October's Book: Wind, Sand and Stars

Wind, Sand and Stars is unsurpassed in capturing the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure - through the treacherous passes of the Pyrenees, above the Sahara, along the snowy ramparts of the Andes - combined with lyrical prose and the soaring spirit of a philosopher, make this  book one of the most popular works ever written about flying. 

(Summary from Goodreads.com)

K2, The Savage Mountain: Thoughts

K2, The Savage Mountain is a thrilling tale of the 1953 attempt by a team of Americans to be the first to reach the summit of the second highest mountain in the world. Along the way they endured terrible struggles, sickness, frostbite, starvation, storms, avalanches, and mental anxiety that would stretch any man to his limit. In fact, these challenges very nearly cost them their lives. Though they were not successful in their summit attempt, what they achieved under the most trying of circumstances is worthy of recognition. Upon returning to base camp, I don’t believe any of them felt that they had failed.

One thing this book taught me was the importance of establishing camps during a summit attempt. In the past I have often wondered, why place 7 or 8 camps all up the side of a mountain, making innumerable relay climbs and turning a summit attempt into a three week ordeal under the best of circumstances? Why not just take two guys, three days worth of food, and make a blitz for the top? The explanation given in this book is that the weather is so unpredictable when you reach such high altitudes that you may be stranded at one of your camps for two weeks before you have an opening of two days to reach the next camp, or the summit. These men were certainly lucky they had properly established their camps. They ended up being stranded in a storm for ten days at an altitude of 25,500 feet before they were forced to turn back, making a daring escape attempt while the storm still raged.

They were forced to abandon their attempt at the summit because one of their team, Art Gilkey, became incredibly sick, with blood clots in both lungs. Unable to walk, they were forced to carry him down the mountain wrapped up in a sleeping bag. At one point during the descent an avalanche fell down over the top of Gilkey and his climbing partner, who were held to the mountain by their ropes as the snow pounded over and around them. Not long after this event, the team suffered an accident that nearly killed them all. The men were tackling a particularly difficult section of the climb when one of them slipped and started falling, pulling his partner off of his feet. This pair was independently roped and would have fallen together off of the side of the mountain, but somehow they became tangled with another pair of climbers, pulling both of them off of their feet as well. These four men fell into a fifth climber, tangling him in their ropes and pulling him down the slope. Amazingly, this fifth climber was tied in to Gilkey, who, resting in his sleeping bag was being belayed by the seventh member of the climbing team from 60 feet up the mountain. This one man, Peter Schoening, held all six of his companions on the end of a single rope and stopped all of them from falling off  of “a slanting Empire State Building six times as high as the real one.” In the end the team made it safely down the mountain, with the exception of Art Gilkey, whose inexplicable disappearance undoubtedly saved all of their lives.

At many points during this book I had to stop and admire the strength and bravery of these men. They were attempting something that had never been done before, and they seemed to have all the cards stacked against them. Time after time they faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and they pulled together and made it through. That being said, at other times while reading this book I had to stop and ask myself the question, are these men crazy? This is absolutely insane what they are doing. Why would anyone leave the safety of their home and travel halfway around the world to climb a mountain that kills one man for every four who reach the summit? Why even try to climb these mountains at all? I love the answer that Houston and Bates give at the beginning of the book.

“In the year that has passed since our ordeal we have been asked that question many times and have answered it in many ways. No answer is complete or satisfactory. Perhaps there is no single answer; perhaps each climber must have his own reasons for such an effort. The answer cannot be simple; it is compounded of such elements as the great beauty of clear cold air, of colors beyond the ordinary, of the lure of unknown regions beyond the rim of experience. The pleasure of physical fitness, the pride of conquering a steep and difficult rock pitch, the thrill of danger—but danger controlled by skill—are also there. How can I phrase what seems to me the most important reason of all? It is the chance to be briefly free of the small concerns of our common lives, to strip off nonessentials, to come down to the core of life itself. Food, shelter, friends—these are the essentials, these plus faith and purpose and a deep and unrelenting determination. On great mountains all purpose is concentrated on the single job at hand, yet the summit is but a token of success, and the attempt is worthy in itself. It is for these reasons that we climb, and in climbing find something greater than accomplishment.”

