Summit Tales: Early Adventures in the Canadian Rockies

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

“Summit” is a verb referring to the act of conquering the peaks.
Summit Tales tells the stories of many of the earliest mountaineers,
with an emphasis on those who climbed first, climbed highest, and
climbed the most. The book is largely focused on pre-1900 climbers, such
as Wheeler, Vaux, Wilcox, Warrington, Collie, Shaffer, Coleman, Whymper,
and others. The stories are usually overviews of an individual’s or
group’s exploits and contribution to mountaineering and, occasionally,
science. Pole has gleaned the stories from first-person accounts,
archival materials, and publications of alpine associations, all of
which are cited in the brief bibliography. The book is heavily
illustrated with black-and-white photos, some of them full-page images.
While some are published for the first time, many would be familiar to
any student of the Rockies.

This work is not meant to be scholarly or comprehensive. The stories
are written for entertainment value, describing mishaps and mistakes,
death and daring rescues, competition and triumphs. While they are
arranged around loose themes, the lack of strong organization forces the
reader to take each chapter on its own and enjoy the tales without
trying to put them into their historical place. Without considerable
prior knowledge, understanding the temporal and geographical
relationships among them is difficult. The book lacks an index, which
would have made it easier to track individual climbers or peaks through
different stories.

Overall, Summit Tales is a good read for anyone interested in the
history of mountaineering.