Mountaineering / Wilderness Travel Section

I use the Alaska Section more than any other part of the library.  It is full of stuff about where we live and the little animals that inhabit the rest of the library don’t go there much so you can hear yourself think there unlike the rest of the library which has become a preschool or playground.  I have noted a complete set of the Scree (Mountaineering Club of Alaska Publication) dating from 1958 to present and a complete set of the AAJ (American Alpine Journal).  I have flipped through every one and plan on doing it again.  If these resources and everything else could be entered into a data base on location and team members name it would be a rush.  For example take the book Alaska’s Wolf Man by Jim Reardon.    A true wilderness adventure and Alaskan History Classic.  In that book he talks about living on the Savage River in the 1920s in what is now Denali National Park.  Now we know the mountains that Frank Glasier, the guy in the book, talked about, now have names and people climb them and make publish accounts in the Scree and other publications.  If we could have an index that brought all these sources together on place or team member it would be a blast.   In the case mentioned above Frank talks about how to successfully trap wolves.  He transplanted tufts of grass to the top of the ridge in order to establish a pee station for wolves that he could lay traps near.  Guess what.  I have been on top of Mt. Margarret, the mountain that he mentions.  Guess what is up on top of the ridge.  You guessed it.  Some very odd looking tufts of grass.  I wondered how they got up there.  Now I know who and why and the year it happened.  I also know about the Natives that lived there before Frank hung out there since he talked about them.  I have found their rock rings for their saunas or tents.  I guess I could do a story in the Scree about it with photos but the Scree is full of this kind of thing.  A Wilderness Travel / Mountaineering data base would suffice I think and if there was one central location it would be a cool place to go and hang but you need to have the USGS Maps there, too.  They currently are at APU.  Also you have to find a way to keep low lifes from walking out with the goods.  The truth is when you walk into the Mountains and forest there is no question that something speaks to you in a certain sense.   That is why we keep going back.  To have the library recognize this fact and to also facilitate all documentation on locations it might make that voice, if you can call it that, a lot clearer.   What a concept.