About the Author

World-class mountaineer, photographer, cartographer, and scholar, Bradford Washburn served as director of the Boston Museum of Science for nearly 40 years. He has produced numerous award-winning maps, including those of Mount Everest, Mount McKinley, the Grand Canyon, and Mount Washington and the rest of New Hampshire's Presidential Range. Washburn pioneered aerial photography (modifying both camera and airplane to capture vast landscapes), mountain cartography, wireless communications, cold-weather search and rescue, and cold weather survival techniques. He began his climbing career when he was just 11 years old by scaling Mount Washington, the highest and harshest but closest such peak to his boyhood home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He would soon climb in the Alps and Alaska, claiming numerous first ascents around the globe.