Trekking and Climbing in the Andes (Trekking and Climbing Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Not really a climbing guide; more of a coffee table book
Review: There are several shortcomings in the book that keep it from being a reliable and useful climbing guide. First, it is too bloody large and heavy to haul around, being printed on heavy paper stock so that the photos are pretty. Second, it was not well proofed, and a book that has three authors should have some luck in catching basic information errors if there were indeed three qualified persons involved. Instead, we believe that the errors in many of the simpler subjects point to the possibility of more grave errors in significant details. A modern and serious trekking or climbing guide would include detailed positional data, including topographic and GPS coordinates. These are generally lacking. There are also some fundamentally silly statements, such as "Bolivia is a relatively safe country." Bolivia? Safe? Perhaps compared to Colombia. But Bolivia is fraught with hazards ranging from generally poor health and hygiene, unsafe tourist accommodations, treacherous public transport, and considerable street crime in the cities, even if you don't accidentally end up in one of the coca-growing regions. (There is also a statement that Peru is relatively safe, so evidently the authors' perception of "relatively safe" is not shared with those from the civilized countries). In the Chilean portion of the book there are considerable errors, including one that describes going "clockwise" as a way to make the John Gardner pass "less of an uphill struggle." Anyone who has climbed this pass will attest that the western side is steeper and more slippery than the east side, so this book's recommendation is quite backward. Another part of the same chapter even seems to contradict this observation, leading us to think perhaps one author was not really talking to another. Similar errors persist throughout the book, along with misleading information, misspelling of Spanish words, internal inconsistencies, and then the absence of essential data that should have been included. Pretty pictures, though.