When I started blogging here on T.S.M. in 2010, my posts covered climbing more broadly still about mountains and included a lot of literature, but my most popular post for years was about climbing Olympus Mons on Mars. It rises much higher than anything on the surface of the Earth partly because of the gravity on Mars is a third of the strength here at home. Climbing on Mars would be vastly different than here at home, which is what I wrote about.
I was recently reminded about another celestial climbing attraction. My kids learned about it at school and they told me about it that same day with a lot of enthusiasm. I thought about it now because there was a recent news story about the planet Uranus. It didn’t change much about this feature, but it drew me back in.
In 1986, when the Voyager 2 space probe inspected Uranus and its moons, about 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) from Earth, it discovered the largest cliff that we know about. Verona Rupes is on the moon named Miranda and may be as modest as five kilometers or as tall as 15! It’s a significant feature of Miranda, as it is unevenly shaped with a noticeable ridge, the subject cliff, as distinctive as a ridge on Denali. Wikipedia has the actual image that Voyager 2 captured and some other amazing facts. An artist conception on Reddit dot com has this to help us imagine more what it’s like.
The greatest cliffs on Earth don’t exceed much more than 1.6 kilometers (1 mile). Mount Thor, a slightly overhanging cliff boasts the greatest vertical drop on Earth is 5,495 feet. A fall from the top would take us long enough to think what am I doing and watch and re-watch your life pass by, which will take just more than 18 seconds. (Try waiting that long.) That’s because our gravity’s strength on Earth governs the game of climbing. (Heck, gravity controls and sets up the assumption of all of our games from chess, baseball, and football.)
It seems everyone likes to share how long it would take to fall from the top of Verona Rupes. Well, Miranda’s gravity is much, much weaker than Earth’s. The Moon’s is a third of Earths and Mars’ is two-thirds or Earths by comparison. (I sometimes wish Star Trek, Star Wars, and even Dune played around with varying gravity levels more.) On Miranda gravity is one 124th that of what we deem normal.
So if Verona Rupes was a straight drop, which it is not, and you jumped off the top, you would reach a base speed of 200 kilometers per hour and fall for 12 minutes, according to NASA. I wonder if you would just bounce off the bottom. Probably not at that speed.
Climbing it would require a space suit, which is like climbing Everest with oxygen and plenty of other environmental comforts on hand. It wouldn’t really be climbing like we do on Earth, which makes home pretty damn special. Still, I love the artist’s concept of this piece for sale on the Internet. Definitely check it out.
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After reading an Alpinist Mountain Profile on Hyalte Canyon and explaining Alex Lowes’ connection, I was surprised how little Jennifer Lowe-Anker wrote about it. I took away from that profile that the icy crag south of Bozeman, Montana was immensely impactful on Alex Lowe, but when I read Forget Me Not: A Memoir by Jennifer Lowe-Anker, his widow, there was more, much more about the Tetons in Wyoming.
That was the only notable surprise in her 2010 book, because I knew the story. Most climbers who have been around or seen Max Lowe’s film Torn, knows the story. Alex Lowe enchanted everyone he met, including his wife, Jen, climbed hard, had three boys, and in 1999 went to climb and ski the Tibetan side of Shishapangma with David Bridges, Conrad Anker, Mark Holbrook, Kris Erickson, Hans Saari and Andrew McLean. Everyone went home except Lowe and Bridges, who were swept away in an avalanche. Anker married Jen, and Anker continued to climb and Jen rose to a revered figure among the climbing community. Yet, reading it, I still held my breath for the emotional strikes and gentle nudges of the hardness of life.
Lowe-Anker begins by explaining that she knew a book would have to be written about Alex, but she didn’t anticipate it would be a memoir like this. At the end of the book, she has a conversation with Reinhold Messner, who warns her that one day Alex will melt out of the glacier. Alex and Bridges were found in 2016. Everything in between was Lowe-Anker, the climber, the mother, the romantic, and the artist.
The language takes the reading experience higher than a memoir of life with her late husband. Lowe-Anker makes a realization about life with Alex, who can’t stay still for very long, and she visits the Louvre in Paris and has a delightful one-on-one with Mona Lisa, woman to woman, or rather the portrait. They bought a home, which they didn’t live in very long, on Guide’s Hill in Jackson, Wyoming, and describes their neighborhood more through their boys’ lives. And nearly everywhere she goes in the story, she observes the flowers around her, like the blue alpine forget me not.
