Postcards From the Trailer Park: The Secret Lives of Climbers

Here are Colorado-based mountaineer Cameron M. Burns's funniest, finest, freshest takes on the people, places, and pursuits of the average American climber. POSTCARDS FROM THE TRAILER PARK is written in the grand tradition of climber-writers like Krakauer, Gillman, and Bonington. Burns mixes stories about climbing with straightforward reporting and witty, sometimes dark, personal commentary on what he calls "the most expensive and dangerous way to tear rotator cuffs and waste valuable time." Burns's mountain "oddventures" take the reader from an attempt on Aconcagua using a cheap Wal-Mart tent, to the invention of new equipment and the subsidiary sport of "hoopsticking" for the extremely soft rock of the New Mexico desert, to the fine art of spray-painting pitons for identification purposes. His profiles of fellow climbers describe Fred Beckey, David Brower, Galen Rowell, John Middendorf, Warren Hollinger, Pete Athans, Eric Weihenmayer, the Banditos climbing gang, and many others at their best, worst, and weirdest, both in the mountains and under Burns's own "screwily focused" spotlight. Read, laugh, and be entertained by one of the best mountaineering writers around.