The letters collected in Woman on the Rocks document Ruth MendenhallÕs fifty-year mountaineering career which began on a trip to the east side of the Sierra Nevada. In the years that followed, Ruth and husband, John Mendenhall, made numerous first ascents in North America including some of the most classic in the Sierra Nevada: Mount Whitney, Third Needle (1939), Mount Sill, Swiss Arete (1938), Temple Crag, North Peak (1940), Mount Whitney, Southeast Buttress (1941), Lower Cathedral Spire, Yosemite (1948), Mount Williamson, North Face (1957), and Mt. Mendenhall.

"This book is a priceless collection of letters and accounts by one of the first women climbers in America. Though from a different era, Ruth Mendenhall's fun loving attitude, spunky character, and journalistic talent vividly capture the timeless essence of the spirit of adventure." Lynn Hill

This is the book on Whitney--anything else is overkill.
Los Angeles Times

World-renown climber Peter Croft applies his unique experience to updating one of North American mountaineering's most enduring guides, CLIMBING MT WHITNEY (third edition, 42nd printing, Spotted Dog Press, Bishop, CA), with photography by Galen Rowell, DanÊPatitucci, John Moynier, Andy Selters, and Glen Dawson.

Best known for pioneering solo wall routes and what he calls "link-ups," climbing the ridges of entire ranges in one-day, Peter Croft received the American Alpine Club's Underhill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mountaineering. Includes Croft's insight on how to prepare physically for the climb from sea level to altitude with the right equipment. Along with the standard trails, technical climbing routes are Croft's cross-country routes that circumnavigate Whitney and three classic routes on Mt. Russell, Whitney's neighbor to the north. Croft's hand-drawn topos accompany photographic maps of each technical route.

Whenever men gather around blazing campfires on cold nights in the high country and talk of the history of mountaineering, there are certain names that inevitably come into conversation . . .among Americans, John Muir, Clarence King and Norman Clyde.
San Francisco Chronicle

When Norman Clyde started climbing in the Sierra Nevada, trails and roads were few. Getting to the mountains was almost as challenging as climbing them. The infrastructure of today's Sierra Nevada simply didn't exist. Clyde lived in an abandoned ranch house owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and walked from Big Pine to most of the summits of the peaks he climbed. This edition includes previously unpublished works with photographs by Norman Clyde, Glen Dawson, Cedric Wright.

They came west, daring pioneers, men and women who left behind their families and homes to cross a continent in search of gold. They braved remote and desolate country not without its deprivations and hardships. Beautifully written by the leading authorities on the early history of Eastern California. Fascinating reading with maps to the historic camps from remote Death Valley to Yosemite's high-country.

¥ More than 375 hiking desert routes in Nevada and California
¥ Updated edition 2006
¥ $21.95 189334312X 416 pages
¥ Peaks and ranges not previously covered
¥ Updated road and route information
¥ Readable natural and human history
¥ Internet resources for visiting these areas
¥ Complete bibliography
¥ Geologist and author, Andy Zdon (Geology of the Las Vegas Region), has been traveling the desert west for 25 years

I enjoy Desert Summits and have used it frequently for hikes around Pahrump and Death Valley.
John P. Davis, Scrambles in the Great Basin

It is a fantastic guide!
George Wuerthner, author

Professional geologist Andy Zdon's Desert Summits: A Climbing & Hiking Guide to California and Southern Nevada is the definitive guide to more than three hundred remote and diverse desert mountains in California and Southern Nevada including:

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Death Valley National Park, Desert National Wildlife Range, Inyo National Forest, Joshua Tree National Park, Lake Mead NRA, Mojave National Preserve , Mono Basin National Scenic Area, Red Rock NCA, San Bernardino National Forest, Spring Mountains NRA, Toiyabe National Forest

From steep scree slopes to miner's trails, this is an opportunity to explore beautiful and rugged landscapes.

Author Andy Zdon climbed his first desert peak, Telescope, in the winter of 1981 and has been climbing desert peaks ever since. A member of the American Institute of Professional Geologists, Zdon also wrote the fieldtrip guide book, Geology of the Las Vegas Region.

More than 100 day hikes, walks & parks!

