Majestic Mountains: Roaming the Great Mountain Ranges of Six Continents with Leo Le Bon

Mountaineering guide cum vacation planner, this luxurious volume of prose and 175 color photographs romps up and around some 30 mountains. Replete with climbing histories, access routes, personal memories and evocative, technically competent photos, Le Bon's ( Where Mountains Live ) rambles are of primary interest to alpinists; his contagious enthusiasm, however, could make climbers of us all. He visits the Rockies and the Andes, pauses briefly at Mt. Taylor in Antarctica, then treks off to the Alps. He climbs Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus--the highest peak in Europe--with 400 Soviet mountaineers in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, comments on the history of Turkey's Mt. Ararat, discourses on Jbel Toubkal in the Atlas chain, on Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Sinai. Le Bon tells stories of high humor, tragedy and near-tragedy; describes being shelled by Pakistani artillery on an attempt to climb Sia Kangri in the territorially disputed Karakoram range and concludes with an aptly awestruck appreciation of the Himalayas. (Oct.)