Don't let the low price scare you away. This was a popular book, a mini-bestseller, and we are going through a time of plenty thanks to the internet.
New York, Henry Holt, 1997. 253 pp, b/w photos. White and navy hardcover with dust jacket. May have former owner's gift inscription on FEP. Near Fine to Fine. Other than old gift inscription there is no writing in the book or other flaws, and the dust jacket has no tears or chips and is not price clipped. The Dust Jacket is now protected by a removable Brodart clear plastic jacket cover. The Dust Jacket and the Book are in Near Fine condition.
Jonathan Waterman recreated the Duke of Abruzzi's first climb, Mount St. Elias in Alaska, and tells a tale of courage and wisdom in contrast to the ego driven climbs of today.
In 1897 an Italian nobleman, Luigi Amedeo Giuseppe Maria Ferdinando Francesco di Savoia, Duca degli Abruzzi, the duke of Abruzzi, set out to climb North America's second-highest peak, the 18,008-foot Mount St. Elias, then known to the native Tlingit people of Alaska as Yasetaca.
In 1897 nobody knew for sure what the highest mountains of each continent were, or even the highest on earth. For a while Mount St Elias was proposed as the highest mountain in the world. And then later, Chimborazo. So even though Everest was surveyed accurately in the 1850s at 29,002', and was on many maps, nobody was really certain. So the obvious thing to do is... climb them all!
A century later, the author of A Most Hostile Mountain attempts to recreate this same land-sea journey by sailing north out of Seattle and into the Gulf of Alaska. While Abruzzi traveled with an army's worth of supplies, inclduing steel beds, and numerous porters to shoulder creature comforts fit for a duke, Jonathan Waterman chooses the relative quiet of a single companion in his attempt to retrace the duke's historic expedition.
