I helped with a few of the line drawings, but my effort was minimal, compared to the thousands of hours Ken spent on this project. It was edited on a VAX/VMS minicomputer, in pre-PC days.
This is essentially a second edition of the 1982 guide, without line drawings. They were left out because of the added book cost and time required to update (the book was already in the $35 range and it was not clear that many people would want to buy a guidebook for $60 or so). My contribution was fairly minimal - I produced the index and helped translate the files from PC to Mac for layout.
I created an overview table of the routes on the 105 Traprock cliffs. It includes the number of routes in each * grade (0, *, **, ***), and the difficulty ranges of ** and *** routes. It may be useful for deciding which crags to explore. Note that some crags may be closed at times due to access problems.
The Chessler Books web page says it is available for $34.95, in the Northeastern Rock Climbs section. However, the list of books on their page looks about 2 years old, and people have reported that it is now out of print. I haven't confirmed this myself yet (check with Chessler to find out).
This guide includes a full set of 45 line drawings. I wasn't involved in producing it; it is a good quality guidebook.
It is available for $16.95 from Chessler Books, in the Northeastern Rock Climbs section.
In recent years, the controversies seem to have degenerated into a feud between Ken and other local climbers, which has cast an unfortunate negative shadow onto Connecticut climbing in general. I'm tempted to provide a chronology of the problems, so that people can get an understanding of what has happened. But I'm afraid that it might further polarize the factions and prevent a long-needed resolution of the conflicts.
In spite of these political problems, the climbing itself is great, and can even be enjoyed during the winter, on the east and south faces during frequent sunny days. The rock type is "traprock" which is a combination of basalt, dolerite and gabbro. Mt. Arapiles in Australia is the same type of rock.
Some people have remarked that the ratings are a bit stiff compared to some other areas in the US. This can be partly explained since the climbs are rated by the "easiest known way" to do the route, rather than an "onsight" type rating which would consider the "likely attempted way". The rock is steep and the holds are often inobvious or hard to locate, so there can be a big difference between the two types of ratings.