The Best Climbing Guidebooks for North Wales

If you’re thinking of visiting North Wales for a rock climbing trip, having a good guidebook can make the difference between floundering around not quite knowing where to go or what to climb and having an amazing trip.

There is something about having a physical guidebook to flick through, which you can’t do with an app, that makes planning a trip far easier.

With a huge number of current and out of print guidebooks available, here are some recommendations for the best available.

Select Guidebooks

Select guidebooks only including the very best for a given area which is perfect for infrequent visitors who just want to climb classic routes on the best crags, or for those making their first visits wanting to learn the lay of the land. Don’t expect every route and crag to be included, but the two, newer and excellent, select guides which are easily available cover all the obvious crag and route choices plus some slightly off the beaten track options.

The three select guidebooks for North Wales

Rockfax and Wired guides have both produced great modern guidebooks for North Wales, plus the older Ground Up North Wales Rock is still available. This however shows its age in comparison to the other two books, even if the small size is far more convenient to put in your climbing bag.

The above two photos show some of the differences between the two books (Rockfax above, Wired below). Perhaps the familiarity with Rockfax topos from using their app makes the book slightly easier to read, but both have good clear photos and topo lines. I prefer the Rockfax use of Green-Amber-Red-Black-White to visually indicate the difficulty of routes over the colours used by the Wired guide.

The Wired guide has more large format crag photos making it better for getting an overview of the crag. Both the Rockfax and Wired guides contain the obvious major crags, but both books include some different minor outcrops. Either book will be perfect for that first time visit or cragging holiday.

The information from the Rockfax guidebook is mirrored on their app. Whilst not as easy to thumb through to help plan your trip, it’s certainly a convenient resource to take to a crag and carry up a route unlike a paper guidebook.

Definitive Guidebooks

If you’re looking to explore the local area more, the definitive guidebooks from The Climbers Club and Ground Up are the current reference points for all the crags and routes in an area. Given the huge amount of information contained in a definitive guidebook, they are only for one specific area eg. The Ogwen Valley otherwise they would be far too large a book to ever see publication or be useful!

Lots of definitive guidebooks.

Given that the information contained is just for a limited area, these guidebooks are less useful for those people visiting for a short while and wanting an overview of the whole of North Wales, however, for those wanting to get away from the crowds on a bank holiday weekend, or just avoid the polished trade routes, then buying a definitive guidebook for your favourite areas is the way forward. For climbers visiting North Wales regularly a good collection of definitive guidebooks can be built up over time, becoming an invaluable reference point.

A comparison of the Rockfax select and Climbers Club definitive guidebook for Dinas Mot.

Comparing the the crag pages for Dinas Mot between the Rockfax (above) and Climbers Club definitive guidebook (below) it’s obvious to see the huge number of extra routes and detail on the topo. Not everything included a the definitive guidebook will be high quality, unlike the select, but many of the un-starred routes in North Wales give amazing adventure if you’re prepared to put up with a little more lichen or vegetation.

The Climbers Club have recently published an amazing range of modern style definitive guidebooks covering some of the historically overlooked areas such as Pen Llyn and the Moelwynnion which are perfect for those experienced climbers looking for esoteric adventures far from the crowds.

Ground Up have also published a pair of guidebooks for the sea cliffs of Anglesey, Gogarth North & South, also including Holyhead Mountain. For those wanting to climb on the coast, these two definitive guidebooks are a must have.

Bouldering

There is only really one choice for a North Wales bouldering guidebook. The excellent North Wales Bouldering Volume 1 from Ground Up covers the blocs around the mountain crags. The eagerly awaited Volume 2 covering coastal crags has been in the works for years but hopefully sees publication soon.