Alex contributes his own words in Forget Me Not. Lowe-Anker includes volumes of letters Alex wrote her and her boys. Alex was frequently traveling away from home to climb for recreation and professionally, and increasingly professionally after they had kids. He wrote love letters and descriptions of what he did or saw, all with his audience, Jennifer Lowe or one of his sons, in mind.
I didn’t know Alex or follow his climbs, I sort of knew the immediate aftermath and I know Conrad’s story best, since I actively started following climbing news around 1999. This book seems to have caught me up on what everyone loved and admired about Alex. Perhaps the most valuable part of Forget Me Not is the insight Lowe-Anker gives into the psychology of Alex and what drove him. I won’t get into it here, because her words are far superior, but Alex had to be constantly in motion. He had goals and ambitions and had to feel he was working towards them; even climbing with Jen, while good, was lowering his standard, and he would grow unsettled and grumpy. Lowe-Anker said at the core of Alex was the demanding expectations of his father he might never meet.
What I didn’t like about the book was that I knew the core of the story and I was always bracing myself. It’s sad. And it’s beautiful. It actually made me appreciate the precious time with my own family a bit more. Actually a lot more. In fact, I became more grateful and expressing that became easier, even in our hurried lives with two kids in a lot of places to go. (Thanks for writing this book for that, Ms. Lowe-Anker.)
Forget Me Not discusses climbing, and I loved it for the window into their climbing life and community out West, but I think it is fundamentally a climbing adjacent book. It is a memoir, not a biography or an autobiography, or a chronicle of adventure and nature. It is a memoir of love despite hardness in a climbing world. I still rate it very high on my scale (which is not an Amazon book seller scale where five stars means you liked it; five has to be outstanding.)
Stars: 4 — Three stars just for the good and significant story, but Lowe-Anker’s romantic writing brings it up to four. Read it, but read it quick, and go live.
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After I read all 19 mountain articles for the Mountain Article category of the Banff Mountain Book Competition I had two with the same score. In haste, I didn’t reevaluate them or scrutinize them further, but submitted my scores and comments. Well, the jury at Banff decided it was one of them and last week they awarded the winner of the Mountain Literature category was Astra Lincoln for her work in the annual Ascent Magazine originally titled “The Terror of Turning a Corner.”
Lincoln’s article has since been republished on Climbing dot com, though in a very Outside dot com way (Outside Magazine owns Climbing now,) that is made more for search engines and not human readers: “My Rocky Return to Climbing After a Life-Changing Accident.” The top of the webpage is just: “Climbing After a Brain Injury.” Well, that makes it raw and unapproachable, unlike Lincoln’s post. The original title has something to do with it.
I also scored Jeff Jackson’s “Cayesh” in Summit Journal the same. The article involved Mark Richey and the “Roadie Loades” on the big pointy peak. If you read it, you get it. I can’t find an online version anyplace and I don’t think I can share the PDF that was shared with me; sorry!
Overall, the Banff Mountain Book Competition jury announced ten winners, composed of seven books and Lincoln’s article from the standard categories and two more books for honorable mention. The standard categories are of Adventure Travel, Mountain Fiction and Poetry, Guidebook, Mountain Image, Mountain Article, Environmental Literature, and Mountain Literature, with the category of Climbing Literature as a category that can honor a climbing themed book from the Mountain Literature or other categories as appropriate.
The Jon Whyte Award, which is for the mountain non-fiction literature category, included books by Bernadette McDonald, Eric Blehm, Graham Zimmerman, Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar, Beth Rodden, and Rick Accomazzo. I am familiar with all of the books, though I only read McDonald’s Alpine Rising (so far.)
Well, Alpine Rising is the Jon Whyte Award winner for 2024 and eligible for the Grand Price to be announce in Banff on the evening of October 31st. Jurist Tony Whittome said this about her work:
We are privileged as judges to honour not one but two books which help transform our understanding of Himalayan mountaineering. Bernadette McDonald’s Alpine Rising, arguably the most important book in her long and distinguished career, tells the unsung, heroic and sometimes tragic story of the Sherpas, the Baltis and other Indigenous peoples without whom no Himalayan peak could have been climbed. As truths emerge from the shadows of empire and they take their rightful place in their own world, she reveals the lives and humanity behind their dramatic stories, culminating in the all-Nepali first winter ascent of K2.
