SELECTION OF REVIEWS:
"The best recent travel book to come to our notice....a compulsive read
for anyone who enjoys the call of the wild." Strider: The
Journal of the Long Distance Walkers Association.
SELECTION FROM WALKING THE YUKON:
Campbell had discovered the Pelly and Upper Yukon rivers and built
Fort Selkirk. It wasn't until 1968 that it was finally concluded that
Mount Campbell and Tombstone Mountain were in fact the same peak and
the latter name was officially adopted, though some maps still give it
as Mount Campbell.
That night's site, on a little sandy hillock
above the Tombstone River
with superb views upstream to the black wedge of Tombstone Mountain and
the pinnacle-topped wall of Mount Monolith, was the best of the walk so
far, though only a faint promise of what was to come.
The next day, I found that walking into this
mountain sanctuary
was like walking into paradise. As befits the way of a pilgrim, the
going was rough, leading gradually through dense brush, across
willow-thicketed creeks and over moss-covered, half-hidden boulders
into the inner sanctum, the magnificent rock amphitheater that is the
Tombstone Range, a huge curving ridge of heart-stopping granite walls
and spires. Talus Lake, a boulder-ringed, brooding mountain tam, backed
by a towering cliff that looked about to topple into the water, made my
fifth night out from Dawson one of the most magnificent wilderness
camps I have ever had. Beyond the rippling waters Tombstone Mountain
darkened into blackness as the sky deepened from pink into the dark
blue of night.
Perfection is not easy to find. Some would
say it is an ideal,
a goal to seek but never achieve. Perhaps, most of the time, but I
found it at Talus Lake on the morning of August 12, 1990, a morning so
beautiful, so faultless that I almost felt guilty for being there,
almost wondered what I had done to deserve such rapture. But on
reflection I knew what it had taken to immerse myself in the mountain
glory granted to me, knew that without the days spent struggling
through dense forest, slogging through mud and rain under a heavy load,
and plodding along alone with my thoughts I wouldn't have been able to
accept what that morning gave me.
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