No Limits But the Sky

Christine Woodside has been Editor-in-Chief of Appalachia journal since 2006. She is a writer and editor specializing in environment and energy issues, and mountain adventure. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the journal Nature Climate Change, and the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media. Chris was a newspaper reporter or editor for 18 years and covered environmental issues for The Day of New London, Connecticut. She has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and volunteers as a trail maintainer in Connecticut, where she lives.

The explorers chronicled in this collection push the limits--of endurance, weather, altitude, or personal achievement. Some make history, such as the first American climber to ascend Kilimanjaro in 1932; others, such as the leader of an 1895 team attempting a first ascent of Canada's Mount Lefroy, never return. Each essay has been chosen from the archives from America's oldest mountaineering and conservation journal, Appalachia, to guide you forward from the age of first ascents until the present day. Freak accidents, legendary perseverance, and singularly colorful personalities and climbing luminaries such as Bradford Washburn, Elizabeth Knowlton, and Fritz Wiessner all figure into this fascinating, illustrated collection. In print since 1876, Appalachia has delivered inspired writing on mountain exploration, ecology, and conservation, along with international mountaineering news, analysis of Northeastern mountaineering accidents and much more. Now in back in print, these twenty-five essays offer no less inspiration and power than when they first appeared.