Well I’ve been busy… Since finishing the Grampians guidebook in February I’ve done trips to Spain and Moonarie, which I’ll have reports on soon, and in between trips have been beavering away in the office producing another guidebook. Thankfully this will be our last guidebook for a little while as I’ve got some exciting photography trips and projects coming up, but this was a good opportunity to finish producing something which I think will be a significant and popular guidebook to one of Australia’s premier climbing areas.
So now I’m delighted to announce Arapiles, 444 of the Best. This is a very affordable, small-format, selected routes guidebook to Mount Arapiles. The author of this no-nonsense book is local climber Gordon Poultney. This is a complete revamp of some earlier budget Arapiles guidebooks which Gordon, in fact, produced back as far as 1995. This book covers the best routes at all grades, it’s pocket-sized and has the usual high standard of photography, design and production that you’d expect from Onsight Photography.
Arapiles has always been a special place for me personally. It was there that I spent eight months full-time climbing back in 1992/93. It was then, when I was taking climbing photos on my rest days from climbing, that I started regaining my youthful obsession with photography, I really started to find my vision, and made the decision to pursue my photography professionally. Soon after I moved to Natimuk to live and started up Onsight Photography. So it has been a real delight working on this book, getting psyched about climbing there again, and being able to put so many of my photos — both old and new — together into this one book.
I first became interested in this project when I started hearing stories of people climbing at Arapiles without a guidebook, mostly short-term visitors I guess. The need for it was then driven home to me when we were getting out of the car at the Pharos car park one day and three climbers came up to us, looking a bit lost, and asked “Where is Bushranger’s Bluff?”. I kid you not! With a recommended retail price of a mere $19.95 this 132 page book will be a little winner for climbers and travellers wanting a budget guidebook. The small format makes it easy to carry around — even up those multi-pitch routes. And Gordon’s waffle-free route descriptions combined with the “tight” design will help make finding the best routes easy. I’m actually really very very psyched about this book — and I can’t wait to put it to use — and get on many of those classics which I haven’t yet done!
The book is available now from climbing gear shops, or from our online shop here — where you can also see some sample spreads.
