Banff Mountain
Book Competition

What is the Banff Mountain Book Competition?

The Banff Mountain Book Competition is an internationally recognized literary competition that will celebrate its 19th year in 2012. Winners will be announced during the Book Awards at the 2012 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival in November.

2012 Banff Mountain Book Competition Categories

Prizes will be awarded in each of the following categories:

(Please note: books written primarily for children and young adults are not suitable for this competition.)

Adventure Travel — includes fiction and non-fiction books with a theme of travel to, and exploration of, remote or rugged landscapes and their cultures. (English editions only) $1000(CAD)

Mountain Guide Books — includes hiking, climbing, mountaineering, and “how-to” books dealing with physical activities in a mountain area. (English editions only) $1000(CAD)

Mountain Image — includes books with a primary focus on mountain images and with text in a subordinate role. Images may include photographs, drawings, and reproductions. (Publications in all languages are eligible) $1000(CAD)

Mountain and Wilderness Literature — includes non-fiction and fiction books on mountaineering, mountain history, mountain travel, mountain culture and environment, mountain adventure, and mountain or wilderness experience of any kind. (English editions only) $1000(CAD)

A Grand Prize of $2000(CAD) will be awarded to the best overall book, regardless of category.

Book Competition Entry Deadline – June 30, 2012

• Read the regulations
• Enter on-line
• Print the entry form
• If shipping books from outside Canada, please contact the competition coordinator at banffmountainbooks@banffcentre.ca

2011 Banff Mountain Book Competition Winners

The Banff Mountain Book Festival thanks the writers, the photographers, their editors, and publishers for entering this year's competition.

The 2011 Banff Mountain Book Competition jury – Baiba Morrow (Canada), David Pickford (UK), and Katie Ives (USA) – chose the award winners.

View 2011 Winners

Past Winners of the
Banff Mountain Book Festival

2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995 |

2011 BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK COMPETITION FINALISTS

The Banff Centre is pleased to announce the list of finalists in the 2011 Banff Mountain Book Competition, all entries are listed alphabetically by award category. Awards will be presented Thursday, November 3, 2011 at The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival.

Adventure Travel

The 1000 Hour Day
Chris Bray, Pier 9 (Australia, 2010)

Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole
Felicity Aston, Summersdale Publishers (UK, 2011)

Crossing the Heart of Africa
Julian Smith, HarperCollins Publishers (USA, 2010)

The Magnetic North
Sara Wheeler, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (USA, 2011)

Travels in Siberia
Ian Frazier, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (USA, 2010)

White Planet: A Mad Dash through Modern Global Ski Culture
Leslie Anthony, Greystone Books (Canada, 2010)

Guidebooks

Bouldering in Ireland
David Flanagan, David Flanagan (Ireland, 2011)

Peak District Bouldering
Rupert Davies, John Coefield, Jon Barton, Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2011)

West Country Climbs
Mark Glaister, Rockfax (UK, 2010)

Mountain & Wilderness Literature

All That Glitters: A Climber's Journey through Addiction and Depression
Margo Talbot, Sono Nis Press (Canada, 2011)

The Canterbury Trail
Angie Abdou, Brindle & Glass (Canada, 2011)

Desert Towers
Steve Bartlett, Sharp End Publishing (USA, 2010)

Fail Falling
Royal Robbins, Pink Moment Press (USA, 2010)

Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer
David Roberts, Broadway Books (USA, 2011)

Freedom Climbers
Bernadette McDonald, Rocky Mountain Books (Canada, 2011)

The Ledge
Jim Davidson, Kevin Vaughan, Ballantine Books (USA, 2011)

Murder in the High Himalaya
Jonathan Green, Public Affairs (USA, 2011)

No Way Down
Graham Bowley, HarperCollins Publishers (USA, 2010)

One Mountain Thousand Summits
Freddie Wilkinson, New American Library (USA, 2010)

Mountain Image

Pakistan's Golden Thrones
Tommy Heinrich, Tommy Heinrich (Argentina, 2010)

Path of Beauty: Photographic Adventures in the Grand Canyon
Christopher Brown, St. Martin's Press (USA, 2010)

The Sacred Headwaters: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass
Wade Davis, Greystone Books (Canada, 2011)

Unexpected: Thirty Years of Patagonia Catalog Photography
Jennifer Ridgeway, Jane Sievert, Patagonia (USA, 2010)

2011 Book Jury

Katie Ives — USA

Katie Ives is the editor of Alpinist Magazine. Her stories, book reviews and translations (from French and Mongolian) have appeared in various publications, including Alpinist, The Harvard Mountaineering Club Journal, The American Alpine Journal, Mountain Gazette, Circumference, 91st Meridian, Outside Magazine, and Patagonia Field Reports. In 2004 she won the Mammut/Rock and Ice Writing Contest, and in 2008 she received third place in the UKC/International Literature Festival Writing Competition.

Baiba Morrow – Canada

Baiba Morrow has travelled the mountain world for the last 30 years in many capacities, telling stories through words and images, both still and moving. Baiba and her husband Pat are frequent visitors to the Himalaya and their documentary, The Magic Mountain, filmed in Ladakh, India, won three international film festival awards, including the 2005 People’s Choice at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival.

David Pickford – UK

David Pickford is a climber, writer, and photographer based in the United Kingdom. He is the editor-in-chief of Climb magazine, Britain’s leading monthly climbing magazine.