Long description:

From his youthful second ascent of the north ridge of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon?s Saint Elias Range, an in-and-out on skis for which he had not entirely learned how to ski, to a recent excursion across the Harding Icefield conceived under the influence of rain and whiskey, David Stevenson chronicles several decades of a life unified by a preoccupation with climbing. Reflective and literary, and also entertaining and funny, his accounts move across the great climbing locations of the western United States, with forays into the spires of the Alps, and slip freely in time from the author?s childhood, when he could not wait to head west, to his adulthood, with a wife and two sons, in which he still feels compelled by a longing to be on the heights.

"This collection of essays provides an evocative look into the somewhat exclusive climbing world. Stevenson?s prose is lively, and his references to other prominent climbers and climber-authors may serve as a jumping-off point for further research in the field."

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Warnings against Myself

1. Speaking in Code: Conversations and Reflections on Climbing, Language, and the Religion of the French

2. The Purposes of Ascent: Episodes and Conversations on Adventure, Climbing, and What It All Might Mean; An Account of Twenty Years in the West

3. Climber as Writer: From the Armchair to the Tetons Last Dance of the Wu Li Master: A Distanced Appreciation of Terrance ?Mugs? Stump Virga

4. Untethered in Yosemite: A Report from Paradise in the Last Summer of the Millennium

5. Short Walks with McInerney: Three Classic Pilgrimages

6. Superstitious: Mont Blanc, French Alps

7. Struck: Longs Peak, Rocky Mountains

8. In the Bugs: In the Canadian Rockies

9. Axe of Contrition

10. Byron Glacier, June 24, 2009

11. Eros on the Heights

12. The Tower and the Riddle

13. Lives of the Volcano Poets

14. Here Comes Ol? Flattop

15. A Short Cultural History of the Ice Axe in the Twentieth Century

16. Three Dreams of Mountains, Late Fall 2004

17. Whillans, Haston, and Me: A Distanced Appreciation with a Couple Trip Reports, Contextualized

18. In the Very Big Ice House: Travels on the Harding Icefield

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments