Overview
By the age of 20, Brad Washburn was a mountain-climbing wunderkind who had published four books about mountaineering. Most would consider this accomplishment enough for a lifetime, but for Washburn it was only a beginning.
While a student at Harvard, he studied the pioneering field of aerial surveying and photography. Throughout his life, he would combine this skill with his passion for climbing to make aerial photographs and maps of the world's major landforms, from Mount McKinley in Alaska to Everest. Washburn's improvements to aerial surveying technology resulted in maps of such accuracy and definition that they are still used by climbers today. At age 78, Washburn mad yet another expedition, this time to the Himalaya, leading a scientific team that would determine Everest's true height. Two constants gave ballast to Washburn's life of adventure—his wife and partner-in-adventure, Barbara, and his career as director and visionary behind Boston's Museum of Science—one of the finest educational institutions in the country.
Filled with exciting and entertaining anecdotes—including his prescient refusal of Amelia Earhart's offer to have him co-pilot her now famous last flight—and with Washburn's breathtaking photography and maps, On High is the first book to reveal, in his own words, the extraordinary life and work of Brad Washburn.