Congratulations, Astra, Bernadette, Nandini, Deepa, and the other winners.
On a wholly other topic, I wanted to update you about the Long-Short List of climbing classics and books I really want to make sure I read: I added Steve Roper’s memoir, Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber (1994). And yes, Roper and his publisher made rockclimber one word. I wish that would have stuck, like as it has with baseball becoming a single word.
Well, thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for my newsletter, which is the best way to get updates. And please tell a friend too; I am a humble hobbyist and don’t pay for advertising so organic search engine traffic and word-of-mouth referrals are all I’ve got. I just believe that climbing matters and you do too.
There is no credible list of classics of mountain climbing literature. I looked. The lists that are out there are mostly a mix of well regarded books mixed with a couple of recent releases the writer of the list enjoyed. Several years ago, I chose to make my own list. But this wasn’t going to be a round-up list like so many others. I was going to read the nominated books and evaluate them. And I knew this would take a very long time.
I know you are not among them, but since most people do not share my niche interest for mountain climbing literature, and because they have not spent as much time as I have contemplating what makes these books special, I thought I would try to break down what I think makes a mountain climbing classic… well, at least as I understand it today.
I started seeking a credible list of mountain climbing classics because this blog started out as a pure reader response exercise. I would read climbing news, a passage in a book, or a whole book and reflect about the points. I was posting once a week when that was the blogging trend. I started focusing on increasingly on bound books because I believed in all of the forces and events that it took to make one from the author having a story to tell, to an editor and a publishing house believing it was worthy. I was living in a small urban condo where space had to be used judiciously and the things I owned had to be things I loved or have some practical purpose, as Marie Kondo would ask, “Does it bring you joy?” The climbing books did most of all, but I already knew that the ones I owned weren’t all the best books. I had read and collected many titles, but it was eclectic and a mix of narratives, guides, and what I call “instructionals.” If I was going to make space on this shelf for only some climbing books, which ones were the right ones?
My ideas of what should make the list have evolved, and I realized that there are really four lists (since I am not including my magazine collections of Alpinist, Climbing, and Rock & Ice.) The first three are very personal:
Guidebooks
Instructionals
Books that I value, though are clearly not classics, or were very recently published
The fourth list is the climbing classics and these are not guidebooks or instructionals. I am speaking about narratives. There are mountain climbing guidebooks that I adore for their embedded stories, writing, photography and overall presentation, like High Alaska by Jonathan Waterman or Mountaineering in Patagonia by Alan Kearney, except they are in a subcategory all of their own. I used to group some of my beloved guidebooks into my list of books to consider as mountain climbing classics, but I don’t think that’s appropriate any longer. That will be a separate list I hope to share one day.
The narratives of mountain climbing literature is a genre with unique lens on humanity. The better ones read more like novels with some limited perspective and talk about events and experiences those of us living a comfortable life don’t get to see. They are stories of exploration of terrain and the subject’s soul. I like to say, that great climbers incrementally push through multiple veils of fear to show us the strength of human spirit and out ability to manage problems and challenges, from navigating a vertical world, weather, or our own bodily and psychological limitations in those conditions. With great mountain climbing literature you don’t need fiction for entertainment, and they are anecdotes for our lives.
My favorite climbing stories are stories of the climber’s troubles or life being told on a climbing stage or with climbing as the primary backdrop. This includes why Paul Preuss of Voytek Kurtyka climbs to their objectives, in dealing with their own searching, to troubled youths like young Paul Pritchard escaping to a clearer world where he finds himself. In all of those, climbing is the vehicle for the climber to express himself, and the mountain climbing as a means to the stories of their adversity as humans are what makes us buy their book. It is also why their books’ longueurs — in between the climbing sections — are so impactful to the reader.
In general, classics are by definition excellent, enduring, sometimes traditional, memorable across generations, and are authentically representative of its subject. However, there were some bad traditions in climbing literature that I am thrilled have changed. The first is the old-fashioned expedition book. These books were official records of the expedition and can be tedious to read and have large appendices of lists. I find them fascinating records to read for nuggets or neat trivia. But they were dry, not well written with limited perspective, no soul, and they ignored anyone except the climbing party, meaning they marginalized anyone in a porter or supporting role. They were all, if not mostly, colonial in nature, where the indigenous people were there for the home country heroes.
