2 comments about 50 Hikes in Alaska's Chugach State Park.

1. As a former long-time Anchorage resident, I can say that this is a well-written, informative guide for people of all skills. Whether you are local or visiting, there are maps, directions, and a condensed, detailed write-up, without excess fat.

   The climbs range from the recreational family journeys to the hardcore hikes. The authors obviously have spent much time on each of these trails.

   There is even a nice touch of history in the guide.. you can tell there was good research done off the trails too.

   The black & white photos are there but can't do the land justice. Get out and go.




2. Enormous Chugach State Park abuts the City of Anchorage, Alaska, the largest city in Alaska and the hub of tourist travel into the state. Easily accessed from Anchorage, Chugach State Park provides a variety of year-round recreational activities. This guide provides a run-down on a variety of hiking trails, suitable for the barely fit to the extremely fit.
   
   The book, as advertised, provides descriptions of 50 different hikes in the Chugach. Some hikes are variations of route in the same area. The descriptions include distance, estimated time, elevation gain, and estimated hiking difficulty, along with directions to the appropriate trailhead, a sketch map of the route, and often photographs. Also included are some wise safety tips for hiking in Alaska, where weather can be extremely variable in just a couple of hours, and where man is not at the top of the food chain.
   
   Highlights include Crow Pass, over which the old Iditarod Sled Dog Trail once passed, and Flattop Mountain, perhaps the most heavily climbed mountain in Alaska. Chugach State Park also includes areas accessable only by a couple of days hike, where the determined hiker will find nearly pristine wilderness.
   
   This book is highly recommended for the hiker planning to visit Anchorage and looking for good trails, and for the long-time resident looking for some variety.

1 comments about Rand McNally Alaska: Highways & Interstates (Rand McNally Folded Map: States).

1. My wife gave me this map for my birthday, as a token of her desire (or just her willingness) to paddle the entire length of the Aleutian Island chain with me.
   I used to live in Alaska, and when I open this map I'm overcome by the memories of its small towns and loneliest roads, and by the excitement of planning our epic Aleutian trip.
   If you love Alaska, be warned: this map will put your mind there, and your mind will start relentlessly scheming up ways to get you back there.
   The map has good details, and seems fairly complete for the size it is. I think you'd like it.

3 comments about Cheating Death: Amazing Survival Stories from Alaska.

1. This isn't a bad book, but there are better ones of this genre. Some of the stories are quite interesting; others, less so. Some could use more detail, more background research. According to the book, the author has taken up writing full time. You could have fooled me. This book appears to be written as a hobby, by someone who has occupational interests other than writing. But, some of the book is well documented, and overall the book is OK.



2. This book is full of excellent stories of survival in the vast and varied wilderness of Alaska. What I enjoyed most about these stories was the sense of ordinary people up against the extraordinary forces of nature and circumstance. There's a personal flavor to some of the chapters. Almost as if you're hearing your neighbor telling a story about his cousin up in Petersburg. Is this the best written book in the world? No, but the true stories are pretty good.



3. In Cheating Death, Larry Kaniut offers a series of short, unconnected tales of potentially deadly accidents whose victims walk away, if not unscathed, at least alive to tempt death again some day. Most of the accidents deal with the "normal" string of minor disasters that those who have lived in Alaska are pretty used to: small airplane crashes, small boat sinkings, small raft flippings, and encounters with not-so-small blizzards and bears. Most of these situations sound like the inventions of uninspired adventure writers except to those who have indeed lived for a time in the state that calls itself The Last Frontier, for we know that such adventures are indeed real life.

   Kaniut's book is an eclectic collection of such adventures as might appear in glossy magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Shooter, and other such publications whose stories usually involve a vicarious injection of testosterone into the reader. In fact, it's usually an overload of testosterone that gets the victims into their scrapes to begin with: "Gee, there's a wide, fast-flowing, silt-filled river full of boulders. Let's see if I can conquer it in my noisy, polluting, totally unnecessary jet boat!" "Oh, look! There's a huge, ancient, majestic grizzly boar. Let's see if I can kill it with my very expensive sport rifle." The one thing that ties almost all of Kaniut's victims together is their chest-pounding bravado and their insistence on being where they shouldn't when they shouldn't-but that, too, tends to be real life in Alaska, as does the religious fanaticism that a few of the victims display ad nauseam.

