Off Trail

Finding few contemporary role models to validate her ambition, Parnell looked to the past for inspiration--to English travel writer Isabella Bird, who also sought refuge and transformation in the Colorado Rockies, notably by climbing Longs Peak in 1873 with the notorious mountain man Rocky Mountain Jim. Reading Bird's now-classic A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains emboldened Parnell to keep moving forward. She was not alone in her drive for independence.

Parnell's memoir spans half a century. Her personal journey dramatizes evolving gender roles from the 1950s to the present. As a child, she witnessed the first ascent of the Diamond on Longs Peak, the "Holy Grail" of alpine climbing in the Rockies. In 2002, she saw firsthand the catastrophic Colorado wildfires of climate change, and five years later, she nearly lost her leg in a climbing accident.

In the tradition of Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Tracy Ross's The Source of All Things, Parnell's mountaineering memoir shows us how, by pushing ourselves to the limits of our physical endurance and by confronting our deepest fears, we can become whole again.