From Charleston Peak, Nevada's eighth highest, to waterfalls in the heart of high desert sandstone, this is the BEST dog hiking guide to Las Vegas! The Spring Mountains, Kyle Canyon and Vicinity, Harris Springs Road, Deer Creek and Vicinity, Lee Canyon and Vicinity, Cold Creek, Wild Horse Watering Holes, Trail of the Mustangs, Mountain Springs Summit and Vicinity, Potosi Mountain, Carpenter Canyon, Goodsprings Mining District, Desert National Wildlife Refuge, Pahranagat Wildlife Refuge, Red Rock NCA, Wheeler Camp Spring, Spring Mountain Ranch, Blue Diamond, Lake Mead, NRA, Valley of Fire, and more!

For dog-lovers who have a hankering for the trail and four-legged companionship.
Los Angeles Daily News

Great idea!
Fritz Coleman, KNBC

Pack a picnic lunch, a copy of Favorite Dog Hikes In And Around Los Angeles and head for LA's favorite dog-hiking trails. First published in 1995, Favorite Dog Hikes In And Around Los Angeles is our bestselling guide to the most beautiful dog-friendly trails in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains. Trails listed in this book include Palo Comado Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area; Arroyo Seco, Mt. Lowe, Mt. Lukens, Strawberry Peak, Mt. Williamson, Mt. Lewis and Sunset Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Each hike includes driving instructions, trail descriptions, mileages, suggested maps and estimated round-trip completion times.

New are pointers for removing ticks, how to keep your dog on leash while walking hands-free along the trail, and how to make your own dog-hiking boots complete with pattern.

Raised in Studio City, author Wynne Benti (Favorite Dog Hikes In and Around Las Vegas, Climbing Mt. Whitney) founded the K9 Hiking Committee in the Sierra Club's largest chapter. Wynne has climbed more than 400 mountains including all range highpoints in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, San Jacinto Mountains and Santa Monica Mountains. Two of her dogs, KD and Syd, adopted from the East Valley Animal Shelter in Los Angeles, were each awarded official Mascot Status in the Hundred Peaks Section for climbing 25 peaks in the San Gabriel, Los Padres and San Bernardino National Forests.

I set about tracking down the experts on foot travel in the Canyon . . . they totaled one . . . Harvey Butchart.
Colin Fletcher
The Man Who Walked Through Time

Credited with finding more than 116 new approaches to the Colorado River and with summiting 83 of the 183 named peaks in the Grand Canyon (35 of those being first ascents), Backpacker Magazine called Harvey Butchart the "undisputed king of extreme and obsessive Grand Canyon hiking."

Born in Illinois, Butchart accepted a position teaching mathematics at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff hoping that the dry climate of the high desert would alleviate his daughter's asthma. Shortly after arriving, a day trip to the Grand Canyon changed his life forever.

Ultimately, Butchart explored the most remote areas of the Canyon's rugged wilderness from Lee's Ferry, through steep canyons and rambling plateaus to Lake Mead. Hiking more than 12,000 miles in a combined total of 1,000 days, a distance comparable to walking halfway around the earth, Butchart is considered the leading authority on backcountry hiking in the Canyon.

FINALIST, BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK FESTIVAL, MOUNTAIN IMAGE

On Sunday August 11, 2002 while returning home from a 3-week trip to the Bering Sea, author and photographer Galen Rowell, and his wife, Barbara, died on final descent to the Bishop, California Airport. At the time, Galen was editing what was to become his final book, a special expanded edition of his classic High & Wild: Essays and Photographs on Wilderness Adventure. High & Wild a tribute to the beauty of the world's wild places.

With an introduction by Robert Redford, High & Wild takes us on a journey of twenty-three of Galen's greatest mountain adventures including his "firsts" in Yosemite, the Himalaya, Patagonia, Alaska, the Cirque of the Unclimbables, and the American Southwest.

Galen began climbing mountains at the age of 10 and by age 60, had completed more than 40 expeditions on all seven continents and to both poles. He made more than a hundred first ascents in Yosemite and the High Sierra.

Since 1986, he wrote a popular monthly column for Outdoor Photographer Magazine, was featured in Life & Outside Magazines, and in 1992 he received a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Grant to photograph Antarctica. His photographs have been exhibited in both domestic and international venues including the Smithsonian, the International Center of Photography and the Ansel Adams Gallery.

Galen touched many lives around the world, and through his last book, High & Wild, completed while he was alive, we get the privilege to view his work and life experiences one last time.

