The Complete Guide to Climbing (by Bike): A Guide to Cycling Climbing and the Most Difficult Hill Climbs in the United States

This is an impressively extensive list of climbs---some well-known, many not---along with useful descriptions and comments about each. As an introduction/guide to the major ascents in California, and as a reference for the many smaller, more esoteric climbs that only local riders are likely to be familiar with, it is invaluable.However, a major and inexplicable omission makes using this book cumbersome and frustrating: the absence of an index or of any way to cross-reference the climbs, which are listed only in non-alphabetical order in the table of contents. To find the entry for a climb of interest, the reader must manually scan the table of contents - which is 11 pages long! - for the name of the climb. The climbs are at least ordered approximately (and only approximately) by latitude, but this does not help much. And the included maps are of such low resolution and so opaquely annotated that they don't help much either.This problem is exacerbated by the fact that climbs are named in an inconsistent and opaque way. Some climbs are tersely named only for the number of the state road they use (.e.g, "180" for a climb on Route 180) while others are named for a pass or summit with no reference to the (often well-known) road they follow (e.g., "Ebbetts Pass West" is of course just the westbound ascent of Route 4). On top of this, the regions California is divided into are oddly chosen: for example, Lake Tahoe, both sides of the Sierra, Death Valley, and the Santa Lucia range are lumped into a region called "Central California."There's nothing else like this guide, and its thoroughness and thoughtful descriptions make it worth putting up with the frustration of using it. It is, nevertheless, disappointing that with very little effort the author could have done justice to the thoroughness of his efforts by making them straightforward, instead of cumbersome, to access.

Got this book before heading out on a 5 month van trip trip though the mountain west. It has been great as a guide on areas to go to. I have done a bunch of the climbs listed.One thing I wish it had more of Colorado. Only 10 climbs listed for Americas attic? Hmm

This is so incredibly detailed and comprehensive as to make you wonder if the author has some kind of mental condition, but if so that's our gain -- with this book you will know all the climbs that are worth doing and exactly what to expect when you ride them. If you are the kind of rider who spends their winter evenings draming about what new climbs they are going to tackle next summer then this is the book for you. My only suggestion is that the author tell us in the Introduction what percent gradients correspond to his terms "shallow", "solid," etc. You can work it out from the charts but that shouldn't be necessary. The B/W photos on matte stock are not the greatest but that's the best you can expect with a print-on-demand type book. Let's hope the author lands a mainstream publisher and gets 4-color throughout.

So you put hours and days and weeks and years into compiling a list of the best rides in the state. You painstakingly catalog every route, outline multiple options, detail the driving directions, etc etc. And then you don't put index numbers on the titles for any of the rides in the book.I keep flipping between giving this 4 stars or 1 star, but you caught me on a good day.

I love Summerson's books because they are the only easy way to discover the best climbs in the country, and to get me motivated to travel and ride. I have the first edition and second edition. My trivial complaint is that climbs in the first book that I've done that were top 100 are no longer top 100 - darn. More seriously, one reason the second edition is bigger is that the print is bigger. There are many pages of what I consider fluff - we go from page 16 to 66 without any information about the climbs. Pages 275 to 349 contain innumerable statistics on the climbs, information of little interest to me. What IS of interest is where the rides are, and the maps in the first edition are completely gone from the second edition. I want to know where the climbs are and how to get to them, and the first editions maps were very useful. I had hoped that a second edition would improve on the maps by adding other less detailed maps showing context - where the climbs are relative to major roads. Information that would be useful to non-locals. Instead, the maps have been removed in the second edition! So for the time being, I'll be using both editions of the book. I'm giving 3 stars to register my complaints about lack of maps, large print, and fluff, although since there is no competition for this book the star rating is almost meaningless.

My man loves this book and is still going through the routes

I Love this Book!! And Great improvements in this new and revised edition. John's a great writer, climbs are well described and narratives are accurate. I bought this book and pick and area, then did all the climbs in that area. Awesome!!! It's Bucket List to do several area. Great surprise in the new edition, "The Bear". If your a climber or what to improve this the book for you!!

Great resource for riders who want to seek out a challenge and know what to expect, very good descriptions of the climbs

A great book, packed with lots of details of the climbs - great for planning a lumpy holiday in California. A map, or GPS coordinates, showing the actual location of the climbs would have been beneficial.