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From Scientific American.com April 24, 2007 Weekly Review

Ale's Well with the World
A yeasty discussion of the science of malt and hops
By Steve Mirsky

Free beer. And thus I found my way to a lecture in late February at the New York Academy of Sciences by renowned beer maven Charlie Bamforth. A man for whom the word "avuncular" was coined, the British Bamforth has three decades of brewing expertise under his belt. Over his belt is what he insists is "a sausage belly, not a beer belly."

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Disclaimer: This story was written in the dim past before the advent of computers. I therefore did not have uploadable text and had to scan it in editable form from the magazine in which it was published. This of course, created many errors, which I tried to correct, but not being the greatest editor in the world, I'm sure I missed some. The piece was published in 1987 in a small press magazine called "Swift Kick." Though not specifically about climbing, it uses climbing as part of its main theme and draws metaphors and other fancy-sounding words from the sport.

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He stared blankly at the rope inching like a snake through
the leaves at his feet. His neck ached from looking up and he
was sick to his stomach. His palms were actually sweating.

He was having a heart attack! Certainly that was a good
enough reason to back out. But at 14 years old, it was hardly
likely.

Both bored and frightened, he became gratefully engrossed in
the insect life teeming on the tree beside him. The endless waves
of footsteps marking the journey of a centipede, the sinister

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Ways to the Sky: A Historical Guide to North American Mountaineering, by Andy Selters, The Mountaineers Books, 2004. Hardcover $24.95. 300 pp.

Historical mountaineering books risk descending into mind-numbing recitations of thin ice, rotten rock, and freezing bivouacs, with one climb blending anonymously into another. In Ways to the Sky, however, the first update to North American Mountaineering history in 25 years, Andy Selters guides us from ancient native ascents to the cutting edge, without dropping into crevasses of ennui.

Selters, a mountaineer, photographer, and mapmaker, imbues each account with excitement and individuality, expertly playing detail, personality, and anecdote for all they’re worth. Climbers are rendered human through their motivations, and mistakes, while his tales are peppered with gems like this: “Canadian Pacific saw a publicity opportunity and pronounced Assiniboine ‘North America’s Matterhorn.’ The railroad recruited Edward Whymper, the celebrity of the Matterhorn first ascent…But Whymper was in his 60s, quite taken with liquor, and uninterested in a challenging climb.”

Although the real estate covered ranges from Canada to Mexico, most of the action quite naturally occurs in Canada and Alaska and the book is rife with familiar names and places.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about this history is that in addition to the usual narrative, maps, and photos, Selters provides route descriptions at the end of each chapter for those who want to repeat climbs that have been discussed.

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By Joseph Ferguson (Originally appeared in a slightly different form in Climbing Magazine)

In the early days of my rock climbing career, when EB's were state-of-the-art and no one in their right mind referred to 5'10 as "moderate climbing," we were rebels with neither cause nor effect. Gravitating from equally erstwhile pursuits like surfing, majoring in philosophy, or drinking sterno, we were the guys unpicked for basketball, the girls not asked to dance, a motley assemblage of ex-hippies, one-time nerds, and Nam vets hoping to match the adrenal fix of battle. Reveling in our outcast status we made fashion statements that said things like, "Tom Waits," "Gabby Hayes," "Tet Offensive."

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