A Range of Glaciers: The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range [Hardcover]

Fred W. Beckey (Author), Murray Morgan (Foreword), Fred Beckey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003

In this first comprehensive account of the 19th-century exploration and survey of the northern Cascades, Fred Beckey presents a wide range of materials from dozens of archives across the United States, Canada, and beyond: voyagers' logs, trappers' yarns, agency and government documents, official surveys, tall tales, climbers' journals, and sober histories. The voices, most of them from first-person narratives, range from wonder at the magnificence of the terrain, through frustration with the rigors of its harsh conditions, to the often humorous and sometimes tragic anecdotes of daily life in what was still mostly unexplored wilderness. The story is of multiple overlays of discovery and conquest: European and American explorers and sea captains, fur traders, railroad builders, surveyors of international boundaries, settlers, gold prospectors, mountaineers, timber barons, tourists, and finally the Forest Service and National Park administrations.Two of the narratives are recounted in detail: the story of the survey of the 49th parallel, with its clear contrast between the British and American approaches, and the account of early conquests of the major peaks, told with intimate relish by a fellow climber. This study will be particularly appealing to those interested in American wilderness areas and the way people approached those areas during a time of dynamic change in the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, it will be a sourcebook for future histories of the northern Cascades. Fred Beckey, a legend among mountain climbers, is also the author of a number of climbing guides, including the three-volume "Cascade Alpine Guide". 'Nobody else could have written this absorbing appreciation of the Northern Cascades, the 'range of glaciers.' Fred Beckey is a master of all he has surveyed and of all the surveyors surveyed' - from the Foreword by Murray Morgan.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 568 pages
• Publisher: Oregon Historical Society Press (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875952437
• ISBN-13: 978-0875952437
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 54 - 40 or fight, April 2, 2003

By 

Geronimo "geronimo2003" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Range of Glaciers: The Exploration and Survey of the Northern Cascade Range (Hardcover)

The primary accomplishment of this book is its 500+ page discussion of the Washington Cascades without mention of The Mountaineers club! The first 140 pages deal with indians, immigrant trails and the Hudson's Bay Company. Nothing new here, a lot of references to Winthrop's Canoe and Saddle and a discription of Ross' trip over Cascade Pass. The next seventy pages are about the first boundry survey fron 1857 - 1862. This is the guts of the book and it is really good - vintage Beckey. It's researched from original sources and well footnoted. The next sixty or seventy pages are basically about the railroads. These stories have been told before in more detai but the recounting is interesting with an attention to the geography that is usually overlooked. (Yakima Pass?) The third part of the book is a superficial presentation of mining in the Northwest, early mountaineering on the volcanoes and the beginnings of the forest service. None of these are done particularly well and none of them have enough detail to complement the first part of the book. This section does have a thirty page section on the USGS topographers and the second boundry survey in 1901 - 1908. It was during this era that many of the first ascents in the cascades were done but the discussion is brief and clearly omits the majority of what Beckey wrote about these efforts in the CAG series. Overall I have to say that I was disappointed. I understand that the Oregon Historical Society lacked the funds to publish and held it up for a long time but I started hearing about this book in the early '90s and saw a mock-up of it's cover at their booth at bookfest in about 1995. I got very excited reading the first part of the book but ended up feeling like Fred got tired about halfway through, or that he lost interest and just glossed over everything after the boundry survey. Read Woodhouse about mining. Read Molenar and Haines or Rusk on mountaineering. Read Beckey's own Challenge of the North Cascades and the introductions and footnotes in the Cascade Alpine Guide series. Read Bates Three Fingers to get a flavor of the early forest service era - and there are probably better sources for people interested in that topic (Even Beckey's CAG intros and notes have more information that this book does.) Read Tabor & Crowder Routes and Rocks about the geology. Read Roe and Praether about the railroads (again, also covered in CAG). Read Miles Kolma Kulshan about Mt. Baker. Finally, read Carlos Schwantes. His railroad discussion and his regional history are a lot better than Beckey's. But read Beckey about the boundry survey. There's nothing else like it.