Jerry Moffatt Book Wins Grand Prize at Banff

For over twenty years, from roughly 1980 to 2000, Jerry Moffatt was simply the best climber in Great Britain. Now Moffatt can add prize-winning author to his extensive resume after Revelations, his new autobiography, just won the Grand Prize at the prestigious 16th annual Banff Mountain Book Festival for outdoor, adventure, and environmental genres. The book, coauthored with Niall Grimes, chronicles Moffatt's rise to rock stardom.

Stephen Goodwin, one of the festival jury, says, "Margaret Thatcher's great contribution to pushing rock climbing standards in the 1980s can now be better appreciated: mass unemployment, climbers existing on the dole (welfare payments), dossing in caves and tumble-down shacks at the foot of crags in North Wales and the Peak District, and all the while, in Jerry's case, training, training, training...." Moffatt was both obsessed and dedicated to climbing. He trained compulsively, especially on the boulders. He lived for months under tarps or in shacks, eating beans and drinking tea, collecting his dole checks, and climbing every day.

Revelations won over 101 book entries from ten countries. American alpinist Steve House won The Jon Whyte Award for Mountain Literature for his mountaineering book Beyond the Mountain, while David Roberts was awarded Best Book on Mountaineering History for The Last of His Kind, a biography of photographer and alpinist Bradford Washburn, and Sarah Garlick won Best Book on Mountain Exposition for her Falcon book Flakes, Jugs, and Splitters about climbing and geology. The great American climber Royal Robbins was given a Special Jury Mention for Royal Robbins: To Be Brave -- My Life, the first volume of his planned seven-volume autobiography.

Read more about the Banff Mountain Book Festival.