5 comments about In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley.

1. Heck of a book. Kudos to Jon Waterman on putting together a terrific collection of stories related to Denali. For those not well versed in mountaineering I think you can still enjoy this book a great deal. It will give you an honest look into the experience.

   In addition, Waterman doesn't try to glamorize it. Sure he'll give you a good look at the many men full of character who have risked life and limb for a chance the climb the high one (as they call Denali). Also some of the stories take place when Jon was younger and you can see how he has matured. He doesn't make any attempt to hide the brashness of his youth. Finally, the climbers themselves really make the book. Read about the 'Pirate', the other Waterman (an especially intriguing story), Wilcox, the inimitable Mugs Stump, and others. A fine book that will having you turning pages and keep your attention.




2. The author falls into the trap of thinking that climbing is going to give him and some other fellow climbers an insight into life beyond that of the ordinary man.

   No doubt he has done some amazing things but the fact is when you get off the mountain you are the same jerk you were before you started. Being a great climber does not make you a better person than someone else.

   I thought the chapter about his winter ascent was really self indulgent. Under the circumstances of his physical condition he had no business being there.

   On the positive the author has a knowledge of the Denali area that is very impressive but ...




3. I've always been fascinated by Denali (Mount McKinley)and its lands, but most literature about the mountain is similar to most other mountain writing: dry hubristic stories that don't give the deep-down-dirty. Much to my surprise, Waterman includes those hidden details of mountain climbing and Northern life in this incredible book. This is a timeless addition to the mountain writing genre, and what I believe is Waterman's best book. If you don't have it on your shelf, get it, read it, and read it again -- then share it with a friend.



4. This book helped me to get a good "feel" for Denali and its surroundings. It was easy to read and entertaining. Waterman recounts his life, first in New Hampshire in the white mountains and then later in Denali as a park ranger.

   I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a little history of Denali and its beautiful surroundings through entertaining short stories while not getting bogged down in factual details and structured story lines.




5. A real look into the world of mountaineering that hasn't been glamorized or overly dramatized (in the case of other authors). The primary focus is Denali, but the book often shifts attention away from it, giving the reader a good look into the mountaineering career of Jon Waterman and a bit of insight upon many others. For the experienced mountaineer, they can most likely relate to many of Jon's experiences. To the less experienced, it will give a sobering wakeup call to the realities of mountaineering. I must disagree with the reader from NY listed below as stating that "The author falls into the trap of thinking that climbing is going to give him and some other fellow climbers an insight into life beyond that of the ordinary man." For anyone who has survived a truly epic climb, one does gain a bit of insight into life that they failed to notice beforehand, and that many others do not completely understand...do this regularly enough, and it can in fact change a person. The book was NOT self-indulgent in the least...merely giving a first hand account of his experiences, both good and bad. If you are planning a trip to Denali, this should be required reading....

1 comments about The Inside Passage to Alaska.

1. This is a beautiful book I bought for my wife as we anticipate our Alaskan cruise this summer.

1 comments about The Nature of Southeast Alaska: A Guide to Plants Animals and Habitats.

1. In this highly readable book, Rita O'Clair and her co-authors explore the geology, habitats, and animals of Southeast Alaska and how they interact with each other. I haven't found any other source that puts the basic story of the region together in this way. For those getting started learning about the area, this book provides a framework to organize future observations and learning. Those who already know some natural history of the area may be surprised by the connections this book helps make and the gaps it fills in.

2 comments about 55 Ways to the Wilderness in Southcentral Alaska.

1. This is a MUST HAVE book for any visitor or Alaska resident who wants to get out and about and enjoy the outdoors in this part of Alaska. Those of us who have lived in Alaska for many years still use this book every summer for our day trip or weekend adventure planning, as well as for longer trips. I give this book as a gift to both summer visitors and people who have just moved here. It is accurate, clearly written, has good maps, easy directions to the trail heads and has the necessary safety information for folks not used to things like mosquitos, bears, and stream crossings. I get the latest edition every time it comes out to check out the most up to date trail information.



2. South Central Alaska holds most of the population and recieves many of the visitors to Alaska. It also includes those parts of the Alaskan wilderness most accessible to the average hiker. This guidebook is designed to provide both residents and visitors with a selection of hiking possibilities spread across the Anchorage Bowl, the Kenai Peninsula, the Matanuska Valley on the way to Denali, and the Copper River Basin on the way to the port of Valdez. The hikes range in challenge from those suitable for the merely fit to those intended for the extremely fit.
   
