Writing 'Snow and Ice' - a female first
In this guest blog, Lina Arthur describes the why and how she accidentally became the UK's first female guidebook writer. A fascinating insight into what it took to complete Snow and Ice, a fantastic guide to the best winter mountaineering routes in Great Britain.
The transition from summer rock climbing into winter is never easy for me. But then comes the first snow of the season, and with the sun glinting off the ice crystals, I know that snow and ice season has arrived and that the mountains are going to be just that little bit more magical for the next few months. It’s easy when the sun’s shining, but sometimes you need that little dash of inspiration to tip you out of the door into the cold. Luckily I have just the book – Snow & Ice. The funny thing is that I had to write it myself.
American novelist Toni Morrison once said that if there’s a book you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you have to write it. I wanted a winter mountaineering guidebook, one that would have guided me when I was first getting into winter climbing, and which, with more experience under my belt, I could still flick through and think, “Wow, that looks like a great day out, I’m going to do that!”
There were plenty of winter climbing guidebooks out there already, but they all had flaws. They had topos nowhere near the route descriptions, sketch topos, no maps, or just didn’t bother to include the easy routes at all. There was no book that you could just grab and head off for a weekend winter mountaineering in North Wales, the Lake District or Scotland, so I decided to write one. I wanted it to be easy and inspiring to use, and to tell you everything you needed to know to get to, up and back from each climb on a single page spread.
The plan was simple – a book of 100 great winter routes. The hard part was deciding which routes should be included. I had a few basic criteria – the routes selected had to be grade I-III, fun and achievable in a day. Almost immediately the list got out of hand; there were just too many good routes to choose from. Luckily I’d already decided that I needed to include alternatives as well as the main routes. It would be frustrating to do a long walk-in with heavy kit only to discover that your chosen route was out of condition, or had a queue of climbers waiting to get on it, or even just that you actually had time for multiple routes. So Snow & Ice contains 100 brilliant winter mountaineering routes from grade I-III PLUS 150 alternative routes in the same grade range, at the same crags – a total of 250 routes. Simon Richardson’s Chasing the Ephemeral was a big inspiration to me in this decision and got me thinking about new ways that a guidebook can be useful.
As a result, I didn’t include a graded list of the climbs, since grades in winter are very dependent on conditions. Instead, I categorised the routes into classic snow gullies, classic ridges, water ice and harder mixed routes. I wanted a reader to be able to say “I enjoyed Striding Edge, what can I do that’s similar?” or “I’ve done some winter walking, but where should I start with snow gullies?” or “The avalanche danger is high, what might be a safer option?”.
I spent two winter seasons researching this guidebook and photographing every route. It took a while, because I had to wait for days when the climbs weren’t hidden in cloud or completely buried in snow. The wonderful part of this was getting to experience some of the most beautiful bluebird winter days of my life. But it wasn’t always easy. One day, as I was sitting by Llyn Idwal in the freezing rain, a passing mountain guide gave a truly accurate assessment of my day: “You must be working, because no one would be sitting here by choice!”
Basically, when writing a winter guidebook, you sit at home for days at a time, hoping for good weather, and then you do as much as possible! I live in the Lake District, so I was able to do daytrips to North Wales and Scotland to catch brief weather windows. I also was really lucky that we got a massive snowfall in May. Others were complaining about the unseasonable cold snap, but not me! It was a brilliant chance to get some crucial missing photos.
But the hill days were only about 10% of the work. Most of my time was spent sitting at my computer, putting it all together: writing descriptions, editing photos, drawing the topos, and labelling the maps. I also spent quite a lot of time on research for the book’s history section. It’s fascinating to realise that even in the late 19th century British climbers (male and female) were pushing the possibilities of winter climbing, with far less equipment than we have today. In 1936, Alice Nelson and Ruth Hargreaves were among the few climbers tackling grade V. It is reassuring to discover, however, that our illustrious forbears were also getting benighted because they’d got distracted by tasty snacks on the route or having a suffer-fest because their sandwiches had been lost under an unexpected snowfall!
Snow & Ice was the first climbing guidebook I wrote (I’d previously co-written Cogne: Selected Ice Climbs). When it was published I was shocked to be told that it was the first climbing guidebook written by a woman to be published in the UK. I’ve since written two more guidebooks (Dry Tooling Great Britain; Fontainebleau Trails), and I’m working on another ice climbing guidebook. But when the cold weather arrives, Snow & Ice is the book that I grab off the bookshelf as I head out of the door and into the hills. I’m so glad I got the chance to write it and I hope it leads to countless brilliant days of winter climbing for everyone who reads it.
