Anyone who’s been to Barnes and Noble knows there’s no lack of fancy coffee table books looking for a home.  As a photographer I have my own fair share gathering dust in stacks around the house.

But occasionally a book appears that makes one not only want to own it, but if necessary, buy a new coffee table on which to display it; a book so well done it seems destined to become the definitive work on the subject.

If you love mountains like I do, if you’ve spent as much time thinking and wandering around in them as I have, then Mountain, conceived and edited by Sandy Hill, and published this fall by Rizzoli, is that kind of book.

As I leaf through Mountain’s pages, I have the sense I’m visiting old and very dear friends.  Partly, this is because I’ve spent so many days, weeks, and months in many of the places documented here— the Alaska Range, Chamonix, the Khumbu, the Pamirs, the Colorado Plateau— and partly it’s because Hill has astutely combined well-known images from Bradford Washburn, Ansel Adams, Vittorio Sella, and Galen Rowell—with a wonderful infusion of fresh contemporary talent.

Wisely (and rightly to my thinking) the emphasis here is not on personalities, but on the peaks themselves.  In our age of celebritism this is as refreshing as a glacial wind.  Within these pages the sheer physical presence of the great ranges comes alive. As I browse, the book falls open to Washburn’s iconic image of the West Face of Mount McKinley, one of those rare photographs that manages to succeed both scientifically and artistically—providing the essential physical details of the West Buttress (the most popular route up the mountain) while simultaneously inspiring the soul to long for height and distance, to shrug aside the pain, suffering, and back-breaking labor required to climb mountains like Denali in order to attain once more the transcendental feeling of life distilled to it’s essence, the exhilaration of a journey far above the clouds and the tawdry world of men.

I admit I’m not impartial. I’ve got some skin in the game. I’m privileged to have two of my own photographs included in Mountain.  The first is an aerial of the immense south face of Annapurna III.  Viewed with the eyes of experience, the photograph carries for me equal measures of longing and dread.  Longing for the adventure of exploring those vertical rock walls, dangling ice runnels, and snowy ramps— and dread knowing how dangerous and demanding such exploration can be.  This is the heady brew mountains offer.  To be at once intoxicated by their siren beauty while simultaneously sobered by their attendant risks.

The second photograph is one of my career favorites. In it Lynn Hill performs her unique vertical mastery near the summit of a mountain called The Bird in the Ak-Su Region of the Pamir Atlai.  For me the image brings back potent memories: the pepper smell of granite mixed with the sourness of my own sweat; the pressure of the harness on my waist as I hang in space; the struggle to control my breathing in the thin air; to reign in the adrenaline as I realize the remarkable nature of what I’m witnessing, the privilege of being in such a place, photographing such a superlative athlete.

At it’s core, this is the true thrill of being a photographer, to watch all the elements of a memorable image coalesce before you— and then, with a hope and prayer, to press the shutter.  And of course, it’s a double blessing when such images eventually find a good home as these have in the pages of Mountain.

But perhaps best of all, Mountain reminds me why I wanted to learn to climb in the first place.  Not for fame or glory, not to write stories or take pictures, but to simply explore a magic enchanted realm.  Like Alice, to make one’s self small, then scramble up into the crystal chandelier of a frozen waterfall.  To experience humility and awe, emotions all too rare in our modern world.  To move with grace and ease through a primal world of ice, rock, and snow— a world that was here before us, and will be here long after we are gone.   Mountain is a tribute and reminder of all these things.

You can buy  MOUNTAIN at:

http://shop.americanalpineclub.org/collections/frontpage/products/sandy-hill-mountain-book

A video preview by Sandy Hill is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXaQbpfzPbY