With a storm approaching, I'm in a presumptious mood, ready to break into a good book. Well here's one with a review I wrote for a NorCal-based mag, reprinted here for your pleasure. Batten the hatches and pull on the fireplace.

http://www.summitpost.org/article/59449 ... ories.html

Enjoyed reading the article, so I checked out your website. The stuff you put up there is outstanding. Your writing has some of the best quotable lines I've come across in a long while.

I just finished reading Daniel Arnold’s Early Days in the Range of Light. It sure brought back a lot of memories, having done some of the same routes and hiked the JMT. I've read a lot of books on the Sierra Nevada and mountaineering in general and if you are thinking about adding this book to your collection, I strongly recommend it. The writing quality is very good and mountaineering/climbing/exploring perspective (found throughout the whole book) is something we all can relate with. Hell, the next step is to go do the climbs! hah!

I am currently reading this book.

I was going to add this book, written by Daniel Arnold, into the adventure book thread but it really is much more than an adventure story.

At its core this book illuminates the individuals behind the names of many of our beloved Sierra Nevada's peaks, while allowing the author to communicate his own journey as he retraced the routes these climbers made between 1864-1931.

Arnold should be commended for what must have been an enormous amount of research as well as being bold enough to attempt (and succeed at) climbing these routes utilizing the same type of equipment that the legendary mountaineers he portrays used during their first accents.

Additionally, the book is extremely well written and if you like philosophy, you will appreciate the questions that bubble up throughout the stories.

Arnold doesn't mention one of the greatest Sierra adventures of all , Orland Bartholomew's solo Winter ski traverse of the Muir Trail from Lone Pine to Yosemite Valley starting on Dec.25,1928 and finishing on April 3 ,1929 . Among other ascents he made the first Winter climb of Mt.Whitney . See "High Odyssey" by Eugene Rose (1974) .