"ALL ELEVATIONS UNKNOWN: AN ADVENTURE IN THE HEART OF BORNEO," by Sam Lightner Jr.; Broadway Books, June 2001; 288 pages; $24.95.
This new adventure book is a sure-fire success because it neatly threads two separate tales — a 1999 climbing trip by the author to a remote rock spire in Borneo and the 1945 invasion of Borneo by the Japanese.
It jumps back and forth between the two timelines, providing a fascinating look at life in Borneo, both now and 50 years ago. But it is also a jungle adventure where snakes, leeches and water-logged tree branches are just some of the dangers in the thickly forested canopy of this Southeast Asian nation.
Lightner, an internationally known rock climber from Jackson Hole, Wyo., is intrigued by a lofty spire he sees in an old French atlas. He initially calls it "Misty Mountain" and makes plans to find and conquer it. With the help of a little-known book called "World Within," written by Maj. Tom Harrison, a British World War II soldier who explored the interior jungles of Borneo, Lightner and his group began their trek.
As the author glimpses the steep spire, Bata Lawi, for the first time from an airplane, he comments: "It's a blade of rock like a headstone, rising from the jungle and into a ceiling of water vapor."
"Borneo" proves there is plenty of adventure left in the world as Lightner faces a host of difficulties, from locating the obscure chunk of rock on maps, to securing government permission to climb the peak, to getting all the necessary gear flown in on a small plane that is hardly air-worthy, to negotiating with porters, to frequent thunderstorms.
Unlike some climbing books that are too heavy on the technical aspects of the sport, Lightner's descriptions are easy to comprehend, and at just over 200 pages, the two stories — Lightner's as well as a historical narrative of Harrison's adventures — move quickly and are not overdone.
The book's title comes from a pilot's reference to the spire being classed among "all elevations unknown."
Lightner, several colleagues and a film crew weren't the first to climb the peak. A British group and some Australians did it in 1996. But Lightner is the first to extensively write about the experience and the first to seriously try the east side of the mountain.
Although the film crew's presence helped pay for this costly adventure, Lightner realized later their accompaniment compromised the usual solitary pleasures of remote rock climbing.
"It tainted the experience of the climb," he wrote.
An encounter with a deadly snake, a bamboo viper, in a crevice part way up the spire creates the best adventure in the book.
"All experienced climbers know that reaching the summit is not the goal; reaching the ground safely after climbing the mountain is," Lightner relates after several failed attempts to reach the summit.
This book has a down-to-earth humanistic flavor and is a delight to read.
The only shortcoming is a lack of photographs from the trip. A few maps, a photo of the author and a single shot of him gazing into a misty jungle are the only visual illustrations the book has — the reader never sees Bata Lawi.
On the one hand, this lack of visuals lets the reader rely on the "theater of the mind," perhaps making the mystery of Bata Lawi even greater.
E-MAIL: lynn@desnews.com