Of course the holiday season is mostly about family and friends, however ever since college, Christmas has also been closely connected to mountaineering for me. First, it is often a time when I have headed off to bag some peaks or do long pitches of ice climbing. (There were even those Christmas days in Manchester when I had my younger sister belay me on the Rock Rimmon crag.) Second, since my family, friends, and colleagues never seem to know what technical gear to get me, so they get me mountaineering books instead. (As you can see from the picture my collection has grown significantly this day ... thus my Fossil nickname ... The Historian.) Third, ever since my family has moved back to North Country School I have been in charge of hanging the Christmas stockings on the fireplace. This has always been accomplished by a variety of climbing gear placements, although - shame on me - as you can see I have not equalized my placements. (Although my anchor spans multiple climbing generations as it includes a lost arrow piton, an original hexcentric, and an alien.)
This Christmas with the wonders of the internet, Selden was able to find a host of obscure mountain related books.
1) David Brower, classic 1942 book, "Manual of Ski Mountaineering."
2) Trevor Braham's, "Himalayan Playground: Adventures on the roof of the world from 1942-1972."
3) Knut Haukelid: "Skis Against the Atom," a history of the Norwegian ski partisans who sabotaged the Nazi attempts to develop an atomic bomb.
4) Yuichiro Miura's "The Man Who Skied Down Everest," which for those that saw the full-length movie in the 1970s know that it was really about the man that fell down Everest.
5) The anthology "Peering Over The Edge: the philosophy of mountaineering," edited by Mikel Vause.
6) Marco Pallis and his book "Peaks and Llamas: a classic book on mountaineering, buddhism, and Tibet."
7) A murder mystery set on Mount Rainier by Ben Small called "Alibi on Ice."
Oh, and my brother and sister in-law, gave me a series of humorous German postcards from 1908 with a mountaineering setting. For those that have stayed in the Fossil Cabin you'll need to look at my climbing postcard collection ... it's quite extraordinary.
Posts
