The White Ladder

December 2, 2024
Mountain climber Light debuts with a high-octane history of mountaineering. Beginning the account in 1802, with explorer Alexander von Humboldt’s 19,286-foot ascent of Chimborazo, a volcano in Ecuador—the first climb by a European on record—Light describes how Humboldt, even though he did not reach the summit (he and his ill-equipped party were stymied by a “giant crevasse”), afterward embarked on a sold-out lecture tour that sparked the “Golden Age of Alpinism” by inspiring a heated competition for “the world altitude record.” Light vividly narrates some of the era’s most famous climbs—including Edward Whymper’s summiting of the Matterhorn in 1865 and George Dixon Longstaff’s ascent of India’s Nanda Devi in 1905—while making clear that these white expedition leaders were not the first or most impressive climbers to top the world’s most daunting peaks. He notes, for example, that 15th-century Incan priests ascended Llulliallaco, a 22,110-foot volcano, and also devotes much of his narrative to the feats of Indigenous guides who routinely outperformed early European climbers. Mountaineering quickly took on a bitter and competitive edge that, as Light amusingly recounts, sometimes led to sniping and slander, like an anonymous article that cast doubt on mountaineer William Woodman Graham’s 1883 ascent of the Himalayan peak Kabru by claiming that, based on his descriptions, he must have climbed the wrong mountain. It’s a spirited, adventuresome chronicle.