Backcountry Skiing Returns…

Dan Mingori & Nate Greenberg have just released the 2nd edition of their backcountry skiing guidebook, ‘Backcountry Skiing California’s Eastern Sierra,’ and it is a substantial update. You can read my review of their original 2008 edition here; the 2014 release happily keeps all the original material (with minor tweaks), and adds coverage of (more…)

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Fixing Your Feet

If your chosen sport has anything in any way to do with your feet, I say John Vonhof’s Fixing Your Feet is a must-have. This massive 350-page book details the prevention, coping, and recovery strategies of those penultimate foot-bashers, ultramarathon runners. No, there is not a simple fix to be found here, nor, as Vonhof himself writes, is there such a thing as a universal fix (more…)

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Death Valley In ’49

Does anyone read books anymore? This is not a rhetorical question—my books section is basically a ghost town nowadays. Still, for those of you who still like to hold a bound stack of old paper in your hands for hours at a time, here’s William L. Manly’s Death Valley in ’49, a classic story of pioneer life and the California Gold Rush, plus a truly remarkable account of a disastrous journey across Death Valley (more…)

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Execution by Mathmatics

I enjoyed the original Freakonomics when it first came out. Written by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner, the book used economic analysis in clever and unexpected ways to expose “the hidden side of everything.” Freakonomics made its share of enemies, thanks to its occasionally radical theories, such as suggesting the national decline in Crime seen during the Clinton years was actually due to the legalization of Abortion some twenty years earlier. Levitt and Dubner clearly enjoyed rabble-rousing as a sport. But, the book did successfully challenge conventional wisdom on a wide range of subjects. It was a good, fun read (more…)

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Born To Run

Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run arrived on my desk with impeccable timing. I’d just finished a mammoth 19-hour climb and ski of California’s Mount Tyndall, and while nursing my wounds I began asking hard questions about my physical limits. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ve been conditioned over your entire life to believe that human beings were not meant to run (more…)

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Mingori-Greenberg: “Backcountry Skiing”

Mammoth Lakes climber/photographer Dan Mingori and Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center co-founder Nate Greenberg have released a new backcountry skiing guidebook, Backcountry Skiing California’s Eastern Sierra. Backcountry Skiing limits its coverage (mostly) to the Mammoth regions, but oh what coverage it is (more…)

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8000m Crime

The Alpinist’s web site is running an excerpt from High Crimes: the Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas. High Crimes documents the shocking but very real emergence of theft as yet another deadly threat climbers must face on 8000 meter peaks. You’ve probably heard about the ‘borrowing’ of oxygen bottles on Everest and similar tales, but the depth of the crime on Everest and other big peaks (including K2!) is truly astonishing (more…)

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