My rating: 7 out of 10

September's Book: K2, The Savage Mountain

K2, the second highest peak in the world, is generally regarded as the most difficult and dangerous of all mountains. This is the dramatic story of the 1953 American expedition when a combination of terrible storms and illness stopped them short of the summit. Then on the descent, tragedy struck, and how they made it back to safety is renowned in the annals of climbing. K2, The Savage Mountain captures this sensational tale with an unmatched power that has earned this book its place as one of the classics of mountaineering literature. 

(Summary from the back of the book)

My First Summer in the Sierra: Thoughts

John Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra” was less an adventure book, and more a passionate stroll through the wild mountains of California. I have never known anyone to find greater pleasure in nature than John Muir. Though the reading was wearisome at times, with endless descriptions of trees, rocks, and clouds, I found it difficult to put the book down. His seemingly boundless ecstasy from being surrounded by wilderness was extremely contagious, even after 100 years. I have never spent more than an hour in the Yosemite Valley, but after experiencing it through the eyes of John Muir, I am sure it is one of the most marvelous places on earth.

 Muir was hired to spend the summer as a shepherd, taking the flock of a Mr. Delaney into the mountains for grazing. Though he despised the sheep and often faulted them for marring his otherwise untouched wilderness, he agreed to the work because it was the only way he could afford to spend so much time in the wild.

Here is one of my favorite passages which illustrates the depth of Muir’s passion for the untouched wilderness.

On the way back to our Tuolumne camp, I enjoyed the scenery if possible more than when it first came into view. Every feature already seems familiar as if I had lived here always. I never weary gazing at the wonderful Cathedral. It has more individual character than any other rock or mountain I ever saw, excepting perhaps the Yosemite South Dome. The forests, too, seem kindly familiar, and the lakes and meadows and glad singing streams. I should like to dwell with them forever. Here with bread and water I should be content. Even if not allowed to roam and climb, tethered to a stake or tree in some meadow or grove, even then I should be content forever. Bathed in such beauty, watching the expressions ever varying on the faces of the mountains, watching the stars, which here have a glory that the lowlander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of waters and winds and birds, would be endless pleasure. And what glorious cloudlands I should see, storms and calms, -- a new heaven and a new earth every day, aye and new inhabitants. And how many visitors I should have. I feel sure I should not have one dull moment. And why should this appear extravagant? It is only common sense, a sign of health, genuine, natural, all-awake health. One would be at an endless Godful play, and what speeches and music and acting and scenery and lights! – sun, moon, stars, auroras. Creation just beginning, the morning stars “still singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy.”

If only mankind could learn a lesson from John Muir. If only we could see what he sees in the natural world, I am certain that we would seldom have reason to be unhappy. If only we could take the time to discover what a marvelous world our God has created for us, I am certain that no one ever become an atheist.

Mr. Delaney arrived this morning. Felt not a trace of loneliness while he was gone. On the contrary, I never enjoyed grander company. The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. No wonder when we consider that we all have the same Father and Mother.

My rating: 7 out of 10
 

August's Book: My First Summer in the Sierra

This volume in the John Muir Library Series is the most popular of Muir's works: the naturalist's account of his first visit to the High Sierra and the Yosemite. There he recognized his life's calling: to preserve wilderness areas. Muir's extraordinary memoir vividly communicates the excitement and reverence he felt at discovering the spectacular natural world of the Sierra.

Based on his journal entries for 1869, the text has an immediacy and spontaneity that bring alive the voice and emotions of the young Muir and the humor of his rough-and-tumble adventures as a California shepherd. The book brims with the budding naturalist's detailed observations of the region's flora and fauna as well as his memorable encounters with local characters and the region's Indians.

