Item - Mountain Survival

Mountain Survival was a childhood favorite of mine, and holds up on reading it again. Well-written Young Adult books can appeal to adults when they are written "for" a young audience, but not "down" to them. The concept is simple: your plane crashes in the mountains and you must seek help for the injured pilot who remains behind. The storyline is realistic and believable throughout, and the reader must make reasoned choices, all while dealing with the vagaries of chance. The emotional impact is higher, as you are not just fighting for your own survival, but that of your friend, the pilot. Every set-back fills you with dread, such as slipping into an icy stream, soaking your clothes and matches as nightfall approaches. Every lucky find brings relief, whether its shelter, food, tools, or a working radio. Excellent writing and artwork earns this gamebook 5 out of 5 stars.

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This is an enjoyable adventure. In addition to being fairly well-written and exciting, the book is aided by the fact that many of its choices require a bit of thought and actually make sense logically.

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Great mountain climbing book! Through it has many loops, the book is still enjoyable. Page 71 (or the book's back) is the best place to start. Will you get help for Jake, or will you be in over your head? Choose carefully! You may get hypothermia!

8/10

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Choose Your Own Adventure had been going strong for nearly thirty books when Mountain Survival hit stores in the early 1980s, and Edward Packard was as responsible as anyone for shaping the personality of the series. This book puts you in a small airplane above the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where a snowstorm forces your pilot, Jake McKay, into a crash landing. Jake's ankle is severely damaged and so is the radio; your only hope of rescue is to hike alone toward a ranger station nine miles away. That's nine miles of heavy snow, jagged terrain, and predators stalking their next meal. You haven't trekked more than an hour when you hit a towering rock wall. You could follow an animal trail uphill around it, but this would delay your arrival at the ranger station; or, you could cross the swift, swirling creek ahead and hope not to fall into its icy depths. Which way will you choose to gamble your life?

The animal trail seems safer, but after ascending to the plateau a subarctic squall blasts you. Press on against it and you may wind up completely turned around, having to resort to crazy tactics to draw a rescue plane's attention. You might even accidentally trudge back to your crashed plane, but all isn't lost; Jake has had time to repair the radio and summon assistance. The helicopter that comes can only take one of you at a time, and if you elect to be the one, an extreme storm triggers a second crash. As the only survivor, you have time to grab one of three different emergency items as you evacuate the helicopter, and choosing wisely can mean all the difference. If you let Jake go on the helicopter first, you may have a long wait before the men come back for you, but at least you can hole up in the crashed plane.

You might stumble onto other paths to adventure; if you seek shelter in a cave when the winter surge hits atop the plateau, afterwards you wander until spotting a cabin in the snow. Peeking inside you see a man armed with a knife and shotgun, and a boy tied to a chair. Chauncey Van Dyne is a year younger than you, and the man, Gino, abducted him to collect a ransom from Chauncey’s wealthy father. If Gino catches you he'll tie you up too, but you can try to talk him out of more serious violence. If you get the jump on Gino you can hold him at gunpoint until the Mounties you call on the radio get there, but any lapse in vigilance on your part and Gino will kill you. If you bypass the cabin without ever entering, your situation turns grim when you slip while crossing a creek. Your left foot is soon icy and numb. You find a cabin to rest in, but is it better to treat your frozen limb now or resume hiking to get professional care as soon as possible? The danger of losing your foot is real.

Did you cross the creek instead of following the animal trail at the book's first decision? You do your best to hop across the stones with caution, but a shaky one sends you into the frigid water, and when you drag yourself out, you're in trouble. You want to migrate toward the ranger station immediately, but if you build a fire here you'll dry out within hours. Once you get to the plateau, confusion sets in. Your gut says you should follow the meandering creek, but if you trust conventional markers instead, you run into a ranger station...one without a radio. For a station that has one, you need to hike eight miles more. It's a one-way radio, though...are your SOS messages getting through? You could hike toward a road that the station wall map indicates isn't far off, or take some of the food from the station back for Jake, but either plan risks the safety you have here. If you continued following the creek at the plateau, you run afoul of a grizzly bear, but if you live through that, you make it to an abandoned cabin and a detailed map. It's still easy to wander off into the subarctic storm and never be seen again, but you may find a small pool where a trapper lives. He has a radio, but do you remember the map well enough to guide the Mounties to Jake and the plane? Wherever your adventures lead, death or salvation waits at the end.

Because you spend this book lost in the mountains, there's little by way of character interaction. That might be the reason for Chauncey; without him these pages would feel a little barren. Internal continuity is pretty solid overall with a minor exception or two. Be warned: poor choices made by the reader tend to receive no pity. A few decisions require accurate study of maps shown in the illustrations, a more game-like element than usual for Choose Your Own Adventure, but I ended up going in the exact opposite direction I intended, every time. I'm not skilled at interpreting maps, so I'll grant this book the benefit of the doubt and assume they were sound. Mountain Survival is a decent outdoors action adventure with enough story variety to keep you guessing when you pull it from the shelf for a reread.

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