Enduring Patagonia

By Gregory Crouch

Book Overview

Patagonia is a strange and terrifying place, a vast tract of land shared by Argentina and Chile where the violent weather spawned over the southern Pacific charges through the Andes with gale-force winds, roaring clouds, and stinging snow. Squarely athwart the latitudes known to sailors as the roaring forties and furious fifties, Patagonia is a land trapped between angry torrents of sea and sky, a place that has fascinated explorers and writers for centuries. Magellan discovered the strait that bears his name during the first circumnavigation. Charles Darwin traveled Patagonia's windy steppes and explored the fjords of Tierra del Fuego during the voyage of the Beagle. From the novel perspective of the cockpit, Antoine de Saint-Exupry immortalized the Andes in Wind, Sand, and Stars, and a half century later, Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia earned a permanent place among the great works of travel literature. Yet even today, the Patagonian Andes remain mysterious and remote, a place where horrible storms and ruthless landscapes discourage all but the most devoted pilgrims from paying tribute to the daunting and dangerous peaks.

Gregory Crouch is one such pilgrim. In seven expeditions to this windswept edge of the Southern Hemisphere, he has braved weather, gravity, fear, and doubt to try himself in the alpine crucible of Patagonia. Crouch has had several notable successes, including the first winter ascent of the legendary Cerro Torre's West Face, to go along with his many spectacular failures. In language both stirring and lyrical, he evokes the perils of every handhold, perils that illustrate the crucial balance between physical danger and mental agility that allows for the most important part of any climb, which is not reaching the summit, but getting down alive.

Crouch reveals the flip side of cutting-edge alpinism: the stunning variety of menial labor one must often perform to afford the next expedition. From building sewer systems during a bitter Colorado winter to washing the plastic balls in McDonalds' playgrounds, Crouch's dedication to the alpine craft has seen him through as many low moments as high summits. He recounts, too, the riotous celebrations of successful climbs, the numbing boredom of forced encampments, and the quiet pride that comes from knowing that one has performed well and bravely, even in failure. Included are more than two dozen color photographs that capture the many moods of this land, from the sublime beauty of the mountains at sunrise to the unrelenting fury of its storms.

Enduring Patagonia is a breathtaking odyssey through one of the world s last wild places, a land that requires great sacrifice but offers great rewards to those who dare to challenge it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375761284
• ISBN13: 9780375761287
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Some of the best adventure writing I have read

Crouch does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the obsessive world of hard core mountaineers. His writing is exciting , crisp, and vivid. You feel his enthusiasm for his sport and can understand the sacrifices people like him make to climb the world's most challenging peaks. Anyone with an interest in adventure travel or outdoor sports will enjoy this book.

Great storyteller

It's always good to read a mountaineering book that goes beyond the travelogue or that recites only overcoming the hardships. Gregory Crouch shows he has a knack for storytelling and a literary skill which makes this an enjoyable read. While the latter part of the story lacks the precission and insight of the first part, the narrative style still makes me hope this is not his only book. As an aging mountaineer of far less skill and experience as Crouch, I found Crouch speaks to the inner psyche of those who find themselves obsessed by the affliction for high places.

Absolutely Fantastic - Beautiful

If you climb and have a deep-rooted passion for the emotions that climbing stirs in you then I would highly recommend this book. You don't have to be on the cutting edge of climbing to understand in your heart what Crouch talks about in Enduring Patagonia. Empathy, focus, inner-demons, harmony, determination, pain, self-realization and the laurels of success are the streams of conscious thought that are conveyed so beautifully in Crouch's book. If you climb you know that all these feeling come out in great strength throughout almost every climb. I've never been able to put into words all the emotions and the reason for ones passion of climbing but Crouch's book does a stellar job of wording our obsession with the sport and lifestyle.

A real climber tells it like it is

Enduring Patagonia is an excellent read. Crouch is the real deal, and he gives the reader a full helping of what it's like to do battle in Patagonia: waiting for weather, climbing fast while the weather fuse burns, taking risks, dealing with committment, learning to love misery, and, sometimes, pure elation. It's all in here.If you want to climb inside the mind of an elite Patagonia climber, buy this book.

"Into Thin Air" fans will be thrilled!

I've long loved Gregory Crouch's writing in the mountaineering magazines and was excited to see a full-length book written by him. I was even more thrilled to discover how he brought the world of mountaineering alive in "Enduring Patagonia" -- the way he describes these otherworldly places is unimaginatively beautiful. It's a literary book many readers will place among the classics of adventure literature, to be sure. And for those who read "Into Thin Air," it's the next step in breaking open the world of cutting edge alpinism. Now even my mother wants to read it!