Imaginary Peaks
The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams
by Katie Ives
- 304 pages
- Mountaineers Books
- 978-1-68051-541-1
- Sep 14, 2021
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Description
2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition Special Jury Mention
"A book every thoughtful adventurer and seeker of dreams should read." -- Outside
"A book every thoughtful adventurer and seeker of dreams should read." -- Outside
- Author is a renowned writer in international climbing community
- Fascinating story of hoax that inspired a quest for a North American Shangri-La
- Vivid recounting of fabled mountains from across the world
Contributors
by Katie Ives
Details
- 304 pages
- Mountaineers Books
- 978-1-68051-541-1
- Sep 14, 2021
Reviews
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Imaginary Peaks reminds us to embrace the unknowable, revel in the obscure, and partake in the infinite wilderness that is the natural world overlaid by human imagination.
— Brendan Curtinrich, Split Rock Review
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The book earns the close attention it demands, and it occupies a liminal space between two ideas that reveal Ives at her best: celebrating the possibilities that imaginary cartographies offer us to see the world anew, and how they pull back the veil on what has been unjustly hidden from view.
— Michael Levy, Appalachia
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Well-written, engaging and thoroughly researched
— The Sanborn Alum News
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Imaginary Peaks is a book that discusses many threads, the subjects Ives explores are expansive. I found the best state of mind to be in when reading was just to immerse myself and follow Ives' thinking, not worrying about where the flow would next be heading. In doing so I saw more connections between things, as seemingly disparate entities are expertly linked by Ives’ lucid prose. To do this so effectively requires a wide and deep knowledge of the subjects, a great deal of empathy and a minimal amount of ego.
— Heather Dawe, The Himalayan Journal
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An erudite, elegant book for dreamers and fans of mountain literature, history, hoaxes, cartography and adventure. In Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams, Katie Ives charts our fascination with the blank spaces on maps and imagined realms and how these fabled mountains of the mind influence storytelling and culture. It's a beautifully crafted, meticulously researched and poetic exploration of human reverie, mythology and desire.
— Natalie Berry, Banff Mountain Book Competition Jury
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Imaginary Peaks is a wide-ranging exploration of the ways mountains inspire us to dream.
— Heather Dawe, Little Peak
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Before the obsessions, before the certainties, before the knowledge, we were led by imaginings and dreams. Lying on the shag rug of the rumpus room with, as Katie Ives puts it in Imaginary Peaks, “scraps of old images that drifted from illuminated manuscripts and sepia-toned maps, tales that slipped from leather-bound volumes and ink-blurred magazine pages...,” dreaming of yarding our way up pinnacles, yes, that was painless. Beautiful, too. The sunlight: how it bent. The solidity. The lack of doubt. This is what Ives has rekindled in Imaginary Peaks.
— Jerry Auld, American Alpine Journal
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A masterful work of non-fiction that reads like a novel.... Imaginary Peaks is meticulously researched and beautifully executed.
— Jayme Moye, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine
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Most of all, I appreciate how Ives isolated the notion of what we seek when we go into nature looking for adventure through examining Manning’s life. It’s intensely personal and sometimes it’s fundentally about the imagined story and narrative we tell ourselves.... If you are looking for magic places, whether it’s your real summit, a mountain pass, Middle Earth, Narnia, or the transformative power of a walk in the woods without a map, I highly recommend you read Katie Ives’ Imaginary Peaks.
— Andrew Szalay, The Suburban Mountaineer
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I’ve only started this book by renowned Alpinist editor Katie Ives, but I’m already gripped by its premise: most cultures carry stories about mythical landscapes that are outside of human reach. What does this say about the human imagination and, more importantly, the hubris of our conquest of nature?
— Nicholas Triolo, Trail Runner Magazine
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Imaginary Peaks is a rich and diverse work that quickly draws the reader into a labyrinth of ideas about myth and reality in mountaineering, and in exploration and mapping in general.
— Mike Nash, Cloudburst
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Her [Ives'] engaging book Imaginary Peaks explores that idea by using a prank directed at the climbing community to make a larger point about our relationship with mountains: they have always been sources of mystery, with secrets waiting to be discovered, and that’s the way we like it.
— Ken DuBois, Mazama Bulletin
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Throughout [Ives] runs a biography of [Harvey] Manning, an influential climber beyond the resilience of his jokes, and she uses his prank as a jumping-off point for a rumination on dreams, ruses and the appeal of the unknown and the imaginary.
— Tom Hallberg, Backcountry Magazine
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In all, the book is a fact-filled exploration of human reverie and desire. But there's no whimsy here; Ives' sense of wonder towards both the physical and metaphysical mountains is serious and studious. A fascinating read for dreamers and fans of mountain literature, history, cartography, mythology and adventure.
— UKClimbing
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The author probes what mountains mean in the human imagination. Roaming widely through the literary topography of exploration, Ives…takes the armchair climber far indeed.
— Harvard Magazine
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A thoughtful and transporting treat for adventurers and dreamers.
