Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams

by Katie Ives

Author is a renowned writer in international climbing community Fascinating story of hoax that inspired a quest for a North American Shangri-La Vivid recounting of fabled mountains from across the world Using an infamous deception about a fake mountain range in British Columbia as her jumping-off point, Katie Ives, the well-known editor of Alpinist, explores the lure of blank spaces on the map and the value of the imagination. In Imaginary Peaks she details the cartographical mystery of the Riesenstein Hoax within the larger context of climbing history and the seemingly endless quest for newly discovered peaks and claims of first ascents. Imaginary Peaks is an evocative, thought-provoking tale, immersed in the literature of exploration, study of maps, and basic human desire.

Genres: Nonfiction, Climbing, Travel, Outdoors, Audiobook, Adventure, History

420 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2021

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

"On the Women Who Succeeded in the “Man’s World” of Mountaineering."
Katie Ives on "Jean Crenshaw and Helen Kilness, the Women Behind Summit Magazine".
Excerpt from The Mountaineers Books. Stories mostly from the 1950s. Pretty interesting. Maybe?
https://lithub.com/on-the-women-who-f...

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried. I really could not get into it- the first 100 pages could not hold my interest. Basically the history of people envisioning peaks that don’t exist is incredibly dry. I know it turns more into a story later, but getting there is a Sahara desert marathon

[Chris Kalman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished Imaginary Peaks last night. It took me a while, as the writing demands close and careful attention. Of course, that always makes the reading more rewarding.

It's a really beautiful story. The weaving together of narratives, the intentionality of the language on a sentence level, the imagery, the philosophical reflections, it's all done so wonderfully. And of course, it's insanely well researched.

Most of all, more than the ideas, I thought the author—Katie Ives—did a great job capturing the people. I think it would have been easy to idealize Harvey Manning, but she didn't. He was believably imperfect, a bit haughty, at times sort of corny. In other words, real. And so were some of the other memorable characters in the story, including Ives herself.

The book made me want to go see the Kichatnas in real life, as well as places like Marmot Pass, No Name Peak, the EACAS glacier... but more importantly, it made me want to remember how to see wonder in the seemingly mundane old haunts close to home. Now that may not be a very sexy way to live--at least not for a social media influencer--but I think it ultimately leads to a more fulfilling life. The difference between looking outward and looking inward is, perhaps, that the one is a form of self-escape, and the other is a form of self-confrontation. I guess I just feel like we can only run from ourselves for so long. In the end, who we are always catches up with us.

Imaginary Peaks reminded me of this fact. I hope it gets all the praise and awards it deserves. Congratulations to Katie Ives!

[Sean Prentiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book that is about mountaineering, hoaxes, and adventuring into and protecting those mountains of our lives. Ives weaves in research, biographies, adventure, and thoughtfulness to create a book that inspires and teaches us. Beautiful.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite nonfiction. It's funny and hopeful. It includes all the history you need to know if you don't climb. The beginning is the history of ridiculous map mistakes like non-existant island and "really really tall" mountains that are then hard to find because they aren't. And what humans have thought of mountains, always trying to find a volcano with a utopian society inside, and basically the history of how the world fit on a map, explorers and mountaineers and settlers and naming mountains. I want to take notes. Then it's about all the people involved in the Riesenstine hoax and what it means.
It gets flowery/purple at times, and I liked the cartography stuff so much I felt friction when the book zoomed into the Riesenstine, but then I got invested. For a second I thought it was odd that they all were referred to by first name but it doesn't matter, and it makes you feel closer to them.

[Gail Storey · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams, Katie Ives maps an inner world as subtle and lovely as the mountainous natural world. Her visual imagery transports us from glorious peaks to the depths of imagination, with an exploration through culture and humanity in between. I found even her chapter titles exquisite. Her research is broad indeed, from Ptolemy to nuggets such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Emily Dickinson's editor, collecting "stories of cartographic errors and fables." What I love most about the book, though, is the sense of a satisfying, seamless integration of the known and the unknown, similar to that evoked by Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities or Jorge Luis Borges in Ficciones.

[Philippa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this; Katie Ives’ writing is always stunning, and this book had me hooked right from the title. Imaginary Peaks is an intriguing exploration of the fascination held by empty spaces on the map, and of mountains that aren’t represented on maps.

