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Just a heads up to anyone who might be in the OV or Eastside this coming weekend. Dan Arnold, author of "Early Days in the Range of Light: Encounters with Legendary Mountaineers" will be giving three readings. Here's the places and times:
Friday--Bishop, 6:30pm, Inyo Council for the Arts (Spellbinder is the host)
Saturday--Mammoth, 4pm, Booky Joint
Sunday--Lone Pine, 1pm, InterAgency Visitor Center
I'm not his publicist but I did write a review of this very fine and well-conceived book. Best read on the Sierra in a long time. Here's a few paragraphs from the review (to be published in Adventure Sports Journal this Feb.) to spark your interest.
"The premise is simple, the execution grand. Take nearly a dozen or so early pioneers of California mountaineering and tread in the echoes of their bootsteps. Follow them up the peaks that defined them, separated only by time itself. Sounds easy, right?
Almost forgot to mention: No Gore-tex, GPS, and nylon ropes allowed. If these early mountaineers went solo, so shall you. If they had to roll their meager possessions up into a blanket and tie it off with an old rope as Clarence King did, then you too will leave your backpack at home. Like John Muir, you will chase away hunger with bread crusts and tea. As for maps… What maps? You will bed atop a layer of dead pine needles. Shiver under the stars and storms without a tent. With the invention of DEET still decades away, mosquitoes will sing you to sleep. And you will come to know the Sierra like you have never known it before.
This is, in part, Daniel Arnold’s “Early Days in the Range of Light: Encounters with Legendary Mountaineers” (Counterpoint, 432 pages, $28). High above timberline, Arnold deftly nudges the legends of the Sierra into the present, bringing forth their sepia-toned accounts into sharp, colorful focus. Here, in about the only place left in California to have resisted civilization’s broad reach, Arnold goes back in time, reenacting their first accents in the same style, using the same equipment—or, in most cases, the lack of.
Beginning with William Brewer’s 1864 accent of Mount Brewer in the Southern Sierra, Arnold weaves the narratives of Clarence King, John Muir, Bolton Brown, Joseph LeConte, James Hutchinson, Francis Farquhar, Charles Michael, Ernest Clayton Andrews, and Norman Clyde with his own accents of peaks that, as he writes, “…climbers would lose sleep over in the nights before an attempt and look back afterward with pride.”
Arnold, 29, says the idea was sparked when he was 18, climbing the walls of Yosemite and the backcountry peaks of the Sierra. Soon after graduating from Stanford with a degree in philosophy, Arnold headed for the hills, living up to expectations of his major in a talus cave in Yosemite. “The general impulse for the project had been rattling around in my head for years,” he says. “I remember picking up little snippets of stories about Charles Michael and Bolton Brown when I first started climbing. Right away I wanted to know more. Who were these guys? How come no one talked about them? I couldn't believe that a whole generation of bold soloists—or maybe proto-soloists? —had been all but forgotten.”
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Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 159
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I'm not sure if it's that one or another book I recently saw on early mountaineering accounts, but it would be a great book to collect all those early writings (I think Peter Browning just published some of those originals). Many of those stories are only available as first person accounts in early Sierra Club Bulletins or some of the late 19th century periodicals. Terrific stuff.
On a related topic, I think the Norman Clyde exhibit is still at the Independence museum -- it's great and well worth a visit if you haven't seen it.
g.
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Joined: Sep 2004
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My wife and I live on the WesternRONG side of the Sierra    It is time to relocate... Hmmmm.... Bridgeport is nice! Alas.... Maybe someday! Have fun 
Journey well...
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Joined: Oct 2009
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Many of those stories are only available as first person accounts in early Sierra Club Bulletins or some of the late 19th century periodicals. Terrific stuff.
