Ansel Adams

  The following day I walked the two miles to Happy Isles and back and another mile to see Mr. Holman at his riverside camp. Within the week I was able to walk to the top of Nevada Fall, and the following week I climbed Half Dome. Yosemite had cured me! I was never again bothered by such irrational fears and fixations.

  Francis Holman (I called him Uncle Frank) talked little about himself, though I discovered he had graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1877 and had worked as a mining engineer in South America; he apparently had done well enough to retire with austere limitations. His face was chiseled and sad, his mustache drooped. He had lost one eye in a firecracker accident when a child; the other eye was as sharp as an eagle’s.

  Uncle Frank knew the Yosemite Sierra well and was a genius of minimal-equipment camping. He was a cautious climber, a productive fisherman, and a well-trained ornithologist, who collected for the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. With full credentials, he occasionally fired a pellet gun at a specimen-to-be and then wept when the bird fell to earth and science. I shared his conscience about killing things. He was a rigorous Puritan, kind, intelligent, though noncommunicative in ordinary things of the world. By the close of his life I had learned nothing more about him. I have conjectured all kinds of careers. Did he have a “past”? Was he fleeing some great and shattering disappointment of life? I was never to know.

  Uncle Frank and I had many marvelous and sometimes perilous experiences together in the Sierra. I have thought that we anticipated the Outward Bound spartan-style schools of wilderness adventure. We rose from our sleeping bags at dawn and alternated the chores of our camp: preparing breakfast or going out into the frosty meadow and untying the burro. The ropes would be ice-hard, the knots congealed, and fingers aching and sore. In time I would get them loose and hear Uncle Frank yell, “For God’s sake, the mush is ready!” I would slowly struggle back, dragging one or two burros as the case might be, chilled to the bone, my legs wet and very cold, my nose runny, and my spirit dejected. I would soon revive, standing so close to the fire I could smell scorch.

  Under the opposite situation I would prepare breakfast: oatmeal (if any), bacon and eggs (if any), and flapjacks (always). Occasional trout brightened any cooked meal. We did not starve, but we would brush close to malnutrition. We never stopped to unpack for lunch, which usually consisted of dried fruit or whatever could be reached through the burro-pack covers. Dinner would be tinned meats and vegetables, sometimes canned soup, raisins or dates for dessert, and maybe tea, especially if it was nippy (which it usually was above six thousand feet elevation).

  The only thing I remember with distaste is that Uncle Frank was always determined to keep on the trail until it was practically dark. Then we would fumble for a campsite and a reasonably rockless or pineconeless stretch of flat earth. There was no way of knowing if we had put our bags on an ant nest; we found out in good time after retiring. I recall some dismal nights, awakening, crawling with ants—the nice, black half-inch-long wood ants that could bite, and often did. I would crawl out of my bag into frigid air, take the bag apart, and shake and pick off the ants from both the bag and myself as well. If there was no moon, I would stir up the fire to see the critters as best I could. If I felt any on return to the bag, I would roll on them and often get a bite of appreciation in return. I remember dreadful nights when I had my fights with the ants and a toothache; it was almost too much.

  For our more hazardous mountain ascents, Uncle Frank and I tied ourselves together with a fifteen-foot length of windowsash cord about an eighth of an inch in diameter. We climbed without thought of a belay. Had one of us fallen, the other would either have been pulled along or cut in two by the cord. Technical rope climbing was not introduced to the Sierra Club until 1931 by the eminent British climber Robert Underhill. With the advent of skilled rope climbing, formerly frightening situations became child’s play.

  Today the history of climbing recounts spectacular conquests in Yosemite; the Cathedral Spires, then the sheer faces of El Capitan and Half Dome were scaled by techniques of engineering that I find difficult to accept. A mountain can be climbed with delight and otherwise perilous slopes can be ascended with the use of ropes. I abhor the drilling of expansion-bolt holes in the pristine flanks of El Capitan and Half Dome; it is a desecration. Ego seems to vie with the respect I feel should be expressed in the presence of mountains. How can we define the delicate borders between ambition and the search for perfection and identity?

