Stewart Green has spent much of his life finding his way in places few people have explored. Surveying rock for hidden steps and handholds and logical routes, he has become a master at mapping vast stretches of limestone and sandstone and hulking domes of granite. It was logical he would transition from mapping the routes on rock to mapping them on paper.

Eleven years ago, Green wrote his first guide, “Rock Climbing Colorado” (Falcon Publishing), an exhaustive look at the state’s major climbing areas. It was an instant hit among climbers who were hungry for accurate, reliable information, and it sent Green on another unexplored route: Europe. “Rock Climbing Europe” (Falcon Publishing), Green’s newest guide, is the first complete English-language climbing guide to the continent.

Green, 53, was born in Colorado Springs and grew up exploring the rock of Cheyenne Canyon with his brother. After high school, he enrolled in the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he and friend Billy Westbay, also a dedicated climber, arranged their schedules so they could have four-day weekends. After classes ended, the pair headed to Eldorado Canyon and Boulder Canyon where they did what they loved best: climbing.

“I lived and breathed climbing,” Green says. “My father was a climber in England, and I literally grew up with it.”

The appeal of climbing, Green says, is in the demands it makes on a person. “It’s more than a sport or an activity. It is a way of life and an intense kind of bonding when you climb with somebody else.”

Green climbed solo and with friends, and he was drawn to bouldering and free-soloing, without ropes.

“But after I had a family and had more responsibility, I decided I wanted to live longer, so I don’t do those things anymore.”

For years, Green had written and taken photos of his family and friends climbing, and he became a regular author for Falcon Press, writing books about traveling throughout Colorado and the West. In 1995, with the release of his Colorado climbing guide, his life took a turn; books on climbing in Arizona, Utah and New England followed.

Green’s books acquired a reputation, just as the climber himself did, says friend and climbing partner Brian Shelton of Colorado Springs. Shelton, owner of Front Range Climbing, has climbed with Green for three years, but he says, “I’ve known of him for 18 years.”

“He’s most well-known for his guidebooks,” Shelton says. “He goes out and really does the research and gets on the routes he’s talking about.

“Climbing is all about focus. When you are on the route, that’s what you are thinking about. Nothing is going on except what is going on in the five feet ahead of you. You have to be comfortable with that and be able to be a problem-solver. That’s what Stewart is really good at.”

Shelton says Green “is one of just a few climbers in Colorado who’s still very active in new route development. I guess that’s his second claim to fame.”

Green not only relishes finding new routes, he enjoys introducing them to his readers — most of the time. “I feel a huge responsibility in my books, and attempt to monitor the environmental impact in a climbing area,” he says. “Places open to climbers often change considerably. Red Rock Canyon Open Space, for example, has changed so much since it opened, with so many social trails.

“So, some great areas won’t ever make it to a guidebook.”

Green leaves those areas for himself and friends. But he shares his knowledge of hundreds of trails on countless miles of rock. And with the release of his latest book, he has offered 15 years of research to his readers.

“Rock Climbing Europe” is an oversized, sturdily bound paperback guide that Green finished after 15 trips to Europe for research, climbing and interviews with climbers.

“When I started going to Europe in the 1990s, it was difficult to find information there,” he says. “You had to translate guides from French and Italian, and all you had were handdrawn topo maps and no photographs.”

Green’s guide includes climbing routes with maps and photos in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Germany and Norway — all places, he says, that are steeped in a great climbing tradition. The result: a climbing book that is part routefinder, part travel guide and part travelogue, with tidbits about the weather (the best climbing in Belgium’s Freyr is between April and late October); cultural highlights (Gothic architecture abounds in Bolzano, Italy); and food (Provencal cooking in the south of France features olive oil and garlic).

In researching the book, Green took the same approach he takes on the rock.

“I wanted to tell people how to get off the beaten path, and I wanted to help them get to Europe. So many people are put off by planning that kind of trip; they don’t know how to get there, how to get around, where to stay, where to climb. I’ve figured that out for them.”

Climbing in Europe is thrilling, Green says, “but the touchstones, the things you come back to later in your mind, can be found as the sun is setting on your climb in the Verdon, France, or on a dome on the South Platte River. I was there the other day. It was a three-pitch route, nice and quiet, and a perfect day. “Perfect.”

Green still climbs two or three times a week, but admits he has slowed a bit since a serious fall four years ago on the limestone cliffs of Shelf Road.

“I was leading a route in a first ascent and a foothold broke,” he says. “I fell and ended up with a compound dislocation fracture of my ankle.”

“Only in the last year has that ankle let me do more climbing.”

That injury wasn’t apparent as Green climbed a sandstone formation called the Snakepit recently in Garden of the Gods. His path up the cracked rock appeared to be effortless, and he joked quietly with climbing partner and friend Dennis Jump on the way up. Jump is a British climber and caver who met Green 15 years ago.

“He’s a great guy to know. He’s supersafe, and we know we can trust each other implicitly. And he has the same sense of humor as I do.”

Jump and Green share the same belief about climbing. “You feel free, alive,” Jump says. “Unless you’re ice climbing,” quips Green. “In ice climbing, half the time you’re freezing to death, and half the time you’re scared to death.”

Green jokes with his friend about difficult climbing, but he has done his share of it, on the dark cliffs of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, on the slender towers of Colorado National Monument, and on the limestone of Rifle Mountain Park.

Still, he says, the most difficult climbs aren’t always the most rewarding ones.

“I like to climb new routes in new areas and travel to new places. That’s what makes a climb memorable.”