Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165826 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Booklist
In hiker's parlance, the person who "breaks trail" is one who leads others across difficult terrain, creating a path as they go. This aptly describes Blum's role, not only in her experiences as a climber, but also as a scientist doing innovative, groundbreaking work. Blum, whose previous book recounted the first women-only climb of Annapurna, here covers a cross section of her life as a climber, from her first experience, as a college student in 1964, to 1993, when she semiretired. Through climbing, she experiences a wide range of emotions, from exhilaration at success to grief over the death of friends. Interspersed between the climbing stories are scenes from her childhood that do much to explain the person she became. This is an engaging, well-written adventure that also serves as a social history of women's roles. It should be required reading for young women of today who haven't experienced the closed doors and closed minds that Blum conquered as a women student, scientist, and climber. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Disarmingly honest...refreshing. Provides the requisite bits of grace, glory, strength and pain: the stuff of all worthy ascents." -- New York Times Book Review, October 2, 2005

Review

Customer Reviews

WHAT A LIFE...WHAT A WOMAN...WHAT A MEMOIR...
Having read and loved the author's other book, "A Woman's Place", I looked forward to reading this one, knowing that, at the very least, I could expect a well-written book. Well, it is that and much more. It is a memoir that kept me turning its pages, as it provides a peek as to how this highly intelligent and articulate, nice, Jewish girl became a mountaineer with which to contend.

In a macho arena, where women were considered to be mere appendages to the male of the species, when considered at all, the author is surely a trailblazer. With her world famous, women only, expedition to summit Annapurna, she put women on the mountaineering map, letting the world know that a woman's place is on top. Independent and singular in her desire to make her mark, the author has written a memoir that provides insight into her desire to climb mountains, as well as her development as both a person and a woman.

Set across the backdrop of women's changing roles in the social fabric, this memoir is an intimate and compelling look at a life well-lived and filled with achievement in a man's world, as the author is not only a mountaineer but a well-respected scientist known for some ground-breaking research that has had impact on the general public. Neither of these fields was initially receptive to the inclusion of woman, and the author's memoir details her travails in gaining acceptance as an equal, both as a mountaineer and a scientist.

Written with humor and insight, the author creates an intimate memoir that chronicles her development into the person that she became. This is a memoir that will keep the reader engaged and turning the pages of this wonderful book. Highly enjoyable, those who are interested in why one would climb mountains, as well as those who enjoy well-written, interesting memoirs, will love this book. Bravo!

Woman to Woman
Arlene Blum's new book, Breaking Trail, is a book for everyone interested in the experience of high peak mountaineering--plenty of thrills and chills for those who stayed up all night reading Into Thin Air or Touching the Void like I did. However, there is one huge difference with this book--its written with a tenderness of narratorial voice I have not seen in other, more macho mountaineering books. Here, the high peaks
become a metaphor for what all women face when they aspire to dreams outside the suburban marriage with freezer, soccer kids, and SUV. Her voice is intimate, modest, and honest. By the time I finished this book, I felt like we had been hiking together for days. This is not just a running account of a life spent in the highest peaks on earth--it is also the story of an accomplished scientist and social activist who is an inspiring role model for women of any age. She has lived a creative, adventurous, and
uniquely imagined life, rich in adventure, beauty, love, and tragedy. She is the embodiment of: "If you can dream it, you can do it." After I finished the book, I was able to go to her website, where there are twelve slide shows of the climbs she writes about in the book; seeing the color photos of many places and incidents mentioned in the book took my breath away and only deepened my appreciation of this remarkable woman. She was not afraid to follow the deepest currents of her own soul into the mountains at a time when there were virtually no women participating in serious mountaineering (except to cook and make the coffee or truck loads of gear from one base camp to another while the guys made the glamouress sprints up to the summit.) Even having lived through it (being a contemporary of Ms. Blum's)
I was indignant at the way she met with sexual bias at every turn. Its a great reminder of how different things were just forty years ago--and how they could be again. This is a book to read and pass to a woman friend or to a daughter. Its a great read and contains, through the recounting of incidents from the writer's childhood, a lot of insight into how someone ends up in
high peak climbing. Arlene Blum is a role model for women everywhere and her story is told woman to woman. This is THE summer read this year. I loved it!

Life Altering Experience
As a adventure Arlene Blum's Breaking trail: A Climbing Life is captivating; as a memoir a life altering experience. Reading about a women who had the fortitude to push past conformity, offers the reader renewed enthusiasm for today. Blum writes beautifully and in wonderful detail that keeps her human. Insights into her childhood, turn this adventure into a thought provoking tale of life, death and the meaning of it all. Nicely done in one book.