Just a jeep ride out from the spectacular strip of Las Vegas, a place where millions of tourists rarely think of yesterday, there is a trail that one can hike that was first walked nearly three hundred years ago. First blazed by Padre Francisco Garces in 1775, it is the same road traveled by thousands nearly a century later to seek their fortunes in California.

In her newest book, Mojave Desert Trails famed desert guide, story-teller and third generation Las Vegas resident Florine Lawlor reveals more of the secrets of the mysterious land that lies just beyond the blazing neon lighted sights of modern Las Vegas.

Best known for her book Out From Las Vegas Adventures A Day Away Florine Lawlor, who spent 40 years writing for the Las Vegas Sun, then Review-Journal, introduces us to some of her favorite desert haunts and lesser-traveled jeep trails. Mojave Desert Trails is a unique and accurate guide to some of the most interesting geologic and historic sites found in the Mojave's enchanting and remote landscape. Endless vistas, high-walled canyons carved by water and wind, Joshua tree forests, sand dunes, rugged mountains, abandoned settlements and a magnificent railroad depot await curious readers and weekend desert wanderers.

It's hot! Take a look a this gem of a book and begin planning at least a year's worth of day or weekend trips in and around Nevada. I can guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised."
Nancy Gott, freelance writer/adjunct professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

. . . Lawlor put her lifelong love of the desert to work. . . to give Nevadans a greater appreciation of the beauty and history that exists here.
Las Vegas Review Herald

Out From Las Vegas: Adventures A Day Away is our favorite guide to the great getaways and scenic trips just a day or less away from downtown Las Vegas.

Author Florine Lawlor, a third-generation Nevadan, was born to write about the Silver State. Daughter of a gold miner who once worked at the now abandoned ghost town of Delamar, Florine's grandfather, a pioneer Nevada railroad man, worked for Union Pacific.

Geologist Andy Zdon, author of Desert Summits A Climbing & Hiking Guide to California and Southern Nevada and the American Institute of Professional Geologists handbook, Geology of the Las Vegas Region, joined Florine on the update of this new edition.

In 1915, Robert Clunie came to America from Scotland. It wasn't until 1928 that he made his first trip to the Sierra Nevada. Inspired by the massive scale and dramatic lighting of the harsh landscape, he painted the Olivas Pack Station beneath Mount Whitney and Lone Pine Peak, his first plein-air painting of the Sierra.

Just months before the stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, Clunie hired a mule packer to carry him and his painting gear to Fourth and Fifth Lakes above Upper Glacier Lodge in Big Pine Canyon. Over the next fifty years, Clunie returned to the lakes every summer for two months to paint. He camped in a canvas tent and cooked his meals in cast iron pots, sharing them with weary mountain travelers. His pots are still hidden beneath the white bark pines as he left them more than a quarter-century ago.

Robert Clunie, Sierra Nevada realist and resident, spent his entire life painting the mountains he loved.

What is it like to live in a place of bare rock, vertical walls, and windswept ledges, where snow covers the ground for much of the year and temperature changes of thirty degrees or more is the daily norm? The Alpine Sierra Nevada, the rugged mountain world above treeline, presents this challenge to all living things venturing into its extreme environment.

Author and naturalist, David Gilligan, describes the Alpine Sierra Nevada with a passion for both personal observation and science. From deep inside an ice-encrusted crevasse on the Lyell Glacier to the airy heights of Mt. Ritter, The Secret Sierra: The Alpine World Above The Trees is a book dedicated to exploring the high and hidden world of the Sierra Nevada's alpine zone.

Published in 1944.
Vanished from store shelves in 1944.
Brought to light 60 years later in a new edition featuring the photographer's complete, unedited, original text.
Limited Edition Hardcover 128 pages, portrait-size 8.5" x11"
Sixty-six duotone photographs by Ansel Adams

Magnificent . . . Ansel would have been proud.
Mary Street Alinder, Ansel Adams: A Biography

This book should be regarded as one of the finest examples of documentary photography from the 20th century. . .
The British Journal of Photography

Born Free and Equal stands not only as a reminder of Ansel Adams, the documentary photographer, but it also illustrates how prejudice and the denial of personal freedom can be overcome through man's ability to draw strength and peace from nature.
Photolife