Outdoor and Climbing Literary Awards - 2009

It's the season of outdoor book awards. And as the weather is changing and the days are short, we thought that people might be looking for some good adventure books to read. This blog is a round-up of major outdoor adventure oriented book awards.

There are three different organizations that offer book awards to outdoor oriented books and their authors. They are the Banff Mountain Book Festival, the American Alpine Club and the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation.


Banff Mountain Book Festival:

Grand Prize

Revelations -- Jerry Moffatt. By Jerry Moffatt and Niall Grime. Vertebrate Publishing (UK, 2009) Best Book -- Mountain Literature

Beyond the Mountain. By Steve House. Patagonia Books (USA, 2009)

Best Book -- Adventure Travel

The Great Polar Journey -- In the Footsteps of Nansen. By Borge Ousland. Ousland Design AS (Norway, 2009)

Best Book -- Mountain Image

The Alps -- A Bird's Eye View. By Matevz Lenarcic. Panalp d.o.o. (Slovenia, 2009)

Best Book -- Mountain Exposition

Flakes, Jugs and Splitters. By Sarah Garlick. Globe Pequot Press (USA, 2009)

Best Book -- Mountaineering History

The Last of His Kind: the Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer. By David Roberts. HarperCollins (USA, 2009)

Special Jury Mention

Royal Robbins: To be Brave - My Life, Volume One. By Royal Robbins. Pink Moment Press (USA, 2009)

Canadian Rockies Award

In the Bear's House. By Bruce Hunter.Oolichan Books — A Literary Publisher (Canada, 2009)


American Alpine Club Winner:

Where the other organizations have a series of awards, the AAC only presents one author with an award every year. The Literary Award was established to recognize excellence in alpine literature by American writers. Recipients of the award have contributed extensively and over many years to mountain literature. Recipients are not selected through a submission process.

This year's winner was Doug Robinson.


National Outdoor Book Award Winners:

History/ Biography Category:

Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. By Douglas Brinkley. Harper, New York

Outdoor Literature Category

Halfway to Heaven. By Mark Obmascik. Free Press/Simon & Schuster, New York.

Honorable Mention. Rowboat in a Hurricane: My Amazing Journey Across a Changing Ocean. By Julie Angus. Greystone Books, Vancouver.

Design and Artistic Merit Category

Lars Jonsson's Birds. Illustrations by Lars Jonsson. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Classic Category

Kayak: The New Frontier. By William Nealy. Menasha Ridge Press, Birmingham.

Honorable Mention. Appalachian Odyssey: Walking the Trail from Georgia to Maine. By Steve Sherman and Julia Older. Author's Guild, New York.

Children's Category

Whistling Wings. By Laura Goering. Illustrated by Laura Jacques. Sylvan Dell Publishing, Mt Pleasant, SC.

Honorable Mention. Operation Redwood. By S. Terrell French. Abrams/Amulet Books, New York.

Nature and Environment Category

Our Living Earth. By Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Abrams/Books for Young Readers, New York.

Natural History Literature

Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys. By Rob Dunn. Smithsonian Books. New York.

Nature Guidebook Category

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. By Roger Tory Peterson. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston.

Honorable Mention. Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West. By Dennis Paulson. Princeton University Press.

Outdoor Adventure Guidebook Category

Guide to the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument. By Duwain Whitis and Barbara Vinson. RiverMaps, Buda, TX.

Honorable Mention. The Guide to Baja Sea Kayaking. By Dave Eckardt. Paddle Publishing, Eagle, CO.

Instructional Category

Girl on the Rocks: A Woman's Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace and Courage. By Katie Brown. Photos by Ben Moon. Globe Pequot Press/Falcon Guides, Guilford, CN.