High Top Press

     EXCERPTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION.....  The making of Scudder's White mountain viewing Guide began as a hobby in 1967.  By the middle Eighties, diagrams of the views from fifteen mountains had been assembled.  If the book was ever to appear, the author had better give his creation a lot more of his time.  The First Edition appeared in 1995 featuring 43 mountains and sold out its print run within two years.  A second printing appeared in 2000 thanks to Mike Dickerman of Bondcliff Books who assumed total responsibility for financing and marketing.  Now, High Top Press has published the Second Edition with a more user-friendly format (see below) and eleven additional mountains

     The diagrams contained herein are panoramas developed from overlapping pictures taken around the horizon from forty-seven mountain tops in New Hampshire and from seven other summits just beyond its borders.  Prominent terrain features are labeled and these allow the White Mountain hiker to become familiar with what can be seen from each peak.    

     If you limit your climbing experience to periods of crystal clear weather, you will not climb often.  Certainly you can use the charts on hazy days.  But we are often stuck with times of rain, wind and fog where the charts lack any use at all.  Even then, there is often temporary clearing revealing fantastic aspects as you look down upon clouds covering nearby slopes and hiding distant mountains -- a marvelous landscape of vapor and forest, rising mists, brilliant rainbows and storm-tossed sunshine.  You will miss much if you confine your hikes only to periods when the charts are at their best.

     I hope that the skyline diagrams.....will amply reward your hiking experience.  Before long you will surprise yourself at how many mountains you can name without the use of the charts even from peaks that are not featured in this book.  You will certainly surprise your climbing companions.

More user-friendly format:

     In the First Edition, all of the mountain viewing diagrams were packed together in an appendix.  It took 3 or 4 diagrams to cover a 360-degree horizon.  Although each diagram was clearly marked, it was easy for the user to turn a page and, without realizing it, be looking at a diagram of the view from the next mountain.

     The Second Edition places each group of charts with its respective text chapter.  As a result, each chart set is separated by a least two pages of text.  Inadvertant flipping of pages to charts of the view from the next mountain is therefore eliminated.