A Most Hostile Mountain : Re-Creating the Duke of Abruzzi's Historic Expedition on Mount St. Elias by Jonathan Waterman

by Jonathan Waterman

A century ago, Alaska's forbidding Mount St. Elias, the second-highest peak in the United States, was summited for the first time, not by American pioneers, but by a team led by an Italian nobleman, Luigi of Savoy, duke of Abruzzi. Sailing north from Seattle in turbulent waters, the duke and his team disembarked along the Alaskan coast and worked their way on foot across the glistening and breathtaking Malaspina Glacier, hauling thousands of pounds of equipment to the base of the great mountain, which they ultimately surmounted after a grueling and perilous climb. Now acclaimed author Jonathan Waterman adds the ways of the mariner to his considerable mountaineering experience to retrace the duke's historic land-sea expedition.

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Rob Neyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book doesn't quite live up to its subtitle; Waterman re-created the Duke of Abruzzi's expedition to (and atop) Mount St. Elias in just the broadest of outlines. But it's a book about mountaineering unlike any of the others I've read ... which is worth at least one extra star.