Mountaineering has always felt otherwordly to me, lingering somehow right on the edge between reality and a vivid fantasy. There have been moments in the mountains that I’ve later struggled to explain and I’ve always been frustrated by what feels like a huge inability to re-tell my own experiences, so I felt very comforted (and validated!) by Katie’s discussion of the sheer difficulty of fully capturing our experiences in the mountains, let alone the impossibility of trying to pin down such vivid and complex terrain onto a flat piece of paper.

The first section races through stories about peaks which have been imagined or hallucinated or confused; a mis-history of discoveries and exploration. There’s a long list of intentional and accidental reports of summits later found not to exist. It’s incredible to think about how quickly and relatively recently our knowledge of the world has been put together – it wasn’t really that long ago that explorers were genuinely (if willingly) bewildered by towering peaks which were later established as vivid tricks of light and cloud. There’s a lot of short anecdotes in the first half, quick recaps of expeditions which I would happily have read a whole book about. It covers a huge scope of explorers and expeditions and pulls from an impressive amount of research, although I did occasionally find the pace of the narrative a little confusing.

The second half focuses more on the life of Harvey Manning and the hoaxes he manages to pull off within the climbing community. Harvey’s reflections on appreciating the small beauties in the landscape, taking the time to stop and observe it all, felt very apt in our post-lockdown world. I also enjoyed Katie’s honest reflections on the reality of trying to identify hoaxes as a magazine editor and the difficulties of ever knowing the full truth about an ascent. The ambiguity seems to be a huge part of the draw of mountaineering literature; the world that top alpinists are operating in is so far removed from our everyday lives that it really does become impossible to ever fully know what happened at 8,000 metres – sometimes even impossible for the climbers themselves to understand events or be sure that they reached the correct summit. Katie writes with sensitivity and awareness throughout, and she’s always quick to acknowledge the rights of indigenous people who are often already living in the lands westerners claim to explore.

The real value of the book, for me, was the delight in finding a moment of genuine exploration when maps turn out to be false, and the discussion around how every hoax shows us something about our own perception and understanding of these mysterious places. I’m so grateful that some aspect of the mountains will always remain a mystery – the magic of the unknown is definitely part of the draw of mountaineering for me.

Imaginary Peaks left me with many wandering questions about the purpose and truth of maps, and about the necessity – or not – of being able to match the land in front of me to what’s on the piece of paper in my hand.

(With thanks to Mountaineers Books for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.)

[Bill Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished reading “Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams” by Katie Ives, a scholarly and beautifully written work that speaks to all of us who find ourselves enthralled by rock, snow, and ice, mountains both real and of the mind. A captivating journey that weaves through the history of cartography, brave and sometimes foolhardy explorations of faraway places, and the magnetism and mysticism of the mountains. A story that reaches a crescendo of wonderment and insight in the final chapters. It drew me in, progressively further, as if it knew me, my heart and soul. An impressive and magnificent work that will find all that love the vast and yet intimate wild places a sense that they have met a kindred spirit who innately understands them. I found Katie’s subject impressive and her writing truly resonant, and I recommend it to all who share our addiction to those magnificent places, the terra incognita of our dreams. Well done, and thank you, Katie Ives!

[Brian Glenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a disappointment, coming from Katie Ives.

She found a guy who left boxes and boxes of archival materials in a college archive, and having waded through them, felt the need to write a story to justify her efforts. The problem is, it just isn't a story worth telling.

In 1961, a climbing magazine posted a hoax report of an expedition, along with a photo. They just didn't have enough content for the magazine, and published without fact checking. Ives works very hard to make a lot of this, and of the man behind the hoax.

In fairness, the first third of the book is about the challenges facing map makers, and all the historical inaccuracies that resulted. It's an interesting read, and brisk, but she tried to connect all that to the little hoax, and I'm sad to say it, but it just doesn't resonate.

If you have time, I would suggest instead Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road, by Kate Harris.

[Tim Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I thought it would be

I got this book as it was on a recommended book list. It wasn't what I thought it would be I will be honest and say if I knew what it was about I probably wouldn't have read it. I'm glad I did. Very well researched and very interesting. I love an old wonder around the hills looking for obscure boulders and have often walked around a corner just to see what was there. Very off beat book but very refreshing. Why do we chase peaks.

[Julius · Rating 2 out of 5]

Die Autorin hat sehr ausführlich recherchiert und mit vielen Zeitzeugen der Riesenstein-Hoax bzw. ihren Angehörigen gesprochen. Sie hat versucht die verschiedenen Absichten dahinter zu ergründen genauso wie die Spannweite der Reaktionen der Community - damals wie heute.

In meinen Augen ist das Buch aber konzeptuell nicht gut umgesetzt: Die erste Hälfte ist ein unstrukturiertes Hin- und Herspringen zwischen verschiedenen Biographien, Literatur und unzutreffender Bergabenteuerschilderungen. Wirklich interessant ist das Buch für mich ausschliesslich über etwa 30 Seiten in der Mitte gewesen, nämlich dort, wo es etwas abstrakter um die Vorstellungskraft der Leute und ihrer unterschiedlichen Bedürfnisse und Absichten geht, die durch eigene oder fremde larger-than-life Berggeschichten angeregt wird. Alles Darauffolgende hat wieder keinen erkennbaren Zusatznutzen.

Das Thema hätte so viel hergegeben: Von Clustern der verschiedenen Absichten über ein strukturiertes Ergründen der verschiedenen Reaktionen, von zeitlich-chronologischer Entwicklung bis zu geographischen/ethnologischen Feinheiten.

Gut ist, dass die Autorin häufig den Disclaimer mitschickt, dass es sich bei "Entdeckungen" und "Erstbesteigungen" ausschliesslich um aus westlicher Perspektive erstmals "eroberte" Berge geht, ungeachtet derer lokalen Geschichte. (siehe Zitat 2)

Interessante Zitate
Zitat 1: "Killing dragons is a phrase sometimes used to describe mountaineering. For many alpinists, however, the experience of climbing evoked nostalgia for what the bygone creatures represented." (S. 46) Das gilt aber dann nicht mehr notwendigerweise für andere, wenn ein Berg erst einmal "erobert" ist.

Zitat 2: "A modern-day reader might sum up the story [remark: Joseph Herron's expedition to Alaska in 1899] otherwise: a group of white soldiers set out to gather information that might lay the groundwork for colonization. They found themselves hopelessly underprepared for the challenges of the backcountry, left their depleted horses to starve, and were saved from nearly certain death by the aid of Alaska Native residents - the same people whose traditional rights white settlers wanted to displace." (S. 152 f.)

Zitat 3: "[...] Harvey's hoaxes were the opposite of Cook's. Instead of claiming a false record, Harvey's imaginary climbers told stories in which they failed to reach their ultimate objective. They tempted their readers to try to make the first ascents themselves. These narratives fit Harvey's aim of pointing out the absurdity and inappropriateness of climbing mountains for personal glory in the first place." (S. 162)

Zitat 4: "[...] a harsh but indirect lesson to always be humble in the face of Nature. I felt like I'd been there, but the mountains were unperturbed. They were just there, and we could sort of live in their thereness for a while. That was it. Then we'd have to go." (S. 186)

Zitat 5: "In his hiking guides [...] Harvey aimed to lead people on a journey that was as much imaginative and spiritual as geographic and physical, like the pilgrimage narratives of old. He designed his route descriptions to evoke a deeper sense of reverence, caring, and responsibility, advocating for low-impact travel in wildlands and composing specific notes about places that still needed to be saved. [...] Harvey renamed the cluster of low summits 'the Issaquah Alps', to ploy to associate them with images of higher, more Romantic peaks and to inspire more people to believe they were worth saving. He called this idea 'name magic'. And with members of the Issaquah Alps Trails Club (which he cofounded in 1979) and other activists, he worked to safeguard thousands of acres of these wooded uplands from the developers' bulldozers." (S. 204)

Zitat 6, Ken Kesey, einer der 'Vulgarians': "It's the truth, even if it didn't happen" (s. 220)

Zitat 7: "Not necessarily a warm and nurturing place, but a place that you can learn from. But again, I come back to why do we have that connection? Why do [mountains] have that power? Why is that part of our collective psyche? I don't believe that it's something just restructed to people who climb. [...] There's always that mystery of what lay over the horizon." (S. 221)

Zitat 8, betreffend der Kurzgeschichte 'On Exactitude in Science' in 1946 von Jorge Luis Borges über eine Karte mit dem Massstab 1:1: "[...] Could it capture each facet of quartz along a ridge of stone, each minute bend in a glacial river, with infinitely spiraling, fractal-like forms? Would this map show the world as a deity might see it, displacing some transcendent vision of truth beyond the limits of representation? Would it include all the particular shifting perspectives of cartographers and map readers and their relationships with the land? Or would it simply be redundant, a 1:1 copy of the terrain that we might experience better by physically walking outside rather than by perusin any virtual simulacrum? [...] All maps, in the end, will always be imaginary." (S. 268 f.)

