When the Story Has its Own Story: Edge of the Map, Honoring Appleton's Christine Boskoff

Johanna Garton:

Carrying on Mom’s Passions, a Daughter Completes Edge of the Map

(From the April 2024 issue of Silent Sports Magazine / Check out an Exciting Video at the End of the Story!)

Editor’s Note One: Johanna Garton is a journalist/sportswriter raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, now living in Colorado. An early advocate of Title IX and gender equity in sports, Johanna's mother, Jane Dwyre Garton, was a sports information officer at Lawrence University in Appleton, and a marathoner at a time when few women participated in the sport of running. Her mother's drive to participate in multiple Chicago and Boston Marathons inspired Johanna’s own career in running, along with a passion for telling stories about other female athletes. In 2006, Appleton native Christine Boskoff disappeared in western China while mountain climbing.  Boskoff was the most prolific high-altitude female mountaineer in the United States, and that she hailed from Wisconsin intrigued those who followed the search and rescue operation. Boskoff's disappearance captured the attention of the nation, including both Johanna and her mother, who eventually collaborated to tell the story of Christine Boskoff in the book Edge of the Map, The Mountain Life of Christine Boskoff. The book has been widely praised and is currently being developed into a feature film. Johanna’s next book, All in Stride, is the inspiring story of American professional distance runners, Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir. The narrative takes readers from their upbringing in rural Kenyan villages through their journeys to the United States, their romance as college athletes, and ultimately their service as U.S. soldiers and professional runners. The story examines issues of race/identity/gender/culture, explores the world of high-performance sports, and looks at the ever-changing landscape of what it means to be American. 

Boxes of my mother’s research filled the back of my SUV as I drove away from the Fox Cities heading west and back home to Denver. She’d selected only a half dozen of the most important crates of information she’d gathered over ten years. The rest, she said, would come to me in time. Best to start small and get my arms around the story first. 

It seemed bittersweet that this is the way Edge of the Map began for me. Mom had worked for so many years on the research and it felt the perfect cap to her career in journalism.  The narrative she planned was the true story of a young woman from Appleton, Wisconsin, who’d excelled in the male-dominated world of mountaineering until her tragic death in a remote part of China. Beat for beat, the story matched my mother’s own journey of struggle as a woman living in male-dominated orbits. There were things I knew she needed to say in the book she hoped to write. The one that was now being laid at my feet — the victim of her Parkinson’s Disease and its cruel progression. 

Being There

My mother had been at every cross-country meet, every tennis match, and every basketball game my sister played as a scrappy middle schooler. It was the 1980s and there was no way for us to comprehend what it had taken her to stand on the sidelines watching her daughters do their thing. Title IX was still in its infancy, but all we’d known was a mother who’d run since we were young children, occasionally taking us with her so we didn’t get into trouble.  Girls and women were athletes just as much as boys in our world. If my mother was running marathons, surely everything else in her life must be a breeze, we assumed.

What we failed to see were the hurdles she faced as a journalist in a newsroom at a time when women were only assigned to write for the lifestyle section.  She wanted to write more sports stories, but it seemed an incomprehensible task for male editors to consider a woman for those assignments. We weren’t there for the late-night meetings Mom attended with other women in our community, designed to strategize ways to engage more women in collegiate sports. We didn’t hear the conversations they had over coffee or lunch, discussing bad behaviors of their male counterparts in the workplace. And we surely didn’t see how difficult it had been to be a mother, a journalist, and an athlete at the same time. To schedule marathon training runs to fit between work and carpool duties.

Like a slow leak, the truth oozed out over many years, and through my own experiences as a collegiate athlete, sports journalist, and mother. She’d disguised her own career disappointments to ensure that I’d never question whether I’d be able to achieve my own.  Now in my thirties, the Badassery of Mom was clear to me, and I was grateful for the path she’d laid.

A Story from Mother to Daughter 

“I can’t believe this is a story nobody has told yet, Mom,” I said over a phone call one night in 2007. 

We’d both been following the search and rescue operation for Christine Boskoff, a local Appleton woman who’d gone missing in China with her partner, mountaineer Charlie Fowler. Charlie’s body had been found, and eventually Chris’, transitioning the effort from rescue to recovery. 

“These are the stories that need to be shared,” Mom replied. “High altitude mountaineering is a sport for men. I’d say rich, white men if we want to be precise about it.  If a man had achieved just a portion of what Chris did, he’d be lauded. She’s so unknown because she was both humble and a woman.”

Christine’s resume included scaling more of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks than any other American woman, and she was one of the only women at the time to lead a major guiding company.  The fact that she and I had gone to high school together made the potential for a book that much more compelling.

Ten years passed and, with it, the stuff of life.  Mom had built an incredible body of work in her career as a journalist and subsequent advocacy on behalf of women and girls. She’d raised a million dollars on behalf of the Women’s Fund of the Fox Valley Region, for which she served as the first executive director. At night and on the weekends, she pursued the story of Christine Boskoff.  Not even a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease could slow her down until, it seemed, it did. 

There was only one person who could take the baton from Mom when her fingers could no longer type and her mind became too cloudy to work on her book proposal. The book I’d write wouldn’t be the one she would have written, but the story would be told, I vowed. 

Late into the night in Denver, I poured over the boxes of Mom’s research. Sprinkled among the files was a résumé which included a piece she’d written for Silent Sports Magazine in 1986, a profile of race director Gloria West. In another pile, personal essays, one which caught my eye. The title?  

Why I’m Not a Sportswriter 

It was a heartfelt yet caustic synopsis of why she’d been denied the title she’d fought to achieve for so long despite dozens of sports stories to her name. The title, she mused, was apparently only for those who could go into locker rooms, played golf, and knew the intricate rules of professional hockey.

Bittersweet Publication

By the time the book my mother had started was published, she could not read it. Not for lack of desire, but because the pages were too difficult to turn, the words too detailed to absorb.  And yet, she was certain it was, in her words, “the best book ever written.”  The work she’d done for me and generations of future girls and women hasn’t gone unnoticed, though there are decades more work ahead.  So let us all sing praises of the Bad Assery of those like her, both before and after us.

Editor’s Note Two: Published by Mountaineers Books, Edge of the Map, The Mountain Life of Christine Boskoff, enjoys a 4.6-star review ranking based on 192 reviews and a 4.30-star review ranking on Goodreads based on 460 ratings, as of March 2024. Kudos include: "The next must-read." - REI's Uncommon Path magazine; "Powerful and moving...a story of human endurance taken to its limits." -- Foreword Reviews; "An absorbing, unputdownable book about an intrepid climber and pioneer in high-altitude mountaineering." -- Library Journal; "Garton's research is impressive and should broaden the book's appeal far beyond those familiar with its subject. Expect demand...where fans of Jon Krakauer's now classic Into Thin Air are to be found."—Booklist; Finalist, Colorado Book Awards; Nominee, Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature; Nominee, Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature; Nominee, Reading the West Book Awards; Nominee, High Plains Book Award. Available in print paperback, audiobook and CD, and Kindle/e-book. While Edge of the Map is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, please consider purchasing through your local, independent bookstore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO9X1O_6S-g