Enduring Patagonia

Rating:
Summary: Being There
Review: Beautifully written and evocative--makes you feel you're on a frozen bivy ledge with the author. Suitable for savvy mountaineers and armchair adventurers alike. The author has made several impressive ascents yet is quite honest about his failings, dumb mistakes, weaknesses and fears. I liked his assertion there are no "important routes" in mountaineering except as they are important to the individual mountaineer--who cares if others know of your successes? A few minor complaints: near the end, the author waxes a little too flowery for me on the spiritual and mystical attributes of climbing--it's still only snow & rock; a couple of small grammatical mistakes ["none" really is a singular pronoun...]; and some problems with parallels ["The depth and breadth of my Patagonian peregrinations are just that--wide and deep..."]. Without getting too maudlin or detailed, the author traces nicely his growth as an adult and alpinist, especially his Army years, and shows how his earlier years impacted his climbing. I had always been leery about trying to climb in Patagonia because the weather seemed to make it a poor bet but Crouch has stirred me to the point where I plan to give it a try, with modest expectations. His book suggests how the place itself, with all the wildness of nature, could be a suitable goal.

Rating:
Summary: A real climber tells it like it is
Review: Enduring Patagonia is an excellent read. Crouch is the real deal, and he gives the reader a full helping of what it's like to do battle in Patagonia: waiting for weather, climbing fast while the weather fuse burns, taking risks, dealing with committment, learning to love misery, and, sometimes, pure elation. It's all in here.

If you want to climb inside the mind of an elite Patagonia climber, buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Well...he aint Krakauer...
Review: I read this book while stranded in an hosteria during a storm in Patagonia. How much more perfect can the situation be? I totally appreciate the passion Crouch conjures, but you can only hear the same old cliches so many times before you realize the author doesn't have anything else to offer. Yes, he loves climbing. Bravo. A lot of people love climbing, and a lot of people sacrifice a comfy job and home in order to satisfy that addiction. Crouch is trying to pave his climbing with a book that just doesn't quite measure up. He has some lovely passages, but if I were reading them from my apartment in Seattle rather than the aforementioned atmospheric perch in Chalten, Argentina, they wouldn't mean anything. That's the true measure of the book. Read it if you're an alpine junkie (or trapped by the Patagonian winds in Chalten), but otherwise, don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: "Into Thin Air" fans will be thrilled!
Review: I've long loved Gregory Crouch's writing in the mountaineering magazines and was excited to see a full-length book written by him. I was even more thrilled to discover how he brought the world of mountaineering alive in "Enduring Patagonia" -- the way he describes these otherworldly places is unimaginatively beautiful.

It's a literary book many readers will place among the classics of adventure literature, to be sure. And for those who read "Into Thin Air," it's the next step in breaking open the world of cutting edge alpinism. Now even my mother wants to read it!

Rating:
Summary: Well...he aint Krakauer...
Review: If you climb and have a deep-rooted passion for the emotions that climbing stirs in you then I would highly recommend this book. You don't have to be on the cutting edge of climbing to understand in your heart what Crouch talks about in Enduring Patagonia. Empathy, focus, inner-demons, harmony, determination, pain, self-realization and the laurels of success are the streams of conscious thought that are conveyed so beautifully in Crouch's book. If you climb you know that all these feeling come out in great strength throughout almost every climb. I've never been able to put into words all the emotions and the reason for ones passion of climbing but Crouch's book does a stellar job of wording our obsession with the sport and lifestyle.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Fantastic - Beautiful
Review: If you climb and have a deep-rooted passion for the emotions that climbing stirs in you then I would highly recommend this book. You don't have to be on the cutting edge of climbing to understand in your heart what Crouch talks about in Enduring Patagonia. Empathy, focus, inner-demons, harmony, determination, pain, self-realization and the laurels of success are the streams of conscious thought that are conveyed so beautifully in Crouch's book. If you climb you know that all these feeling come out in great strength throughout almost every climb. I've never been able to put into words all the emotions and the reason for ones passion of climbing but Crouch's book does a stellar job of wording our obsession with the sport and lifestyle.

Rating:
Summary: Fiction or not, I enjoyed it
Review: Well written book about Crouch's interesting life and a vivid picture of his climbing trips to Patagonia. Crouch's point of view is unglamorous; his descriptions (and pictures) of base camp hovels are disgusting, the climbs sound miserable, and the weeks of waiting for good weather seem mindnumbing. And yet, to paraphrase the author, he'd rather be no where else. This curious incongruity kept me engrossed in the book to the end. A very rewarding read.

Rating:
Summary: Fiction or not, I enjoyed it
Review: Well written book about Crouch's interesting life and a vivid picture of his climbing trips to Patagonia. Crouch's point of view is unglamorous; his descriptions (and pictures) of base camp hovels are disgusting, the climbs sound miserable, and the weeks of waiting for good weather seem mindnumbing. And yet, to paraphrase the author, he'd rather be no where else. This curious incongruity kept me engrossed in the book to the end. A very rewarding read.