Legendary Maps From The Himalayan Club: Commemorating 90 Years of the Iconic Institution

This book contains well researched hand drawn maps which perhaps are more accurate than the ones you can find online. Harish Kapadia has done a fabulous job compiling these.

Although the title is "Legendary Maps from the Himalayan Club", there is virtually no commentary about these maps outside of the introduction. What makes one map more of a legend than another? Why was this map important? Did someone try to use this map and succeed because of it? Or fail because of it? This book won't tell you. Rather, it is a bunch of climbing accounts which happen to have maps which, I think, were to inform the readers of the journal of some aspect of the climb. The accounts never mention the maps.As a book about climbing accounts, the accounts range widely. Some are well written and have some interest to non-climbers. Others are terse and uninformative. On the whole, climbing comes off as a frivolous, dangerous activity whose practitioners have little regard for life or limb. A few accounts mention some of the soul satisfaction of climbing, but other just make it appear arduous and tedious.I think your better off reading books by Shipton or Tilman, or better off looking at maps in a broader context.

Very good book to read and have as a collection. I feel there should have been more info or volume 2 should be launched.