Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life

I'm not a huge memoir fan, it takes an outstsanding story to get to me, but I can place Arlene's book Breaking Trail firmly in that catagory. Part narrative and part detective mystery, Arlene's story recaps the inspirational climbs up the world's high peaks and across the world's largest mountain ranges. Woven in between these amazing adventures is the mystery of her family life and it literally unfolds as you read the book. A must read for anyone interested in the natural world, the challenge of high mountain climbing, a women's desire to suceed, all wrapped around a family mystery.

Arlene Blum's new book, Breaking Trail, is a book for everyone interested in the experience of high peak mountaineering--plenty of thrills and chills for those who stayed up all night reading Into Thin Air or Touching the Void like I did. However, there is one huge difference with this book--its written with a tenderness of narratorial voice I have not seen in other, more macho mountaineering books. Here, the high peaks become a metaphor for what all women face when they aspire to dreams outside the suburban marriage with freezer, soccer kids, and SUV. Her voice is intimate, modest, and honest. By the time I finished this book, I felt like we had been hiking together for days. This is not just a running account of a life spent in the highest peaks on earth--it is also the story of an accomplished scientist and social activist who is an inspiring role model for women of any age. She has lived a creative, adventurous, and uniquely imagined life, rich in adventure, beauty, love, and tragedy. She is the embodiment of: "If you can dream it, you can do it." After I finished the book, I was able to go to her website, where there are twelve slide shows of the climbs she writes about in the book; seeing the color photos of many places and incidents mentioned in the book took my breath away and only deepened my appreciation of this remarkable woman. She was not afraid to follow the deepest currents of her own soul into the mountains at a time when there were virtually no women participating in serious mountaineering (except to cook and make the coffee or truck loads of gear from one base camp to another while the guys made the glamouress sprints up to the summit.) Even having lived through it (being a contemporary of Ms. Blum's) I was indignant at the way she met with sexual bias at every turn. Its a great reminder of how different things were just forty years ago--and how they could be again. This is a book to read and pass to a woman friend or to a daughter. Its a great read and contains, through the recounting of incidents from the writer's childhood, a lot of insight into how someone ends up in high peak climbing. Arlene Blum is a role model for women everywhere and her story is told woman to woman. This is THE summer read this year. I loved it!

After reading and enjoying Arlene's first book detailing her experiences climbing Annapurna, it has been a great joy to have an account of her life to read. "Breaking Trail" is not only for those interested in mountaineering and trekking. I recommend the book to all women, especially those of us who find it challenging to forge our way through a world which still does not give credit to a woman's abilities and strengths. Many thanks to Arlene Blum for being a trail-blazer and a mentor.

As a adventure Arlene Blum's Breaking trail: A Climbing Life is captivating; as a memoir a life altering experience. Reading about a women who had the fortitude to push past conformity, offers the reader renewed enthusiasm for today. Blum writes beautifully and in wonderful detail that keeps her human. Insights into her childhood, turn this adventure into a thought provoking tale of life, death and the meaning of it all. Nicely done in one book.