Sam Page
New Member
Most people try mountaineering by choice, but others are forced into it by circumstance. Such was the case for Norman Ollestad. In February 1979, a small plane carrying the 11-year old boy crashed into Ontario Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California. The injured boy found himself perched precariously in a steep, icy chute in the upper reaches of a drainage just north/northwest of the summit. Reluctantly leaving his dead father and pilot behind, Norman and Sandra, his father's girlfriend, began a terrifying, inch-by-inch descent of the steep chute, roughly 3,000 feet above Chapman Ranch. Unfortunately, after descending just a few feet, Sandra slipped and plummeted about 2,000 feet to her death. What followed for the young Norman was a harrowing descent that called upon every piece of mountain wisdom imparted by his father over the years.
Read the rest of my review.
Read the rest of my review.