NOT WITHOUT PERIL

A catalog of death in the New England mountains.

Although not high by world standards, New Hampshire’s Mount Washington is home to howling winds and monstrously cold temperatures, often the coldest in the Lower 48. For years, mountaineer and freelance journalist Howe has been haunting the mountain and nearby summits of the Presidential Range, a place where furious storms, hypothermia, and occasional bears take their toll on human visitors at all seasons. Howe catalogs the errors of the unfortunate victims—and silly mistakes which seem always to come into play whenever Americans head outside, whether the date is 1849 or 1994. (The most common of them, Howe’s evidence suggests, is the simple omission of appropriate cold-weather gear, for although the summertime temperature may approach 90 at Mount Washington’s base, the wind chill may take it down to freezing at the peak.) Few of Howe’s pointed tales end happily. Some of his protagonists slip easily into death, having made some misjudgment or another; others wander around for days in the woods, running from lightning and wild animals in scenes that would fit right into a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, before meeting their unhappy fate; a few others even make it off the mountain alive, but minus toes and fingers. Since there are only so many ways to die on a mountainside—you can fall, freeze, or get munched—the narrative tends to be repetitious, and a little judicious paring would have been welcome. Still, all these deaths lead up to a well-taken moral: It is not so much that Mount Washington is a killer, but that people approaching it need to take better care than many of them do. Fans of outdoor disaster and unpleasantry, as well as collectors of New England mountain lore, will find Howe a generally

satisfying guide to New Hampshire’s dark side.