A Mountaineer’s Life

This remarkable memoir chronicles the amazing and risky adventures of longtime mountaineer and rock climber Steck (Fifty Classic Climbs of North America). Illustrated with breathtaking color and black-and-white-photos, Steck’s account ranges from his early climbs in Austria in 1949 to a dangerous ascent in the Hoggar Mountains of southern Algeria in 1989. Along the way, Steck details some of his most memorable climbs, such as the first major Himalayan mountaineering expedition by Americans in 1954, in which he experienced the pain of oxygen depletion at high altitudes (“I was tormented by bad dreams and felt as if I were suffocating”). He provides an exciting account of the ascent in 1965 of Hummingbird Ridge on Mount Logan (the second-highest peak in North America), a 35-day climb so challenging that it has never been repeated. In one of his final chapters, “Is Climbing Worth Dying For?”, he elaborates on the joy he and others feel during their adventures: “a state of mind and spirit” that climbers “operating in a high-risk environment perceive as having a greater value than their own existence, a perception that borders on the metaphysical.” This is a thrilling account of an extraordinary life. (Oct.)