Vanishing Trails of Atacama by William E. Rudolph. American Geographical Society Research Series #24; 87 pages, 50 illustrations, maps and bibliography. New York, 1963.

The highlands of Atacama include the highest volcanoes of the world, which reach up to 22,590 feet rising from a 13,000-foot-high plateau in northern Chile and Argentine and southern Bolivia. This book contains an excellent description of this desert mountain land, the driest in the world, as well as a study of the impact brought upon it by modern life. The Atacama peaks having been neglected in mountaineering literature, this book will be a basic reference work; although essentially a geographic research, some of its chapters are of interest to mountaineers: the Puna, Salt lakes and Salars (salt flats) ; Effects of Altitude; and its illustrations are excellent from the standpoint of topography. The Atacama highlands have been described as “a weird and inhuman scene” and “a mountaineer’s nightmare”, judgments the author does not seem to share, basing his own upon forty years of residence in this region.

Evelio EchevarrÍa C.