Rating: 
Summary: Slow Going
Review: .
This is a "True Crime." In 1893, two spoiled rich boy-men and a brother-in-law - all from New York, and 2 local men (a guide and a cook) went off into the Bitterroot Mountains for a hunting foray. Not all came out. The Great White Hunters were exposed to be neither Great nor much good as hunters. The aftermath of their foibles and folly is an interesting juxtaposition of Eastern American v. Western, and the idle idyll rich v. working folk of the time. The hunting "expedition" and its wending out of the wilderness are slow going. Unfortunately for the reader, so also is author Ladd Hamilton's pacing and writing style. In the beginning, I had to create a chart of the participants - then, reading further, they each become more easily identifyable. Two portions in the book are among the most sad and gruesome testimentaries of man's inhumanity to man and animal of any this reader has ever read - I will not spoil it for you by revealing further. And speaking of spoilage, one is cautioned to employ "Owen's Rule" and not look at the included photos before reading - as they disclose those who came out alive.
Rating:
Summary: Slow Going
Review: .
This is a "True Crime." In 1893, two spoiled rich boy-men and a brother-in-law - all from New York, and 2 local men (a guide and a cook) went off into the Bitterroot Mountains for a hunting foray. Not all came out. The Great White Hunters were exposed to be neither Great nor much good as hunters. The aftermath of their foibles and folly is an interesting juxtaposition of Eastern American v. Western, and the idle idyll rich v. working folk of the time. The hunting "expedition" and its wending out of the wilderness are slow going. Unfortunately for the reader, so also is author Ladd Hamilton's pacing and writing style. In the beginning, I had to create a chart of the participants - then, reading further, they each become more easily identifyable. Two portions in the book are among the most sad and gruesome testimentaries of man's inhumanity to man and animal of any this reader has ever read - I will not spoil it for you by revealing further. And speaking of spoilage, one is cautioned to employ "Owen's Rule" and not look at the included photos before reading - as they disclose those who came out alive.
Rating:
Summary: So much detail, yet still a mystery
Review: After a recent trip to my family's cabin in Cardiff Spur, I caught the history bug. Back in the dusty shelves I found a old book about the ghost towns of Idaho. A small book, probably out of publication by now, that had details about North Central Idaho that the schools don't teach - the drama. When I decided to make the trek back to the cabin, I decided I would be better informed of the area and what it offered in the way of hiking and historical sites. In that manner, I came across "Snowbound."
Ladd Hamilton did a wonderful job of recreating an incident that has been told in many different versions. I knew the fate of George Colegate before I started reading the book, but the rich detail helped make the story vivid and more human.
It was a bit slow paced at times, and the heartbreaking part is that no one will ever know exactly what happened to George Colegate. Regardless, an awesome history of the area surrounding the Lolo Trail for those who are interested.
Rating:
Summary: A gut-wrenching account of wilderness survival.
Review: Hamilton does an excellent job of describing the physical demands of a pack trip into a mountain wilderness. Reading his detailed account, a person can almost feel the unforgiving weather and participate in the bruising, torturous trek through the mountains. Add to this the indecision, moral dilemmas, and complacency of the hunters and your in for a great read.
The fact that this was a true story really kept me in awe.
Rating: 
Summary: Snowbound by Ladd Hamilton
Review: I couldn't put the book down until I read every page. Ladd Hamilton made this area come alive with his in depth, detailed description of the harshness when challenging the Bitterroot mountians. I had to question my own response to their decision to leave Colegate behind to live or die alone. I really enjoyed reading this book, I will look forward to many more books written by Ladd Hamilton. .
Rating:
Summary: Snowbound by Ladd Hamilton
Review: I couldn't put the book down until I read every page. Ladd Hamilton made this area come alive with his in depth, detailed description of the harshness when challenging the Bitterroot mountians. I had to question my own response to their decision to leave Colegate behind to live or die alone. I really enjoyed reading this book, I will look forward to many more books written by Ladd Hamilton. .
Rating:
Summary: Snow Bound by Hamilton - riveting !
Review: I just finished this book (February 2003) and I must say that it was a very riveting book. Since I have been to some of the places that are spoken of in this book and am a resident of the Lewiston,ID and Clarkston,WA valley, it was all the more fascinating.
The positives of this book are too many to list, but let me begin by saying that it gives a vivid picture of the beauty but also the brutality of nature. The Bitterroot mountains, the Lochsa River, etc. are described so well, you feel like you're there. The Carlin hunting party that ventured into these parts in October of 1893 did not expect such harsh conditions - it was an unusually snowy and wet Fall. Very few people in the world have faced the hardships they faced, and their heart-wrenching decision to leave a sick man behind can only be understood by those who appreciate the harsh conditions they were in, both in terms of weather, but also in terms of their own physical and mental weakness at the time.
Ladd Hamilton does a good job at remaining objective on his assessment of their decision. But I, for one, do not fault them for it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Far from being an act of inhumanity, as one reviewer calls it, I see in the Carlin party an example of real courage and ingenuity. They did not arrive at their decision in a flippant manner - they really struggled with it, and they chose to act on logic, rather than on sentiment. What a breath of fresh air that is in our feelings-oriented society!!
One member of the party, Keeley (who was hired by Carlin to aid them in their exit), ends up twisting the story against his comrades - but this was clearly because of his greed and his bitterness for not having received more $$$ for his services.
Read it for yourself, and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Snow Bound by Hamilton - riveting !
Review: I just finished this book (February 2003) and I must say that it was a very riveting book. Since I have been to some of the places that are spoken of in this book and am a resident of the Lewiston,ID and Clarkston,WA valley, it was all the more fascinating.
