By Vicky Hoover
Throughout 2016, the National Park Service has celebrated it centennial as an agency, and has emphasized public visits to national parks. The Sierra Club has used the centennial to promote attention to our national parks as iconic protected areas — prized by our national culture. But: what about wilderness and our national parks? Our national parks are known in part for some major developments — roads that span many parks, high-profile hotels and other developments, commercial stores and other service. Yet in spite of that, the portion of many parks that is developed is relatively small, and a gratifyingly large proportion of all our national parks is wilderness. Of the 84 million acres in our National park System, 44 million acres (52 percent) is designated wilderness, with 32 million acres of that within Alaska. Vast additional areas in our parks are truly wild even if not actually designated, by law, as wilderness
While Sierra Club celebrations of parks this year have been too numerous to recount here, we highlight one special event in California and an important statement in Nevada.
Ceremony on Muir Pass
August 25 was the 100th anniversary of the day in 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Act establishing the National Park Service as an agency within the Department of the Interior. On August 25, 2016, a Sierra Cub contingent assembled on Muir Pass within designated wilderness in Kings Canyon National Park for a special ceremony.
Why Muir Pass? On top of the 11,955-foot Muir Pass, roughly halfway along the length of the fabled John Muir trail that goes from Yosemite to Mount Whitney in Sequoia National Park, is the Muir Hut, or Muir Memorial Shelter. The stone building was constructed by the Sierra Club in 1930 both to honor our founder John Muir and to offer an emergency shelter for hikers caught out in a storm.
The August 25th ceremony marked and celebrated the official placement — at long last — of the Muir Memorial Shelter on the National Register of Historic Places.
How the Muir Memorial Shelter became Historic
Buildings are not placed on the National Historic Register lightly, or easily. About three years ago, Sierra Club volunteer and historic-properties architect Doug Harnsberger — Californian by birth but now resident of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania — was backpacking with his family on the Muir trail and reached Muir Pass for the first time. Immediately he was struck by the unique style of the octagonal stone structure. He learned a bit about the structure in chatting with a Park Service ranger doing routine maintenance on the hut. Shocked that the structure was not already on the historic register, Harnsberger determined to get it recognized as Historic.
So began a nearly three-year crusade that involved intense research for Doug, including a visit to the Sierra Club’s Colby Library. He learned that Sierra Club leader Will Colby had the idea for a memorial hut on Muir Pass and was inspired by a 1926 National Geographic article featuring Italian mountain “Trullo Huts” to hire a prominent California architect to design the building along Trullo lines. All the information that Harnsberger’s relentless studies uncovered went into an incredibly detailed and complex nomination form, on which Harnsberger worked with Park Service historical-building experts — with enthusiastic support from Kings Canyon/Sequoia Superintendent Woody Smeck.
Finally, this summer his endeavors were rewarded when the nomination was approved by state and national authorities, and the historic status became reality. Harnsberger elected the Park Service anniversary day to have a celebration ceremony on Muir Pass, and he worked with Sierra Club director Chuck Frank, Outings Director Stacy Bare, and wilderness advocate Vicky Hoover to recruit a Club contingent.
Dave Roberts of Sierra Club National Outings volunteered to be the official leader of the Sierra Club group heading up to Muir Pass from Florence Lake; Dave’s group included Tom Valtin, a videographer, Julia Marshall, and two Chicago-area high school students working with our ICO program (Inspiring Connections Outdoors), Leo Hernandez and Luis Ramirez, and their mentor, Chris Grenier, Chicago ICO chair.
Group size within the Wilderness is limited to 15, but three separate Sierra Groups heading to the Pass from different trailheads planned to meet at the Memorial Shelter for a unique ceremony in which both Sierra Club and National Park Service representatives participated. The Park Service granted us a “Special Use Permit” to assemble briefly as more than 15 persons. Harnsberger had worked with a designer to prepare a new plaque for the Hut, and a Park Service mule team brought the 110-pound bronze plaque up to Muir Pass just in time for the August 25 gathering.
Roberts’ trip took three days to hike from Florence Lake up to the base camp at Evolution Lake at 10,800 feet of elevation. The day after arriving at Evolution Lake, the group hiked the five miles up to the Pass for the ceremony, returning to Evolution Lake late afternoon.
Ceremony at Muir Memorial Shelter
During the rededication ceremony for the Muir Memorial Shelter, Doug Harnsberger outlined the history of the structure. He explained how Will Colby’s inspiration to honor John Muir via a stone structure midpoint on the Sierra trail that bore his name led him to work with prominent Bay Area architect, Henry Gutterson — a student of Bernard Maybeck. Harnsberger described how Gutterson played a crucial role in converting the ancient Trullo Hut construction details into a strong structure able to withstand the severe climatic forces at the 12,000-foot-high Muir Pass.
Then, no less a personage than John Muir himself (the ceremonial “Ghost of Honor” in the person of Tehipite Chapter activist and long-time Muir impersonator Frank Helling) described Club history related to the Sierra Nevada. Muir was followed by Sierra Club deputy executive director Bruce Hamilton, who highlighted more recent Sierra Club history in connection with our national parks and how we are emphasizing parks during this centennial year of the National Park Service.
The company, augmented by several passing backpackers who delighted in joining this once-in-a-lifetime celebratory event, then finished the ceremony with two songs led by Tom Valtin: a Scottish ballad once sung by John Muir himself and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
The advance party
As a senior backpacker, I myself wanted to head up toward Muir pass more slowly, so I undertook to start out a day ahead of Dave Roberts’ main party. With me in the advance group, and providing valuable support, were three friends:
- John Muir/Frank Helling himself, who also has been around long enough not to want to hurry;
- Donn Furman, whom I first knew as director of the successful 1980s campaign to save the Kings River from the proposed Rogers Crossing Dam, and who has also abetted other river-protection efforts. On countless Sierra backpack trips since then, he taught me to seek out Sierra rivers as well as mountains; and
- Jack Hession, whom I first knew as the Club’s Alaska staffer, who was a leader in designing the bill that became the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), and who has taken me on memorable rafting trips on truly remote Alaska rivers before and since his staff retirement.
Dave’s main party caught up with our team on our second day, and we camped with them in both McClure Meadow (after a fierce afternoon hail storm) and at exquisite Evolution Lake.
After the ceremonial day, our group also took a more leisurely trip back to the Florence Lake ferry than the main party. The longer you can savor the Sierra wilderness the luckier you are.
Images, top to bottom: Drawing of the Muir Memorial Shelter in Sierra Club Bulletin from 1930; Frank Helling as "John Muir"; the Muir Hut plaque.