SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea


John Wiseman - 1986
    John 'Lofty' Wiseman presents real strategies for surviving in any type of situation, from accidents and escape procedures, including chemical and nuclear to successfully adapting to various climates (polar, tropical, desert), to identifying edible plants and creating fire. The book is extremely practical and is illustrated throughout with easy-to-understand line art and diagrams.

Mount Rainier: A Climbing Guide


Mike Gauthier - 1999
    Name any route on Rainier, and he can describe its rewards and specific challenges (he's summited Rainier more than 170 times during all seasons and under intense conditions). Whether you choose the classic Liberty Ridge route, the drama of Success Cleaver, or the rarely attempted Mowich Face, Gauthier provides all the details you'll need for a successful and enjoyable climb.This edition presents the information on logistics, regulations, and permits. It includes expanded material on understanding and surmounting Rainier's famed glaciers; tips on selecting a guide service; excellent mountaineering training sites around Rainier for those bound for the world's highest peaks; and bonus routes on adjacent Little Tahoma, Washington's third highest peak.

Fifty Places to Hike Before You Die: Outdoor Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations


Chris Santella - 2010
    Chris Santella, along with top expedition leaders, explores the world’s greatest walking adventures. Some, such as the Lunana Snowman Trek in Bhutan and the Kangshung Valley Trek in Tibet, are grueling multiweek adventures at high altitudes. Others, such as Japan’s Nakesando Trail, move leisurely from village to village, allowing walkers to immerse themselves in the local culture. Whether it’s climbing the Rwandan mountains to view mountain gorillas or strolling through bistros along Italy’s Amalfi Coast, there’s a memorable hike at everyone’s level within these 50 chapters. With commentaries from expert trekkers and insider tips that lead the reader off the beaten path, Santella has again captured the special characteristics that make these must-visit destinations.

The Solace of Open Spaces


Gretel Ehrlich - 1984
    A stunning collection of personal observations that uses images of the American West to probe larger concerns in lyrical, evocative prose that is a true celebration of the region.

Trespassing Across America: One Man's Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland


Ken Ilgunas - 2016
    Told with sincerity, humor, and wit, Ilgunas's story is both a fascinating account of one man's remarkable journey along the pipeline's potential path and a meditation on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and the extremes to which we can push ourselves--both physically and mentally. It started as a far-fetched idea--to hike the entire length of the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline. But in the months that followed, it grew into something more for Ken Ilgunas. It became an irresistible adventure--an opportunity not only to draw attention to global warming but also to explore his personal limits. So in September 2012, he strapped on his backpack, stuck out his thumb on the interstate just north of Denver, and hitchhiked 1,500 miles to the Alberta tar sands. Once there, he turned around and began his 1,700-mile trek to the XL's endpoint on the Gulf Coast of Texas, a journey he would complete entirely on foot, walking almost exclusively across private property.Both a travel memoir and a reflection on climate change, Trespassing Across America is filled with colorful characters, harrowing physical trials, and strange encounters with the weather, terrain, and animals of America's plains. A tribute to the Great Plains and the people who live there, Ilgunas's memoir grapples with difficult questions about our place in the world: What is our personal responsibility as stewards of the land? As members of a rapidly warming planet? As mere individuals up against something as powerful as the fossil fuel industry? Ultimately, Trespassing Across America is a call to embrace the belief that a life lived not half wild is a life only half lived.

Before They're Gone: A Family's Year-Long Quest to Explore America's Most Endangered National Parks


Michael Lanza - 2012
    As a father, he hopes to share these special places with his two young children. But he has seen firsthand the changes wrought by the warming climate and understands what lies ahead: Alaska’s tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating, and the abundant sea life in their shadow departs with them. Encroaching tides threaten beloved wilderness coasts like Washington’s Olympic and Florida’s Everglades. Less snowfall and hotter summers will diminish Yosemite’s world-famous waterfalls. And it is predicted that Glacier National Park’s 7,000-year-old glaciers will be gone in a decade.   To Lanza, it feels like the house he grew up in is being looted. Painfully aware of the ecological—and spiritual—calamity that global warming will bring to our nation’s parks, Lanza sets out to show his children these wonders before they have changed forever.   He takes his nine-year-old son, Nate, and seven-year-old daughter, Alex, on an ambitious journey to see as many climate-threatened wild places as he can fit into a year: backpacking in the Grand Canyon, Glacier, the North Cascades, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and along the wild Olympic coast; sea kayaking in Alaska’s Glacier Bay; hiking to Yosemite’s waterfalls; rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park; cross-country skiing in Yellowstone; and canoeing in the Everglades.   Through these poignant and humorous adventures, Lanza shares the beauty of each place and shows how his children connect with nature when given “unscripted” time. Ultimately, he writes, this is more their story than his, for whatever comes of our changing world, they are the ones who will live in it.

Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzle Bears' Trail


Karsten Heuer - 2002
    Accompanied by occasional human companions and a remarkable border collie named Webster, Heuer faces immense challenges; storms, avalanches, floods, and grizzly bears. At the end of the journey, Heuer proves that there is nearly continuous wilderness that can support wildlife along the length of the Rockies, and is salvageable if the right decisions are made now.

The 2 Oz. Backpacker: A Problem Solving Manual for Use in the Wilds


Robert Snyder Wood - 1982
    It will help you get the most from the food and gear you carry on your back, making your trip safer, more comfortable and, above all, more fun.HOW TO...make quick repairs to packs, boots, tents, beds and stoves...choose and develop a campsite for maximum comfort and shelter...deal with emergencies, storms and other difficulties...treat blisters, hypothermia, sunburn, bleeding, elevation sickness, etc... keep snug, dry, comfortable and warm in heavy weather.PLUS TIPS ON fire building, cooking, water treatment, getting found when lost, hiking, climbing, cross-country and route-finding techniques.

