Seattle, The Mountaineers, 1981, 1st US edition. 226 pp, b/w photos, maps. Hardcover with dust jacket. Fine.
Paddy Sherman is well known as a western Canadian publisher, and perhaps even better known as a skilled mountain climber. Equally impressive, however, are Sherman’s vocations as an insatiably curious student of human nature, and a gifted and colorful reporter on everything that crosses his path – from avalanches to Peruvian bureaucrats. Climbs of Huascaran, McKinley, Aconcagua, Mt. Kenya, etc.
All of these talents contribute to the exhilaration of Expedition to Nowhere, a fascinating account of Sherman’s travels in Peru, Kenya, Alaska, Tanzania, Argentina, Bolivia and, for good measure, British Columbia and the Yukon.
This is a chronicle of the challenges of climbing in faraway places on some of the world’s highest mountains. For the climber and the non-climber, here are descriptions of the places and the peaks and the problems-storms, ice, rock, avalanches and broken-down buses. It is not a saga of superheroes struggling up impossible cliffs, but of a happy bunch of alpine warriors who greatly enjoy difficult places, and to whom the summit is the frosting on the cake of simply being there.”