[Dave Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To a large extent, a mountain is a mountain because of the part it plays in the popular imagination.”
American geographer Robert Peattie

When I was growing up, enchanted by all things outdoors, the name Harvey Manning was synonymous with Pacific Northwest guidebooks and what was then (and still is) a bible for many outdoor enthusiasts -- Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills.

However, until reading Katie Ives’ wonderful new book Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams, I was ignorant of the role that Manning played in a clever hoax perpetrated on the mountaineering community in June of 1962. In that month’s issue of Summit magazine, readers saw an unattributed article describing the adventures of three Austrian climbers. It was accompanied by a dramatic black-and-white image of peaks that were unlike any that North American climbers had ever seen. The photo caption described the “unclimbed summit of Mount Riensenstein (sic), approximately 8,100 feet, near Prince Rupert in British Columbia. It can be reached in two days by bushwhacking up the Klawatti River.”

The article left its readers with a single challenge, punctuated by a tantalizing question mark: “who will be the first to climb it?”

At its heart, Imaginary Peaks is a biography of three men known for their off-beat humour -- Harvey Manning, Ed LaChappelle and Austin Post – and an exploration into the reasons behind, and results of their hoax. While the world of mountaineering and climbing is full of tall tales and exaggerated exploits, the three men’s article describing the unclimbed peak in remote coastal British Columbia led some mountaineers to doubt that such a mountain existed, while it sent others off on wild summit chases that ended in disappointment and frustration.

For Manning in particular, the hoax was a natural result of his increasing concern about how the mountaineering community seemed to care more about bagging peaks and grabbing headlines than it did about the special, wild places where mountains exist. He was turning a mirror on that community, on its greed and longing, on its seemingly pretentious race to first ascents and glory and admiration, on its growing perception that summits were prizes to be won. It also reflected Manning’s own shift toward conservation, toward a deeper understanding that being in the mountains was more about camaraderie and honest delight in sharing the beauty of the natural world.

However, with incredible skill, impressive research, and lyrical writing that encourages readers to pause, appreciate and ponder, Ives – who has an MFA from the Iowa’s Writers Workshop and is editor-in-chief at Alpinist magazine -- blends history, geography and human psychology into a captivating story that goes well beyond biography.

Imaginary Peaks uses the Riesenstein article to illuminate how humans have viewed mountain landscapes and unknown spaces (terra incognita) through history, and how those often-frightening places played – and continue to play -- a role in our collective imagination.

Recognizing the critical move to reconciliation with First Nations (particularly in Canada), Ives also notes the tendency of stories and maps created by climbers and mountaineers to erase prior knowledge and world views of local and Indigenous peoples. She suggests that terra miscognita is a much better phrase to highlight the failures of explorers through history to acknowledge that others had been there for thousands of years and had developed their own names and trails and stories.

In Imaginary Peaks, Ives also speaks to humankind’s deep-seated love of maps, and the challenge we had – at least until the advent of GPS satellites and Google Maps and hand-held navigation devices – of accurately depicting a three-dimensional landscape in two dimensions. Ives digs deep into the notion that maps are as much about what is not there, and how we are losing the art of getting lost. However, given the changes in technology we’ve experienced over time, she also poses intriguing questions about whether the same kind of geographic hoax perpetrated by Manning and his colleagues would be possible today.

Toward the end of Imaginary Peaks, Ives honours her readers with her own ruminations:

“I think it is still possible to find places beyond the gridlines of longitude and latitude or the furrows of contour intervals and marked boundaries. Even the most sophisticated modern cartographers can’t capture all the infinite complexities of ice and stone. They can’t fully express the changes with time or the vagaries of our own emotions and perceptions. … Yet by comparing physical and imagined geographies, we can remember that there are other reasons for approaching mountains besides those of conquest, appropriation, and possession. And we can ask ourselves what it might mean to unmake the maps. To search for everything that escaped from them – and everything that only seemed to be lost.”

“Once you begin to look for imaginary peaks, you start to see them everywhere; each furrow of crag and hill has its own local myths; each square of map conceals forgotten phantom heights. Each human mind contains innumerable ranges, speaking like starlight and like snow.”

Imaginary Peaks is a marvelous book, an enchanting, delightful surprise on many levels. It begins with a single, well-crafted hoax but goes deeper, offering a thought-provoking treatise on mountains and myths in the human imagination. It is a wonderful story, well-told, a must-read for anyone who spends time in the mountains, or dreams of doing so.

