And old hikers reading Howe's book will realize how lucky they have been to escape the full fury of New England's greatest mountain range. Howe's meticulous research and energetic writing cover a vast time span. He concludes with the death of Sarah Nicholson, a young woman who was struck by a car-size block of ice while skiing Tuckerman Ravine in 1994. There's a classic story on the last run of a Cog Railway steam engine called Old Peppersass, and a look at multiple calamities that befell skiers and hikers in 1994. Howe's stories hook their readers from the start.
Readers sense the buoyant spirit of adventure with which so many ramblers begin a trek.
Then comes bad weather and worse decisions. Toward the end of each tale, one feels a sense of doom brought on by human error and weather on the Presidential Range, which can get blizzards in any month of the year. The author's qualifications for chronicling mountain mishaps are beyond question. He also took part in mountain rescues while working for the Appalachian Mountain Club in the early 1950s. In one of his book's 17 chapters, he draws on his AMC experience to describe what it was like at age 19 to carry the body of a heart attack victim down Mount Washington, the victim's boots flopping by his shoulder as he held the litter.