New York, McGraw Hill, 1988. 298 pp. Used softcover. Near Fine.
Jeff Long's first climbing novel has become a classic of Yosemite climbing and the climbing lifestyle. The plot is based on thruw events that took place in Yosemite in the 1980's when a drug laden airplane crashed in the High Sierra, and the climbers got to the stash before the rangers did. Many fortunes were made, and a lot of airplane gas smelling weed was smoked in Camp 4 for a long time.
But bad fortune haunts the climbers afterward: young Tucker, the purest and best among them, takes a mysterious, fatal fall after an extraordinary climb; Bullseye, camp sage and '60s holdover, is found battered and broken at the bottom of a cliff; the camp bully, Kresinski, becomes even nastier.
Finally, John returns to the lake with Kresinski to confront the danger stalking the climbers and the destructive forces within himself. Long explores the mythic properties of climbing and the situation of essentially solitary men brought together in a common pursuit. Climbers will relish this rapturous and penetrating, slightly macho paean to their passion.
