For this latest blog I am happy to present the next in our series of guest blogs by prominent members of our community.

I am honoured that my friend Phillip Stone has agreed to contribute.

Many of our readers already know Phillip as the chronicler of islanders' exploits in their unique and beautiful mountains through his series of guide books. But Phillip is of course much more than a guide book author. From when I first met Phillip 25 years ago, he was clearly an adventurer driven to explore. He exuded a contagious excitement for the mountains which he shared generously. Indeed he continues to do this to today still exploring and authoring new routes in our Island Alps. On the eve of the release of his seventh book, Island Alpine Select, Phillip muses on his role as a writer and publisher and on the future of guidebooks.

Will Guidebooks Find Their Own Way? - Blog by Phillip Stone

Working in media, okay it’s pretty small town BC media, - still, I watch not only the ‘news’ but the business of media as well.  And you too, must have caught stories about the unstoppable rise of the internet and questions about the viability of print, like books, magazines and the like, in the future.

Print has been part of my working life since I was a kid. At age 11 I wanted a job and figured I could deliver newspapers. Thing was, we lived well outside of the city, St. John’s Newfoundland and it took some persuading to get the delivery van to drive the 30-some km north to drop off 25 copies of the Evening Telegraph every day. It was only 25 papers but in a spread out rural coastal village you can only imagine the experiences along the way. Cruel fall storms smashing the Atlantic almost to the doorstep; cold, clear starlit winter evenings with the Northern Lights flickering overhead. It was an interesting start to a life-long relationship with paper.

A school magazine followed - an awesome financial success because we launched at the parent-teacher night and sold it first to the parents by donation. Our end of year party that year rocked from the proceeds.

Now my livelihood depends on producing a steady-stream of publications and I feel happy to have merged my passions for adventure, rural-living and photography with my day to day work. Along with my line of guidebooks you probably know, I run a local news magazine and produce a variety of web sites and print publications. Much of it is tourism-related for Quadra and the Discovery Islands so all this talk of the demise of print worries me. But should it?

The murmurings of print’s expiration was already floating around in 2003 when I published the first edition of Island Alpine. That moment was a very proud day. I still remember well, as I described in the Preface, arriving at the south col of Mt Colonel Foster for the first time and being just simply blown-away by the sweep of endless snow-capped mountains and immediately deciding I would write a guidebook - eventually.

The motives were varied. As described, writing, and especially publishing is in my blood. Just as for others its mechanics, caring for others, crunching numbers or whatever. for me it’s about creating publications, large and small. So I can’t say exactly why I wanted to do that, god knows it was a long road, I just couldn’t help myself, I had to do it.

The thing about climbing guidebooks is though: they aren’t just any old book, another vertical spine on a shelf, a story to be read once, maybe twice and then forgotten. Climbing guidebooks have a life like few other books can ever imagine. For a bestselling novel, the story is contained within the pages. The reader delves into this world, becomes lost and returns, may share opinions, emotions and ideas with others but the story never really truly comes to life. Even if a blockbuster film results, it’s still completely intangible.

Not so the guidebook. Here the story is brief. The images just one snapshot in time. But the possibilities the guidebook incites are endless.

The guidebook is a catalyst for adventure a portal to infinite combinations of weather, time, season and emotion. Success, failure, suffering, relaxation all flow from the inspiration and action triggered by a few words.

Then there is the community. True, readers of the latest Governor-Generals award winner can have a cult-like kinship whipped up by the likes of the CBC’s Canada Reads. But again, this relationship is all based on a nebulous and finite narrative. For local climbers who share a love of their home-turf and are tied together by the threads of a common bible the bonds are far deeper. There is no joy greater than discovering another who has shared a route, who understands the challenges overcome, the puzzles solved, the rewards achieved.

Did I realize I would be a part of this back in 1991 when I sat on a boulder under Crest Creek Crag and lamely outlined the route topo in a sketchbook? Not a chance!

Now with the latest Vancouver Island mountain guidebook (Island Select) at the printers in Manitoba, there is a calm between the twin storms of production and distribution. I have some time to reflect on the process of writing a guidebook and to ponder the uncertainty of the risks involved.

The biggest risk brings us right back to the initial question of print books viability. Having just spent another decade, for a total of 25 years, accumulating photographs and 3 pretty solid years of repeating climbs and riding desk jockey committing it all to paper, I can’t say that there isn’t some apprehension. Will the Island community embrace this new book? Will Island Select fulfill its potential to tie our community bounds stronger, to inspire a new wave of adventure? And importantly for me personally, will it bring the financial return essential for me to be able to continue the endeavour?

Does SummitPost and FaceBook make a book seem quaint and trivial in the era of real time information sharing and gathering? What can a guidebook tell you that Google Earth can’t? Heaven knows I consulted it enough times writing it!

Of course this is not to say that today’s print book is confined to paper. With some extra work and know-how I’ve converted all my books into electronic editions and Island Select has been specifically designed from the outset to work in an eBook format.

While I’m most excited about the paper edition; a part of me is also curious to see what the potential for the eBook is.

Will regular updates have an effect on new route development? If you know your new climb is going to be appearing on iPhones and tablets within days of completion is that an incentive? Does that invite unnecessary risk? Will technology (and our ability to figure it out) allow more integration between the guidebook and social media, online mapping etc..? Is technology poised to offer un-precedented levels of risk aversion through real time forecasting - is this a persuasive argument for wi-fi in park’s?

There are still many questions to be answered but one things is certain. Our Island Alps are an amazing place to spend time and the next best thing to being out there, is day dreaming about them!