CA, 2001, 1st edition. 215 pp, many photos. The death of Walter Starr in 1933 in the Sierra is one of the great mysteries of American mountaineering. Alsup has recreated what happened to the young climber, whose body was found by Norman Clyde 70 years ago. Fine-New Hardcover with dust jacket.
In the summer of 1933, 30-year-old Walter 'Pete' Starr, Jr. set off on a solo expedition in California's Sierra Nevada in order to survey the landscape along the new John Muir Trail. In addition to exploration, his purpose was to gather notes for a guidebook he was writing. An experi-enced mountaineer, Starr was also a lawyer with a San Francisco firm and the scion of a prominent family. When he failed to come out of the moun-tains at the appointed time, his father became concerned. Several days passed; concern gave way to alarm.
Missing in the Minarets is part mountaineering history, part detective story, and part photo album. It is 100 percent engaging reading. Alsup's lucid prose is complemented by the inclusion of numerous well-reproduced photographs, some of which are historical and others documentary images made by the author himself. It would seem that Alsup is ideally suited to write a book like this. As a recognized Sierra historian (author of the excellent Such a Landscape!, which recounts William Brewer's 1864 California Survey), a skilled photographer, an enthusiastic mountaineer, and a former San Francisco trial attorney now serving as a feder-al district judge, he applies his many-sided genius to sorting through a complexity of evidence in order to provide his reader with a clear and compelling account of an important episode in the social history of the Sierra Nevada.
It was no easy task. Most of the people who participated in the events are now dead. There are many gaps in the evidentiary record. What evidence does survive, especially in the form of written records, is often contradictory. Perhaps most challenging of all is the aura of myth that has long surrounded the fate of Starr, a swirl of exaggeration and speculation that makes it difficult for a researcher to separate fact from fiction. Nevertheless, Alsup conducted a painstaking and meticulous investigation, literally leaving no stone unturned (you'll have to read the book to catch this allusion).
Accounts of mountaineering accidents serve a curious dual purpose in the climbing community. On the one hand, we say such reading is instructive and indeed essential, because it allows us to learn from other people's often fatal mistakes. On the other hand, we experience a simple, though often unacknowledged, attraction toward the gruesome, the same urge indulged by passing motorists who slow down and gawk at bloody car wrecks.
In contrast to the fascination with death that characterizes many mountaineering narratives, Missing in the Minarets avoids this emotional dog route and focuses instead on character. The author takes great care to allow the evidence to speak for itself. As a writer, Alsup resists the temptation to identify too closely with his subject matter, and he refrains from enter-ing the narrative himself, except at the very beginning and end, in order to provide the context for the investigation.
Pete Starr loved the mountains. He was, on the one hand, 'outgoing, the sociable son of a prominent family, a joiner in college and career. On the other, at least in the wild, he preferred the companionship of the landscape itself' He was a man who one time, not having a pencil, signed his name in a mountain register in his own blood. And then there is Norman Clyde, one of the great 'characters' in North American mountaineering history, who likewise valued his solitude.
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed that character is destiny. The exquis-itely produced Missing in the Minarets demonstrates that, for some characters, destiny lay in the mountains and that this destiny often comes at a dear price. Alsup concludes his book with these admonitory words: 'Peter Starr proved how dangerous was the climb; readers definitely should not repeat the act.' Wise words. You, however, will likely want to repeat the act of reading this deeply satisfying book.
