White Heat: The Extreme Skiing Life

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to jump hundreds of feet on skis, learn to drop explosive charges into avalanche zones or deal with a dying, severely injured skier as a First Responder? Wayne Johnson has personally done all of these things and much more. In addition, he explores almost every other aspect of the skiing life from the eccentric ski bum who tragically dies while living in the woods to the struggles of World Class racers. If you want a heavy classic, as some reviewers seem to desire, read, "1984" or the "Grapes of Wrath". If you want a teriffic book to inspire and motivate you this ski season, read this book. A great gift for any adventurous person in your life!!!

An excellent read giving a glimpse at ski culture. I have been a ski patroller in the Midwest for over twenty years, doing it full time for the last seven years. I know patrollers that drive three hours to volunteer to patrol or drive all night to allow their children to race in the Upper Pennisula, MI. To the best of my knowledge I have never met the author but I have skied Park City, The Canyons, Alta and other areas. I have stood in the patrol hut at the top of Jupiter lift with twenty five other patrollers performing an avalanche rescue drill on West Face. Getting from the hut to the avalanche site meant skiing the ridge in a sixty mile per hour whiteout. The author accurately portrays the thought processes on rescues and opening and closing sweeps. The author also gives a good representation of the various aspect of other snowsports including racing and snowboarding. The author fails to inform the reader of the many mundane actions a patroller performs including the paperwork after the care for the injured has been transferred. Each incident requires an incident report and usually an investigation. While not part of the glamour and adrenaline, it is a vital part of the incident follow-up.

I am a journalism professor who teaches writing and a non-skier who has both friends and colleagues who live skiing, which is something that I never truly understood until I read this book. To me, skiing always seemed a bit too dangerous, but I always enjoyed watching it and many of the rather heroic careers of skiing champions written about in this book were known to me - though not in the depth covered here. I flatly loved this book!!! It's exciting from the first page - and even I could feel my pulse starting to race and sense the love of this sport that dominates those who've made skiing an important - even central - part of their lives!!! If I were younger and a bit healthier than I am today, I'd have made skiing an important part of my life. The book is artfully written with exceptional prose to help the reader share the sensations felt by avid skiers. The author uses first, second and third person as appropriate, and emphasizes second person as both a form of direct address to the reader and to bring the reader into the narrative. A truly exceptional read that I'd recommend to all with a desire to know better the skiing life complete with it's subjective feeling as well as an objective history and description of technique. Simply superb! G. Davey, Ph. D.

This wonderful book addresses the lives and life surrounding the extreme aspects of skiing (avalanche controllers, racers, ski jumpers, snowboarders, mountain patrollers, and a sundry feast of other characters), and readers will find it an inspiring and lucid examination of just what drives people to such extremes, be it a love of speed or heights or jumping off helicopters. Wayne Johnson has delved deep into the hearts of those who aren't content to live out their lives in a prescribed, socially acceptable manner, and he's written a fine book honoring the idiosyncrasies of their lives. It is a thrilling account, and the narrative is written as daringly as the lives it examines. You don't have to love skiing to enjoy this book --it's entertaining as hell and you'll be hard pressed to find any writer out there with the massive talent Mr. Johnson brings to his subject. Odds are that when you get to the end of the book you'll do as I did: you'll go back to page one and start reading it again. Regarding an earlier review, in which the reviewer claims the book suffers from "enormous stylistic flaws," one has to wonder what planet he lives on (I laughed out loud at the absurdity of the statement). He has a problem with Johnson's use of second person narration, a perfectly valid and effective technique used by countless writers and essayist throughout history. I would direct the reviewer to the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Gunter Grass, Italo Calvino,, Jay McInerney, Carlos Fuentes, John Updike, and many, many other gifted writers. One wonders if the reviewer would have been more pleased if the book had been written in an uptight, faux scientific manner, complete with footnotes and a good dose of pretentious Latin terminology. (Thankfully, author Wayne Johnson has spared us that scenario). In fact, by its tone and tenor (petty, plebeian), one wonders if this profoundly uptight reviewer was passed one too many times by Mr. Johnson on the ski hill.

The first reviewer is right the writting is not world class but the book is fun. It is good ski porn/mind candy. Not a classic. So keep that in mind.