This joyous book is Muir's celebration of the landscape that he came to love passionately--"my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion, when I crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built." My First Summer in the Sierra traces the emergence of his conservationist urge as he contrasts the Indians, "who walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds or the squirrels," with the white settlers--blasting roads, building intrusive structures, and altering the landscape. Muir shares his growing determination to preserve this "divine, enduring, unwastable wealth" for future generations.

(Summary from Goodreads.com)

Endurance: Thoughts

I was thrilled to return to the Antarctic in F. A. Worsley’s Endurance. I had heard a great deal about this fateful voyage lead by Sir Ernest Shackleton, and I was not disappointed. By now I am thoroughly convinced that Antarctic expeditions are the most daring and adventurous of them all. In this forgotten corner of the world you never know what is going to happen. Worsley described it perfectly when he said,

“…You felt as though you had stepped into a world where the laws of Nature, as you had known them, were suspended and overruled by some vaster Power, which was making itself known to you.”

These men got stuck in the pack ice before ever reaching the continent. Their ship sank and they were forced to live for months on top of the frozen ocean surface. Here they encountered all sorts of dangers, from being chased by ravenous sea-leopards (almost 15 feet long), to having massive ice bergs charge their camp with the power of 40 battleships, to having the very ice beneath them split open while they were sleeping. Through incredible hardships, and against incredible odds, they were able to make it to land and then eventually to safety. In the process however, they suffered hunger, thirst, fatigue, and most especially, bitter, relentless cold. Shackleton led a rescue party by boat across 800 nautical miles of Antarctic Ocean, during which time they were never able to get dry for even a moment. After landing on South Georgia they were forced to cross the frozen, mountainous landscape on foot to reach the safety of the whaling port. Their success was nothing short of miraculous. In fact, Worsley often commented that he believed they were being helped by a greater power.

For example, there was the time they lost their rudder, and after six days it inexplicably returned to them.

“After six days’ wandering, with the vast Southern Ocean and all the shores of South Georgia to choose from, that rudder, as though it were faithfully performing what it knew to be its duty, had returned to our very feet. This incident strengthened in us the feeling that we were being protected in some inexplicable way by a Power of which we were aware but could not aspire to understand.”

Worsley also mentioned that during the trio’s crossing of South Georgia he had felt that a greater power had been with them all the way.

“There was no doubt that Providence had been with us. There was indeed one curious thing about our crossing of South Georgia, a thing that has given me much food for thought, and which I have never been able to explain. Whenever I reviewed the incidents of that march I had the sub-conscious feeling that there were four of us, instead of three. Moreover, this impression was shared by both Shackleton and Crean.”

The thing I loved most about this book, however, was the sense of honor and dignity showed by these men, and most especially by Shackleton himself. He felt a profound sense of duty to his crew and as a result, he was loved and revered by them.

“Shackleton had always insisted that the ultimate responsibility for anything that befell us was his and his only... My view was that we were all grown men, going off of our own free wills on this expedition, and that it was up to us to bear whatever was coming to us. Not so Shackleton. His idea was that we had trusted him, that we had placed ourselves in his hands, and that should anything happen to any one of us, he was morally responsible. His attitude was almost patriarchal.”

I really appreciated reading about the dignity and honor of this incredible man. There aren’t many men like that these days--men who look to the well being of their fellows above their own. There are many important lessons that can be learned from his example of self sacrifice. I am looking forward to reading about his South Pole attempt in the coming months.

My rating: 9 out of 10

July's Book: Endurance

First published in 1931, Endurance relates the riveting account of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s doomed 1914-16 expedition to the Antarctic and its incredible rescue: After HMS Endurance became stuck in Antarctic ice packs and then sank into the Weddell Sea, its twenty-five crew members were forced to launch three lifeboats and sail, in miserable conditions, for barren Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton, Frank Worsley (captain of the Endurance), and four others set off in the largest of the lifeboats, the James Caird, to seek help eight hundred miles away at the whaling stations on the island of South Georgia. Endurance is not only a tale of courage and unrelenting high adventure but also a tribute to one of the most courageous leaders in the history of exploration.

(Summary from back cover)