Virginia Climber's Guide

General information is bland. Descriptions of routes sketchy at best. The parts dealing with 'ethics' and 'accessibility' are potential entries to a yet unwritten history of content-dodging.
There are standards to how climbing routes are described in sketches and diagrams. This book ignores them. It will be a miracle if you find your way based on this information.
As someone that wants to *actually* climb in VA, I simply had to toss Watson's book and get another one.

This guidebook is the product of a small mind. It's about
toproping on crappy boulders. Why would someone waste time
to go to some 20 foot chosspile and climb some nameless
route? This guidebook sometimes lists routes that are
22 feet long - did he go out with a ruler and measure the
height of the route as 22 feet? What if he went one foot
to the right or left - would that make it 21 feet or 23 feet?
I cite this merely as an example. This book is dry, uninspiring,
and has no vision or aesthetic sense. After looking at the
guidebook, it made me think that there was no worthwhile
climbing in Virginia, and Jeff Watson has a very small vision
and extremely low level to mediocre taste in climbing.

My climbing partner and I decided to go out to the Shenandoah to hike and do some toprope climbing. We figured we'd head out to White Oak Canyon based on some of the climbs that were described there, completely unaware of the ambiguity of this guide. We couldn't find anything. We had a much easier time finding climbing without it just by following the trail and using intuition than by finding it with the guide. Bizarre landmarks like "at the first bridge, with the northwest facing boulder" (there was no boulder at either of the first two bridges), and the lack of a general area map (climbing areas are listed in A, B, C, etc...but there's no actual map to get you to them in most cases) led us to abandon any hope of climbing in the canyon, even though there were some beautiful spots near the first set of falls. Too bad the guide doesn't make use of such an obvious landmark as the 60 foot waterfall.

After hiking a mile and a half back up and out of White Oak Canyon, we decided to go to Blackrock, which according to the guide was "the only place where you could be clutching for your next fingerhold and hear 'Johnson, party of five, your table is ready'". Apparently it was located on the Appalachian trail directly behind a resort lodge. The guide couldn't possibly screw this up, right? We found the Appalachian trail fine. There was no climbing to be found anywhere near the lodge. The guide didn't tell us which way to turn onto the trail. It gave the impression that it would obviously visible from the trail, but walking a half mile in either direction from the lodge with significant bushwacking in topographically curious areas turned up a single 18' cliff that didn't resemble any of the diagrams in the book.

Don't buy this guide. It will only get you lost, frustrated, and angry at Jeff Watson.

My climbing partner and I decided to go out to the Shenandoah to hike and do some toprope climbing. We figured we'd head out to White Oak Canyon based on some of the climbs that were described there, completely unaware of the ambiguity of this guide. We couldn't find anything. We had a much easier time finding climbing without it just by following the trail and using intuition than by finding it with the guide. Bizarre landmarks like "at the first bridge, with the northwest facing boulder" (there was no boulder at either of the first two bridges), and the lack of a general area map (climbing areas are listed in A, B, C, etc...but there's no actual map to get you to them in most cases) led us to abandon any hope of climbing in the canyon, even though there were some beautiful spots near the first set of falls. Too bad the guide doesn't make use of such an obvious landmark as the 60 foot waterfall. After hiking a mile and a half back up and out of White Oak Canyon, we decided to go to Blackrock, which according to the guide was "the only place where you could be clutching for your next fingerhold and hear 'Johnson, party of five, your table is ready'". Apparently it was located on the Appalachian trail directly behind a resort lodge. The guide couldn't possibly screw this up, right? We found the Appalachian trail fine. There was no climbing to be found anywhere near the lodge. The guide didn't tell us which way to turn onto the trail. It gave the impression that it would be obviously visible from the trail, but walking a half mile in either direction from the lodge with significant bushwacking in topographically curious areas turned up a single 18' cliff that didn't resemble any of the diagrams in the book. Don't buy this guide. It will only get you lost, frustrated, and angry at Jeff Watson.

this guidebook has absolutely no info on trad lines and contains little detailed info besides driving directions to an area. plus the cliff drawings are either incomplete, too sparse or generally unuseful in orienting yourself. there are no topos, little indication of bolt lines or anchors but if you just want an idea of where a few climbing areas are go ahead and buy it.