Salt to Summit: A Vagabond Journey from Death Valley to Mount Whitney (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781582437507)

From the depths of Death Valley, Daniel Arnold set out to reach Mount Whitney in a way no road or trail could take him. Anything manmade or designed to make travel easy was out. With a backpack full of empty two-liter bottles, and the remotest corners of desert before him, he began his toughest test yet of physical and mental endurance.

Badwater Basin sits 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley, the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere. Mount Whitney rises 14,505 feet above sea level, the highest point in the contiguous United States. Arnold spent seventeen days traveling a roundabout route from one to the other, traversing salt flats, scaling dunes, and sinking into slot canyons. Aside from bighorn sheep and a phantom mountain lion, his only companions were ghosts of the dreamers and misfits who first dared into this unknown territory. He walked in the footsteps of William Manly, who rescued the last of the forty-niners from the bottom of Death Valley; tracked John LeMoigne, a prospector who died in the sand with his burros; and relived the tales of Mary Austin, who learned the secret trails of the Shoshone Indians. This is their story too, as much as it is a history of salt and water and of the places they collide and disappear.

Guiding the reader up treacherous climbs and through burning sands, Arnold captures the dramatic landscapes as only he can with photographs to bring it all to life. From the salt to the summit, this is an epic journey across America's most legendary desert.

Author: Daniel Arnold
ISBN-10: 1582437505
ISBN-13: 9781582437507
Publisher: Catapult
Language: English
Published: 05/22/2012
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/11/2012
Library Journal 07/01/2012 pg. 96