On Ice and Snow and Rock by Gaston Rebuffat (1971)

From the dust jacket: “This book is not primarily aimed at the top flight performer so much as at the beginner and the man beginning to improve. It will give him pointers on technique the technique that Rebuffat himself applies in his own Climbs. There are many pages of useful rules, hints, and advice on every aspect of the sport– on equipment and clothing, roping together, bivouacking, climbing techniques for various surfaces and under different conditions. Finally, and making it more even than this, it conveys one man’s attitude of mind and soul, and approach to climbing in mountains, an initiation into the rare world between earth and sky. It will lead the beginner into this world of silence, end of rapture which, and in Rebuffat’s own words, “one can only enter with joy and respect”: for the man who knows his mountains already, it will provide a great refreshment of spirit.