>>512984Sorry if my post seemed condescending! I was just trying to illustrate the point in the most vivid possible sense. (Not implying that you're mad etc etc)
Like someone here said, if you like climbing and have any degree of commitment to it, start looking for Freedom of the Hills and read the fuck out of it, cover to cover.
It will make you a better /out/doorsmen in general (I'd recommend the first couple chapters to anyone that likes being outside period, and some of the bits on nav and forecasting to anyone at all, but the meat and potatoes of the book are climbing)
Anyways, it's the climbers textbook. Don't be thrown off by the word textbook either, it's a damn fine piece of text that I reference all the time.
Also, Mark Twight's "Extreme Alpinism" is a good read, not just for those aspiring to be "Extreme". It gives you a good /out/look into the minds of people pushing the edge, lets you peek into their though process and take the relevant lessons from it. He also annotates the book with some really really interesting stories of climbs with his pals.
Reading these two books one after another had alpinism in my brain for literally years to come, one was the bait, the other was the hook, and I swallowed them whole.
