Product Description
In 1969, five young men from Montana set out to accomplish what no one had before: to scale the sheer north face of Mt. Cleveland, Glacier National Park's tallest mountain, in winter.Two days later tragedy struck: they were buried in an avalanche so deep that their bodies would not be discovered until the following June.The White Death is the riveting account of that fated climb and of the breathtakingly heroic rescue attempt that ensued.
In the spirit of Peter Matthiessen and John McPhee, McKay Jenkins interweaves a harrowing narrative with an astonishing expanse of relevant knowledge ranging from the history of mountain climbing to the science of snow.Evocative and moving, this fascinating book is a humbling account of man at his most intrepid and nature at its most indomitable.Amazon.com Review
By turns gripping, informative, and even frightening, The White Death probes the interplay of human endeavor in the mountains, the fragile beauty of snow, and nature's mysterious power. Jenkins succeeds admirably in melding human drama with the indifference of natural forces, allowing the "avalanche-beast" to build in character through survivors' reports, news clippings, and scientific findings. The book's emotional centerpiece is the tragic story of an avalanche that roared down Mount Cleveland in Glacier National Park, where five young climbers set out to scale the treacherous North Face. Just days into their climb, snow and strong winds set in. "What they saw could not have been inviting: snow clouds covered the mountain's summit...with loose powder avalanches regularly scrubbing it clean." Bud Anderson, older brother to one of the climbers, flew his single-engine plane over the mountain to observe the team's progress. "He hoped, perhaps, to rock his wings at them as a sign of encouragement, or congratulations." Instead, "his breath caught. The tracks ended at the unmistakable edge of a massive fresh avalanche..." Jenkins's stirring account pieces the clues and rescue efforts together to read like a true and terrible mystery being solved.

The horror of being buried alive by snow is vivid and sober among these pages, and is sure to chill climbers as well as those reading from the comforts of central heating. The author's vision is acute and helps better assess the bounds of our human capacity and domain. --Byron Ricks ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Too much technical information
The actual story of the 5 boys would make a good chapter in a book about avalanche disasters. There was not enough story in itself for a whole book, so the author turned it into an historical narrative about the formation of mountains, snow, avalanches, etc; the history of mountain climbing, rescues, etc.; a brief biograghy of everyone involved in the rescue. Way too much irrelevant information if you just want an exciting story. I kept forgetting what I was reading about because so little of it had to do with the story of the 5 boys.

Makes you think twice before skiing again
Throughout history, mountains have held a certain irresistible appeal, an unknown feeling of holy ascendence.That appeal has held through the ages, and envelops people who have already done something important with their lives, those who haven't, and older people as well as young people.Being close to nature, risking everything for the beauty of the view from the top of a mountain, for the physical prize after a hard climb, for the closeness a peak brings heaven or any sentient all-powerful being; these are all rewards from a successful climb, and these are not all.But there is also so much to risk - life itself, which, being already so short, is worth more than anything imaginable.People risk themselves constantly through mountain climbs or extreme sports, believing the rewards far outweigh the losses.The White Death is a well-told story of five boys who risked it all for the climb of a lifetime.

McKay Jenkins transforms the elusive and unknown world of avalanches to an intriguing story of mountain rescues. Don't read this book expecting it to focus on the lost boys; it won't. But you'll learn all about avalanche rescue techniques, types of snow and how to test them for avalanche safety, helicopter rescues, et cetera. You get my point.

I would completely recommend this book to any skiier, boarder, hiker, climber, or person interested in the outdoors and rescues. I picked this book off the shelf because I liked the cover, then read the flap and borrowed it. It is definately worth the time to read "The White Death".

A Scary and Scientific Read
I am not a mountain climber, nor a skier, but I love the outdoors and the mountains, thus my interest in this book.I was pleasantly surprised by the author's flowing writing style and the way he seamlessly incorporated historic details about avalanche disasters and the science of snowflakes and snowpack.This book offers a wide breadth of fact while expertly narrating the gripping story of the plight of these five climbers, and the lives of those they left behind.If you enjoyed "The Perfect Storm" or "Into Thin Air", you will not be disappointed at all with this book.This ranks up there with the finest natural disaster books I have read, and I highly recommend it.

