The Banff Mountain Book Competition has announced its 2026 category winners, with Adam Weymouth's Lone Wolf taking Mountain Literature and Trina Moyles' Black Bear winning Environmental Literature. The grand prize, worth CAD 5,000 and sponsored by the Alpine Club of Canada, is announced in Banff on 5 November. The festival itself runs from 31 October to 8 November 2026.
The Banff Mountain Book Competition has named its 2026 category winners. The grand prize comes later, at a live awards presentation in Banff, Alberta, on 5 November 2026. It is worth CAD 5,000, sponsored by the Alpine Club of Canada, and every category winner is in the running for it.
The competition runs as part of the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, from 31 October to 8 November 2026. This year's winners came from 27 finalists, selected out of 173 submissions representing 12 countries, according to Gripped. Total prize money across the competition is CAD 26,000 a year. The categories are Mountain Literature, Environmental Literature, Adventure Travel, Mountain Image, Guidebook, Mountain Article and Climbing Literature.
Mountain Literature: Lone Wolf
Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness by Adam Weymouth (Knopf Canada, 2025) won Mountain Literature. The book deals with the place of wild animals in a Europe under climatic, environmental and political strain. The jury citation, written by David Chambre, reads it as the trail of humans more than the trail of a wolf, and as a portrait of a way of life that is ending.
Environmental Literature: Black Bear
Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival by Trina Moyles (Knopf Canada, 2026) took Environmental Literature. Moyles worked in a fire watch tower in Alberta. The book runs two storylines together: her relationship with her brother, and her encounters with the wildlife around the tower. Jury member Rob Lovell called it an honest and relatable account set against wider environmental and social themes.
Adventure Travel: North to the Future
North to the Future: An Offline Adventure through the Changing Wilds of Alaska by Ben Weissenbach (Grand Central Publishing, 2025) won Adventure Travel. Weissenbach travels the Alaskan wilds with the explorer Roman Dial, off the grid, and writes about youth, a changing climate and the pull of the digital world. ExplorersWeb's account of the citation describes him as a Los Angeles native with little prior wilderness experience who went into the tundra with a series of eccentric environmental scientists.
Alaska draws a particular kind of reader here. Anyone working towards Denali will recognize the country it covers, though the book is a walking and science narrative and not a climbing one.
Guidebook: Cabin Wild
Cabin Wild: Alpine Bivouac Huts by Ben Tibbetts (Alpenglow Editions, 2025) won the Guidebook award. It is an account of bivouac huts across Italy, Switzerland and France, with route information, cultural history and photography. Jury member Rob Lovell described it as a book that encourages a respectful approach to these remote refuges.
Mountain Image: Fjell
Fjell: A Faithful Witness by Orsolya Haarberg (Tinde Publishing, 2026) won Mountain Image. The subject is the Norwegian highlands. The jury singled out the minimalist layout on matte paper, the black and white photography, and the short, poetic captions. David Chambre called it as much an art book as a book about mountains.
Climbing Literature: The Great Mixed Climbs of Scotland
The Great Mixed Climbs of Scotland by Guy Robertson and Hamish Frost (Scottish Mountaineering Press, 2025) won Climbing Literature. It profiles significant Scottish winter routes through the climbers who first made them, with photography by Frost. Jury member Lauren DeLaunay Miller called it a book for the climber's climber.
Mountain Article: The Misfits
The Mountain Article prize goes to a magazine piece. This year it went to The Misfits by Chad Heddleston, published in Summit Journal in 2025. The subject is Jan and Herb Conn, a rock climbing couple whose legacy sits in the Needles. David Chambre's citation places them in the spirit and austerity of the pioneering European climbers of the early 20th century, and argues they were far ahead of their time.
Two special jury mentions
ExplorersWeb reports two special jury mentions alongside the category awards. Jack Plant's Spirit of the Great Bear is a photography book of the Great Bear Forest. Ian Nicholson's Glacier Travel & Crevasse Rescue: Essential Skills for Snow Travel is what the title says, an instructional manual. Lauren DeLaunay Miller's citation notes that few skill sets in mountain climbing are as intimidating as glacier travel, and credits Nicholson's instructions and illustrations with taking the reader behind the curtain.
That second title is the most directly useful of this year's list for climbers heading to the big glaciated peaks. Rope work on a glacier is a live skill on Denali and on Vinson, and a book is a reasonable place to start before practising it with people who already know how.
What to read next
None of this year's winners is about the 7 summits. That is normal for Banff, where the field is mountain writing in the widest sense, from nature essays to winter climbing photography. The library here collects the books and films that do cover the seven peaks, and the route guides carry the practical detail for each mountain.
The grand prize winner will be known on 5 November.
This story is part of This week on the 7 summits: 19–25 October 2026, the week's news in brief.