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Chapter Six: New Leaders, New Sports In 1930 William Colby led his last High Trip. To Marion Randall Parsons, the end of the Colby-led outings seemed like the end of an era. "Our problem is no longer how to make the mountains better traveled and better known," she wrote that year. She wondered whether the Club needed to restate its aims for a modern age. In fact, the Club was already changing. The Angeles Chapter had been chartered in 1911, the San Francisco Bay Chapter in 1924, the Riverside Chapter in 1932, with many more to come. The first chapter outside of California--the Atlantic, organized by Tom Jukes to serve members on the East Coast--would be chartered in 1950. Each chapter began to provide its own educational and outings programs. The year 1931 brought to the Club a major technological innovation that promised to change the nature of mountaineering. On the High Trip to northern Yosemite, Francis Farquhar, with Robert L. M. Underhill of the Appalachian Mountain Club, introduced the proper use of the climbing rope to Club mountaineers. Immediately after the annual outing, Underhill joined Norman Clyde, the grand old man of the Sierra, and two younger climbers, Glen Dawson and Jules Eichorn, in the first ascent of the east face of Mt. Whitney. Other difficult first ascents were made that summer, including the north face of Unicorn Peak, North Palisade, Thunderbolt Peak from the glacier, and the east face of Banner Peak. The use of the climbing rope energized the climbing community. A young law student named Richard Leonard organized a climbing club that practiced at Cragmont Rock in Berkeley; this group became the Rock Climbing Section of the San Francisco Bay Chapter. A similar section was formed in the Angeles Chapter. Soon members of the rock climbing sections were training for difficult technical ascents in Yosemite and at Tahquitz Rock in southern California. A new generation of Club rock climbers appeared, including Leonard, Eichorn, David Brower, Raffi Bedayn, Morgan Harris, Bestor Robinson, and many others. Although Club members did not introduce the use of the rope to American climbers, they perfected its use, promoted safety in the sport, and raised the standards for technical climbing. By the mid-1930s they were pioneering routes up spires, walls, mountains, and towers previously thought unclimbable. In 1934 Eichorn, Leonard, and Robinson climbed the Cathedral Spires in Yosemite, using pitons for the first time in the Sierra. The Club's Committee on Mountain Records began to compile a climbing guide to the Sierra, and the Sierra Club Decimal Rating System, developed at Tahquitz Rock by the Angeles Chapter Rock Climbing Section, soon became the American standard for determining the difficulty of rock climbs. The Club's Bulletin had been devoted primarily to literature about the exploration, enjoyment, and conservation of the Sierra; under the editorship of Francis Farquhar it also became the premier American mountaineering journal. Club expeditions went to British Columbia in the mid-1930s, and by the 1950s successful Club-sponsored expeditions were going to Alaska, Peru, and the Himalayas. Sierra Club climbers and Club-trained climbers would become the avant-garde of American mountaineering in the next three decades, and they would make California--in particular Yosemite Valley--an international center where technical climbing reached ever-higher standards. Meanwhile, rock-climbing sections in individual chapters instructed novices in safe technique and devised tests to screen participants for climbs of various levels of difficulty. From these local sections came a constant flow of accomplished mountaineers. Skiing had always been the companion sport to summer mountaineering. The best-known early skier in the Sierra was "Snowshoe" Thomson, who crossed the Sierra many times in the mid-nineteenth century. Muir himself skied at Lake Tahoe in 1878. Some Club members had been interested in skiing from the beginning, and in 1915 Hazel King had written for the Bulletin of her "wonderful flight on hickory wings" at Tahoe. Like climbing, ski technique underwent a revolution in the 1930s. During the winter of 1929-30, Club member Orland Bartholomew solo-skied the crest of the Sierra from Lone Pine to Yosemite Valley. Francis Farquhar wrote in the Bulletin that such an accomplishment opened up a new era, allowing winter ascents of major Sierra peaks and the unfolding of the winter grandeur of the range. Another writer for the Bulletin prophesized that "within a very few years there will be found in the Sierra Nevada of California the outstanding winter resorts of America." Club President Duncan McDuffie appointed a Winter Sports Committee, chaired by the young photographer Ansel Adams. This committee urged the Club to eschew the exploitation of downhill resort skiing, and instead to encourage winter cross-country trips and expeditions. Meanwhile, Joel Hildebrand, a chemistry professor at the University of California, was interested in encouraging technical proficiency (and perhaps competition) among skiers. Hildebrand and others devised downhill skiing tests that screened Club members for tours of increasing difficulty, and awarded badges corresponding to various levels of proficiency. These tests were supplemented by a ski-mountaineering test that focused on backcountry-touring and winter-camping technique. The widespread enthusiasm for winter sports led the Club to build ski lodges. In 1930 the Angeles Chapter constructed Harwood Lodge in San Antonio Canyon, and a few years later the chapter built San Antonio Hut and Keller Peak Ski Lodge. Skiers from the San Francisco Bay Area built Clair Tappaan Lodge near Donner Summit in 1934, and others followed. The Club began to schedule winter outings that used the lodges as centers for tours. World War II forced a temporary halt to the Club's outings program, but actually served to further Club members' progress in developing mountaineering equipment and technique. During the war, many Club leaders saw combat with the U.S. Mountain Troops, while others perfected equipment and trained troops. Indeed, the Manual of Ski Mountaineering, a collection of articles on winter camping and safe mountaineering written by Club members and edited by David Brower, was compiled to aid in training mountain troops. And much of the Army manual, Mountain Operations, was drawn from Sierra Club mountaineering experience. The 1940s also saw the introduction of nylon climbing rope by Richard Leonard, and improved technology of expansion anchors, first used on a Sierra Club party's ascent of Ship Rock in New Mexico. The advent of new alloys allowed advances in the design of pitons. But technology influenced more than the frontier of technical climbing and skiing; "mummy"-style sleeping bags, devised and tested by Club mountaineers, nylon tents, and improved backpacks using aluminum frames made travel in the mountains far less arduous than it had been at the turn of the century, opening the wilderness to more people. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use |
