The last of his kind The life and adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's boldest mountaineer

David Roberts, 1943-

Book - 2009

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Subjects
Published
New York, N.Y. : William Morrow c2009.
Language
English
Main Author
David Roberts, 1943- (-)
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
334 p., [16] p of plates : ill. ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780061560941
  • Prologue: Donjek
  • 1. Boy Adventurer
  • 2. Alaska Breakthrough
  • 3. Blank on the Map
  • 4. Lucania or Bust
  • 5. Perfecting Alaska
  • 6. The Two Best Decisions
  • 7. Back to Alaska---and into War
  • 8. Mastery
  • 9. Explorer Emeritus
  • Epilogue: Mentor and Protege
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

Reading this excellent biography, you'll wonder why you have never heard of Bradford Washburn before this moment. Washburn, who was born in 1910, was a groundbreaking mountaineer and photographer. In addition to exploring Alaska's Saint Elias Range when it was unexplored territory he was a pioneer of aerial photography and a first-rate mapmaker. His wife, Barbara, also a climber, was the first woman to reach the top of Mount McKinley. This biography, written by veteran climber-author Roberts, is a portrait of a man who dedicated his life to exploration and education (he founded the Boston Museum of Science). The author, who knew Washburn for many years and thinks of him as a mentor, explores his subject's private and professional lives in roughly equal measure, and Roberts' personal respect and admiration for the man are evident on nearly every page. Washburn, who died in 2007, is one of those people who are legends in their own fields but little known outside them. This book could change that, at least for anyone with even the slightest interest in mountain climbing.--Pitt, David Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Before his 30th birthday, Bradford Washburn was already a legendary mountaineer, completing four major first ascents on his way to becoming "the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history." Soon after, Washburn took over the creaky New England Museum of Natural History, which by his retirement in 1980, had become the renowned Boston Museum of Science. Washburn (1910-2007) was also an innovative cartographer as well as a self-taught photographer whose aerial shots garnered major acclaim. A longtime friend of Washburn and a former mountaineer, Roberts (No Shortcuts to the Top) is an ideal candidate for writing Washburn's biography, but the book lacks the depth of compelling biographies. Roberts's decision to extensively profile Washburn's various expeditions (and those of others) offers no insight on the man, while contributing to the book's glacial pace. Roberts obviously has nothing but admiration for Washburn and his accomplishments, but that inhibits opportunities to examine the dark side of Washburn's personal life-his responsibility for a fatal plane crash in 1938; son Ted's inappropriate behavior with high school students that divided the family-which are almost glossed over. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

