On Ice and Snow and Rock

Dust jacket notes: "On Ice and Snow and Rock is a remarkable book in every respect. Its author is climber Gaston Rébuffat, perhaps the most famous Alpinist of our time. The text is clear, authoritative, immensely comprehensive. The illustrations - 58 photographs of breathtaking colour and nearly 200 in black and white, together with numerous line drawings - must be among the finest, the most incredible, ever collected in a mountaineering book. It is not primarily aimed at the top-flight performer so much as at the beginner and the man beginning to improve. It will give him pointers on technique - the technique that Rébuffat himself applies in his own climbs. There are many pages of useful rules, hints and advice on every aspect of the sport - on equipment and clothing, roping together, bivouacking, climbing techniques for various surfaces and under different conditions. Finally, and making it more even than this, it conveys one man's attitude of mind and soul, an approach to climbing and mountains, an initiation into the rare world between earth and sky. It will lead the beginner into this world of silence and of rapture which, in Rébuffat's own words, 'one can only enter with joy and respect': for the man who knows his mountains already, it will provide a great refreshment of spirit."