   Don't approach this little anthology looking for universal themes, character development, artfully interwoven plots and subplots, inspiring figures of speech (except maybe hyperbole) or anything at all of a memorable nature. However, if one is in need of some great outhouse reading material or wants to kill a few hours on the airliner between Anchorage and Seattle, Kaniut's collection of survival tales is the ticket! Knowing Alaska and its denizens, I have to admit that most of these wild tales may even have happened very much as they are told-with the exception of the giant octopus. That one I'm not buying (even if it does make a great read).

5 comments about Frommer's Alaska 2007 (Frommer's Complete).

1. Doing a road trip via Motor Home...great explanations of camp sites, fishing, etc. Very helpful for a first time visitor for sure!



2. This book has been very informative in helping us to select which cruise line, tours and offshore excursions we plan to take advantage of while in Alaska. I highly recommend reading this BEFORE BOOKING and taking it along as a guide on your trip. It gives insider tips you may not have thought about when planning a trip. JPB



3. What more can one say about Frommer? You can't, or shouldn't, take any trip without taking along Frommer's reviews/commentary, and what to see and do books. Our trip to Alaska was just fantastic, and the information provided in it on everything from travel by cruise ship, history and what land tours to take was outstanding. I purchased the book (and others like it) from Amazon, and they all arrived in a timely manner, and the "price was right".



4. I received the 2008 edition for Christmas...
   true to Frommer's form. Great "Best of Alaska"
   and "Planning your Trip" chapters...good inter-
   net links and current contact phone numbers.
   Nice section of "Alaska in Depth."



5. This book is all you really need to go to Alaska. If you are a fan of Frommers products you will not be dissapointed. It's a thorough and accurate overview of all the basics needed when planning an Alaskan getaway.

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.

5 comments about Travels in Alaska.

1. Nature is a beautiful and highly complicated phenomena of this world. Many have sought to understand it and capture its essence in writing. The nature writings of John Muir succeed in capturing the beauty of nature as well as the scientific aspect. I have to be honest, I wasn't that enthused about reading a book about science. I expected Muir's book to be identical to a science textbook, definitely not my idea of enjoyment. However, his book was actually full of detailed descriptions and creative uses of similes, metaphors, and analogies. In fact, it completely changed my perception of a scientific novel.
   
   In his book, "Travels in Alaska", Muir brings alive the magnificence of the vast expanses of unexplored Alaskan territory. His prose reveals his enthusiasm for nature, and he weaves clear and distinct pictures through his words. Muir's writing is very personal. His favorable feelings toward the land are very apparent, and reading the book is like reading his diary or journal. He avoids using scientific jargon that would confuse and frustrate the average reader; his words are easily understood.

   Muir also uses very detailed descriptions throughout "Travels in Alaska". Although at times his painstaking description is a plus, at others, he seems to take it a little too far. Numerous times throughout the book, Muir spent a paragraph or two talking about something slightly insignificant. He would go off on a tangent of enthusiasm for something as simple as a sunrise or the rain. While his careful observances make the book enjoyable, the sometimes excessive detail tends to detract from the point he was trying to make. The description also reveals that his heart and soul was in his research; this became very evident upon reading the long and thoughtful descriptions.
   
   "Travels in Alaska" can be appreciated by a wide audience. Muir shines light upon the Alaskan territory, and he is detailed in his account of the many people he meets. Anyone could read the book and find enjoyment learning about Alaska when it was for the most part unsettled. Muir shares with the readers his keen insight upon the various Indian tribes that lived in Alaska. At one point in the book, he gives a very detailed description of one tribe's feasting and dancing. His observances capture exactly what he saw and the feelings these observances evoked in him.
   
