Santa's Elves

want to know about any good &/or recent books fit for holiday gift to the decerning hiker. Got most of the classics, and looking for new and interesting material.

Thanks for the input. Should be a good read.

Hmmm, Not much bookin' goin' on this season.

a couple of weeks ago I finished following Atticus. not a bad read.

Following Atticus and Up both sound fabulous, and are new enough that most folks won't already have them. And their purchase supports fellow VFTTers!

Three Days on the White Mountains Dr. B.A. Ball. Bondcliff Books (2002)

Not new but one I just read. Good story about Dr. Ball whom Ball Crag is named after. It's like 30 pages.

Wandering Through the White Mountains, A Hiker's Perspective By Fellow VFTT'er Steve Smith.

If you spend any time in the White's, you will get lost in this book (and you don't have to worry about getting fined by NHF&G) . It's a compilation of past published essays, with some objective lists of White Mountain stuff thrown in. I personally enjoyed each and every story.


See you on the trail....Walker

You can't go wrong with a visit to http://www.mountainwanderer.com/ He's got a spiffy new website, and there's always something new. I'm hoping Santa will bring me Beyond the Notches this year!

Not a WMNF book but a book that I enjoyed and one that I think most hikers would like.

The OP didn't specify New England topics so I'll move this thread to General Backcountry. If you want to restrict this to New England let me know and I'll make the appropriate change.

-dave-

Good Books I have read this year

Touching the void/ Joe Simpson Simon yates
No Shortcuts to the top Ed Vieusturs

these are pretty main stream books, the book I enjoyed the most was
Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life: The Autobiography of a Mountaineering Icon. Washburn led and amazing life and I highly recomend this book!

Thanks as General Backcountry is appropriate given the NY, NJ and PA readership.

Good books!

The best book I read all year out of 30 or so was House of Rain by Craig Childs (note: not Greg Child the mountaineer). Incredible book about the Anasazi (or Ancestral Puebloans) that blew my mind. Not a "hiking book" although there is some of it there, and the Anasazi were the original (?) and pretty hardcore rock climbers. http://www.houseofrain.com/bookdetail.cfm?id=1183863026528

Also 5 stars IMO were a few of David Roberts's works (non mountaineering):
Sandstone Spine, a story of the first known complete traverse of the Comb Ridge in northern Arizona/southern Utah (with photos by Greg Child, the mountaineer), Devils Gate , the story of the Mormon handcart tragedy of 1856 (fascinating stuff!! Talk about hardcore "endurance athletes"), In Search of the Old Ones, and the recently released Finding Everett Ruess.

You can probably discern my latest interests...

Ethan Allen: His Life and Times - Willard Sterne Randall

He and his brothers stomped all over Vermont and came from the part of CT with the best hiking...

Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast - Michael Wojtech

So you nature buffs know who you are huging in the winter.

The Nature of New Hampshire: Natural Communities of the Granite State by Dan Sperduto and Ben Kimball

Rocky shoreline, beaches to subalpine and alpine. This book gives great descriptions of geology and plant communities with a list of what species that are found,

The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds by Richard Crossley

Pretty pictures of pretty birds.
thousands of pictures
and very few words

I like Scalphunters by Raymond Potvin. It is a history of Rogers Rangers and the wars during the colonial era including the battle of Lovewell Pond in the Fryeburg, Maine area. It is all part of the heritage of the area we hike in.

The Unstrung Harp said:

Following Atticus and Up both sound fabulous, and are new enough that most folks won't already have them. And their purchase supports fellow VFTTers!

Click to expand...

Many thanks, Unstrung.


Also, can't go wrong with any book by David Roberts.

Brian Wood said:

I like Scalphunters by Raymond Potvin. It is a history of Rogers Rangers and the wars during the colonial era including the battle of Lovewell Pond in the Fryeburg, Maine area. It is all part of the heritage of the area we hike in.

Click to expand...

I've read that one, too, and it is amazing to contemplate how people were able to travel so far and under such conditions back then.

I'm reading a book that was published by the AMC about hiking in the Whites long ago. It's not really exciting, but it is a good look into an earlier era by people who do what we love to do. It's got quite a long title, but it's an interesting compilation of letters women have written back and forth to each about their summer hiking. Some think that the art of letter writing has been lost, I think it has just changed.

"Mountain Summers; Tales of Hiking and Exploration in the White Mountains from 1878 to 1886 as Seen Through the Eyes of Women" was published by the AMC and is now out of print, I think. I purchased my copy from Amazon after seeing it at a cabin we stayed at in Maine last winter.