Yates is the author of three autobiographical books about mountaineering. The first, "Against the Wall", is about an expedition to climb a new route on the Central Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia and was short-listed for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. "The Flame of Adventure" describes a series of climbing adventures around the world. His most recent book, "The Wild Within", describes expeditions to the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, the Wrangell St-Elias ranges on the Alaska-Yukon border, and eastern Greenland.