“We called ourselves the Valley Cong. We took special pride in the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value in society. We were rebels from the consumer culture.” [Yvon Choinard, about pursuing his métier in Yosemite Valley]

That quote is my favorite among the many interesting remarks found in Maurice Isserman’s Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering. The style of life to which Choinard alludes found its apotheosis in the late Fred Beckey, a mountaineering legend famous for his difficult personality and revered for his guidebooks and unwavering devotion to making first ascents during an ungodly number of his 93 “dirt bag” years. It doesn’t seem anyone felt much regret about committing to Choinard’s rebellious ethos and there might be a valuable lesson in that. I think so, though of course one should remember that the regretful, with their dissenting views, aren’t usually paid much attention in mountaineering books. Also, in life, ironies abound, and one is that Choinard created a company, Patagonia, whose products have whetted the ardor of many embracing consumerist culture.

This book goes back as far as 1642, with the first half devoted largely to the 19th century. Back then, Isserman tells us, “transcendentalist” philosophies and sensibilities were the rage and “sublime” was the nearly default adjective to describe nature and one’s experiences in it. It’d be nice to imitate these early nature lovers by calling Continental Divide sublime. The truth is it more often is like going through a stack of newspapers. That’s not bad. It has the merit of alerting us to much we might not know. An example is the author’s discussion of women who in the early years accomplished climbs that were notable achievements by any contemporaneous standard. So, while most readers seldom will feel themselves in the grip of great drama in this book, most everyone’s understanding of climbing’s history in America up into the early 1960s is sure to be enlarged. ( )