In reply to sjc: I have the alpine club guides and classic climbs in the Dolomites guide. I'd agree that the classic climbs topos are often a bit inaccurate but generally it's a pretty user friendly guidebook. All the routes are good, the limiting factor is that there is almost nothing above about E2 in there. I used the Alpine club guide once or twice, I think my partners usually had a better guide (in German or Italian) for the routes we climbed, the Alphine club does give a lot more routes up to about E5 (above which it basically resorts to grading with aid grades) but I found the pitch descriptions a lot more cumbersome than a topo (I am very used to SMC guides, so this isn't just lack of experience on my part). Both guides are rock climbing only guides really, as others have said.
Recently bought the English translation of the Tre Cime guide, it's a very sexy book but I've not had a chance to use it yet. Enough hard routes to keep you busy for years no matter what grade you climb. But very area specific of course.
