I thought I knew much about Norman Clyde’s life and times, the “times” being when the High Sierra were, paradoxically, both explored and unexplored. Late in life Clyde stated that he had been most active in that interlude between the pioneers—1860 to 1910—and the technical rock climbers, who arrived in the 1930s to scale the “impossible” cliffs. Reading Pavlik, I discovered new insights. For instance, Clyde was well aware that by 1920 excellent maps existed, that the range was well known, and that most of the highest peaks had been climbed. But “minor” unclimbed peaks—like the exquisite Mt. Huxley and the craggy Deerhorn Mountain—were among the most startling formations of the High Sierra. And Clyde sought these out. A forty-year-old kid let loose in a candy store! As Clyde himself admitted, he was not a great technical climber. He seemed content to seek out beautiful or remote peaks with relatively easy routes and often reported later, in his typical laconic manner, “No sign of previous ascent.”
Much though I admired Clyde’s mountain skills, I was not a fan of his prose, as Pavlik points out in this book. I thought my hero’s words were dry and impersonal, and I still feel this way. Yet I was unaware that he wrote such a phenomenal amount. I now picture him at his typewriter on a snowy winter’s day, alone as usual, pecking away, probably with two fingers, thinking of new ways to describe his sublime but rather limited universe.
Clyde’s personal life was certainly unsettled. Everyone knew that he could be a curmudgeon and occasionally act rude. I met him only once, in a setting he must have hated: a sporting-goods store in Berkeley where I think he was trying to cadge equipment. I was young and timid and hardly said a word; it was enough to simply gaze upon this aging legend. He certainly behaved himself on this brief encounter, but Pavlik has a lot to say about his behavior elsewhere, and this is what makes the book so intriguing. Clyde was no saint and could be downright antisocial at times. With fairness and respect, Pavlik, having done an enormous amount of research over fifteen years, delves into all aspects of Clyde’s life.
If Clyde was occasionally cantankerous, he could also be generous. Everyone familiar with High Sierra history knows how Clyde persevered, by himself, in the Minaret Range in 1933, looking for the body ofWalter Starr, Jr., long after the other searchers had given up. And I knew of one or two other of his efforts in this regard. Pavlik has discovered, in ancient newspapers and by contacting peripheral people, that Clyde was involved in numerous other unpleasant but necessary searches to locate an overdue hiker or climber. He seems to have had a preternatural ability to know where a missing person would go and how he or she might act. His astonishing knowledge of the natural world helped, so he was quick to see a fresh rockfall scar, for instance, or hear buzzing flies that might indicate a nearby corpse. Clyde was certainly the outstanding human tracker of the High Sierra for many decades.
But Clyde was not simply a California superman, and Pavlik eloquently describes his feats in other regions. Many Sierra aficionados might be unaware of his travels outside the state. An example: Clyde’s adventures in Glacier National Park in a matter of weeks during the summer of 1923 are almost unbelievable. In this book you will learn of his endurance and route-finding abilities as he ascended Montana peaks far more complex and dangerous than those in his beloved Sierra. At the time, probably no one in the world was attacking mountains at such a demanding pace. More significantly, this was not some reckless, hotshot kid bent on fame; he was a careful, thirty-eight-year-old climber. Norman Clyde was, without question, a unique individual.
Introduction
The old man sits on the ground, without benefit of a chair to hold him up off the earth. Around him are scattered a lifetime of writings and photographs, remnants of a life lived in the mountains of California and the West. Carefully he reads them, sorts them by subject, and lays their onionskin pages one on top of another. His clothing is neatly pressed, patched, and clean. The collar and cuffs show signs of wear, and the color has faded from the fabric. Perched on his head is a ranger-style campaign hat, a four-dimpled crown surrounded by a wide, flat brim that protects a weathered face from the bright spring sunshine. His sun-scarred hands gently hold the documents before his one good eye, the orb darting over the handwritten pages, his mind traversing the years and miles contained in those few, precious pieces of writing.
The old man is Norman Asa Clyde; the year is 1970. Along with his friend Dick Beach, Norman had returned to his Baker Ranch cabin, above the Owens Valley town of Big Pine, to sort through his belongings. Illness and old age have forced a retreat from his rustic home. When local hoodlums had heard about his absence, they ransacked his cabin in search of a gun collection. The crumpled papers and photographs are among the casualties of their looting spree.
In earlier years Clyde would have begun his day quite differently—perhaps with a walk up the creek to witness the changing weather patterns, or with skis strapped to his feet, to make a daylong exploration of the mountain peaks that surrounded his winter den. Perhaps he would clean and oil one of the many firearms, fresh from a round of target practice. There was always work to be done: repairing a broken camera, organizing fly fishing equipment, splitting and stacking firewood, penning an article for a newspaper or magazine. And there was always the need for physical exertion—a walk, a climb, skiing or snowshoeing in winter, multiday excursions in the summer and fall.
These weren’t only pleasant pastimes. Clyde didn’t just visit the mountains, he lived in them. As he told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, “I sort of went off on a tangent from civilization and never got back.”1 It was there he made a modest income, writing about his activities in the surrounding region, and guiding those who came to enjoy this spectacular and rugged country. For sixty years he called the Sierra Nevada his home, first as an ardent amateur, and later as a knowledgeable resident and traveler who came to know this range better than any other human being, John Muir included. When old age and infirmity finally forced him to move to the sanitorium in Big Pine, he grudgingly went, but his heart and his mind remained in the high country. Upon returning to his disheveled cabin on Baker Creek, he gathered up papers and photographs, and restored them to order.
In effect, that is the purpose of this book: to pull together the loose threads of one man’s life, and to make some sense out of a wide and disparate variety of outlooks, opinions, and viewpoints. Norman Asa Clyde lived for eighty-seven years, coming of age at the end of the nineteenth century and passing away in the third quarter of the twentieth. He learned his skills and practiced his mobility before the age of the automobile, and he lived to see modern-day explorers walk on the moon.
During his lifetime he explored and ascended hundreds of peaks in the mountain ranges of western North America, from Mt. Robson in the Canadian Rockies to El Picacho del Diablo in Baja California. He honed his outdoor skills over a lifetime. He was remarkably self-sufficient and skilled at a variety of tasks, including not only rock climbing and mountaineering but skiing, snowshoeing, fishing, hunting, axemanship, and mountain rescue. Clyde was more than just a mountain explorer. He was an educated man with a keen intelligence and a probing mind. He was well-read, and knowledgeable in a broad spectrum of disciplines—in the arts and humanities as well as the natural sciences. A prolific author, he wrote many articles for the popular press and for mountain journals. And, contrary to popular belief, he was not a hermit, and in the winter season could often be found in the Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay regions, visiting with friends, replenishing his supply of reading material, and planning new excursions. He could also be volatile, his anger and frustration erupting in unpredictable ways that had serious consequences for the strong-willed