David Roberts - The Mountain of My Fear / Deborah: Two Mountaineering Classics

THE MOUNTAIN OF MY FEAR
AND
DEBORAH: A WILDERNESS NARRATIVE

TWO MOUNTAINEERING
CLASSICS

DAVID ROBERTS

Foreword by
JON KRAKAUER

LEGENDS AND LORE SERIES

THE MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS
is the nonprofit publishing arm of The Mountaineers,
an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration,
preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

2012 by David Roberts

All rights reserved
The Mountain of My Fear was originally published by Vanguard Press, 1968.
Deborah was originally published by Vanguard Press, 1970.
The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative was first published in a single volume by The Mountaineers Books in 1991.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cover, book design, and layout: Karen Schober
Cover photograph: David Roberts, circa 1970. Photograph Matt Hale
Frontispiece: Matt Hale standing beneath the Nose on Mount Huntington. Photograph Don Jensen
Page 16: Bradford Washburn Collection, 2855, Archives, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Page 152: Bradford Washburn Collection, 5013, Archives, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections, Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, David, 1943
The mountain of my fear and Deborah : two mountaineering classics / David Roberts.
p. cm.
Deborah originally published by Vanguard Press, 1970. The Mountain of My Fear originally published by Vanguard Press, 1968.
ISBN 978-1-59485-679-2 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-59485-680-8 (ebook)

1. MountaineeringAlaskaDeborah (Mount) 2. MountaineeringAlaskaHuntington (Mount) 3. Deborah, Mount (Alaska)Description and travel 4. Huntington, Mount, (Alaska)Description and travel. 5. Roberts, David, 1943- 6. Jensen, Don. 7. MountaineersUnited StatesBiography. I. Roberts, David, 1943- Mountain of my fear. II. Roberts, David, 1943- Deborah. III. Title.
GV199.42.A42D437 2012
796.52209798dc23

2011042555

Printed on recycled paper

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-679-2
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-680-8

IN THE LITERATURE OF MOUNTAINEERING, certifiable brilliance is in short supply. Over the two centuries that men and women have been writing about climbing, only a handful of authors have created work that can honestly be called great, work that can stand on its own as literature beyond the forgiving confines of the mountaineering genre. Most of those belonging to the pantheon are gifted full-time writers who have done little more than dabble in climbing; conversely, a smaller number are accomplished climbers who have likewise dabbled in writing and managed, almost as if by accident, to produce one or two extraordinary pieces of work. There is one person, however, who has made a significant mark both as a climber and as a writer, that man being David Roberts, the author of this volume.

At the age of twenty, three years after he took up climbing, Roberts and six Harvard buddies made the first direct ascent of Mount McKinleys huge, avalanche-swept Wickersham Walla route that, twenty-eight years later, has yet to be repeated. Following the McKinley climb, Roberts participated in more than a dozen additional Alaskan expeditions, in the course of which he blazed alpine ground in such now-legendary ranges as the Arrigetch Peaks, the Cathedral Spires, the Revelations, and the Ruth Gorge. A number of the first ascents Roberts bagged along the wayShot Tower, for instance, and the southeast buttress of Mount Dickeyare indubitable classics, among the most beautiful lines on the North American continent.

But Roberts most famousand perhaps finest-Alaskan deed remains one of his earliest undertakings, the first ascent of a route he, Matt Hale, Don Jensen, and Ed Bernd put up in 1965: the west face of Mount Huntington. Their remarkable climb became the subject of The Mountain of My Fear.

It was Roberts first book. He wrote it as a first-year graduate student, in nine feverish days. Against all likelihood, it turned out to be one of the best mountaineering books ever written. A critic for The Atlantic Monthly praised The Mountain of My Fear as Exceptional for the young authors subtle, unsentimental attempt to define the motives that drive men to climb mountains. W. H. Auden, the great English poet, selected an excerpt from the book for inclusion in a collection of his favorite writing titled A Certain World. Auden thought so much of Roberts prose, in fact, that the poet later wrote a glowing review of Roberts second book, Deborah, for The New York Times. Never, before or since, has an author of climbing books been taken so seriously.

The publication of The Mountain of My Fear, in 1968, and Deborah, in 1970, changed the face of the literature of mountaineering. Roberts trademark wasand isunflinching honesty. He tells it like it is. He also tells it beautifully, in a distinctive, flawless voice that leaves the rest of us who write about the sport feeling an uncomfortable mix of admiration and bald envy.

In the review section of the 1990 American Alpine Journal, Steve Roper critiques the latest book by a famous British climber and finds it wanting. I dream of perfection, I suppose, he complains. Not everyone can write like David Roberts, but why cant he at least have a few writers hot on his tail? The truth in Ropers lament is unfortunate, but undeniable. We should be especially grateful, therefore, that The Mountaineers have reissued The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah in this single volume. Its been long overdue.

JON KRAKAUER
1991

THE MOUNTAIN OF MY FEAR was my first book, written in the spring of 1966, eight months after our expedition to Mount Huntington. During that lull, I toiled through a lonely first year of graduate school at the University of Denver, far from my climbing friends, not sure that I wanted to climb ever again. I was enmeshed in a tangle of disturbing emotions, the legacy of our costly victory. For the first and only time in my writing life, I felt obsessed with a need to put the story down on paper. It seemed of paramount urgency to explain our climb to the worldas I then, with a twenty-two-year-olds brash earnestness, might have phrased my mission. I wrote the book in a white heat, a chapter a day, too impatient for second thoughts or serious revision.