[Andrew Szalay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katie Ives digs deep in her book into the story behind the hoax as well as the deep seeded reasons we want to believe, seek, and even conjure imaginary mountains. It’s an entrancing journey into a world where humans create ideas and places to believe in, and even stories for the real places in our lives to give them more meaning. Ives takes you on a tour of the Seven Cities of Cibola, Mount Hooker and Mount Brown, Diamond Mountain, Shangri-La, Minya Konka, Amye Machen, Nanda Devi, and even Narnia. Some are fictional, some are real, but the stories are sometimes both at the same time.

Ives sprinkles her book with many little stories of other climbs and points of mountaineering history that even I hadn’t come across. And, having known quite a bit about the real history of the real Riesenstein -- the Kichatna Spires -- already, I was very pleased that she relayed their whole story from their first obervation by non-Indigenous in 1898 to the real first attempts.

Most of all, I appreciate how Ives isolated the notion of what we seek when we go into nature looking for adventure through examining Manning’s life. It’s intensely personal and sometimes it’s fundentally about the imagined story and narrative we tell ourselves.

If you are looking for magic places, whether it’s your real summit, a mountain pass, Middle Earth, Narnia, or the transformative power of a walk in the woods without a map, I highly recommend you read Katie Ives’ Imaginary Peaks. No, you have to read Katie Ives’ Imaginary Peaks.

[Bill Ives]

I greatly enjoyed reading Imaginary Peaks. Katie Ives takes you on journeys through mountains and the many mysteries about them. Discover Our Coast magazine, that covers the Pacific Northwest scene writes about many of the stories in her book. It concludes, “With these carefully researched and richly told stories, Ives reminds us of the human capacity for boundless wonder. Today, in our era of global satellite imaging, she urges us not to lose our power of imagining.’ I will try to follow her sound advice and highly recommend this book to those who want to stretch their imaginations.

[Isabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imaginary Mountains by Katie Ives (explores the lure of mountains, the myths we create, the eternal search for Shangri Las, and at the center is that rascal, dreamer and lovable curmudgeon, Harvey Manning; the selected bibliography, running almost 15 pages, is a delightful rabbit hole to dive into. Imaginary Peaks honors the quiet heroes, dreamers and adventurers, and it has an honored place on my mountaineering bookshelf.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn’t what I had expected when I picked it up, in a good way. Instead of a straightforward account of a famous mountaineering hoax, Ives looks back at the history of mountain climbing in general and specifically several of the perpetrators of the hoax. Through this process, she unravels the nature of the social function of hoaxes in general, as well as the impact wilderness has on humans, and humans on wilderness. Much more than your typical climbing tale, and a great look at some unique characters.

[Emily Bettin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up. Listening to this book on three separate road trips via my husband’s audible account has certainly affected how I feel about this one. I loved the first part and themes of map making and exploration and questioning reality that came back in part 3, but I am not a climber, and the histories of notable people in alpinism all blurred together for me throughout the middle of the book.

[Joey Deptula · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative piece that allows the readers to delve into the minds of past explorers who either knowingly or unknowingly created peaks, landscapes, and/or summit attempts that are fictional. Although some of the stories are entertaining, the author leaves the audience without the sense to go and explore like many great pieces of mountaineering literature

[Tami Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book because it takes you out of the mountains and into a deeper conscious state of what might there be that is more than mountaineering? This is a must-read and a re-read for climbers who have taken their alpine interest beyond a top-10 list ,tick-lists and waaaay beyond who-you-are-and-how-hard-you-climb.

[Nathan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating treatment of geographical hoaxes, the gradual filling-in of the proverbial blank areas of the world map, and the effect modern access to knowledge has had on our imagination, sense of adventure, and capacity to be surprised and delighted by the outdoors. It made me rethink my propensity to pour over guidebooks and Googlemaps during preparation for and anticipation of hiking trips.

[Lisa Keuss · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third is about historical map inaccuracies, and I really wasn't sure where it was headed. The middle was about the creators of the Riesenstein Hoax and their mountain climbing stories. This part was the most interesting to me. I lost interest again in the last third.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could elaborate everything I feel about this book in a review. Well researched, well thought out, but absolutely beautifully written. I look forward to my second and third read throughs.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but very narrow and obscure topic. No need to re-read or keep, but folks in the BC mountain community might find a worthwhile read.

[Jessica - How Jessica Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history of mountaineering; both real and imagined.

[Bridget Fairbank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really dense- but a fun ride.