A valuable read for skiers and climbers
This book does a great job of blending snow science and the history of human avalanche experience with a compelling personal story of five unfortunate young climbers. If the scientific and historical perspectives in this book had been available to these climbers, their story would likely be a different one. Anyone interested in skiing or climbing in mountainous backcountry should find this book to be informative, intriguing, and, if not for the tragedy, enjoyable. This book presents the dry text of snow science in a package that will hold your interest. Though flawed in its accuracy regarding personal history, details of mountaineering and local geography, it provides knowledge about the nature of snow and its metamorphosis that any mountain adventurer should be aware of. I am sending a copy to a friend who teaches avalanche awareness classes, as I know he'll thoroughly enjoy it...in spite of the tragedy.

An extraordinary book
I spent several years as the book critic for Outside magazine, during which time I had the opportunity (and sometimes misfortune) to read dozens of books about mountaineering tragedies and triumphs. The White Death is one of the genre's very best, in part because of Jenkins' considerable skills as a storyteller and wordsmith, and in part because--unlike the professional climbers who typically write such tomes--he has healthy skepticism about the sport itself. This is not simply a tale about "tragedy and heroism," as the subtitle indicates, but also about hubris, teen angst and dumb luck. It's also a paean to an extraordinary place (Glacier National Park) and an endlessly fascinating and mysterious phenomenon (snow). Written with flair and suspense, it unfolds with the power of a wall of white cascading down a slope. ... Read more

Product Description
The unrivaled resource for information on avalanches and snow safety— now completely updated!

· New information on the unique characteristics of alpine snow, snow slab instability, terrain variables, skier triggering of avalanches, and the nature of avalanche motion · Brand-new chapters on the elements of backcountry avalanche forecasting and the decision-making process · This is the text used by search and rescue professionals, ski patrol groups, and outdoor education programs

Technical yet accessible, The Avalanche Handbook, 3rd Edition, covers the formation, character, effects, and control of avalanches; rescue techniques; and research on understanding and surviving avalanches. Illustrated with nearly 200 updated illustrations, photos and examples, the revised edition offers exhaustive information on contributing weather and climate factors, snowpack analysis, the newest transceiver search techniques, and preventative and protective measures, including avalanche zoning and control.Amazon.com Review
Don't think it couldn't happen to you. Skiers, snowboarders,climbers, and anyone else who travels in the mountains should be awareof the awesome destructive power of avalanches and the conditions thatcause them. The Handbook is a comprehensive guide to avoidingsuch a calamity of snow and ice--and how to improve your chances ofsurvival if you're caught in one. With a combination of science andpractical advice, the authors explain how avalanches happen, how totest a slope for slide potential, and how to navigate inavalanche-prone areas. This is essential material for winterrecreation fans and outdoors enthusiasts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Essential reading for Mountaineers
This is a great book that covers all the aspects required to understand avalanche safety and the elements of knowing what areas will avalanche. Great book!

Hold your horses a bit...
As a reviewer said: the science sounds like something one may say "at a dinner party". - It is well formulated: At first I was impressed by the book, and I found interesting points in it. But when trying to use it as extra literature when reading some micro-meteorology I got deeper into the text; and what looked interesting (or impressive) turned out to become frustrating and embarrassing. In the chapters about heat transfer, radiation and other physical processes in snow there were frequent subsentences andparenthesis that at first seemed to be there to explain or clarify things, but my spontaneous thought when reaching them was "What?! But that is two different things.", or "But that's not right."
After a while I recognized whole subsentences, or even whole sentences, that seemed to have no other reason to be there than to impress and dazzle the reader. It really looked like someone that felt himself undereducated trying to compensate by putting in technical termology that sounds right, or just simple five or six syllable words like "anisotropic" to impress, rather than clarify. As an academician that also ski and move around a lot in avalanche terrain I felt outright embarrassed. Is the style of the text deliberately chosen to dazzle and then scare away the reader? (I was so tired after a couple of hours of studying the text for the good stuff, while navigating around the weird parts that I really had to sit down and relax with a pure scientific paper about snow by Karl W. Birkeland.) - There is lot of good stuff in this book, but it shouldn't be put in such high regard for it's "science" as most readers and reviewers seem to do. The science seems to end up "not right" too often. Where the author would have been completely right without the frequent attempts to be over-precise. Never wrong, but too often "not right". It isn't the science that makes the text heavy, it's the urge to be eloquent that do it. - A better book with regards to readability, but perhaps also with regards to the science, is Bruce Tremper's "Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrrain", and clear well written pieces can also be found in books like "Field Guide to Snow Crystals" by Edward R LaChapelle. - I expect to find more good stuff in this book, but it is really not indispensable unless it is your job to release controlled avalanches. The backcountry traveler and the pure academically interested will find better texts out there.

