A Book for Lovers of the Raucous Side of Dartmouth

People who know Dean Engle '9l will not be surprised that he set out to compose a modest campus magazine article and ended up publishing a book. (Talus: AHistory of the DartmouthMountaineering Club, available through the Dartmouth Bookstore.) This magazine published an excerpt last February.

Engle, like the true mountaineer he is, seems always to outdo himself. He was drawn to Dartmouth in part for the mountaineering. He climbed with Brian Dunleavy '89, president of the Mountaineering Club, during his freshman year. When Dunleavy was killed in a 400-foot fall in the White Mountains, Engle took over the club. Among his innovations as club leader: freshman trips in which students learned climbing.

Now Engle has written a good brisk history of Dartmouth and its crucial part in American mountaineering. Much of the book recounts first-ever climbs up some of the world's toughest routes; but this is a story of people, not mountains. Some of the characters: hard-drinking, hard-climbing Jack

Durrance '39, who as a sophomore founded the club in 1936, with the help of College Librarian Nat Goodrich. John Larson and Dave Jones, both '78s who scaled the campus smokestack in January 1976, battling falling bricks and galeforce winds that rocked the chimney as they were climbing it. And the women climbers. The club seems to have wondered what to do with this novel new sex, but the women themselves have taken on prominent rolesincluding the club presidency, once filled by Ericka Houck '93 (who now is an intern for this magazine).

Although Engle could have spent more time explaining such arcana as hip belays and dihedral climbs, Talus would be a happy romp for any lover of Dartmouth. The author is a superb yarn-spinner who should stay in the book-smithing business (he is currendy in New

Zealand doing a climbing book). His tale of a raucous, dare-devil side of Dartmouth that thrives to this day will thrill Green traditionalists and nonetheless please the casual reader who likes a good yarn.

And for those into the fairly new sport of "buildering," there are useful schematics for the best routes up Gerry, Bradley, Rollins, Baker, Kiewit, and Webster.