  Francis Holman gave more to the mountains than he ever took. For several years he served as the custodian of the LeConte Memorial, the Sierra Club’s headquarters in Yosemite. The Sierra Club Board of Directors had funded and authorized its structure, designating it as a memorial to Joseph LeConte, the eminent geologist and early conservationist who died in Yosemite Valley in 1901.

  In 1918, the custodian was a mousy girl from Berkeley, majoring in botany. She treated me with great patience. I would often visit and read from the meager collection of books and pore over the snapshot albums of assorted mountain travels and climbs. The botany collection consisted of a number of pressed wildflowers in scratched cellophane covers; they were disintegrating and colorless mummies of the glorious lanterns of the world that blossomed progressively from early spring in the foothills to September on the highest summits. Perhaps the principal service of the Memorial was to mountaineers: there were maps, well worn and marked, and Park Service and Sierra Club bulletins.

  In 1919 I had learned that the custodian was not to return the coming year so I joined the Sierra Club and applied to its great leader, Mr. William E. Colby, for the job. Colby, an attorney who specialized in mining law, was the chairman of the California State Parks Commission. He had led the Sierra Club since the death of John Muir in 1914. Fortunately, Mr. Colby was understanding of my enthusiasm and, in spite of my callow youthfulness, I was hired as the custodian.

  I arrived in Yosemite on April 17, 1920. The LeConte Memorial is a lovely, though simple, stone cottage, designed by an associate of Bernard Maybeck. It is on the south side of the valley, in the long shadow of Glacier Point, and when I arrived to begin my duties, it was damp, chilly, and dirty. Someone had broken in during the winter, made a general mess of things, and burned all the fireplace wood. The water and lights were shut off. I slept on an army cot with one thin blanket. The ten days required to clean the building and its surrounding area were grim indeed. In addition, it rained part of the time, the roof leaked, the waterfalls thundered out of the persistent cloud cover, the oaks were bare of leaves, the rocks and ground were wet and clammy, and the mice ran wild. Early spring in Yosemite is not always a joyous place of white water and light. In any event, I got the place clean and tidy and set up my little camp. In good time, the leaves burst out on the oaks, the ground dried, the skies cleared, and the waterfalls roared down their granite walls in sunlight. People would visit and ask questions, many that I could not answer that first year.

  One day a week I led a small party somewhere about the valley or its rims. The routine was always the same: we would have breakfast together at Camp Curry, I would report where we were going, and then we would go out into the wilds. A trip I enjoyed repeating was a talus-top tour of the valley, starting at the base of the Royal Arches and working our way west. Sometimes we were hundreds of feet above the valley, then we descended to where the cliffs projected onto the valley floor. It was a real adventure, and the intimate situations of clean rock and flowers, tangles of brush and fallen trees, and the glorious views were exciting, especially to first-comers to Yosemite.

  One occasion was not so sublime; at Camp Curry my party of eight and I had breakfast in which some ingredient was less than digestible. All but two of us became ill on the cliffs east of Indian Canyon. Retracing the steep slopes could not be considered in their condition, so we crawled on to the top, only to meet an expanse of snow on the forest floor. We found a clear space with some sheltering rocks, gathered wood, and built a large campf
ire, cheered by the excellent performance of an amateur ventriloquist. With nothing to eat and falling temperatures, we endured a long and uncomfortable night. At dawn we continued across Indian Creek, threaded the icy ridge above Yosemite Creek, and hurried as fast as we could down the trail by Yosemite Falls to the valley. Rangers were out in force to rescue us. I was relieved to be told that I had done the correct thing in settling the group down for the night rather than retracing a dangerous route or proceeding onward after dark.

  That summer of 1920 I was also preparing for my first lengthy trip with Uncle Frank into the High Sierra. Our itinerary would include Merced Lake, Mount Clark, and the beautiful wilderness east of the Merced Range, and I would have to buy my own burro to help carry our camping gear and food. I anxiously wired my father:

  CAN BUY BURRO FOR TWENTY INCLUDING OUTFIT. CAN SELL AT END OF SEASON FOR TEN. FINE INVESTMENT AND USEFUL. WIRE IMMEDIATELY AS OFFER IS FOR TODAY ONLY.