Indispensible but quirky and murky
There is a lot of information in this book, and it's certainly a must have for anyone who wants to be able to make their own decisions about travel in avalanche terrain.That said I think the book fails in two important ways.It fails at explaining the current state of the science behind avalanches, and it fails at giving end users a systematic way to utilize data from snow instability tests.

We get bits and pieces of the science behind avalanches but at a very superficial level.You learn something about the sorts of things scientists think about avalanches without learning the why and wherefore of it.The authors' reluctance to inlude anything that even smells of math turns the science sections into collections of things one might say about avalanche science at a dinner party, but otherwise not very useful when it comes to applying the science to avalanches.
When it comes time for the book to lay out a paradigm for making decisions in avalanche country, we find a confusing mess of very abstract decision schema.Nowhere do we find any specific guidance in using instability tests or snowpack profiles in making decisions.This lack of guidance is exacerbated by the skeptical stance the book takes towards stability tests.We are counseled to pay attention to local conditions, but we are also told that if our tests show a stable snowpack they should be discounted.It's not clear how stability tests could ever yield anything other than a no-go decision given that sort of paradigm, and the book needs to do more to explain how to navigate the grey zone if it to be useful as a handbook for making decisions.
So while this is an indispensable book, it could really use more work, and anyone wanting to understand the contents should probably be ready to dig into the nuts and bolts of the underlying science a bit more using other resources.

Complete...*very* complete
This handbook is a comprehensive compilation of the state of current science regarding the snow avalanche phenomenon. Required reading for most level 2 avalanche courses, and highly recommended for casual backcountry users, this book really excels in the figures and diagrams included. Be warned, however, that the material is rather dense - not really a sunday read...

The informative and thoroughly 'reader friendly' text is superbly organized and nicely illustrated
Every winter we hear of people who have become the victim of an avalanche while skiing, snowmobiling, or camping in mountainous country where a landslide of snow roars down off a mountain side faster than anyone can move out of its way. Co-authored by David McClung (a professor in the Department of Geography and leader of the avalanche research group at the University of British Columbia) and Peter Schaerer (a senior research officer and head of the Avalanche Research Center of the National Research Council of Canada), "The Avalanche Handbook" is now published and available in a newly updated and expanded third edition that includes all the latest information, techniques, and research on understanding the nature of avalanches, as well as how to avoid and/or survive encounters with them. Readers will learn about the character and effects of avalanches, snow formations, snowpack analysis; the use of multiple transceivers along with other search and rescue techniques and equipment; the elements of avalanche forecasting, backcountry forecasting, and the decision-making process with respect to assessing avalanche possibilities; snow slap instability, terrain variables, skier triggering of avalanches, and the nature of avalanche motion. The informative and thoroughly 'reader friendly' text is superbly organized and nicely illustrated making "The Avalanche Handbook" essential and very strongly recommended reading for anyone venturing into mountain country in winter. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: 1910 Fires, 1910 Natural Disasters, Great Fire of 1910, Baudette Fire of 1910, Wellington, Washington Avalanche, Pretoria Pit Disaster, 1910 Great Flood of Paris, Chicago Union Stock Yards Fire. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 26. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) was a wildfire which burned about three million acres (12,000 km², approximately the size of Connecticut) in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana. The area burned included parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests. The firestorm burned over two days (August 2021, 1910), and killed 87 people, including 78 firefighters. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, fire in recorded U.S. history. There were a great number of problems that contributed to the destruction of the Great Fire of 1910. The fire season started early that year, because the summer of 1910 was hot and dry like no other. This drought caused there to be plenty of dry vegetation, so forests were teeming with dry fuel. Fires were set by hot cinders flung from locomotives, sparks, lightning, and backfiring crews, and by mid August there were 1,000 to 3,000 fires burning in Idaho, Montana, and Washington. On August 20, a cold front blew in and brought hurricane-force winds, whipping the hundreds of small fires into one or two blazing infernos. The fire was impossible to fight; there were too few men and too little supplies. The United States Forest Service (then called the National Forest Service) was only five years old at the time, and they were unprepared for the possibilities of this dry summer. Later the U.S....More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1900542 ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on October 28, 2007. The length of the article is 965 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Wrestling over the Arctic -- and Antarctic; Avalanche of claims, debates and accusations are poles apart.(Focus)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 28, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: b7

