It would be almost 50 years before the imposing summit would be touched. Daniel Light’s “The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering” returns readers to an era when ...

Mountain climber Light debuts with a high-octane history of mountaineering. Beginning the account in 1802, with explorer Alexander von Humboldt’s 19,286-foot ascent of Chimborazo, a volcano in ...