I'm reading it at the moment- I'm not sure what to think TBH. There is a lot of death in it but there are also quite a lot of philosophical, inspiring passages. For example, from the chapter "A matter of life or death": (the chapter I believe Maura had book marked)
"We try to make our lives safe. For every hazard there are warnings and barriers, for every bold assertion there are fallback positions, for every fallible device there are back-up systems and redundancies...If all else fails we go to court; when a piece of bridge masonry fell through the top of a convertible, the driver sued the car company for making a cloth top that wouldn't keep out falling masonry. So when we talk about questions of life or death, we usually dont mean it. There do come times, though, perhaps only once in a lifetime, when we really do have to answer a question of life or death.The crew at Madison Spring hut had to do that one evening just as they were serving dinner to a full house; they were all college age and they were up against it..."
It also seems like people do go into the white mountains in winter, from the chapter, "the deadliest season":
"On new years day of 1998 I drove "around the mountains"- up through Pinkham notch, around the north end of the range through randolph, down the west side to Twin Mountain, around the south end through Crawford Notch, and back up to pinkham". I stopped at every parking lot that served trails giving access to 4,000 foot peaks and counted cars. The weather had been brutal and the previous night brought temperatures below zero in the valleys and equally threatening conditions on the heights. A generation eariler I would have been surprised to find any cars at all in these parking lots, but on this day I counted 231 vehicles". Later on though, he acknowledges that, "winter conditions are often beyond the endurance of the strongest person and many have died in the vicinity [of the Alpine Garden area on mount washington]".
I guess it could be interpreted as a guide to how to kill yourself in the white mountains OR as an inspiring read about people who have beat the odds and come out the other side.