Art of Freedom: The Life and Climbs of Voytek Kurtyka


Bernadette McDonald - 2017
    Born in 1947, he was one of the leading lights of the Polish golden age of Himalayan climbing. His visionary approach to climbing resulted in many renowned ascents, such as the complete Broad Peak traverse, the “night naked” speed climbs of Cho Oyu and Shishapangma and, above all, the alpine-style ascent of the West Face of Gasherbrum IV. Dubbed the “climb of the century,” his route on G IV, as of 2016, has yet to be repeated. His most frequent climbing partners were alpine legends of their time: Polish Himalayan climber Jerzy Kukuczka, Swiss mountain guide Erhard Loretan and British alpinist Alex MacIntyre.After repeated requests to accept the Piolet d’Or lifetime achievement award (the Academy Award of the climbing world), Kurtyka finally accepted the honour in the spring of 2016. A fiercely private individual, he continues to decline countless invitations for interviews, lectures and festival appearances, but has agreed to co-operate with internationally renowned and award winning Canadian author Bernadette McDonald on this long-awaited biography.Certain to be a major event in the climbing world, Art of Freedom will appeal to all readers who dream of mountain landscapes and those who long to touch the sky.

Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest: A hill walker's journey to the top of the world


Mark Horrell - 2015
    As he teetered on a narrow rock ledge a yak's bellow short of the stratosphere, with a rubber mask strapped to his face, a pair of mittens the size of a sealion's flippers, and a drop of two kilometres below him, it's fair to say Mark Horrell wasn't entirely happy with the situation he found himself in.He was an ordinary hiker who had only read books about mountaineering, and little did he know when he signed up for an organised trek in Nepal with a group of elderly ladies that ten years later he would be attempting to climb the world's highest mountain.But as he travelled across the Himalayas, Andes, Alps and East Africa, following in the footsteps of the pioneers, he dreamed up a seven-point plan to gain the skills and experience which could turn a wild idea into reality.Funny, incisive and heartfelt, his journey provides a refreshingly honest portrait of the joys and torments of a modern-day Everest climber.

Be Expert with Map and Compass: The Complete Orienteering Handbook


Björn Kjellström - 1976
    In simple, clear, concise terms the basics of map and compass work are described and illustrated." --George T. Hamilton, Appalachia This new, enlarged edition of Be Expert with Map & Compass includes everything the beginner needs to know about the increasingly popular sport of Orienteering: understanding map symbols; traveling by map alone, by compass alone, or by map and compass together; finding bearings; sketching maps; and traveling in the wilderness. Other updated sections cover competitive Orienteering, how to join an Orienteering event or organize your own, and useful hints for competitive and wilderness Orienteering. In addition to the revisions throughout, the author has interspersed the text with reminiscences of his more than fifty years of experience with map and compass. Drawing crowds of 25,000 participants at international events, the sport of Orienteering is more popular than ever. The Orienteering world championships were held in the United States for the first time in 1993. For Orienteers and scouts, avid outdoorspeople, and anyone who wants to feel more comfortable in the wilderness, this updated guide is an indispensable reference.

On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon's Perilous Peak


Jon Bell - 2011
    The mountain itself helps create the notorious Oregon rains and deep alpine snows, and paved the way for snowboarding in the mid 1980s. Its forests provide some of the purest drinking water in the world, and its snowy peak captures the attention of the nation almost every time it wreaks fatal havoc on climbers seeking the summit. On Mount Hood builds a compelling story of a legendary mountain and its impact on the people who live in its shadow, and includes interviews with a forest activist, a volcanologist, and a para-rescue jumper. Jon Bell has been writing from his home base in Oregon since the late 1990s. His work has appeared in Backpacker, The Oregonian, The Rowing News, Oregon Coast, and many other publications. He lives in Lake Oswego, OR.

Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival


Norman Ollestad - 2009
    Resentful of a childhood lost to his father’s reckless and demanding adventures, young Ollestad was often paralyzed by fear. Set in Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s, the book captures the earthy surf culture of Southern California; the boy’s conflicted feelings for his magnetic father; and the exhilarating tests of skill in the surf and snow that prepared young Norman to become a fearless surfer and ski champion--which ultimately saved his life.In February 1979, just as he was reaping the rewards of his training, a chartered Cessna carrying Norman, his father, his father’s girlfriend, and the pilot, crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California and was suspended at eight thousand feet, engulfed in a blizzard. Norman’s father, his coach and hero, was dead, and the 11-year old Ollestad had to descend the mountain alone and grief-stricken, through snow and ice, without any gear.Stunningly, the boy defied the elements and put his father’s passionate lessons to work. As he told the LA Times after his ordeal, “My dad told me never to give up.”

The Land of Little Rain


Mary Hunter Austin - 1903
    In this classic collection of meditations on the wonders of this region, Austin generously shares “such news of the land, of its trails and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to another.” Her vivid writings capture the landscape—from burnt hills to sun-baked mesas—as well as the rich variety of plant and animal life, and the few human beings who inhabit the land, including cattlemen, miners, and Paiute Indians. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the original 1903 edition.

Fiva: An Adventure That Went Wrong


Gordon Stainforth - 2012
    The route they targeted is called “Fiva” (pronounced “fever”). Poor judges of their own abilities, experience, and gear, they began the climb convinced they would return to their tent in time for afternoon tea.Within hours of starting the route, things went terribly wrong. Fiva is the story that Gordon Stainforth lived to tell, 40 years later. While it’s a tale that climbers will embrace, the adventure is one that all readers of non-fiction adventure will enjoy and find absorbing. It’s a story of innocence, brotherly love, youthful folly, and of danger, danger, and more danger.