The positives of this book are too many to list, but let me begin by saying that it gives a vivid picture of the beauty but also the brutality of nature. The Bitterroot mountains, the Lochsa River, etc. are described so well, you feel like you're there. The Carlin hunting party that ventured into these parts in October of 1893 did not expect such harsh conditions - it was an unusually snowy and wet Fall. Very few people in the world have faced the hardships they faced, and their heart-wrenching decision to leave a sick man behind can only be understood by those who appreciate the harsh conditions they were in, both in terms of weather, but also in terms of their own physical and mental weakness at the time.
Ladd Hamilton does a good job at remaining objective on his assessment of their decision. But I, for one, do not fault them for it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Far from being an act of inhumanity, as one reviewer calls it, I see in the Carlin party an example of real courage and ingenuity. They did not arrive at their decision in a flippant manner - they really struggled with it, and they chose to act on logic, rather than on sentiment. What a breath of fresh air that is in our feelings-oriented society!!
One member of the party, Keeley (who was hired by Carlin to aid them in their exit), ends up twisting the story against his comrades - but this was clearly because of his greed and his bitterness for not having received more $$$ for his services.
Read it for yourself, and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A extraordinary and well-told historical tragedy.
Review: In September 1893, a troika of young gentleman hunters from New York headed into northern Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains, hoping to bag some trophy game--moose, elk, maybe even a grizzly bear or two. With them traveled a guide, a camp cook, ten horses, and three dogs. They packed along ample food and equipment, including a couple of the latest, most sophisticated firearms, and it seemed that nothing could prevent their enjoying a relaxing and rewarding wilderness adventure. Nothing, that is, except perhaps the weather. Locally heavy autumn rains portended an early and brutal snowfall in the Bitterroots that year. But the hunters chose to ignore the weather, just as they did the obvious ill health of their cook. These were only the first in what would be a series of bad judgments that turned this pleasure trip into a memorable race for survival. Combining a reporter's devotion to detail with a yarn-spinner's talent for building suspense, Ladd Hamilton has crafted from the true tale of the Carlin party a riveting, often chilling book that's timeless in its portrayal of human frailties and Nature's capriciousness. "Snowbound" is the sort of tome that Seattleite Jon Krakauer ("Into the Wild") might have penned had he lived a century earlier. It's a classic story of people overreaching their abilities in the bush, but is made especially impressive by the fact that Hamilton had to stitch it patiently and tenaciously together from one-dimensional military records, a slanted account published by a member of the Carlin band, and equally suspect newspaper reports. A retired newspaperman who now teaches journalism at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, Hamilton has some experience recounting bygone tragedies. His 1994 book "This Bloody Deed: The Magruder Incident" breathed grisly new life into the case of Lloyd Magruder, a prominent Lewiston merchant who in 1863 was murdered in the Bitterroots, provoking a chase after the killers that extended as far as San Francisco. Like that earlier work, "Snowbound" has the deceptive pace of a slow-burning housefire. Readers see disaster dogging the heels of the Carlin party long before its members did. In large part, this blindness was the result of distrust between the two breeds that made up the expedition: the citified sportsmen, represented by organizer Will Carlin, a photographer, skilled marksman, and son of the general in command of the army at Vancouver, Washington; and the veteran outdoorsmen, among whom cook George Colgate is the most noteworthy. The Easterners, overconfident of their mountaineering prowess, refused to listen to their backwoods guide when he counseled retreat before the threat of record snows. Meanwhile, Colegate grew sicker with each passing day, yet lied about his condition, fearing the hunters would resent him if they knew the truth: that he was suffering from a severe urinary blockage, and had foolishly left at home the catheters he needed to drain his bladder. Not until snow closed the trail home and Colegate was unable to move on his own--his body rotting from the inside out, putrid with gangrene--did sense overcome suspicion. And by then starvation and desperation had set in. While army troops and the cook's son scoured the Bitterroots for signs of the company, Carlin and the rest finally decided to abandon the dying Colegate and thrash their way over ridges and rivers toward civilization...only to find their rescue overshadowed by national criticism that they'd acted hastily and with cowardice in leaving a comrade behind--something that no hard-bitten child of the West would have done. In another writer's hands, this debate might have played out as a silly one pitting city slickers against country clods. However, Hamilton demonstrates an uncommon sympathy for rigid frontier ethics. He also has a spare prose style that seems ideally suited to a story, like this one, that even without embellishment moves like a frigid mountain wind. The only times when the author's presence is significantly felt are in those cases where his historical sources failed to answer questions in the narrative--when, for instance, he could find no explanations of a character's thoughts or responses to a situation. Then, Hamilton writes, he blended in fiction "consistent with the facts as they were recorded." This technique will probably send traditional, footnote-happy historians into frothing convulsions. But what reader, reflecting on the agony of having digested more academic history texts in school, wouldn't allow a few such intellectual liberties if they produce a book as rich and haunting as "Snowbound"? (From Seattle Weekly, Nov. 18, 1997)
Rating:
Summary: The Unforgiving Bitterroots of Idaho.
Review: Last weekend I stopped in a local bookstore (Moscow, Idaho) and Ladd Hamilton was signing his book, Snowbound. I talked with him a few minutes and bought a copy. For those of you that have traveled Hwy 12 over Lolo pass, you may have seen the markers for Colegate Licks. I've fished this area for years and always wondered about the details of the Carlin hunting party. Hamilton has written a superb account of the events specifying this out of the way marker on the Lochsa river. It is as gripping an account of wilderness travel as one can find. If you enjoyed Ambrose's re-telling of the Lewis and Clark expedition over this region, this is every bit as good. The ethical questions raised in this tragedy are considerable and sparked a national debate. A great story and wonderful reading.
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