... wants to be a hybrid: a personal memoir and a hiking journal, a geology lesson and a history lesson about one of the truly epic nature spots in the world. The book’s structure attempts to create order from Robinson’s sheer exuberance and enthusiasm, but only half-delivers on that promise ... I was curious as to how the landscape felt different under the influence, but Robinson for a time shies away from lived-in experience. Instead, he has a brief discussion with himself of which word — surreal, mystical or metaphysical — describes that day best and then veers into a nostalgia-laden account of his life in California at the time ... Throughout these chapters, it felt as if Robison had recorded freewheeling riffs on his life in mountains and that I was reading a transcript ... Sometimes these moments reach an ecstatic crescendo similar to the effect of Walt Whitman’s poetry, but sometimes Robinson cannot quite show us what he’s telling us, despite detailed accounts of his various hikes ... The overall effect is of someone showing slides to a neighbor, with a definite homespun charm ... It sometimes feels as if readers have been given the raw materials from which they might choose to write their own book ... Yet the book also has passion galore and glorious moments when science and poetry meet ... 'The map is not the territory,' Robinson writes, but neither is a territory always useful without the anchor of a good map — a strong argument for dipping into The High Sierra, rather than journeying through it end-to-end.

... gives Robinson the room to write at great length about a wilderness he cherishes, and he brings an idiosyncratic perspective in describing its wonders, large and small, in this unique memoir and guidebook ... Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, he gets the details right ... brims with useful information, containing maps, photos, and nature poems as well as practical advice on what to pack, where to hike and how to stay alive and comfortable through the night. With an annotated bibliography providing a generous selection of further resources, the book invites both intense study and casual browsing ... Robinson writes insightfully about his own thoughts and motivations, and captures the changes that came to hiking friendships over years. His thumbnail sketches of other 'Sierra People' are concise and well-crafted ... Robinson is able to spot what distinguishes an item – a geological specimen, a fellow traveler on the trail, a marmot sunning itself – and convey how it fits into the grander scheme of life in the Sierra. He communicates his observations without any kind of overblown mysticism, but with a deep sense of gratitude, an appropriate sense of wonder, and a welcome sense of humor ... Sometimes it feels as if the density of The High Sierra might be too much of a good thing, as Robinson describes routes he took while backpacking on barely memorable trails. But then there are some truly harrowing maneuvers. When hair-raising events occur, the author describes the action lucidly and grippingly ... makes good on the promise of its subtitle. On every page, Robinson celebrates the mountain range, conveying in his intimate and distinctive fashion his abiding love of the place. Anyone who opens their heart to the mountains – veteran trekker, casual explorer, or complete neophyte – will be well rewarded by this singular book.

The Robinson fluency is here: the compact, mobile sentences; the narrative ease; the technical detail. Prosy perhaps—he’s talking right at you—but only literally pedestrian ... exoteric—attentive to the general reader, instructive, open in character. But it’s also highly esoteric, best read with constant reference to a good set of topographic maps (or an app like CalTopo). Unless you know the Sierra as well as Robinson does—and not many people do—you’ll find yourself lost geographically ... et, somehow, being lost doesn’t matter. Will The High Sierra mean more to readers who have seen the Tehipite Dome from below or camped on 'the crab-claw peninsula sticking into Cirque Lake'? Of course, though it will also mean more to those who have read Emerson and Thoreau than to those who haven’t ... I would call it fractally encyclopedic ... Robinson is constantly shifting scale too—shifting scale, subject, angle of attention, even genre. One moment the book is memoir. The next it’s trail guide. Then it’s bibliography, history, ecological meditation, and a discourse on renaming peaks and passes that have culturally unacceptable names. Robinson lets his thoughts scatter and then tracks them down wherever they’ve settled, much like a Sierra sheepherder and his flock in the late 19th century. The High Sierra might be subtitled: A Miscellany—even though it’s a word we don’t use much any more. Robinson registers that the human mind is miscellaneous and invites us to accept that fact ... That loose-limbed quality is what makes The High Sierra so appealing. But it’s also something more. Robinson clearly accepts the limits of what nature writing can do, in his hands at least ... The point of The High Sierra isn’t to show us the author’s moments of transcendence. It’s to remind us that we can find our own transcendence just the way Robinson did ... what Robinson also contributes is a spirit of engagement with the natural world that’s generous and freeing.

