New Book Explains Wild Weather at Mount Washington Observatory

PR Log (Press Release) – Jul 30, 2008 – One of the mountaineering world's icons, the Mount Washington Observatory, is the setting and subject of a new book being published this summer by Alpine Books.

Among the Clouds: Work, Wit & Wild Weather at the Mount Washington Observatory, by New Hampshire author Eric Pinder, takes readers on a literary field trip to the top of 6288-foot-high Mount Washington. A world-record 231-mph gust of wind shrieked across the summit in 1934, giving the peak its nickname: "The Home of the World's Worst Weather." (http://www.ericpinder.com/html/observatory.html)

The 112-page book describes what a meteorologist's typical day is like the sometimes harsh, sometimes spectacular world above treeline. Hurricane-force winds batter the summit in every season, and fog that the author calls "thick enough to swim in" occurs nearly 300 days a year.  Snowdrifts sometimes form inside the doorway, driven through the tiniest of cracks by the howling wind.

"I can't imagine living on that Rockpile!" said Boston's CBS4 meteorologist Mish Michaels in her foreword to Among the Clouds. Ms. Michaels calls the book "a charming journey into our atmosphere through the narrative of Eric's adventures in the White Mountains."

Humorous and informative essays explain Mount Washington's extreme weather and introduce the many eccentric characters that live and visit the summit in all seasons, including Nin the cat, Marty on the Mountain, tobogganing ravens, meandering moose, and hapless hikers in need of rescuing.

Eric Pinder worked on the summit for seven years and was a familiar voice to North Country listeners of the Observatory's morning radio forecasts on WMOU, WMWV, WHOM and New Hampshire Public Radio. Among the Clouds (http://www.ericpinder.com/html/clouds.html) is a sequel to his first book about Mount Washington, Life at the Top, which was praised for its "wry Yankee humor" by Weatherwise magazine in 1997 and had three printings with Down East Books. Pinder is also the author of North to Katahdin and other books about the outdoors. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire and teaches nature writing at Chester College of New England.

For more information on the newly released Among the Clouds: Work, Wit & Wild Weather at the Mount Washington Observatory, visit the author's website: http://www.ericpinder.com. Or contact the distributor, Bondcliff Books, by writing to P.O. Box 385, Littleton, NH 03561 or by calling 603-444-4880.