Fat, forty-four, father of three sons, and facing a vasectomy, Mark Obmascik would never have guessed that his next move would be up a 14,000-foot mountain. But when his twelve-year-old son gets bitten by the climbing bug at summer camp, Obmascik can't resist the opportunity for some high-altitude father-son bonding by hiking a peak together. After their first joint climb, Obmascik, addled by the thin air, decides to keep his head in the clouds and try to scale <I>all </I>fifty-four of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountains, known as the Fourteeners—and to do it <I>in less than one year. </I>The result is <I>Halfway to Heaven, </I>a rollicking, witty, sometimes harrowing chronicle of an outrageous adventure that is no walk in the park. This "hilarious midlife picaresque" (<I>Publishers Weekly</I>) has garnered wide critical acclaim, was named an "Editor's Pick" by <I>Parade, </I>won the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature, and made one reviewer laugh so hard he "blew beer out of [his] nose" (<I>Colorado Daily</I>). Like the author's critically acclaimed debut, <I>The Big Year, </I>it brings a keen eye and sharp humor to an obsessive subculture: climbers who share the author's crazed passion of scaling all fifty-four of the famed and feared Fourteeners.