Breaking Trail

作者簡介

ARLENE BLUM has a doctorate in biophysical chemistry and has taught at Stanford, Wellesley College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Her bestselling book Annapurna: A Womans Place was named one of the one hundred best adventure books of all time by National Geographic. She lives in Berkeley, California.

FOREWORD INTRODUCTION 1A Slide down Mt. Adams 2A Man and a Mountain 3Higher and Higher 4A Woman? Never! 5Peru Adventure 6Berkeley in the 1960s 7Real Women Climbers 8The Damsels on Denali 9To the Summit of Denali 10Out in the Cold 11Avalanches 12The Endless Winter in Africa 13The Queen of Tenacity 14The Endless Winter in Afghanistan and Nepal 15Peak Lenin Bares Its Fangs 16The Maelstrom 17Tragedy on Trisul 18Seduced by Mt. Everest 19Annapurna: Women in High Places 20First Up Bhrigupanth 21The Great Himalayan Traverse, Part I 22The Great Himalayan Traverse, Part II 23Coming Home 24Across the Alps with Baby 25Peace and Love at Last EPILOGUE: Mountains, Molecules, and Motherhood AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX

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CHAPTER 1 Under the Porch Davenport, Iowa, August 1949 The sun blazes relentlessly on me, so I grab my doll and climb into a cool, dark space under the back porch. I prop my doll up for a tea party. Between us I spread a lace handkerchief and lay out the blue glass doll dishes Mommy gave me for my fourth birthday. My aunts Ruth and Shirley are sitting on the porch above and their muffled words drift down. Lulled by the warm day, the drone of my aunts voices, and the sweet smell of the rosebushes that surround our house, I begin to doze. I hear my name, startle awake, and listen. With parents like that. I strain to hear their words. Theres something about my father, Germany . . . And then: Arlene . . . that child will amount to no good . . . Tears begin to blur my eyes. I curl up on the ground, hug my knees, and shake with silent sobs. I hate my aunts words. I hate my aunt. I hate myself. But she is wrong. Ill show her. Ill show them all. A Slide down Mt. Adams 1964 CAN YOU KEEP GOING? John handed me his water bottle. Ill try, I gasped, taking a sip. We continued upward in the dark, my loud breathing synchronized with the rhythmic tap of our ice axes on the rocky ground, the snow, the ice. It was September 1964 and we were climbing Mt. Adams, a stately 12,276-foot volcano in southern Washington near Portland, Oregon, where I was a junior at Reed College. After class the previous day, my handsome chemistry lab partner, John Hall, had asked if I would like to join him and four other guys in an attempt on Adams. The previous spring, John had taken me on my first backpack trip. Ever since I had been eager to climb a mountain and spend more time with charismatic John, so I happily accepted his invitation. We had begun our ascent at one in the morning so we could climb the hard snow slopes above timberline before the sun softened their surface. When I first put on my daypack and headed up, I began panting so loudly that John later confessed he had wondered if I would make it out of the parking lot. And now here I was, an out-of-shape nineteen-year-old girl from the flatlands wearing borrowed boots and pack, trudging up a mountain in the middle of the night. At dawn, we stopped to get ready to go up the glacier. John helped me strap a pair of cramponsthe metal spikes that keep a climber from slipping on iceonto my boots. He showed me how to tie myself into the braided nylon climbing rope, explaining that it would catch me if I fell into a crevasse. I didnt know what a crevasse was, but John was so confident I didnt worry. John tied himself to the front of our rope, I attached myself to the center, and Mike took the end. Fred, Ron, and George tied themselves to the other rope. I liked the secure feeling of this umbilical cord connecting me to these strong, attractive guys. We began moving up again as the first shafts of light hit the glacier and the hard white snow glittered as though sprinkled with tiny mirrors. Ahead of us was an icefield sliced by

Breaking Trail

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