Most of all, good mountain climbing literature is immersive to the reader. They are unapologetic to being a mountain climbing story, and they commit to not only a story and world-creating of the environment but of the climber’s universe. They don’t have to pause and explain a belay, what an adze is, or how the protection works (though a glossary is preferred than ruining rhythm.) And I think having a limited perspective, ideally first -person, but not necessarily, is helpful to making the story readable and more enjoyable, as the author conceals outcomes and reveals the solutions and unties the protagonist’s mental knots piecemeal.
And of course, a classic of mountain climbing literature must be able to stand the test of time. Do you still want to read them? Are young climbers coming to climbing literature through that title? Or are young adventurers coming to climbing through that book, as many did through Annapurna by Maurice Herzog?
Most of the mountain climbing narratives I own and some AAJs. (All rights reserved)
Here is a photo of some of my books. As I have mentioned before, my library has been mostly in boxes in our basement. I keep them lifted off the ground in case of a leak, and until recently had a dehumidifier running on a thermostat until I realized the basement was so dry year round it wasn’t necessary. Most of my guidebooks, instructionals, and magazines are still in boxes, but I recently moved into a new office at work and had an empty bookcase. I gathered most of the narratives I owned and put them on the middle shelves. I put some recent American Alpine Journals as placeholders for the other books at home on my stack of to-read books or books I hope to acquire and read in the near future. The shelves in total are all I had in our DC area condo, so maybe this will help me stay true to the vetting process.
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I love a good story about addiction, grief, and self destruction, don’t you? Maybe you don’t and you’re looking at me funny now. Let me give you an example of such an addition-like book the mountaineering front: I thoroughly enjoyed Margot Talbot’s autobiography All that Glitters, Paul Pritchard’s books, and, of course, David Roberts memoir On the Ridge Between Life and Death. I also tend to be drawn to them in non-climbing books, from esoteric memoirs like Amy McMullen’s Flat Ass Calm to popular self destruction stories of public and semi-public figures like Hunter Biden’s tell-all Beautiful Things.
I am not an addict or grieving or taking notes on how to self abuse myself more effectively. Rather, these stories are honest about how hard life is, and the reader usually demonstrates grit, which Angela Duckworth defines as passion and perseverance. These books also take us through the experience and sometimes how they overcame them. With nonfiction like this, I don’t need to make stuff up. We all suffer and some more than others, and in interesting ways. As a person of faith, and as someone working for better human outcomes in general, I am always looking for stories that lend more insight into what makes us human and give us more encouragement, particularly that you can endure and get through it, too. (It’s for these reasons I love the longueurs of a great climbing story.)
I am, however, hard on myself, and find the world hard, too. I deal with my own grief, bad habits, and though I try to do the right things, I am not always getting richer or stronger. I love to climb because I forget all about my troubles. I love the act of self improvement, whether it’s climbing in my gym or improving my performance on a golf course or the quality of work at the nonprofit I run. And then there is being loving husband and a good dad. Well, nothing is easy when you care about it immensely. It doesn’t count as trauma, but it is stress.
A publicist for another book mentioned realized this and suggested sharing “something different,” he said. So that brought me to Sydney Williams book, Hiking Your Feelings: Blazing a Trail to Self-Love (2024) from Mandala (an imprint of Simon & Schuster,) which is mostly about dealing with her own grief, and guiding her readers through some therapy — on a trail. To be the most complimentary to William’s work, Hiking Your Feelings is a self-help book in disguise as a hiking book.
After recounting her grief, which included a colleague at work, Chris, who took his own life, and a boss that was insensitive, unsupported, and turned out to be involved in other improprieties, Williams is going to delve into sorting out her feelings and work her way back to self love. Parallel to that, she is actually going to guide her reader on this while telling her story of hiking the Trans-Catalina Trail, a 38.5 miles/61.9 kilometers trail across a small island 22 miles/35 kilometers from Southern California.
Williams dives into the trail and recounting her experiences and the feelings and issues that arise from them. Each chapter ends with applications that the reader can apply. She also discusses the nuances of some of the solutions. For instance, in stepping away from social media or other content, she is careful to point out that removing the things that make you feel insufficient or insignificant should be blocked and unfollowed, but challenging yourself to improve shouldn’t be ignored, and she discusses the difference.
