Lessons from the Red Book

“I have this idea,” Mikey texted. “Let’s climb all the suggested routes from the Yosemite red-cover guidebook.” I agreed immediately. The tattered copy of A Climber’s Guide to Yosemite Valley arrived in the mail less than a week later. Published in 1964 by the Sierra Club, it was the first stand-alone resource for the hundreds of routes put up over the previous three decades.

The 1964 “Red Book”—Steve Roper’s A Climber’s Guide to Yosemite Valley, published by the Sierra Club. I was intrigued by the idea of experiencing those early days of Yosemite climbing and seeing this place I knew intimately in a different way. He texted one stipulation, “No online research, we can only use the info in the guidebook.” A project like this could take multiple seasons to tick off the recommended classics, which apparently ranged from “short scrambles to the most demanding routes yet accomplished.” A few looked short and relatively easy, others would require