I'd like to update this thread after leaving it so long.

For the last year, Tom and I have been keeping this project warm. We have nearly got a copy ready, written up word-for-word and in time, hopefully picture-for-picture. It is more of a reality now, and if it sells we plan to donate profits to Mountain Rescue, who found Bill nearly five years ago and need all the money they can get.

We set out on this project because Stud Marks on the Summits is the centrepiece of fell running lore. No book before ever put our sport's history to text in such a way, and the books written since all trace their pre-'83 backbone to it. The modern authors themselves will agree with that, I'm sure. It's an act of faith and tribute to Bill Smith's thousands of hours of contribution to our sport, and if it's to be released it will only serve to keep his legacy going. Replication will be as sensitive as we can make it. Its new readers will be aware of its value as an "of-its-time" book that is no less important for being so.

It is available on this website for desktop reading, which is brilliant, but most people haven't and won't read a book on a computer screen very easily. The ultimate aim is to help shed light on fell running for as many fell runners as possible, in a way that thoroughly respects someone as committed and self-effacing as Bill Smith.

What about those 33/35 years since? Well, Chilton did a great deed with It's a Hill... Get Over It (as well as The Round), the likes of Askwith and Whalley have captured fell running's incorruptible appeal elsewhere, and numerous smaller publications such as booklets or articles act as further sources. Whoever makes a clean break in writing an SMOTS2 will find it'll overtake their life as it did Bill's. If anyone ever does it it'll be absolutely commendable. The articles, race results, people and stories are easier to access than ever, but as I am otherwise busy and no critical historian whatsoever, it's not for me.

Stud Marks, available for everyone to read as accessibly and affordably as possible, is one worth keeping in the family and that's what we hope to enable soon.