The following paragraph is quoted from the second edition of the book (END-KIANN Publishing Company, Lodi, California, 1970), Chapter VII, Accidents/Lost people/And rescues, pages 32-33:

In August, 1934, Mr. and Mrs. Rettenbacker of San Mateo, California, were reported lost or missing when they did not return to their camp in Tuolumne Meadows, from a mountain climb up Banner Peak, just over the East Park Boundary. They had registered with me at Tuolumne Meadows five days previous, and reported they would return on a certain date. The following day I reported them over-due. A search party was organized by the Forest Service, headed by Norman Clyde, a noted mountaineer in the Sierra region. All Park Rangers in this area were checking trails and high camp sites for a trace of the couple. A few days later Norman Clyde found the bodies in a rock and snow slide on the side of Banner Peak. Permission was granted to bury them near the spot.

A signed copy of Guardians…, second printing (1970). From the collection of Barry Reuter.

This excerpt provides strong evidence that the Rettenbachers began their journey from Tuolumne Meadows. Ranger Bingaman might also have been the last person who talked to Conrad and Anna. Note that the excerpt suggests that the couple's bodies were found in a rock (and snow?) slide on the side of the mountain. Nothing similar was mentioned in the newspaper reports. Could it be that the couple got caught by a rock and snow avalanche while they were climbing? Certainly a possibility, but it is not likely that such a dramatic detail would have been skipped in the wire reports if indeed the slide had happened.

We should keep in mind that John Bingaman's report was written many years after the accident, when perhaps he no longer remembered the details. Shirley Sargent, the author of Protecting Paradise: Yosemite Rangers 1898-1960 (Ponderosa Press, Yosemite, 1998), discusses on p. 70 (footnote #4), a different rescue mission mentioned in Bingaman's Guardians of the Yosemite. She finds that Bingaman's account of events contrasted sharply with contemporary reports. My reading of Shirley's comment, applied to the Rettenbacher case, is that we should take Bingaman's "rock and snow slide" somewhat cautiously. A small rock slide could perhaps have been a consequence of the accident, rather than the cause of it.

In light of Shirley Sargent's comments, one could perhaps also question Bingaman's statement that he was the one who helped with the Rettenbachers' registration, and that he reported them overdue. However, I believe that John Bingaman did personally encounter Conrad and Anna at Tuolumne Meadows. There were certainly many accidents during his 35+ years in Yosemite, and yet he singled out only a few of them in his book. It is feasible that in selecting the cases for the book, Bingaman's main criterion was the level of his involvement in those cases.

Ranger Bingaman had a very interesting life. We can learn about his Yosemite years in his three well written books. He was born in Ohio, and began first working in Yosemite as a packer in 1918. He was appointed park ranger in 1921. At the time of the Rettenbacher accident, he was 38. He retired in 1956, and died in April 1987, in Stockton.

While we could express caution about some elements of John Bingaman's report, other aspects of his account of the Rettenbacher accident are confirmed in a report by another well known Yosemite figure. The report was unearthed in January 2005, by Linda Eade, a research librarian in Yosemite National Park. The document is a part of Yosemite National Park's Superintendent's Monthly Report from August 1934. The Superintendent at that time was Charles G. Thomson (his superintendence came abruptly to an end a few years later, in March 1937, when he died from a heart attack). In the section 630 - Accidents, Thomson's typewriter-written report says on p. 16 (emphases added):

"On August 15, the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Rettenbacker, San Mateo, California, were found on the slopes of Banner Peak, outside the Park, where they had fallen about 600 feet in an attempt to climb the mountain. Rangers had been searching for this party in the Park, as they had started out from Tuolumne Meadows several days before. The Park radio system was invaluable in this incident: The Park ranger stationed at Devil's Post Pile [National Monument] broadcast to headquarters the description of a tent and other equipment found near the Monument. The district ranger at Tuolumne Meadows intercepted the flash, immediately identifying the equipment, by the description given, as the property of the Rettenbackers, who had left Tuolumne Meadows ten days previously for mountain climbing and who were then two or three days overdue back at Tuolumne Meadows. Search was begun immediately."

Thomson's report confirms that Tuolumne Meadows was the starting point of the Rettenbacher's mountain trip. It also indicates that ten days had passed between the time when Anna and Conrad had left Tuolumne Meadows, and the time when their empty tent was found. Even if the number of days was not exactly ten, that sentence certainly tells us that the entire trip was expected to be relatively short, and span perhaps about a week. (According to Bingaman's report, the Rettenbachers' trip was supposed to last about five days). As we shall see later, there are serious doubts that the plaque on the Rettenbachers' grave identifies the time of their deaths correctly. The plaque specifies: "… lost their lives climbing Mt. Banner [in] July 1934". However, all other evidences suggest that the accident had happened in August, not July. A possible time table of the couple's last mountain trip is described in one of the following sections.

Finally, one cannot help but see the Superintendent's excitement with what was apparently a new addition to the National Park equipment: radio stations in headquarters and remote outposts. It was the Park radio system that enabled rangers to send the description of the abandoned tent to Tuolumne Meadows quickly. As mentioned in the previous section, it appears that the search party too was equipped with some kind of portable radio stations. It would be interesting to find out if 1934 was the year that the two-way radios premiered in California's National Parks and National Forests.

NEXT: Other players in the drama

If you have any reliable knowledge about the accident or the Rettenbachers, please drop me a line at