From prolific mountaineering writer Roberts (Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy, 2008, etc.), a well-crafted biography of "the greatest mountaineer in Alaskan history." Because the author knows the world of climbing so well, as both practitioner and chronicler, he brings an insider's perspective to this life of mountaineer and photographer Bradford Washburn (19102007). As a longtime friend of his subject, Roberts writes with measured authority about Washburn as a character, especially his overwhelming passion, impatience and stubbornness. In describing Washburn's vast explorations in Alaska and the Yukon, his extraordinary number of first ascents and the sharpening of the "increasingly virtuosic exercises in the fast-and-light style he had invented," Roberts avoids hagiographyno small feat given Washburn's prodigious talents. Not only did he fill in many blank areas on maps of the northern regions of North America, Washburn brought great flair to the art of cartography and aerial photography, as well as museum administrationhe transformed "the moribund New England Museum of Natural History into the eventually world-renowned Boston Museum of Science." Though unadorned, Roberts's style effectively captures the suspense and danger of Washburn's adventures. A thorough and admiring portrait. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Last of His Kind The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer Chapter One Boy Adventurer He was born Henry Bradford Washburn Jr. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 7, 1910. There's no getting around the fact that Brad was a Boston Brahmin: he could trace his ancestry back to William Brewster, of the Mayflower and Plymouth Colony. But he was never rich, even when he was the director of the Museum of Science. An uncle who'd made a fortune in the wire goods industry put Brad through prep school. Entering Harvard in the fall of 1929, just as the Great Depression hit, Brad could barely finance his college education. A lifelong habit of penny-pinching was inculcated during those early years. Brad's father, Henry Bradford Washburn Sr., was a minister who eventually became dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. His mother, the former Edith Colgate, was the widow of his father's best friend, who had died of typhoid fever in 1902. Brad grew up with a half-sister, Mabel, from his mother's first marriage. Though fifteen years older, Mabel, whom Brad called "Sis," became his close friend and faithful correspondent throughout his teenage years. A year and a half after Brad's arrival, his mother gave birth to another son, Sherwood ("Sherry"), who would go on to become a world-renowned physical anthropologist, one of the first experts to maintain that Piltdown Man was a hoax. (In a brilliant practical joke, several pranksters planted the jawbone of an orangutan and the skull of a modern man in a gravel pit in Sussex, England, in 1912, then claimed to have excavated an early protohuman, the so-called missing link. It took more than four decades for the forgery to be exposed.) Judging by his writings and his achievements, Brad's character seems to have been fully formed at the age of eight. During the First World War, Brad's father moved the family to New York City, where he selected chaplains for military duty abroad. Already fascinated by the outdoors, Brad spent many a solitary hour fishing from the docks off the Hudson and East rivers. Though its publication was no doubt finagled by his father, Brad's first literary effort to see print was a five-paragraph essay that came out in The Churchman on May 12, 1919. It is called "Fishing: What a Boy Thinks." Despite the idiosyncratic spelling that an editor wisely left intact, Brad already comes across as the self-taught expert confidently lecturing others about the proper way to do things: Fishing is a very bad habit when out of season. You should not fish to [sic] much because the fish are disterbed and move from place to place; they get scerd and wont bite. I have fished to eat. It is not good to fish for fun and after you have got a great many fish to throw them away or give them to the cat. God never intended them to be throne away, he ecspects them to swim around and chase their tales. Despite his jaunty tone, the lad had a sensitive side: "I have never liked to take the hook out of the fishes mouth, it makes me feel bad and I know the fish don't like it. They make a little grone and are off to the happy hunting ground." But the young angler quickly reverts to practical instruction: It is always best to stand at least ten feet from the water. I have always had good luck with a steel rod. The best store to get them is Abarcrombi and Fich, Madison Ave. and 45th St. Most -people think that children living in a city have no chance to fish. That is not true because I have caught a lot of tomy cod off the 79th St. dock, New York. All his life, Brad would prove to be something of a genius at tinkering with gear in the field. At the age of eight, he knew exactly how to manufacture the ideal tackle: If you want to do this, solder a bell onto the end of a strong peace of wire, on the other end a screw. Fasten this on the dock by means of the screw. Have about a hundred feet of line to the wire and with about three hoocks on the end of the line with a sinker. Tie the loose end of the line to the wire and throe the line into the water. When the fish bite the bell will ring. Give the line a quick gerck and pull the fish off and rebait. After the war, the family moved back to Cambridge. Many decades later, Brad would credit Miss Florence Leatherbee (it was always "Miss Leatherbee"), his fifth-grade teacher at Buckingham School, with kindling his interest in geography. "She showed us maps of the world," Brad would tell journalist Lew Freedman in 2005. "She had a Hammond Atlas and it showed where gold was found, and copper, and coal. Looking at it, you had the feeling of the world being a live place instead of just a map." At the age of fourteen, Brad drew his own first map, of Squam Lake, the family's summer retreat in New Hampshire. Throughout his life, not entirely in jest, Brad would maintain that he became a mountain climber because he suffered from hay fever as a boy. In the summer of 1921, at age eleven, he started hiking up the low hills behind Squam Lake, where he discovered to his amazement that the higher he went, the less his hay fever bothered him. On July 21 of that summer, with his cousin, Brad made his first ascent of Mt. Washington, at 6,288 feet the highest peak in New England. Four years later, with his father and Sherry, Brad repeated the ascent in winter. Mt. Washington has a gentle topography, but especially in winter, thanks to its ferocious weather, it can be a dangerous climb. The crown of the Presidential Range has killed more climbers than any other American mountain. (The highest wind speed ever measured anywhere in the world, 231 miles per hour, was recorded at the summit observatory in 1934.) Brad's parents were loving, involved, and indulgent, and Brad and Sherry shared a happy and adventurous childhood straight out of Tom Swift. The small but elite Buckingham School was situated only a few short blocks from the Deanery, the Washburn family house on Mason Street. (By now, Brad's father had become dean of the Episcopal Theological School.) Brad attended Buckingham through fifth grade, then switched to nearby Browne & Nichols for sixth and seventh grades, because beyond fifth grade, Buckingham tutored only girls. (In 1974, the two schools would merge, becoming Buckingham Browne & Nichols, or simply BB&N.) In December 1922, three months into seventh grade at B&N, Brad was abruptly offered a "chance-vacancy" at the posh Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts. He transferred in midterm from B&N, becoming overnight a boarder rather than a day student. Writing from Groton to his parents, Sherry, or Mabel every few days, twelve-year-old Brad was miserably homesick. To his mother on December 14, he put up a brave front: "It is a wonderful school. . . . I am having a fine time." To Sis, at about the same time, he confessed his real feelings: "I am sorely afraid that I cannot stay here much longer. I have been on detention every day since I have been here. The work is far too hard for me." The Last of His Kind The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer . Copyright © by David Roberts . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Last of His Kind: The Life and Adventures of Bradford Washburn, America's Boldest Mountaineer by David Roberts All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.