The Mountain of My Fear, by David Roberts. New York: Vanguard Press, 1968. 157 pages, 11 photographs, 3 maps. Price: $5.95.

Mount Huntington erupts from the floor of the Ruth Glacier like a glistening saber thrust through the upper mantle of the earth. This incredibly graceful 12,240-foot peak is hidden in the shadow of Mount McKinley’s bulk. Hence, only a few men have seen the first rays of the morning sun reaching across the east buttress of McKinley to illuminate Huntington’s northern face of fluted ice. Fewer still have watched at twilight when Huntington’s corniced western ridge divides night from day. So it was that this peak which rivals the Matterhorn in its sense of "arrested grace,” remained unclimbed until 1965 when its summit was reached by a French expedition led by Lionel Terray.

In The Mountain of My Fear, David Roberts tells of the second ascent of Mount Huntington via a new and difficult route on the mountain’s western face. But the book is much more than an account of a new route on an Alaskan peak, or a sorrowful tribute to Ed Bernd, a member of the team who died in an accident on the descent. This is a book about life and death, about hope and despair, about challenging the unconquerable, about every man who has dared to look beyond the horizon and to accept the lure of that which cannot be seen. As a story of a difficult ascent it is well told, with sufficient detail about the climbing to give the informed reader a sense of what the climb was like. The photographs (many of them by Bradford Washburn) and illustrations are good and the important landmarks on the route clearly identified. What emerges from the pages, however, is not merely an adventure story (although that is surely there and well done), but a brilliant essay on adventure and the meaning of the challenge of life. It is a small treasure which every mountaineer will want to own. It is a book to be given as a gift to the young in spirit. It is, like a favorite climb, a place to return again and again.

Samuel C. Silverstein, M.D.