Review – Guanzailing Climbing Guide Book

Guanziling is a limestone climbing area between Tainan and Chiayi. Not as developed or as famous as Long Dong, it nevertheless has its devoted climbers.

Basic Info

Published in 2003 and retailing at 250 TWD, the Guanzailing Climbing Guidebook is a simple guidebook to the Guanziling area that, while rudimentary, does provide you with all the information you need to get to the crag and have fun.

Contents

The book is layed out fairly straightforward, with directions and general info in the front, Topos in the middle and some appendices in the back -including where to stay(in Chinese only though), and a route index.

Information Section

The information section tells you everything you need to bring to Guanziling(mosquito repellant is apparently essential!) and how to get there. This section is OK but has really crudely drawn geographic maps that look like they were cobbled together in MS Paint. We understand that 2003 is a long time ago but even back then we would have expected slightly better illustrations in a professional guidebook.

Topos

Topos are via photographs with dotted lines over the route. An interesting and useful innovation in this guidebook is that the bolts are marked by an X. Anchors are marked with a double XX.

The photographs are usable but slightly higher resolution would have been greatly appreciated

Route descriptions are quite simple but useful. Here we’ve pictured one of the longer descriptions. The length of the climb, the difficulty(french system), the # of bolts and anchor is always included. Quality star ratings are present for most climbs.

 

The book includes a small index at the back which strangely doesn’t include page numbers, but does list routes by grade and crag.

Extras

The book doesn’t have much in the way of extras besides a list of accomodations in Chinese. Since this book was published in 2003, the list might be out of date anyway so no big loss.

 

Verdict

Rating:  

The Guanziling guidebook is a rudimentary but important and necessary guidebook for Taiwan Climbing. While extensive development and knowledge of Long Dong exists and is widely available, Guanziling and areas south of Taipei have been much less documented.

This book is bilingual which as foreign climbers we should be thankful for. However the english translations are not just riddled with typos(thankfully mostly innocuous), but there are entire sections of Chinese – including the introduction, which simply don’t have English equivalents. All of the essential climbing info does have english info, but it would have been nice to have all the chinese info in English as well.

Otherwise, although far from polished, the Guanzailing Climbing Guidebook is a valuable resource for the Taiwan Climbing community and a must buy for any serious climber living in the southern half of the island.

 

Where to Buy

• By mail order from Alpine Direct
• In person and by mail order from iClimb in Hsinchu