The Anthropocene—with its changing climate, rising sea levels, and deteriorating glaciers—has been accompanied by a rising interest in the wilds of the world. People are flocking to the outdoors. High places in particular are valuable commodities, now overrun by tourists in Sprinter vans. As Caroline Schaumann laments, “we are destroying the very thing we love” (290). Our desire to both enjoy the mountains and save them from overuse had its origins in the nineteenth century, fostered in part by the earliest of alpinists. In the end, Peak Pursuits asks, “What do we gain from putting our bodies in contact with mountains?” (292).
From the beginning, Schaumann attempts to answer this question by looking at the bodily experiences of early mountaineers. She begins with Alexander Humboldt and Horace-Benedict de Saussure, moves through the main Victorian scientist-mountaineers and authors (James David Forbes, Louis Agassiz, John Tyndall, Edward Whymper, Alfred Wills, Albert Smith,...
