Soul of the Heights

Looks like this is the year for Big Books from legends of the Golden Age in Yosemite Valley. First came Glen Denny's gorgeous retrospective Yosemite in the Sixties. Now, Falcon is releasing Ed Cooper's climbing memoir, an 8.5 x 11 hardcover packed with Cooper's beautiful photos and stories from his landmark climbs of the ’50s and ’60s. Cooper was the Pacific Northwest's "first climbing bum," according to his publisher, and unlike many of the Yosemite icons he traveled widely and did influential routes well beyond his home mountains. Along with many notable climbs in the North Cascades, Cooper did such hard routes as the East Face of Bugaboo Spire (the peak on the book's cover), the Willis Wall on Mt. Rainier, the amazing Grand Wall at Squamish, and, of course, the Dihedral Wall in Yosemite Valley. This ought to be a book well-worth a couple of hours in a big armchair.