AN ALASKAN APPRENTICESHIP: Learning to Climb in a Hard Land

In AN ALASKAN APPRENTICESHIP, John Bousman tells the tales of his 50 years of mountain climbing-from the Shawangunks to McKinley Park, from Katahdin to the Cascades, from the Tetons and Yosemite to the Canadian Rockies and the Dolomites.

In pithy, self-deprecating prose and evocative line drawings, Bousman describes how, while studying to be a civil engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he gravitated to the outing club, comprised of people who were every bit as unsuited for social contact as he was. He set his sights on Alpine climbing and, having joined the U.S. Army as an officer, hoped he would be sent abroad, where the world's highest peaks beckoned. Instead, in May of 1962 Bousman found himself on his way to Alaska-a hard land of alpine peaks all gleaming in ice and snow, a land quite untouched by the hand of man. As it turned out, he could hardly have selected a better place for his apprenticeship. Perhaps the greatest peaks had already been climbed, but the lesser ones in their scores were virgins-a vast, unexplored land, ripe for exploration. Now all he would have to do would be to learn how to deal with their dangers. It was to be an apprenticeship of great possibilities.