   John Muir's writing is of high quality. He incorporates beautiful and creative similes, metaphors, and analogies. His prose is very poetic, which makes it an enjoyable read. For example, Muir says that "when we contemplate the world as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty." His work is also very organized. The book is divided into 3 sections, or parts of his trip, as well as separate chapters devoted to specific subjects. Muir spends one chapter describing his trip to Puget Sound, another on Wrangell Island, etc. The book follows a specific format that ensures that everything is easily followed and understood.
   
   Truthfully, I was impressed with the writing, and the fact that it was nothing like a textbook. It incorporated the literary aspect so well, that the book held my interest whereas a textbook would not have. I had the wrong impression of a scientific novel, and I urge anyone unfamiliar with the genre, to give "Travels in Alaska" a fair try. It may just change your mind about scientific writing.




2. I confess up front, it's been a few years since I read Muir's Travels in Alaska. Yet significant aspects I remember well. Given Muir's exuberance for life and almost everything he encounters in his travels, one almost looses view of Muir the botanist and geologist. But not quite. Here we find the author contemplating the activity of glaciers and documenting the flora of southeast Alaska. Muir (who tended strongly toward vegetarianism) gleefully entertaining himself by foiling duck hunters. Baffling the locals by happily wandering out into major storms.
   The book is a journal of Muir's 1879, 1880, and 1890 trips (he wouldn't mind if we called them adventures) to SE Alaska's glaciers, rivers, and temperate rain forests. He died while preparing this volume for publication.
   I remind myself, and anyone reading this, that Muir isn't for every reader. And, as other reviewers have stated, this may not be the volume in which to introduce oneself to the one-of-a-kind John Muir. One reviewer doesn't think that Muir is entirely credible in these accounts. I won't say whether or not this is wrong, but I tend to a different view. For some of us -- and certainly for Muir -- wilderness is a medicine, a spiritual tonic, so to speak. For the individual effected in this way, physical impediments and frailties rather dissolve away when he is alone in wildness. I once heard Graham Mackintosh (author of Into a Desert Place) speak of this. In all of his travels alone in the desert, he doesn't recall having ever been sick. This may not sound credible to some, but I strongly suspect it is true.
   If you like Muir's writings, read this book. If you like the stuff of Best Sellers, perhaps you should look elsewhere.



3. From the title, one would think this a type of travel journal, a panorama of episodes along the way, a sequence of stations between the starting off point and the destination. Instead, the overall weight of the book is given to glaciers, their descriptions, their influence on the landscape, their geological record, the discovery of new glaciers, and other characteristics of these moving rivers of ice. While Muir offers descriptive powers unequaled among authors on nature, never repeating himself though constantly repeating his subject, the sheer repetition tends to bog the work down. Two whole pages might contribute to our view of a particular glacier, and suddenly Muir reports that he's finished a 200-mile leg of his journey on foot. He tells us when he's climbed a glacier, and along the way we've missed an entire week. Time and space almost have no medium in this publication, utterly lost when gazing upon a glacier. For nature lovers who will never go to Alaska, the descriptions in this book make the ranges and glaciers come alive in print, but as a dramatic journey, a travelogue, or a field manual for the Alaskan bush, this book forms only a vague shadow.



4. John Muir's "Travels In Alaska" is his accouts of his trips to Southeast Alaska in 1879, 1880, and 1890. Southeast Alaska 125 years ago was sparsely settled and poorly explored; Muir's adventurous spirit and enquiring mind led him to investigate the numerous inlets and glaciers in the area, including the magnificent and much-celebrated Glacier Bay.
   
   Muir's simple, muscular prose weaves a fascinating narrative out of descriptions of the people, wildlife, and geology he encounters on his journey, suffused with his endless sense of wonder at the landscapes in which he saw the hand of God. The reader can hardly help but be carried along by Muir's enthusiasm. Muir's descriptions may be most relevant to those traveling Southeast Alaska by cruise ship, for a sense of what the landscape looked like before the population reached today's size and spread. Those not interested in the travel aspects of the book and in numerous descriptions of glaciers may find this book less interesting.
   
