IMAGINARY PEAKS: THE RIESENSTEIN HOAX AND OTHER MOUNTAIN DREAMS
by Katie Ives
Mountaineers Books, 2021. $26.95
Reviewed by Brendan Curtinrich
Part philosophical rumination, part historiography of amateur mountaineering, Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams (Mountaineers Books, 2021) is a massif in and of itself: a lofty, multifaceted body that remains beautifully balanced despite its density and scope. The book tells of Harvey Manning and his cabal of practical jokers who focus their kooky prankishness on pretentious summit chasers.
The hoax unfolded in 1962 within the pages of Summit magazine, an ironically apt detail given Imaginary Peaks author Katie Ives’s fastidious tenure at Alpinist magazine. It’s maybe out of fidelity to her industry predecessors that Ives suggests Summit knew the photo and story were a ruse but published them to partake in the joke.
Though only a minor event, the Riesenstein hoax segues well into a much wider conversation about the cultural influence of mountains and the importance terra incognita (or terra miscognita, as is discussed in the book) has played in the collective human imagination.
Indeed, for all the jest behind the inciting event, Imaginary Peaks is a serious work that contemplates big ideas and salient questions. At the crux of the book is one concept: mountains supersede their physical forms, grow beyond their literal slopes and crags to assume foggy, fourth-dimensional topographies within the human mind.
As they are, mountaintops already occupy a transitional space between land and sky, the perfect foundation for deeper abstractions. Ives writes: “As we climb higher, we enter landscapes that defy our expectations of the earth. Trees shrivel like snakeskin, their branches twisted and polished silver by gusts. Rare alpine flowers sparkle, bright as gems, from stone crevices. Snowfall and wind sculpt giant curls of cornices” (30).
Ives incorporates herself as a character just enough to tug along the more academic chunks, and she does so without the self-aggrandizement authors sometimes succumb to. Her presence warms the book and tethers a bygone man to a more relevant time. She writes:
Higher up the trail, meadows dazzled with flowers, just as Harvey had described, though the grass was turning golden with autumn. A bright sea fog blew across the pass, hiding and revealing craggy summits. When the mists parted, I, too, stared into a tree-darkened wild so deep it seemed to resonate with its own low chords. (259)
Climbers often set out to conquer physical objects, to shade in the final details on a map, but unobtainable summits encourage an appreciation for journeys rather than destinations and for enduring metaphors rather than fallible realities.
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 grew up on the north coast of Ohio and in the sheep pastures of New York. He studied creative writing at Hiram College and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University where he also served as the Nonfiction Editor and Book Review Manager for Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. He has walked long trails both in the U.S. and abroad, and writes nonfiction and fiction about ecological issues, particularly the ways human animals affect and are affected by the environment. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Trail Runner, Appalachia, Gigantic Sequins, Sierra, and Footnote.