Alpine
Climbing: Techniques to Take You Higher
by Mark Houston and
Kathy Cosley
Mountaineers Books; $21.95
Most bookstores and
climbing shops have a shelf set aside where one can find a number of
“how-to” volumes on alpine climbing and mountaineering. For the aspiring
alpinist, picking through such tomes can be a daunting task. Which
author has the most experience? Which book is the easiest to read? Which
provides the most information? In other words, which of these books is
the best? Mountaineers Books has answered each of these questions with
their new instructional manual, Alpine Climbing: Techniques to Take You
Higher by Mark Houston and Kathy Cosley.
Houston and Cosley have
over fifty years of combined experience as instructors, guides, and
climbers. They guided for AAI for many years in the Cascades, Alaska
Range, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Nepal. This depth of experience in
all three capacities is directly reflected in Techniques to Take You
Higher. The book is laid out in an easy to read format that addresses
everything an alpine climber might need to know. The book starts with
the dynamic psychological skill of making informed decisions in the
mountains and then works its way through each of the technical skills
required for a climber to move safely and effectively in an alpine
environment.
One very nice element of the book are anecdotes
throughout the text that highlight the value of each chapter’s content.
For example, Houston writes about the extraction of a climber from a
crevasse who fell in while glissading during a discussion on the dangers
of that method of descent; and Cosley writes about dealing with a
victim of AMS in a section on altitude illness. These stories scattered
throughout the book reemphasize the importance of the skills being
discussed while providing entertaining tangents.
Alpine Climbing:
Techniques to Take You Higher is an excellent resource for the beginning
to intermediate alpinist. Indeed, the collected experiences and
instruction of Mark Houston and Kathy Cosley might be well worth a read
by even the most seasoned of alpine climbers.
--Jason D. Martin
Friday, August 26, 2011
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1 comment:
Sounds like a very useful book. I've been looking into climbing recently, and might have to purchase this book.
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