David Roberts (1) (1943–2021)

The expedition of 2 Franciscan friars, Dominguez and Escalante, with the stated goal to locate a route from Santa Fe to Monterey, California. Sideline goals was to find a friar who was lost in the region previously, and to convert as many Indians as possible. Sometimes this expedition is compared to the much more successful Lewis & Clark expedition nearly three decades later. The journey was much more difficult than they ever anticipated, but they survived.

David Roberts intertwines his personal experiences trying to follow as nearly as possible the route of the small group accompanying the friars making the story more interesting and less like a textbook. He has been an explorer himself and has traveled extensively in this region writing several books about various aspects of early life in the Southwest.… (altro)

It needs to be said that K2 may be the second highest mountain in the world, but it is arguably the most dangerous mountain to summit. Beyond unpredictable weather and inhospitable traverses, language barriers, varying climbing skills (and, let's be honest, knowledge), and clashing egos of the climbers make the mountain even more treacherous. Viesturs and Roberts cover six different campaigns to climb K2. At times these campaigns are confusing to read about because they include details from other mountain climbs (like Everest) and the timelines jump around.
The most enjoyable passages were when Viesturs and Roberts outlined the changed in technology and climbing gear. It makes earlier successes of summitting K2 even more impressive.… (altro)

I have read several David Roberts books and this one did not disappoint; he is a master of relaying the results of in-depth research to the unaware reader. The connections between Kit Carson and John C. Fremont were many, complicated, interesting and sometimes frustrating, i.e, what was it in Fremont's persona that drew the illiterate, but exceptional explorer Carson to him and his irrational goals. In this book Mr. Roberts follows their explorations to claim the West for the United States and it becomes easy to like one and totally dislike the other.… (altro)