For those of you that may not be aware of its existence, the Sierra Club has a small library at its National Headquarters on Second Street in San Francisco: http://207.67.203.80/S10067Staff/OPAC/LibraryInfo/LibraryInfo.asp?MenuID=100[William Colby was the longtime Secretary of the club. Historical note: after the 1906 earthquake, all the club records were moved to his house at 2901 Channing Way in Berkeley for several years until the S.F. office was rebuilt.] When I was working up in the South Bay several years ago, I would occasionally take a day off from work and go haunt the place. The main reason for my visits was to peruse the original bound copies of the Sierra Club Bulletin reaching back to Vol.1 in 1893: http://www.sierraclub.org/library/scb/They make for fascinating reading, containing articles authored by, among others, John Muir, William Colby, Francis Farquhar, Joseph LeConte, Norman Clyde, Clarence King, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Walter Starr. Great photographs also: I spent one entire day looking at photos and reading ongoing accounts of the Lassen Peak eruption sequence; people would climb the peak, take a few photos, and report back what was happening after each activity. (They were rather distressed when one of the preliminary eruptions destroyed the summit hut.) This is a small reference library only. (All the Sierra Club archives are kept at the Bancroft Library on the UC Berkeley campus.) Access is by appointment only and you do not need to be a Club member.
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Joined: Oct 2004
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There's also a hard to find 3 volume reprint set of all the Sierra Club Bulletins from 1893 (?) to about 1906. It was published in the early 50s to replace sets lost by members & libraries in the '06 earthquake. Dawson's Books in Hollywood used to carry individual SCBs, but I'm not sure if they specialize in Sierra/California stuff anymore.
A lot of good libraries do have a full set though. The early ones are definitely worth reading.
g.
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Joined: Aug 2006
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Hmmm... wine tasting doesn't start until 7pm at The Creek, Icebreaker Party at Bishop Mountaineering at 6... I'd say that sounds like a perfect evening in B-town! And a cute Scotsman for a date, even! WOW! Luckiest girl strikes again! And they say nothing EVER goes on here... 
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Joined: Jan 2007
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Thank you for this book alert. I just ordered the book online at Barnes and Noble.I can't wait to read this one. Just sorry I can't go hang with Moose and date. Shots of winer errr scotch and a reading in Rockin B'Town doesn't get much better than that.
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Joined: Aug 2006
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Joined: Jan 2003
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There's also a hard to find 3 volume reprint set of all the Sierra Club Bulletins from 1893 (?) to about 1906.
...
A lot of good libraries do have a full set though. The early ones are definitely worth reading.
g. George Google Books has at least 9 of the first 10 volumes of the Sierra Club Bulletin covering 1893-1919 fully available. The only one I haven't found there is Vol. 2 for 1897-1899. Unfortunately there is duplication and inconsistency in naming, but the price is right. These are .pdf files from 6 to 26 Megabytes. V1 1893-1896 v2 not yet found V3 1900-1901 V4 1902-1903 V5 1904-1905 V6 1906-1907 V7 1908-1909 V8 1910-1912 V9 1913-1915 V10 1916-1919 There are also early editions of other clubs journals there such as: The Mountaineer Appalachia Dale B. Dalrymple
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Joined: Sep 2004
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I got a wedding to go to. One of my wife's co-workers this Saturday of all days! Darn! Darn! Darn! I thought married life meant you didn't have to go to other people's weddings cuz you "been there and done that!"  BTW, my wife DOES read this board so I better be on my bestest behavior. Hi, Wifey-Pooh! Don't want to end up sleeping in my tent... On second thought... Oh, hope no one out there triskaidekaphobic or paraskavedekatriaphobic. Have fun.
Last edited by + @ti2d; 11/13/09 08:41 PM.
Journey well...
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Joined: Oct 2009
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Heading slightly out of the Sierra, there is a nice website on Mt. Shasta that is run by the College of the Siskiyous (located in Weed): http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/Perhaps my favorite photo on that website is the following:  Here is a link to information re. the Geodetic Monument next to Mr./Ms. Horsie: http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/lit/des/desc14.htm
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