Snowbound [Paperback]

Ladd Hamilton (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A detailed, well-paced re-creation of the Carlin hunting party fiasco of 1893 by Hamilton (This Bloody Deed, not reviewed). By all portents, the winter season looked to arrive early and mean as a group of three New York gentlemen, plus two camp personnel, headed out from Kendrick, Idaho, for the Bitterroot Range, on the hunting trip of a lifetime. Also from the start, it was clear that camp cook George Colegate was in ill health. He claimed it was stomach cramps, but as the group pushed deeper into remote Idaho, his conditioned worsened, as did the weather and trail conditions. Culling from official military reports, diaries, a published book by one of the participants, and newspaper coverage, Hamilton imaginatively re-creates their days in the wild, centering the story on Colegate's final admission to his charges that he had knowingly left behind the catheters necessary to drain his prostate-enlarged bladder: They hurt him, and he thought he could make it unaided. Not so. The remaining guide urged retreat, but the sports continued until Colegate could no longer mount his horse, his kidneys now turning his body to a putrifying mass. The others cut and run, abandoning Colegate to his fate. They thrashed their way down the cruel, rapids-infested Lochsa River, freezing and starving, and were rescued at the eleventh hour. Back in civilization, they found a storm of criticism, not least from the Colegate family, who wondered why dad was left when a handful of men might have aided him--back when expedition mates looked out for one another. No one emerges unscathed here, except Hamilton, whose yarn- spinning reconstruction is a pleasure. (maps, illustrations, photos) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: Washington State University (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874221544
• ISBN-13: 978-0874221541
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Unforgiving Bitterroots of Idaho., April 1, 2000

By 

Pettigrew "North/South" (Moscow, ID USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snowbound (Paperback)

Last weekend I stopped in a local bookstore (Moscow, Idaho) and Ladd Hamilton was signing his book, Snowbound. I talked with him a few minutes and bought a copy. For those of you that have traveled Hwy 12 over Lolo pass, you may have seen the markers for Colegate Licks. I've fished this area for years and always wondered about the details of the Carlin hunting party. Hamilton has written a superb account of the events specifying this out of the way marker on the Lochsa river. It is as gripping an account of wilderness travel as one can find. If you enjoyed Ambrose's re-telling of the Lewis and Clark expedition over this region, this is every bit as good. The ethical questions raised in this tragedy are considerable and sparked a national debate. A great story and wonderful reading.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A extraordinary and well-told historical tragedy., December 2, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Snowbound (Hardcover)

In September 1893, a troika of young gentleman hunters from New York headed into northern Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains, hoping to bag some trophy game--moose, elk, maybe even a grizzly bear or two. With them traveled a guide, a camp cook, ten horses, and three dogs. They packed along ample food and equipment, including a couple of the latest, most sophisticated firearms, and it seemed that nothing could prevent their enjoying a relaxing and rewarding wilderness adventure. Nothing, that is, except perhaps the weather. Locally heavy autumn rains portended an early and brutal snowfall in the Bitterroots that year. But the hunters chose to ignore the weather, just as they did the obvious ill health of their cook. These were only the first in what would be a series of bad judgments that turned this pleasure trip into a memorable race for survival.

Combining a reporter's devotion to detail with a yarn-spinner's talent for building suspense, Ladd Hamilton has crafted from the true tale of the Carlin party a riveting, often chilling book that's timeless in its portrayal of human frailties and Nature's capriciousness. "Snowbound" is the sort of tome that Seattleite Jon Krakauer ("Into the Wild") might have penned had he lived a century earlier. It's a classic story of people overreaching their abilities in the bush, but is made especially impressive by the fact that Hamilton had to stitch it patiently and tenaciously together from one-dimensional military records, a slanted account published by a member of the Carlin band, and equally suspect newspaper reports.

A retired newspaperman who now teaches journalism at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, Hamilton has some experience recounting bygone tragedies. His 1994 book "This Bloody Deed: The Magruder Incident" breathed grisly new life into the case of Lloyd Magruder, a prominent Lewiston merchant who in 1863 was murdered in the Bitterroots, provoking a chase after the killers that extended as far as San Francisco.

Like that earlier work, "Snowbound" has the deceptive pace of a slow-burning housefire. Readers see disaster dogging the heels of the Carlin party long before its members did. In large part, this blindness was the result of distrust between the two breeds that made up the expedition: the citified sportsmen, represented by organizer Will Carlin, a photographer, skilled marksman, and son of the general in command of the army at Vancouver, Washington; and the veteran outdoorsmen, among whom cook George Colgate is the most noteworthy. The Easterners, overconfident of their mountaineering prowess, refused to listen to their backwoods guide when he counseled retreat before the threat of record snows. Meanwhile, Colegate grew sicker with each passing day, yet lied about his condition, fearing the hunters would resent him if they knew the truth: that he was suffering from a severe urinary blockage, and had foolishly left at home the catheters he needed to drain his bladder.

Not until snow closed the trail home and Colegate was unable to move on his own--his body rotting from the inside out, putrid with gangrene--did sense overcome suspicion. And by then starvation and desperation had set in. While army troops and the cook's son scoured the Bitterroots for signs of the company, Carlin and the rest finally decided to abandon the dying Colegate and thrash their way over ridges and rivers toward civilization...only to find their rescue overshadowed by national criticism that they'd acted hastily and with cowardice in leaving a comrade behind--something that no hard-bitten child of the West would have done.

In another writer's hands, this debate might have played out as a silly one pitting city slickers against country clods. However, Hamilton demonstrates an uncommon sympathy for rigid frontier ethics. He also has a spare prose style that seems ideally suited to a story, like this one, that even without embellishment moves like a frigid mountain wind. The only times when the author's presence is significantly felt are in those cases where his historical sources failed to answer questions in the narrative--when, for instance, he could find no explanations of a character's thoughts or responses to a situation. Then, Hamilton writes, he blended in fiction "consistent with the facts as they were recorded." This technique will probably send traditional, footnote-happy historians into frothing convulsions. But what reader, reflecting on the agony of having digested more academic history texts in school, wouldn't allow a few such intellectual liberties if they produce a book as rich and haunting as "Snowbound"?

(From Seattle Weekly, Nov. 18, 1997)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gut-wrenching account of wilderness survival., December 28, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Snowbound (Paperback)

Hamilton does an excellent job of describing the physical demands of a pack trip into a mountain wilderness.

Reading his detailed account, a person can almost feel the unforgiving weather and participate in the bruising, torturous trek through the mountains.

Add to this the indecision, moral dilemmas, and complacency of the hunters and your in for a great read.

The fact that this was a true story really kept me in awe.