The 2026 category award winners will compete for the Grand Prize on November 5, 2026, during the 51st annual Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
The Banff Mountain Book Competition is an internationally recognized literary competition within the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival (Oct. 31 - Nov. 8, 2026), celebrating mountain literature in all its forms. $26,000 CAD in cash is awarded annually with seven awards selected by an international jury of writers, adventurers, and editors.
The seven category award winners were selected from 27 category finalists (chosen from a total of 173 submissions, from authors across 12 countries). The categories are Mountain Literature, Environmental Literature, Adventure Travel, Mountain Image, Guidebook, Mountain Article, and Climbing Literature.
The Grand Prize winner, with a cash prize of $5,000 CAD sponsored by The Alpine Club of Canada, will be announced at the live Banff Mountain Book Competition awards presentation at the festival in Banff, Alberta on November 5, 2026.
The 2026 Book Competition jury members are:
David Chambre (France) – climber, and writer of historical reviews for worldwide mountaineering and climbing publications.
Lauren DeLaunay Miller (USA) – journalist, audio producer for the adventure podcast, The Dirtbag Diaries, author of Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing (2022), and winner of the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition Award for Climbing Literature.
Rob Lovell (UK) – publisher and chief executive of the award-winning Scottish Mountaineering Press, and member of the Fort William Mountain Festival team.
All the category winners listed below are eligible for the Grand Prize.
Category Award Winners:
Mountain Literature
$3,000 – Sponsored by Fjallraven
Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness
Adam Weymouth, Knopf Canada (Canada, 2025)
“Brilliant and profound, this book highlights the increasingly controversial place of wild animals within a Europe undergoing profound climatic, environmental and political changes. It is not so much a matter of following the trail of a wolf as that of humans and their ways of life. More than the wolf's journey, it captures the difficult coexistence of modernity and tradition without any romanticism. It is also the portrait of a world coming to an end where the wolf and other wild animals all too easily serve as scapegoats for human contradictions. A disconcerting yet clear-eyed assessment.”
– David Chambre, 2026 Book Jury
Environmental Literature
$3,000 – Sponsored by Arctos & Bird
Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival
Trina Moyles, Knopf Canada (Canada, 2026)
“As we reach further into the places once considered wild, Trina Moyles shows us how we can live alongside one another and with the more-than-human world. Told with precision, elegance and humility, Black Bear seamlessly weaves together two complex storylines, laying bare Moyles’ relationships with her brother and with the wildlife she meets while working in a fire watch tower in Alberta. Her innovative and compelling writing presents an honest and relatable account of the human experience alongside much wider environmental and social themes. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking and powerful book.”
– Rob Lovell, 2026 Book Jury
Adventure Travel
$3,000 – Sponsored by The Town of Banff
North to the Future: An Offline Adventure through the Changing Wilds of Alaska
Ben Weissenbach, Grand Central Publishing (USA, 2025)
“Striking out into the wilds of Alaska to discover something about oneself isn’t new, but the way that Ben Weissenbach writes about it is. In North to the Future, Weissenbach brings an earnestness to his travels with the legendary explorer Roman Dial and writes a stunning exploration of youth, our changing climate, and the impact the digital world has on us all. Beautifully written and impressively researched, Weissenbach weaves science with memoir in what will surely become a classic in the genre.”
– Lauren DeLaunay Miller, 2026 Book Jury
Mountain Image
$3,000 – Sponsored by Mountain Life Media
Fjell: A Faithful Witness
Photography by Orsolya Haarberg; texts by Maria Hasselgård, Tinde Publishing (Norway, 2026)
“Soberly subtitled 'a faithful witness,' this highly original book takes us on a journey through the Norwegian highlands. It stands out thanks to its minimalist layout on matte paper, verging on austerity, which suits the subject matter so well. Eye-catching, the stunning photography, especially in black and white, stands perfectly well on its own. The highly poetic comments, almost like Zen koans, offer us a meditation set down on paper. It is as much an art book as a book about mountains.”
– David Chambre, 2026 Book Jury
Jury note: Rob Lovell abstained from adjudicating the Mountain Image award due to a conflict of interest.
Guidebook
$3,000 – Sponsored by the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG)
Cabin Wild: Alpine Bivouac Huts
Ben Tibbetts, Alpenglow Editions (France, 2025)
“A captivating volume that invites us to see the Alps in a new light, through an intimate journey around a selection of bivouac huts across Italy, Switzerland and France. Cabin Wild expertly weaves together practical information, inspiring routes, deeply researched cultural history and vividly told personal stories, celebrating a unique alpine resource and encouraging a respectful approach to these remote mountain refuges. Illustrated throughout with stunning photography, it coaxes out the dreamer in us—transporting us to the high mountains for a pre-dawn start, the warm glow of evening or the crisp silence of a winter’s night.”
– Rob Lovell, 2026 Book Jury
Mountain Article
$3,000 – Sponsored by The Lodge at Bow Lake
The Misfits
Chad Heddleston and Madeleine Woda, Summit Journal (USA, 2025)
“The history of rock climbing is certainly not without its grey areas and forgotten figures, and what remarkable characters were Jan and Herb Conn. These two exist in the spirit and austerity of the pioneering European climbers of the early 20th century. The writing highlights their uniqueness and the integrity of their life choices. More than a dirtbag way of life within a capitalist, consumerist society, it shows how far ahead of their time they were and the legacy they’ve left behind in the Needles but also in our contemporary collective imagination.”
– David Chambre, 2026 Book Jury
Climbing Literature
$3,000 – Sponsored by Oboz
The Great Mixed Climbs of Scotland
Guy Robertson and Hamish Frost, Scottish Mountaineering Press (UK, 2025)
“The Great Mixed Climbs of Scotland combines stunning photography and evocative essays in a truly spectacular ode to Scottish winter climbing. By profiling important routes through the eyes of the climbers who created them, Guy Robertson and Hamish Frost have created an exceptional book that is beautiful in every way. This is a book for the climber’s climber.”
– Lauren DeLaunay Miller, 2026 Book Jury
Jury note: Rob Lovell abstained from adjudicating the Climbing Literature award due to a conflict of interest.
Special Jury Mentions
Glacier Climbing & Crevasse Rescue: Essential Skills for Snow Travel
Ian Nicholson, Mountaineers Books (USA, 2025)
“Of all the skill sets required for mountain climbing, perhaps none are as intimidating as glacier travel. But with carefully crafted instructions and illustrations, Ian Nicholson’s Glacier Climbing & Crevasse Rescue takes us behind the curtain, helping us better understand the mountains and how to safely travel in them.”
– Lauren DeLaunay Miller, 2026 Book Jury
Spirit of the Great Bear
Jack Plant, Figure 1 Publishing (Canada, 2026)
“This beautifully produced book showcases stunning work from a talented photographer with a deep, hard-earned knowledge of the Great Bear Forest. Sensitively composed, Plant’s images at once stand alone as works of art and combine to form a truly special portrait of a fragile and essential environment—photographs that convey not only time and place, but also character and emotion.”
– Rob Lovell, 2026 Book Jury
Grand Prize
$5,000 – Sponsored by the Alpine Club of Canada
Winner to be announced live during the festival on November 5.
