List Books » Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled--and Knuckleheaded--Quest for the Rocky Mountain High
Authors: Mark Obmascik
ISBN-13: 9781416566991, ISBN-10: 1416566996
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
Date Published: May 2009
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Mark Obmascik has been a journalist for two decades, most recently at the Denver Post, where he was lead writer for the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and winner of the 2003 National Press Club Award for environmental journalism. His freelance stories have been published in Outside and other magazines, and he has aired numerous political stories on public affairs and television news programs. An obsessed birder himself, he lives in Denver with his wife and sons.
Fat, forty-four, father of three sons, and facing a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik would never have guessed that his next move would be up a 14,000-foot mountain. But when his twelve-year-old son gets bitten by the climbing bug at summer camp, Obmascik can't resist the opportunity for some high-altitude father-son bonding by hiking a peak together. After their first joint climb, Obmascik, addled by the thin air, decides to keep his head in the clouds and try to scale all fifty-four of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains, known as the Fourteeners-and to do it in less than one year. The result is Halfway to Heaven, a rollicking, witty, sometimes harrowing chronicle of an outrageous adventure that is no walk in the park. This "hilarious midlife picaresque" (Publishers Weakly) has garnered wide critical acclaim, was named an "Editor's Pick" by Parade, won the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, and made one reviewer laugh so hard he "blew beer out of [his] nose" (Colorado Daily). Like the author's critically acclaimed debut, The Big Year, it brings a keen eye and sharp humor to an obsessive subculture: climbers who share the author's crazed passion of scaling all fifty-four of the famed and feared Fourteeners.
In this hilarious midlife picaresque, journalist Obmascik (The Big Year) set himself the goal of climbing all 54 Colorado mountain peaks that are higher than 14,0000 feet because it was both hard, and not too hard-thousands have completed the technically undemanding circuit. He hit the gym, pared two pounds from his flabby frame and spent a summer plodding and wheezing up the "fourteeners," trying to keep up with the better-conditioned women and older men who cruised past toward the summits. Obmascik dodged lightning bolts, took a few hair-raising tumbles, admired the majestic scenery and experienced the exaltation of having truly earned his post-climb bacon double-cheeseburgers. Above all, he bonded with his "man-dates"-male climbing partners who head to the hills seeking refuge from woman troubles, fear of needles and numbing desk jobs. Their slightly feckless masculinity harmonizes with the shaggy-dog stories the author sprinkles in about the miners, cannibals and odious Texans who populate Colorado's mountain lore. Instead of the rarefied spirituality of typical mountaineering narratives, Obmascik's saga revels in off-color jokes and humiliating pratfalls; the result feels like a raucous bowling night, with moderate oxygen deprivation, on the brink of an abyss. (May 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Introduction 1
1 Failure 5
Grays Peak
Torreys Peak
2 Religious Experience 11
Mount of the Holy Cross
3 The Mission Takes Shape 22
Huron Peak
Quandary Peak
La Plata Peak
Mount Sherman
Mount Yale
Mount Princeton
4 The Monkey 35
Creston Needle
Humboldt Peak
Mount Elbert
Grays Peak
Torreys Peak
5 Man-Date 59
Missouri Mountain
6 Panic 72
Mount Antero
7 Shock 81
Mount Massive
8 Bulldog 97
Mount Shavano
Tabeguace Peak
9 Punishment 107
Mount Columbia
10 Blown Away 111
Mount Evans
Mount Bierstadt
11 The Elephant 118
Mount Belford
Mount Oxford
12 One Benjamin Franklin 123
Culebra Peak
San Luis Peak
13 Gravity 137
Little Bear Peak
Blanca Peak
Ellingwood Point
14 Guts 148
Wetterborn Peak
Uncompahgre Peak
Redcloud Peak
Sunshine Peak
15 Scruples 175
Mount Democrat
Mount Lincoln
Mount Bross
16 Gnawed 182
Mount Lindsey
17 Day at the Office 188
Pyramid Peak
18 Limits 196
Maroon Peak
Castle Peak
19 Man Maker 207
Missouri Mountain
20 The Needles 212
Mount Eolus
Sunlight Peak
Windom Peak
21 The Bald Leading the Blind 228
Wilson Peak
22 Homestretch 236
Handies Peak
Mount Sneffels
Snowmass Mountain
Kit Carson Peak
Challenger Point
Mount Harvard
Capitol Peak
El Diente Peak
Mount Wilson
North Maroon Peak
Crestone Peak
23 Return 249
Longs Peak
24 Summit 260
Pikes Peak
Bibliography 267
Acknowledgments 271