— Katie O'Reilly, Sierra
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With these carefully researched and richly told stories, Ives reminds us of the human capacity for boundless wonder. Today, in our era of global satellite imaging, she urges us not to lose our power of imagining.
— Barbara Lloyd McMichael, Coast Weekend
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Well-researched and equally well-written, Imaginary Peaks is a compelling read, both for experienced mountaineers and for those that have yet to attempt their first climb.
— The Harvard Crimson
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A fascinating look at the human desire to discover new places, and how that desire fuels imagination and lore—a must read for anyone who has ever been called to explore.
— Charlie Lieu, Washington Trails magazine
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[Ives] traces how the issues at the center of outdoor recreation today—Indigenous acknowledgment, climate change effects, wilderness overcrowding—have roots that reach far into our history. And among the philosophical inquiry into the concept of imaginary mountains, Ives sketches a portrait of a man [Harvey Manning] who contributed so much to the Northwest experience of exploration but still struggled with our human impact on the places he loved.
— Allison Williams, Seattle Met
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Imaginary Peaks delivers evocative scenery with a mystical feel, combined with suspenseful adventure. The words reflect the author’s mastery of her craft: in a book about mountains, no two ways are repeated to describe them.
— Cassidy Randall, Forbes
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It’s thrilling to accompany Ives on this odyssey through real and imaginary mountain lore, but the first-person narration and interludes of levity make her discourse warm, accessible and sometimes funny. The book is full of touching human detail from the personal lives of climbers and dreamers.
— Dave Smart, Gripped
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In an outdoors scene seemingly saturated with high-tech athleticism like pursuits of fastest known time (FKT) records, Ives’ embrace of the mystical and mythopoetic nature of mountains reads like an antidote to FKT culture.... “Imaginary Peaks” conjures the same dreamlike head space of literary moments like Hans Castorp wandering in a whiteout in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” or Col. Allen Forrester crossing a mountain pass in Eowyn Ivey’s “To the Bright Edge of the World.”
— Gregory Scruggs, The Seattle Times
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Ives has done an amazing ‘tour de force’ in exploring the myths of real and unreal mountains through history, describing the antics of hoaxers and fakers, reflecting on contemporary meanings of mountains and relating her own relationships with mountains around the world and the multitude of mountain people she has come to know as editor of Alpinist.
— David Fluharty, The Wild Cascades
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A book every thoughtful adventurer and seeker of dreams should read.
— Outside
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A perfect blend of history and adventure, and a lovely meditation on why humans are called to explore. Fans of mountaineering and natural history are sure to enjoy Ives's writing, as will anyone who has ever wistfully wished for a mountainous journey of their own.
— Shelf Awareness
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With its in-depth research, stories and legends, personal interviews, and Ives’s own intimate knowledge of the psychology of climbers, Imaginary Peaks is an engaging look into what compels people to risk their lives to be the first to conquer a demanding ascent.
— Foreword Reviews
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Ives roots Imaginary Peaks in the very grounded lives of the three pranksters who knew that all journeys are inner ones and that what matters most about the mountains isn’t getting on top, but who we are when we’re in them.
— Adventure Journal
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Ives’s writing is engaging throughout, bringing readers into the world of climbing while also telling the story of why this climbing fantasy was easily seen as a reality.... For readers of exploration or literary adventure and those seeking the lost art of getting lost.
— Library Journal
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Imaginary Peaks spirals together the known history of mountaineering, the cartographical interpretations of both known and mystical ranges, and writings factual, fictional, and fraudulent by climbers to create an amazing first book.
— Barry Blanchard, author of The Calling
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I loved this book. Smart, readable, and impeccably researched, Imaginary Peaks challenges the reader to take a more expansive and inclusive approach to the historical debacles and self-congratulatory hyperbole that so often characterizes mountaineering.
— Geof Childs, author of Stone Palaces
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Mountaineering literature’s best-read scholar unpacks the human history behind one of the mountain world’s best kept secrets, and shows us in the process how hoax can also tell a truth, fabrication bear witness to the unscalable reaches of the human imagination.
— Stephen Slemon, Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta
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It has been a long while since I have felt this transported and, by the time I’d finished, elevated, by a book. A work of pure magic, Imaginary Peaks is mountain literature at its most relevant, connecting the vertical world to the larger mainstream…. Ives shapes a singular, bewitching meditation on the ways we know the unknown, or what she terms the ‘elsewhere,’ the places that are no place. Here is a map into the heart of ascent.
— Jeff Long, author of The Wall
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Imaginary Peaks, besides its excellent storytelling and vivid alpine descriptions, is a celebration of the human imagination and our eternal quest to reach the boundary between the known and the unknown.
— Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams
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A cat-footed exploration of the vaporous fantasies, deceptions, and obsessions of the climbing world, this book is a noble successor to Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind, but also, in a way, to Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It is, in every sense of the word, dreamy.
— Robert Moor, best-selling author of On Trails: An Exploration