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
The phenomenon of an avalanche can have devastating effects for unsuspecting people. Young readers will learn about the causes of an avalanche, the different components of an avalanche, how dogs help in a rescue, and many more interesting facts. Accounts of true stories and past avalanche disasters are clearly illustrated in this Level 4 Hello Reader.Avalanche Safety Tips are provided at the back of the book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great high-interest for all readers, reluctant or not
My daughter is a struggling reader, so I'm always looking for high-interest topics. After reading Avalanche! and Volcano! in this early chapter book series, she's now hooked on natural disaster stories. She zipped through both books in a couple of days--very unusual for her. They have a nice combination of real-life survival tales and interesting science, including how to avoid avalanches and what to do if you can't. Both books begin with survival stories involving kids her age--sledders trapped under an avalanche in Minnesota and a boy in Turkey who survived an earthquake inside a collapsed apartment building. Great stuff. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: 1910 Atlantic Hurricane Season, 1910 Floods, 1910 Cuba Hurricane, Wellington, Washington Avalanche, 1910 Great Flood of Paris. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 22. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The 1910 Cuba hurricane was a destructive and unusual tropical cyclone that struck western Cuba and southwestern Florida during October 1910. It formed in the extreme southern Caribbean on October 9, and steadily intensified as it moved northwestward. Shortly after making landfall on the western tip of Cuba, the storm peaked as a severe hurricane corresponding to Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale and completed a counterclockwise loop. The cyclone began tracking towards the United States, and moved ashore near Cape Romano, Florida. After moving through the state, it hugged the coast of the Southeastern United States on its way out to sea. Due to the storm's tight and poorly documented loop, initial reports suggested that it was actually two separate cyclones that developed and affected land in rapid succession. Its track was subject to much debate at the time, and eventually it was identified as a single storm. Additionally, observations on the event resulted in a greater understanding of other weather features that took similar paths. In Cuba, the storm was often considered one of the most severe natural disasters in the island's history. Damage was extensive, and thousands of peasants were reportedly left homeless. Throughout Florida, the storm also had widespread impacts, including the destruction of houses and the flooding of low-lying land. Although total monetary damage from the storm is unknown, estimates of losses in Havana, Cuba exceed $1 million and in the Florida Keys, $250,000. At least 100 deaths occurred in Cuba alone. Storm pathOn October 9, the fi...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=25547092 ... Read more

Product Description
Imagine surviving an avalanche and a 1,000-foot fall down a mountain.Then imagine hiking for five days down the mountain with a broken neck.Impossible?Nor for Colby Coombs.Learn about his life-changing experience and how he used his wits and skills to survive it. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume was published in 1891 and tells of its gales,
hurricanes, tornadoes, showers with thunder and lightning,
great snow storms, rains, freshets, floods, droughts, cold
winters, hot summers, avalanches, earthquakes, dark days,
comets, aurora-borealis, phenomena in the heavens, wrecks
along the coast, with incidents and anecdotes, amusing and
pathetic.


... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard (e.g. flood, tornado , volcano eruption, earthquake, or landslide) that affects the environment, and leads to financial, environmental and/or human losses. The resulting loss depends on the capacity of the population to support or resist the disaster, and their resilience. This understanding is concentrated in the formulation: "disasters occur when hazards meet vulnerability." A natural hazard will hence never result in a natural disaster in areas without vulnerability, e.g. strong earthquakes in uninhabited areas. The term natural has consequently been disputed because the events simply are not hazards or disasters without human involvement. ... Read more

Product Description
R. M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) was a Scottish juvenile fiction writer. Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh, he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. In 1848 he published his first book, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of adventure stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated. The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: A Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. ... Read more

Product Description
Describes the causes and effects of avalanches and landslides, as well as the history and study of such slides. ... Read more