  My father replied positively and Mistletoe, the burro, was mine.

  I knew little about burros and asked Chief Ranger Townsley how to feed it. His reply, “Stake it out in the meadow, lead it to water daily, and give it some barley every other day.”

  I bought a box of pearl barley at the village grocery store. It did not look like convincing food to Mistletoe, so I took it to the Ranger’s Office and confronted Townsley at a staff meeting. “Is this what you said I should get for the burro?” I asked. There was an immediate howl of laughter. I was advised to go to the stables and get a huge sack of regular, rough barley, which cost about the same as the box of delicate breakfast food. For years I was known as “Pearl Barley” Adams.

  This first High Sierra trip was my introduction to true wilderness. The Sierra Nevada, the dominant mountain range of California, may be roughly divided into three areas: the foothills, the middle elevations of four thousand to eight thousand feet where the finest forests are found, and the high country from eight thousand to fourteen thousand feet. Properly, Yosemite Valley is a national shrine, with millions of people each year coming under its spell. The High Sierra is also an environment of majesty, but it has, in addition, isolation, where one can come to terms with solitude.

  The excitement of departure from Yosemite for this trip remains clear in my mind. Uncle Frank’s burro and Mistletoe were properly outfitted and the packs carefully equalized. Each animal carried nearly a hundred pounds. Uncle Frank and I carried packs weighing thirty pounds, my load being primarily photographic equipment. We were accompanied by Admiral Pond, his daughter Bessie, and a delightful Scottish lady, Miss Smith, who spoke with a burr as rugged as a juniper tree. The Admiral was a charming character, quite short and stout, but a tremendous walker. He and his daughter had walked the entire length of the California coast.

  With compassion for our animals we had a moderate first day’s climb to the Little Yosemite Valley. The penance paid for equine assistance was the sufferance of thwarted speed and inhalation of clouds of swirling dust. The animals must be in the lead: walking ahead of them can cause trouble because at every opportunity they will stop to browse or wander off the trail. I learned how to stake them out to feed, how to persuade, rather than browbeat, these determined animals, and how to attach the saddles and lash on the packs with the sleeping bags on top. Good balance and tight ropes were the essentials; there is nothing more distressing than to see a pack topple off a burro when negotiating a steep and narrow trail.

  I had already grasped many of the rituals of camping on our earlier trips: finding a proper bit of smooth ground for the sleeping bag—being sure not to place the open end of the bag facing into the night wind—and how and where to build a campfire. In 1920 there were no worries about pure water, ample firewood, and pasturage for burros. Now the water, even at the highest elevations, is suspect, grazing animals and using dead wood for firewood are not allowed. The resources are too fragile to support the demands of the growing number of people who seek a wilderness experience.

  The old Sunrise Trail to Merced Lake was varied and beautiful. We climbed out of the Little Yosemite through verdant forests of pine and fir with marvelous vistas of the Merced Range and then descended to the Merced River near Echo Creek Junction. Every moment was exhilarating. Even the animals were frisky, and Uncle Frank addressed them with choice Spanish expletives. Ever the gentleman, he first checked that the ladies did not understand Spanish.

  The first dinner at our campsite two miles east of Merced Lake was an adventure. The voracious mosquitoes vanished with the chill of twilight. There was no moon and the stars were bigger and brighter than I had ever seen them. The sounds of the river and of the cascades of Gray Peak Creek above us were enhanced in the granite canyon: a sustained pedal point of throbbing, continuous tone.

  At dawn I crept from my bag into the cold Sierra air at seventy-five hundred feet elevation. A broad spur of granite touched the river nearby, and I decided to climb it, beckoned by the sunrise light on the sparse and rugged trees more than a thousand feet above me. As I ascended, the vistas of the Merced Canyon opened and I soon saw the crags below Mount Clark shining in the early light, their spires dominating all I could see. I returned to camp and found Uncle Frank busy with breakfast. He gave me a knowing smile and said, “Pretty fine, my boy, isn’t it?” The mood of that moment was continued for many years and for many miles together on the trails and it was always pretty fine in every way.

