Customer Reviews

Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life

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Arlene Blum's new book, Breaking Trail, is a book for everyone interested in the experience of high peak mountaineering--plenty of thrills and chills for those who stayed up all night reading Into Thin Air or Touching the Void like I did. However, there is one huge difference with this book--its written with a tenderness of narratorial voice I have not seen in other, more macho mountaineering books. Here, the high peaks
become a metaphor for what all women face when they aspire to dreams outside the suburban marriage with freezer, soccer kids, and SUV. Her voice is intimate, modest, and honest. By the time I finished this book, I felt like we had been hiking together for days. This is not just a running account of a life spent in the highest peaks on earth--it is also the story of an accomplished scientist and social activist who is an inspiring role model for women of any age. She has lived a creative, adventurous, and
uniquely imagined life, rich in adventure, beauty, love, and tragedy. She is the embodiment of: "If you can dream it, you can do it." After I finished the book, I was able to go to her website, where there are twelve slide shows of the climbs she writes about in the book; seeing the color photos of many places and incidents mentioned in the book took my breath away and only deepened my appreciation of this remarkable woman. She was not afraid to follow the deepest currents of her own soul into the mountains at a time when there were virtually no women participating in serious mountaineering (except to cook and make the coffee or truck loads of gear from one base camp to another while the guys made the glamouress sprints up to the summit.) Even having lived through it (being a contemporary of Ms. Blum's)
I was indignant at the way she met with sexual bias at every turn. Its a great reminder of how different things were just forty years ago--and how they could be again. This is a book to read and pass to a woman friend or to a daughter. Its a great read and contains, through the recounting of incidents from the writer's childhood, a lot of insight into how someone ends up in
high peak climbing. Arlene Blum is a role model for women everywhere and her story is told woman to woman. This is THE summer read this year. I loved it!

Having read and loved the author's other book, "A Woman's Place", I looked forward to reading this one, knowing that, at the very least, I could expect a well-written book. Well, it is that and much more. It is a memoir that kept me turning its pages, as it provides a peek as to how this highly intelligent and articulate, nice, Jewish girl became a mountaineer with which to contend.

In a macho arena, where women were considered to be mere appendages to the male of the species, when considered at all, the author is surely a trailblazer. With her world famous, women only, expedition to summit Annapurna, she put women on the mountaineering map, letting the world know that a woman's place is on top. Independent and singular in her desire to make her mark, the author has written a memoir that provides insight into her desire to climb mountains, as well as her development as both a person and a woman.

Set across the backdrop of women's changing roles in the social fabric, this memoir is an intimate and compelling look at a life well-lived and filled with achievement in a man's world, as the author is not only a mountaineer but a well-respected scientist known for some ground-breaking research that has had impact on the general public. Neither of these fields was initially receptive to the inclusion of woman, and the author's memoir details her travails in gaining acceptance as an equal, both as a mountaineer and a scientist.

Written with humor and insight, the author creates an intimate memoir that chronicles her development into the person that she became. This is a memoir that will keep the reader engaged and turning the pages of this wonderful book. Highly enjoyable, those who are interested in why one would climb mountains, as well as those who enjoy well-written, interesting memoirs, will love this book. Bravo!

I bought this book at an author reading in Berkeley, and it's taken me 3 months to finish. The stories are often quite fascinating. Blum covered an amazing amount of ground, since graduating from Reed in the 1960s. She successfully weaves together her research in physical chemistry with climbing, and reveals that her greatest insight into protein folding came to her while viewing a frozen pile of rocks on top of a mountain. This book documents her strength in the face of flagrant sexism on the part of many climbing teams. It is painful to read about her being excluded from the summit team after an exhausting slog to climb an 8K mountains. Her stories show how resilient and resourceful she was. Even if a trip results in the death of teammates, or the icky fights reminiscent of roommate squabbles, Arlene Blum would go back to the maps, and plan another amazing voyage around the planet. Besides her original Endless Winter, she also organized and carried out a trans-Himalayan hike, and managed to travel across the European Alps with her infant daughter and Aussie husband. The accounts of Berkeley were particularly interesting to me: Arlene records her experience carrying the Torah at a Beyt Chesed high holiday service, her success founding the Himalayan fair at Live Oak Park, and little nuggets about jogging in the hills.

There are just a dozen or two books that I've read and treasured, not only for their excellence, but also because they're like no other. This is one of those rare reading experiences. Blum is a female mountain climber writing about her successes and failures, her highs and lows. You don't have to be a crusader for women's rights, nor do you need to know or care the first thing about mountaineering to be entranced by this magical book.

Blum has an amazing story to tell, and she tells it like Scheherezade--every episode leaving the reader impatient for the next chapter. In the end the book is about the triumph of the human spirit, and you don't need to be a climber to appreciate it. Buy it and open it--Blum will do the rest.

I'm not a huge memoir fan, it takes an outstsanding story to get to me, but I can place Arlene's book Breaking Trail firmly in that catagory. Part narrative and part detective mystery, Arlene's story recaps the inspirational climbs up the world's high peaks and across the world's largest mountain ranges. Woven in between these amazing adventures is the mystery of her family life and it literally unfolds as you read the book. A must read for anyone interested in the natural world, the challenge of high mountain climbing, a women's desire to suceed, all wrapped around a family mystery.

After reading and enjoying Arlene's first book detailing her experiences climbing Annapurna, it has been a great joy to have an account of her life to read. "Breaking Trail" is not only for those interested in mountaineering and trekking. I recommend the book to all women, especially those of us who find it challenging to forge our way through a world which still does not give credit to a woman's abilities and strengths. Many thanks to Arlene Blum for being a trail-blazer and a mentor.

Not only is this a terrific mountaineering book, but it also a book about a woman struggling in the male oriented world of her young adulthood. She tells the tale of how she put a brilliant career and outstanding mountaineering life together. Arlene shows that she has what it takes to play with the big boys but not lose touch with being a woman.

Mountain climbing drama comes to life in mountaineer, biochemist, and author Arlene Blum's Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life. Blum has written about climbing before in Annapurna: A Woman's Place: her latest is the story of how she got to be a climber, moving from an overprotected Chicago childhood to reach some of the highest mountains on Earth. Each chapter starts with a memory from her early life, which serves as a starting point to trace an element which contributed to her becoming a climber. A fascinating account.

As a adventure Arlene Blum's Breaking trail: A Climbing Life is captivating; as a memoir a life altering experience. Reading about a women who had the fortitude to push past conformity, offers the reader renewed enthusiasm for today. Blum writes beautifully and in wonderful detail that keeps her human. Insights into her childhood, turn this adventure into a thought provoking tale of life, death and the meaning of it all. Nicely done in one book.

I loved this book. Arlene Blum has lived a full, adventurous, and fascinating life. The book ties together her Jewish childhood experiences with her academic and climbing accomplishments. And although I take a completely different stance from her approach to raising a family - she and her lover deliberately chose to try to conceive while never intending to marry and then Arlene raised her daughter basically on her own (the father has contact but lives in distant Australia) - Her writing enables me to understand the reasons for the choices she made. Arlene is able to take an honest look at her approach to the many obstacles she faced in her life. It is her ability to overcome that inspires.