ASCENT <i> edited by Allen Steck & Steve Roper (Sierra Club: $19.95, illustrated)</i>

This anthology of poetry, prose and photography about mountaineering is a veritable sermon for the converted. The enraptured descriptions of the beauties of mountains, glaciers and mesas have a contagious enthusiasm that’s difficult to resist. But when the writers demand sympathy for the pains that they incur climbing, the reading gets tougher than a 5+ ascent. In “Stone,” Edmond Drummond whines about mortality as he waits to be hauled down from El Capitain in Yosemite: He never considers the risks that the rescue crew must take to extricate him from this ill-conceived jaunt. The climbers in these accounts all seem to be beer-swilling ‘60s holdovers, whose rejection of urban civilization has a curiously hollow ring. Without modern technology, where would these wilting flower children get the pitons, climbing suits, freeze-dried food and rescue helicopters that make these ascents possible?