Robert Steed Dunn's classic tale of his participation in an early attempt to summit Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska is far from the run-of-the-mill heroic mountaineering book. Through all of his years of exploration and work as a war correspondent, his writing was typified by raw honesty and a keen eye toward the foibles and follies of man. Make no mistake, this account is thrilling. But it's also at times hilarious. The 1903 expedition was small and throughout, Dunn exposes the reality of living with and sharing danger with men who become all too familiar. It reads like a modern Krakauer book. Dunn had already been on one very dangerous expedition in 1898. He would go on to explore the Kamchatka River, cover the front lines in World War I for the New York Post, serve as an intelligence officer, and ride with General John "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico after Pancho Villa. Review "A classic on exploration. Dunn...alone of them all was an artist for art’s sake" --Lincoln Steffens "[Dunn was] a man bent on adventure and ready to face the dangers and hardships that adventure brings." --The New York Times Book Review Amazon.com Review More adventure books should be like this. In a genre rife with overbearing machismo and braggadocio, this book, originally published in 1907, is a refreshing and at times hilarious take on exploration. Robert Dunn reveals the bickering and frayed nerves, petty insecurities and trivial jealousies that existed alongside the courage, discipline, and determination exhibited by each member of the 1903 expedition that attempted the first ascent of Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Without downplaying the difficulty of the task, Dunn's honest assessments of the men involved reveals the complex motivations for undertaking arduous exploration and the human weaknesses that are revealed in the process.--Shawn Carkonen

In 1903, aspiring journalist Robert Dunn joined an expedition attempting the first ascent of Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Led by explorer Frederick Cook (who would later win infamy for faking the discovery of the North Pole), the climbers failed to conquer McKinley, but they did circumnavigate the great peak-an accomplishment not repeated until 1978. The trek also spawned a book unique in the literature of exploration: Dunn's frank, sardonic, no-holds-barred look at day-to-day existence on an Alaskan expedition. Before Dunn, most such accounts were sanitized and expurgated of anything unflattering. Dunn, however, a protege of the muckraker Lincoln Steffens, endeavored to report what he saw, with panache. And what Dunn reported was a journey rife with conflict, missed opportunity, incompetence, privation, and danger. By showing men reduced to their rawest state, the young journalist produced a compelling, insightful, and oddly amusing book that disturbed and riveted his contemporaries. As Hudson Stuck-the Episcopal archdeacon of the Yukon who completed the first ascent of Mt. McKinley in 1913-observed, "[Dunn's] book has a curious undeniable power, despite its brutal frankness. ... One is thankful, however, that it is unique in the literature of travel."

Robert Steed Dunn's classic tale of his early attempt to summit Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska is far from the run-of-the-mill heroic mountaineering book. Through all of his years of exploration and work as a war correspondent, his writing was typified by raw honesty and a keen eye toward the foibles and follies of man.Make no mistake, this account is thrilling. But it's also at times hilarious. The 1903 expedition was small and throughout, Dunn exposes the reality of living with and sharing danger with men who become all too familiar. It reads like a modern Krakauer book.Dunn had already been on one very dangerous expedition in 1898. He would go on to explore the Kamchatka River, cover the front lines in World War I for the New York Post, serve as an intelligence officer, and ride with General John "Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico after Pancho Villa.Review"A classic on exploration. Dunn...alone of them all was an artist for art's sake"--Lincoln Steffens"[Dunn was] a man bent on adventure and ready to face the dangers and hardships that adventure brings."--The New York Times Book ReviewAmazon.com ReviewMore adventure books should be like this. In a genre rife with overbearing machismo and braggadocio, this book, originally published in 1907, is a refreshing and at times hilarious take on exploration. Robert Dunn reveals the bickering and frayed nerves, petty insecurities and trivial jealousies that existed alongside the courage, discipline, and determination exhibited by each member of the 1903 expedition that attempted the first ascent of Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Without downplaying the difficulty of the task, Dunn's honest assessments of the men involved reveals the complex motivations for undertaking arduous exploration and the human weaknesses that are revealed in the process.--Shawn Carkonen

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII LAST STRAWS July 8.--Sh-sh-sh! In two hours we made a large clear stream between high diorite cliffs--the Talushalitna! Every time I leaped behind a horse's pack in fording it, a bunch of them tore back to shore; so I crossed alone on foot, through a hundred tickliest yards of icy water. Then we covered endless meadows and one-pond swamps, purple with iris, golden with arnica. Jack's horses stampeded, and he flew into a passion. Now we slid down grassy benches, to a silty slew, where the bent willows were rustred with glacial mud--from river-floods! Glad omen! But never was reapproach to a river so vanishing: more sloughs and silt flats, a level spruce forest growing from white moss and roses; at last a lead along an endless, gouged drift-pile, and we heard shouts, and saw two tents on a gravel island in the middle of the brown river. The Professor, Miller, and two Siwashes, one big, one little, cavorted across to us in a long boat. Our leader first gravely shook my hand and smiled. "Hello, Dunn," said he (like that prig Stanley's icy, "Mr. Livingstone, I believe?" when he met the missionary in darkest Africa, thought I). "You've done excellently. We arrived here only this morning." Mosquito hats choked all of them. They blind and deafen, and if a man as God made him can't stand the 'skeets, he's no right up in this country. We started to ford, from the south shore to the north. The Bay Dunnage mare was mired in a quicksand and pulled out before we even unpacked and loaded the boat. It was the best place ever for putting in horses to swim, a cut bank they couldn't climb up on their side, a narrow current nearly all in one channel and shooting across diagonally to the other shore, where a long bar stretched below. I crossed to...