   The book is broken down first by general geographic area and then further into a description of each hike. Information provided includes distances, estimated travel time, elevation change and a difficulty rating. Descriptions include how to get to the appropriate trailhead and sketch maps for the actual route. The book has a good selection of photographs that provide a sense of scale for the terrain. An introductory chapter discusses the hazards of hiking in Alaska, including the weather and the wildlife.
   
   This guidebook is highly recommended to the resident and to the visitor for an informed choice on where to hike in South Central Alaska.

No comments about 50 Hikes In Alaska's Kenai Peninsula (50 Hikes).

1 comments about Best Places Alaska (Best Places).

1. This is an excellent book, giving brief history of areas and well as information on what to see and where to shop. Being an avid shopper, I especially liked the information on shops that handle native-made art. However, I had also purchased "Best Places Alaska: The Best Lodgings, Outdoor Adventures, and Restaurants" by Kate Ripley and they are virtually identical, using the same phraseology. I would recommend either book but not both.

2 comments about Alaska Trees & Wildflowers.

1. I purchased this guide and took it with me on a cruise to SE Alaska. The guide has too few species listed and too little information on each species to be of any practical use. I would not recommend it.
   
   Ron Stoessell
   Londi Moore



2. I have now collected all of the series of the Alaska pocket guides. This one is amongst all new purchases and it was in as good of condition. Thank you.

2 comments about Hiking Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: From Day Hikes to Backcountry Treks (Falcon Guide).

1. If you're looking to hike Wrangell St. Elias, look no further. This book covers tons of the park. I've been searching the internet for months trying to find all the details on a Fly-In Backpacking trip. Information has been very sketchy. However, I ordered this book hoping it would fill in the gaps, and it has! It gives you a great background on the park, preparations necessary, and most importantly detailed info (including gps waypoints) on just about every route in the park! I'd call it the Wrangell Backpacking Bible!
   
   The author is a guide who's been hiking Wrangell St Elias for a long time. From reading the book, you can tell he knows his stuff. He gives you all his secrets for less than $20.00. After reading the book, I feel very confident on my trip into Wrangell. Get the book and have a great trip!



2. Great hiking guide with useful general alaska backcountry information, for example how to cross rivers and glaciers, bears etc.
   
   I only wish that it also had fishing information for the hikes covered.

3 comments about The Accidental Explorer.

1. Sherry Simpson's earlier essay collection, The Way Winter Comes, was topnotch. The Accidental Explorer is even better. Her voice has mellowed some since her last book, and this seasoning imparts a difficult wisdom--the price of living an examined life. Two of the essays, "Impedimenta" and "Fidelity," are more than worth the price of the book. Excellent.



2. The more I read her work, the more convinced I become that Sherry Simpson is not only Alaska's most accomplished essayist, but that she ranks among the best in the nation. The latest proof is The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska. At one level, this collection of 10 personal essays recounts memorable trips into Alaska's wild places (most, but not all, emphasizing her own travels), written by a person who thinks hard about things, is willing to take risks, and has a wonderful talent for self-deprecating humor and story telling. The remote areas she writes about range from Glacier Bay to Denali National Park, the vast flatlands of the Yukon River basin, and an imposingly wild stretch of the Alaska coast that remains unnamed. But the specific places aren't as important as her experiences, lessons learned, questions raised, and the ideas that Simpson mulls in that restless, roving, worrisome mind of hers. Early on she admits to being a fretter. The reader gains as much, if not more, from her fretful and inquisitive mind as from the adventures themselves.
   
   As with the best of essays, these are multi-layered gems. Besides sharing her sometimes funny, other times sad or disconcerting, occasionally frightening, and always humbling passages through Alaska's wilds, Simpson writes movingly and unflinchingly about home and family. One of the strongest essays, I think, is "Fidelity," which in large part reflects upon about a troubled time in her marriage and the importance of what endures. In fact home and wilderness - and various notions of each - are juxtaposed against each other throughout the book and that juxtaposition creates one of the book's delicious tensions. Simpson is also fascinated by both the Euro-American explorers (many of them military men) who made the earliest Westernized maps of Alaska, and Alaska's Original Peoples, who created their own internal maps of the landscape while building a far more substantial and lasting relationship with the places they have come to know over the millennia. Both "The Mapmaker" (which focuses on mapper-and-explorer-turned-homesteader Bill Yanert) and "Hypothetical Geographies" take the reader to unexpected terrain as they consider the various ways we humans "map out" new territories and homelands. There's lots more here: the importance of stories, the dangers of not paying sufficient attention to advice, instincts, or the landscape itself (death and the specter of death are frequent elements of the stories, including a wonderfully provocative piece on Chris McCandless, of Into the Wild fame - or notoriety - in "A Man Made Cold by the Universe"); and the internal tensions carried by a writer who wonders "how could I ever reconcile this constant restlessness with the desire to know and love one place?" The essays superbly blend Simpson's personal idiosyncrasies with larger questions about discovery, longing, imagination, and how it is that each of us finds - or seeks to find - his or her own place in the world.
   
   A final thought: I'd previously read (and in one case, heard) versions of five of the essays included in this collection; and I found each to be powerful and illuminating this time around. In short, these are essays you can return to again and again, and take away some new insight or delight. That's essay writing at its best.



3. You could live in London all of your life, and never see Buckingham Palace. You could live in Washington D.C., and never see the White House. You could live in Alaska, and never see the beautiful wilderness that surrounds you - and that's what happened to author Sherry Simpson. "The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska" is her tale of accidentally discovering the vast natural wonder surrounding her during an epic solo hike across it all, despite not being much of a seasoned hiker. Written with humility versus the nature that she is simply a simple city girl facing vast odds, "The Accidental Explorer: Wayfinding in Alaska" is highly recommended for any true adventure collection and for anyone who wants to read a tale of explorer about someone who is not so much unlike them.

4 comments about Alaska.

1. Art Wolfe's beautiful photos and Nick Jans' reader-friendly text blend in a beautiful coffee-table paperback edition of Alaska (1-57061-216-1, $29.95), featuring gorgeous full-page color photos of environments and animals and reflecting the contributors' familiarity with Alaska's many faces. Choose this as a keepsake memoir of the state's natural beauty.



2. WOW! Breathtaking photos of Alaska. He captures Alaska as it should be.



3. Whether this book of color photographs accurately shows what Alaska really looks like, I don't know, because I haven't been there yet. But having finished it, I'm planning my trip!

   But I can say this is a great book of photographs of nature. Anyone who loves to look at photographs will love this book. Wolfe demonstrates that he is one of the greatest living outdoor photographers. His sense of light and composition is unexcelled. Almost every picture has a strong sense of line, either vertical, horizontal or diagonal. And the range of light is exceptional, often including in the same picture the darkest blacks and the brightest whites.

   The handling of sky is as sublime as that of any of the 19th century American landscape painters. I'm certain that there must be plain blue skies in Alaska but every one of Wolfe's skies has clouds that are fleecy, or glowering, or mysterious. And the light that falls on the landscapes illuminates them with a strange beauty whether casting deep, hard-edged shadows that make a rugged peak look even more majestic; or soft shadows that fall across a brush-covered hillside and create a subtle modulation of green; or the red rays of the magic hours of dawn and dusk.

   Occasionally his pictures take on a strange abstraction that requires a careful examination to discover what one is looking at, like the pictures of white ice floes on the surface of an inky-black river or the network of crevasses on a glacier with a few spots of emerald blue in the white field, where the snow has melted into a pond reflecting the sky.

   Wolfe is a master of color field photography. Consider the brownish, grayish web of fine lines with several smears of white across it that resolves into a portrait of musk oxen with white horns and muzzles. Or the white arctic foxes in the snow with a bare hint of orange on their undersides. Or the receding green hillsides distinguished only by differing textures with a tiny browsing caribou in the foreground.

   The text by Nick Jans is sometimes overly poetic and almost unnecessary given the photographs although explaining just what it is that makes tundra tundra has some interest. However when I turn the page to see just the top halves of the heads of two fierce little owls peeking at me with yellow eyes hidden amongst a row of wildflowers in the Arctic Wild Life Refuge, words disappear from my mind.

   Most people agree that Alaska is one of the last great wildernesses and that we are unlikely to see anything more exciting in our lives. Art Wolfe has captured the excitement of Alaska. He has also captured the excitement of great photography.




4. Beautiful photography of the grandest state. If you've read any of Nick Jans work, you know the text is excellent as well.