  We moved on to Washburn Lake and toiled up Fletcher Creek to Babcock Lake. Miss Smith proceeded farther and returned, extolling her discoveries in her broad Scotch burr, “Emerick Lake is like a Scotch loch.” She sounded as if she was tearing apart a piece of plywood.

  We returned to Yosemite Valley, arriving at the LeConte Memorial late in the day, begrimed and weary but celestially happy at the splendors we had experienced.

  That summer also brought me friendship with William Zorach and his wife, Marguerite, who had come to Yosemite to sketch and paint. Both were excellent artists in the modern mode and I found their paintings inspiring. One hot day in July, Bill and I went on a hike. We climbed the trail to the base of Nevada Fall, then explored the gorge between Mount Broderick and Liberty Cap. Surviving this without harm, we ambitiously proceeded west to Grizzly Peak. Bill sketched madly whenever we stopped for a breath.

  Rather than return the long way round via Nevada Fall, I decided to climb down the LeConte Gully just north of Grizzly Peak. It is very rough and steep, difficult enough to climb up, which I had done a number of times, but this was my first descent. I soon became aware that such precipitous terrain looks very different on the way down.

  Bill was impatient to get back to camp. He was carrying a large portfolio, now filled with beautiful sketches. I kept to the north side of the gully, but he thought he saw a better route across a steep, polished slope of rock that broke off into a near-vertical precipice of several hundred feet. I yelled at him not to try to cross the rock; the dangerous combination of loose gravel and smooth, leather-soled boots was obvious to me. But he was determined to get to the other side, and I watched in dismay. Suddenly his feet slipped out from under him, his portfolio flew into the air, all his sketches fluttered out, lost over the cliff below, and he started sliding to the brink. He kept sliding with increasing speed, but with great fortune was able to grasp a small, gnarled tree growing in a tiny cleft. With great difficulty he got to his feet and was able to stand on the steep slope against the little tree. He was frightened and bewildered. I was really scared and begged him just to stay where he was.

  I climbed down to a point opposite him, about thirty-five feet away over a distressingly oblique and smooth rock surface. I told him to take off his shoes and socks, and I did the same. We tied the shoes together, stuffed them with our socks and hung them around our necks. I started out over the slick rock in bare feet that made good contact. When I reached him, we took off our belts and fitted them together. I led the way back, very slowly and carefully, each of us grasping the belt ends with one hand and
holding up our pants with the other. We made it—the longest thirty-five feet I can remember. I have two handsome watercolors by Marguerite and Bill Zorach that hang in my bedroom. His is inscribed, “In memory of a wonderful summer in Yosemite.”

  There seems always to be some person, or persons, that will inadvertently shape a life, give it direction—for good or ill. Bill and Marguerite Zorach showed me their full and happy lives as creative artists. And I shall ever be indebted to Uncle Frank for his model of discipline and integrity. He taught me to keep cool and work hard under even extremely adverse conditions.

  In the early 1920s Uncle Frank, his friend Mr. Schuh, and I camped at Young Lakes, north of Tuolumne Meadows in mid October. It was late in the season for nine-thousand-foot camping and it was very cold. We had a splendid climb on Mount Conness and planned to take two days to return to Yosemite Valley.

  We all got quickly into our sleeping bags after supper. I crawled into my bag with all of my clothes on, including my coat, using my boots as my pillow. On awakening, I found about eight inches of fresh snow piled on my bag. Mr. Schuh was up ahead of me and had built a roaring fire. I knocked off the snow; my boots were quite dry but it was chilling putting them on as the snow kept falling.

  Unfortunately, Uncle Frank had decided to be civilized. The previous night he had fully undressed and put on a nightgown, hanging his clothes on the willows about him. The morning presented a ghostly array of pants, shirt, shorts, socks, and jacket, thoroughly whitened with snow, while a snowy mound on the ground indicated the presence of Uncle Frank, with his boots, filled with snow, by his head.