On Mount Hood: A Biography of Oregon’s Perilous Peak tells the story of Oregon’s greatest mountain, a mountain that has shaped the very land of the Northwest. The mountain itself helps create the notorious Oregon rains and deep alpine snows, it draws millions to its textbook beauty every year; it paved the way for snowboarding in the mid 1980s, its forests provide some of the purest drinking water in the world, and its snowy peak captures the attention of the nation almost every time it wreaks fatal havoc upon climbers seeking the summit.