PHOTO COURTESY OF THE COUNTY OF INYO EASTERN CALIFORNIA MUSEUMMuseum Explores Legendary Life of Climber
Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2009
By Marek Warszawski / The Fresno Bee
Legendary Sierra mountaineer Norman Clyde leans on his ice axe in this undated photo. Clyde, who is credited with more first ascents than anyone else in the Sierra Nevada, is the subject of an extensive exhibit that opens Saturday at the Eastern California Museum in Independence. Nearly 40 years after his death, Clyde remains a bit of a mystery among an abundance of personalities in Sierra mountaineering and rock climbing.
John Muir, Clarence King, Royal Robbins. The history of Sierra Nevada mountaineering and rock climbing is filled with legendary names and legendary feats.
But when stories get passed around a campfire on cold nights at high elevations, one name towers above them all: Norman Clyde.
Simply put, anyone who stands atop a Sierra peak is following in Clyde's footsteps, whether they realize it or not.
Legendary Sierra mountaineer Norman Clyde leans on his ice axe in this undated photo. Clyde, who is credited with more first ascents than anyone else in the Sierra Nevada, is the subject of an extensive exhibit that opens Saturday at the Eastern California Museum in Independence.
Nearly 40 years after his death, Clyde remains a bit of a mystery among an abundance of personalities in Sierra mountaineering and rock climbing.
In a mountaineering career that spanned several decades, Clyde is credited with roughly 130 first ascents -- far more than anyone else -- and pioneered just as many new routes on peaks that had already been climbed.
But because Clyde was a recluse, had a gruff demeanor and didn't trumpet his own accomplishments, much less is known about him than other mountaineers of his stature. Nearly 40 years after his death, he remains a bit of a mystery.
That's where the Eastern California Museum, located in Independence, helps fill in the blanks. The museum's newest exhibit, "Norman Clyde of the High Sierra," opens Saturday and will be on display throughout the year.
"Norman Clyde was without question the most prolific climber in Sierra history," said Andy Selters, a Bishop-based climber, author and photographer who curated the exhibit.
"He climbed everything. It's fair to say that he climbed every significant peak in the Sierra, and some that aren't so significant."
The museum's display includes more than 50 photographs, numerous personal belongings, including his trademark campaign hat and ice axe, and a 7-foot-long satellite image of the High Sierra marked with 100 of Clyde's first ascents.
Just as notable as the number of peaks Clyde climbed is the manner in which he climbed them.
Clyde's customary 90-pound backpacks, stuffed with cast-iron skillets, canned food, fishing reels and hardcover volumes of classic literature, written in Greek and Latin, are as legendary as his climbs.
We're not talking about backpacks with fitted internal frames, foam-padded hip belts and load compression straps. The kind of pack Clyde lugged around was basically a wooden board with a duffel bag lashed to it.
He became known as "the pack that walks like a man."
"He was like a traveling Winnebago," Selters said.
Clyde spent his first summer in the Sierra in 1914 -- the same year Muir died. Following his wife's death in 1919 of tuberculosis, Clyde threw himself into mountaineering. To get nearer to the peaks he loved, he became principal of Owens Valley School in Independence.
In 1925 alone, Clyde recorded 48 climbs, 22 of which were first ascents. But while he felt at home in the mountains, he didn't fare as well in general society. On Halloween night 1928, Clyde fired a shot from his Colt .45 into the car of a local teenager who Clyde had reason to believe was on his way to vandalize the school. Under pressure, he resigned as principal and never again held a full-time job.
Included in the exhibit are articles from the local newspaper and minutes of the school board meeting that followed the shooting incident.
"They didn't file charges against him as long as he quit," Selters said. "He had a temper. That's pretty clear."
Clyde typically spent his summers at a high-elevation base camp in order to be closer to the peaks he loved. In winter, he found work as a caretaker of summer lodges and explored the snow-covered wilderness on skis.
Although Clyde was well known during his lifetime, he refused to capitalize on his fame by writing personal accounts of his climbs that surely would've sold well. Instead, his published works are focused entirely on mountains, their individual characteristics and the views afforded from their summits.
"It was very intentional," Selters said. "He did not want to write his story into the mountains, and it's not entirely clear why. I guess he felt the mountains were the story, and his personal recollections shouldn't detract from that."
Photographs of Clyde taken in his 70s show him with a straight back and crystal clear eyes. Even some of the surliness of his younger years is said to have faded.
When Clyde died in 1972 at age 87, just two years beyond his last climb, friends quietly scattered his ashes across the summit of an unnamed peak that Clyde used to gaze upon from his ranch outside Big Pine.
Later, it was christened Norman Clyde Peak. A fitting tribute for a man who dedicated his life to mountains as few have or ever will.