At the firsts chapter, it was more than obvious Williams is speaking to female audience, and the anecdotes and stories are not gender universal. I am hungry for self-love and wholeness advice, and I decided to read on despite this and pull out the relevant nuggets. And I found some. My favorite was knowing when to call “bullshit” on stories you tell yourself or negative talk. Are you really sure that’s the case?
She said several times in the book how she was “eating and drinking her feelings,” but I thought it was an illustration of living life and just being unintentional. I didn’t know what she meant. I realized after the third or fourth reference to it she meant comfort food and “comfort” alcohol. And clearly, she hadn’t explained what we mean by feelings. Perhaps I take them for granted, but I wish she explained that if we’re not being deliberate with out minds, and reacting to our emotions alone, which many of us do unconsciously, then we do things unconsciously to comfort ourselves through suffering of various levels. I still think Hiking Your Feelings is very approachable. Through the anecdotes and storytelling of the hike across the island, Williams lets the reader have a friend show them the way to some worthwhile introspection.
It didn’t help my self-love. But I think it was because she didn’t speak my language with anecdotes I could relate to. Plus, I was distracted by her reoccurring conversation about body image talk. What am I supposed to do with a pep talk that I can lay on the beach in a bikini?
I related to the trail situations. But I hoped that Williams would connect the way the trail helped her. She leaves it mostly as a backdrop and setting for her therapy session. The book is about your feelings and not actually hiking as a means to delve into them. It’s a shame, because so many great stories come from the introspection of a long solo journey. The longueurs of adventures are often the most insightful and human part of the book. You won’t get that here and I think Williams lost an opportunity.
Well, thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for my newsletter, which is the best way to get updates. And please tell a friend too; I am a humble hobbyist and don’t pay for advertising so organic search engine traffic and word-of-mouth referrals are all I’ve got. I just believe that climbing matters and you do too.
Mount Everest from Tibet, 1924 (All rights reserved)
As I have said many times, I prefer not to spend time reading new books on Mount Everest. The best stories on the highest peak ended in the 1980s. After that, commercial expeditions and their politics and the advent of social media has changed everything from base camp to the man-made and human debris on the mountainsides. New books about Everest are generally repetitive or trying to keep that pre-1980s allure, despite or in spite of the circus around Everest.
I am reconsidering my approach to Everest books for two reasons. First, because Everest is a significant portion of the mountaineering literature published. Sometimes it feels like half of the books on mountaineering and climbing are about Mount Everest. Maybe that’s understated. 2024 is the 100-year disappearance-versary of Mallory and Irvine, so perhaps the feeling of today’s titles are skewing things. And in that vein, while I disparage the new Everest books, readers like you are buying them and thereby encouraging publishers to take-up that Everest manuscript and make it a published book. I’m am thinking that you and the publishing world need some help to make better Everest books.
What stimulated this whole conversation within myself and to just be upfront with how I really deal with Everest was an email I received from Becca Parkinson of Manchester University Press. They are putting out a new Everest book. At the subject line, I was going to decline. Then, after some investigating and seeing all the contributors, including Wanda, why wouldn’t I read and review this book.
Second, and related to the first reason, I read several of them, darn it. I do. I get invited by a publicist or the author him or herself to review their book. I turn down most Everest books unless it meets some higher threshold of my curiosity. And I usually regret it too. But isn’t that still something you should hear from me?
I have written down in my notebook for The Suburban Mountaineer this statement: “No Everest. No sport climbing. No comp climbing. Only adventure and alpinism.” I bend the Everest one often and I broke the comp climbing once. I suppose I want to live up to this elitist “no this” standard, but it’s not realistic. Everest is there.
The best parts of adventure and alpinism are hard to find in newer books about Everest. Most of them feel the need to recount a recent tragedy, explain commercial guiding, and spend time justifying why they are doing this. They’re not committed or unapologetic to the reader. And the ones that are retelling history or books already written, well I blame the publisher more than the author.
So I am going to keep complaining about books about Everest. I will keep reading them as I choose to. And I will tell you if it’s worth reading, what was stupid, and why. I’ll also tell you when I find one you have to read. Promise. You deserve that.
Well, thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for my newsletter, which is the best way to get updates. And please tell a friend too; I am a humble hobbyist and don’t pay for advertising so organic search engine traffic and word-of-mouth referrals are all I’ve got. I just believe that climbing matters and you do too.
The Suburban Mountaineer 
