Rock and Rope

London: Faber and Faber. Good/Very Good. 1967. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo Dust jacketunclipped. Boards have rubbed area & tape marks. No ownership marks. 174 pages clean and time. For every climber who aims at the hardest ascents there are a thousand mountaineers who remain content with lesser climbs; who prefer delight to desperation. These, in climber's jargon, are the Rabbits. They are the people who-in C. E. Montague's phrase-know what is what in the way of a recreation. Showell Styles, whose forty mountaineering years have taken him to the Himalaya and the Arctic as well as to the Alps, proudly claims brotherhood with the Rabbits. In Rock and Rope, as in its predecessor Blue Remembered Hills, he deals with his own mountain experiences; but here the theme is the rockface rather than the hill-path, with a rope in place of the pilgrim's staff. From the familiar `classics' of British rocks or little-known crags in Palestine and Malta, from the adventure of First Ascents and from greater climbs in Norway and the Alps, the author distils into words the special magic of steep rock-a joyous magic, for all its elements of danger and escape. `in mountaineering,' writes Showell Styles, `achievement and enjoyment go hand in hand. But in my philosophy of mountains enjoyment is the more important of the pair.' Rock and Rope, then, is a book of mountain enjoyment; half a lifetime of it. .