It’s hard to think of another writer who can touch upon climatology, geology, Gary Snyder, LSD, Aristotle, botany, zoology and Spinal Tap in a book about a mountain range ... We know from his novels that Mr. Robinson is one of literature’s great explainers. Part of the joy of reading him is that he is bound to digress into some fascinating wormhole that will make us a little smarter than we were before. He is enamored of data and facts, and his works of science fiction are loaded with digressions that enhance stories without smothering them. That tendency is less enticing in The High Sierra, which feels like five books jockeying for position in one somewhat jumbly volume. The result is so overstuffed with information that following along can feel like hiking a trail with too many switchbacks ... Mr. Robinson, with great care and affection, has written a mash note for the Sierra, but it suffers from a discursive structure that jumps back and forth from hard science into personal memoir and back again ... All of it is worth reading, but the pile-on of technical terms and place names blurs the brain. Many readers will find themselves skimming some sections in favor of returning to the first-person accounts of his travels through the range, by far the most absorbing sections in the book ... It’s when Mr. Robinson stops cataloging all that is worth studying in the Sierra and turns to his personal experiences in this 'granite world' that his book lives up to its Love Story subtitle and becomes the stirring anecdotal memoir of an intrepid seeker ... Even if one might have hoped for a guide less enamored of every byway, his perambulations are still an invitation to an astonishing journey.

... a fascinating combination of memoir, travelogue, scientific overview, history and much more. Robinson cleverly breaks up his book (which is over 500 pages) into short chapters, interspersing these various strands with one another ... This handsome volume is also generously illustrated, primarily with Robinson’s own color photographs (though it is a shame that the matte paper the pictures are printed on fails to show them to their best advantage) ... Through all of these wide-ranging considerations, Robinson’s personal knowledge of this place and his curiosity to learn more are palpable ... Robinson’s personal love story with the Sierra is a significant one, but it’s just one of countless stories of this place --- stories with human and non-human characters, stories in which the mountains, although perhaps not quite everlasting, still outlast almost everything else we know of.

A capacious and truly original work of nonfiction ... A mashup of travelogue, geology lesson, hiking guide, history and meditation, all wrapped in a revealing and personal memoir...the book is, in essence, an exuberant celebration of finding purpose in nature ... Accounts of these experiences, sometimes risky, sometimes funny, but always deeply meaningful, give shape to Robinson’s larger narrative. The memories are intercut and augmented by chapters delineated by categories such as geology, Sierra people, routes and moments of being. These disparate chapters coalesce into a surprisingly seamless narrative that conveys the full measure of Robinson’s deep affection for the place and its past, as well as its significance to him personally ... Robinson’s writing is companionable and welcoming, never dry or preachy ... The High Sierra should not be narrowly viewed as a book only for the die-hard outdoorsperson. Robinson’s greater project, at which he succeeds splendidly, is to share the magic of his personal happy place, to promote not only its admiration but also its preservation.

Robinson’s knowledge and adoration of the Sierra’s reverberate ... Robinson’s writing is clear, fun, and filled with joy for time spent in the mountains. This lengthy memoir will appeal to fans of Robinson and the Sierras.

Robinson vividly conveys his passion for the Sierra mountains in this enthralling blend of memoir, history, and science ... Robinson’s discussions of what he terms psychogeology—the impact geology has on the mind— are particularly memorable ... There’s humor on offer...and his heartfelt rendering of intense emotional interactions with the natural world pulsates with life.

A celebration of California’s formidable mountain range ... Interweaving meandering memoir, practical travel guide, geological survey, and natural history, Robinson pays homage to the range’s magnificence ... A colorful, digressive journey into incomparable terrain.