High and Wild transports us to a world of granite spires, sheer walls, and snow-corniced ridges; of white-outs and alpenglow; of remote, lush valleys and arctic amphitheaters. It is a world where not human beings but the eagle and the mountain goat are the fittest to survive, one where the highway may be a primeval glacier and “home” a precarious bivouac on a storm-battered cliff.

The adventures Rowell narrates in his text are as various as their physical setting: a daring free climb of Keeler Needle in the High Sierra, ski touring among the ancient bristlecone pines in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, a multi-day voyage out of time and into the isolated and pristine Cirque of the Unclimbables in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and an unprecedented, and nearly fatal, one-day ascent of Mt. McKinley.