Mountain reads: ‘Exposed: Tragedy & Triumph in Mountain Climbing’ by Brad McQueen

NOTE: This is an installment of an occasional series on books, old and new, about outdoor adventures.

Put yourself in this situation: You plan a mountain adventure with your wife and your dad on what is supposed to be a straightforward alpine hike. As the day wears on, a few things go awry: You make a wrong turn and get off-route. The weather worsens. The darkness of night takes over. And when it’s all said and done, you end up in a freezing bivouac fighting off hypothermia. By the time morning arrives, your spouse has suffered permanent injuries due to frostbite, and all of you are lucky to be alive.

But despite the guilt over what transpired, the pull of the mountains remains so strong as to be undeniable.

That’s the backbone of the 2015 book “Exposed: Triumph and Tragedy in Mountain Climbing” by Brad McQueen, a Colorado mountaineer who has built quite the alpine resume.

When I started the Mountain Reads series, I wanted to find books that told interesting and important stories about adventures in the high country. McQueen’s book does both.

When something bad unfolds in the mountains, people often write a book about it, explaining the highs, lows and lessons that incident provided. “Exposed” does this, but doesn’t stop there. While his mishaps on Mount Evans provide the frame of his story, it’s just one part of a still evolving tale of McQueen’s mountaineering life.

McQueen details not only hikes and climbs in his home state, but also those in Wyoming, Washington, Tanzania, Ecuador and Alaska. You get a good sense of what it takes to prepare for his more ambitious climbs while learning the emotional pull that climbing can bring.

In that respect, “Exposed” is also a family story. McQueen and his wife, Melissa, are in fact an outdoors team, as she has also put together a respectable list of accomplishments in the mountains. Overcoming the trauma of their shared Mount Evans experience is a major thread in this story, and in several places throughout the book, Melissa McQueen adds her words to provide context to their tale.

You might also learn something about climbing in the process (there is a succinct appendix and glossary of terms at the end of the book), including a short but instructive bit about crampon technique on snow and ice. Nuggets like that are scattered throughout the text.

I liked this book, and I think most people who enjoy the high country will, too. Pick this one up and see how a regular guy has lived some extraordinary adventures.

Bob Doucette