massive, ongoing effort to replace these bolts. Here I’ll provide updates on rebolted crags and routes, and provide warnings about original bolts that are badly in need of replacement

Bouldering

The entire bouldering section of my 2010 Smith guidebook is not included in the 2023 edition of the guide, making room for the more than 800 new routes. I’m including this deleted content here, updated to include recent boulder problems.

Old Editions

Over 60 years, there have been more than a dozen guidebooks to climbing at Smith Rock. Some of these are books issued by publishing companies while others are homemade undertakings, but collectively they tell the story of the evolution of climbing at Smith Rock. Included in this section is a listing of all known guides to the area, with excerpts from each book including hand drawn topos from my first two books. To see more about or purchase the Guidebook go to Alan's Corner

Alans Corner