   This book is highly recommended to fans of John Muir's writings, and to those planning a trip through Southeast Alaska.



5. The beauty of this wonderful reprinting is how it shows John Muir as a person, how it helps us to understand the dynamic and overwhelming beauty of Alaska, and the changes in the people of Alaska. Muir's complete, tireless, and joyful commitment to nature comes through on every page. The book unintentionally provides an excellent portrait of the kind of inexhaustible devotion it takes to change the world as did Muir. The book also provides a stunning portrait of Alaska in the latter part of the 19th Century and allows one to compare the Alaska of those days with Alaska of earlier times and of today. The biggest changes are in the glaciers and in the people. The glaciers have receded dramatically as a natural part of their centuries' long retreat. It is interesting to compare what Muir saw with the experience of Vancouver almost exactly 100 years earlier (ca. 1793). Vancouver could hardly enter Glacier Bay. Muir could enter quite some distance, but the glaciers were still the dominant features. Today, the glaciers have largely receded into deep valleys. Muir encountered people in Alaska living largely as they had for centuries. They were hunters and fishermen and lived in small groups along the shore line. As Jonathan Raban points out in the intricately woven fabric of his sublime book "Passage to Juneau," the people of southeast Alaska considered the sea to be the real environment of their lives while the land was considered dangerous and unknowable. They lived along the shore and knew how to live off and with the sea year round. The lives of the Alaskan people are very different today but greatly influenced by the past. Raban often characterizes Muir's writing as overblown and florid. However, it is a portrait of a man, a maritime land and a people. To do justice to those three, the book had to be what it is - an astonishingly colorful and detailed portrait in words.

3 comments about The Alaska River Guide: Canoeing, Kayaking, and Rafting in the Last Frontier (Canoeing & Kayaking Guides - Menasha).

1. Great book on numerous trips on both slow and fast water. This combination makes the book a worthwhile purchase. Living in AK for five years and doing a number of the trips makes this a great way for me to stir up a few memories. Put-ins and take outs are accurately marked. Overall excellent book.



2. I love this book, and wish the author would write a sequel, describing more rivers. I have used the Alaska River Guide for several years to plan trips all over Alaska. The maps are great, the trip descriptions fascinating, and the pre-trip preparation information essential, especially for people new to Alaska.



3. This book enticed us to take three fantastic trips: on the Noatak, the Selawik and the Kantishna rivers. Jettmar's book provided absolutely essential information about the river, maps, and travel arrangements. The information was accurate and succinct. Great guide for Alaska rivers! We hope she'll write another about more of the rivers.

5 comments about Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge.

1. I was truly sad to finish this book. Jill is very honest about her adventures and about the frustrating and life changing times she has had in the wilderness. Even if the reader is not an outdoorsperson, he or she will enjoy the vivid descriptions of the arctic communities, the relationship between Jill and husband Doug, the struggles Jill faces in life including her mother's battle with cancer and much more. Thank you Jill for writing such a beautiful book.



2. Unusual deep and wide revelations, experienced and written by a woman describing extreme world wide rowing and paddling. Fully appriciated by kindred spirit having traveled with mind and heart.



3. Her style is elegantly simple, her stories come from the heart...



4. I recommend that you take these reviews with a grain of salt. The stories told by author are quite exciting, but I think that some readers have let them overshadow the author's trite metaphors, frequent, not-so-subtle digs at her husband, and self-aggrandizing style that any editor worth her salary would have edited out in the first draft. The author actually compares herself to Mother Teresa at one point.
   
   If you are looking to read about adventure, try some real writers. Read "The Places In Between," by Rory Stewart, or "The Worst Journey in the World," by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. These are written with sensitivity, elegance, and complete lack of ego. Perhaps Ms. Fredston should have taken a look at these before dashing off her book.



5. She is an amazing writer...very in tune with herself and her natural settings. Adventerous and fun! A must read for anyone who loves Alaska, paddling, or just a coming into your own kind of reader!

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.