A Most Hostile Mountain : Re-Creating the Duke of Abruzzi's Historic Expedition on Mount St. Elias - Hardcover

Waterman, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805044531 ISBN 13: 9780805044539

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1997

Synopsis

Including rare photographs, the author of In the Shadow of Denali uses the letters and journals of the duke and his team as historical context to his retracing of their brave trek to the top of the world. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

In 1897 an Italian nobleman--Luigi of Savoy, the duke of Abruzzi--set out to climb North America's second-highest peak, the 18,008-foot Mount St. Elias (known to the native Tlingit people of Alaska as Yasetaca). A century later, the author of A Most Hostile Mountain attempts to recreate this same land-sea journey by sailing north out of Seattle and into the Gulf of Alaska. While Abruzzi traveled with an army's worth of supplies and numerous porters to shoulder creature comforts fit for a duke, Jonathan Waterman chooses the relative quiet of a single companion in his attempt to retrace the duke's historic expedition. Once on the mountain, after a hectic passage via a small sailboat, the climbers endure a variety of difficulties: harsh weather conditions, avalanches, a lack of food. As their circumstances become increasingly dire, Waterman finds refuge in the journals of the duke and his men. Taking his cue from these voices of the past, the author seeks solace in ideals held worthy in the Age of Exploration--a pure desire for adventure and knowledge that transcends the more modern notions of ego-driven success. The result is an engaging narrative that has its crampons firmly imbedded in the ice.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Alaska's Mount St. Elias was a mystical site to Waterman (In the Shadow of Denali, 1994, etc.), to be revered, and to be visited by fair means, without all the techno-wizardry climbers use today. To show its appreciation, the mountain beat him mercilessly. Mount St. Elias is not a trophy peak. It may be the fourth highest mountain in North America, it may stymie 70 percent of its climbers (and kill another 5 percent), but the trophy climbers want Denali. That was fine with Waterman; he preferred his mountains pure, free of the commercialization of climbing. Waterman was fascinated by the duke of Abruzzi, the aloof, melancholy, scholar-explorer who was the first to ascend St. Elias a hundred years ago, and he wanted to tackle the mountain as the duke did, though with fewer companions (just one partner) and a drastically reduced payload (no porters, for instance to carry an iron bedstead). No radios, thank you, and no flight in and out; he wanted the sanctity of the wild, to discover remnant instincts, deploy map-reading and route-finding talents, be self-sufficient. He would sail up from Seattle, climb, and return. Using diaries and letters from Abruzzi and his team, Waterman entwines his climb with the duke's, although the pleasure here is in Waterman's tale. The climbing almost immediately goes badly and then gets much worse. Crevasses lurk, nonstop avalanches thunder by, it rains watermelon-size rocks. The climbers run out of food. His companion isn't amused; then again, they survive, barely, returning without having gained the summit. Waterman's soul-searching can get trying, but he followed his dreams. In sharing them, he gives readers back some of their own. (24 b&w photos, 2 maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805044531
• ISBN 13: 9780805044539
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 253