I had seen Clyde Minaret near Mammoth Lakes many times earlier, and knew it must have been named for some legendary old Sierra explorer, but I really didn't pay much attention to the Sierra history at that time. Suddenly, this person from the legends became real and present. It didn't matter to us if this really was Clyde's handwriting, or more likely just a copy of his earlier original note. The mere fact that we were here at the top that Clyde had once considered a worthwhile goal elated us. For a moment we forgot that we still had to do our class-3 descent on the way back. In the next few years I learned a lot about Clyde. Unexpectedly, he came back into the focus, this time via the Rettenbacher story.

Norman Clyde, probably during his student years at Geneva College. From Geneva Magazine (Fall/Winter 2000), reproduced with permission.

Norman Asa Clyde, the eldest child in Charles and Sarah Clyde's family, was born in Philadelphia, in 1885. His father, Charles, who probably didn't get much formal education in his youth, but was eager to learn, began taking private lessons in classical literature and theology in about 1879. His mentor and teacher was David Steele. Charles became ordained to the office of the ministry in Steele's Reformed Presbytery (RP) congregation in 1883. In the year in which Norman was born, his father got involved in a bitter conflict with his mentor. After Steele's death in 1887, Charles Clyde became an itinerant minister with no settled congregation, preaching in various places in Pennsylvania and across the midwest. Charles took care of his eldest son's early schooling, and Norman learned to read Latin and Greek at a young age. In 1897, Charles, his wife, and seven children, moved to Lochiel Township, Glengarry County, Ontario, where Charles began serving in the local branch of the Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA). They settled, took Canadian citizenship, and Norman and other children began attending the regular public school. Two more children were born in Lochiel. Contrary to the frequently repeated statement that Charles Clyde had died in 1900, the entire family, including the father, was still there on March 31, 1901, during that year's Canada Census. However, that autumn Charles fell ill from pneumonia and died on December 7, 1901. The family then moved back to Pennsylvania, where Norman enrolled in Geneva College at Beaver Falls, and graduated in classics in 1909. I recently wrote to the school to see if they had any information about Clyde. Mrs. Kae Kirkwood, Archival Librarian at the College, did some research and found that Norman was first mentioned in school's records for 1906/07 school year. (However, the records from 1905/06 are lost or misplaced, and he might have actually enrolled a year earlier). Mrs. Kirkwood also unearthed the following gem: During his student years, Clyde was one of the editors of the school newspaper The Cabinet, and served for several years as assistant local editor, exchange editor, and Adelphic Literary Society editor! (The latest function may suggest that he was also a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity on campus). No wonder that he later turned into a prolific writer. Clyde is registered in the University of Wisconsin 1910-1911 Catalogue as a graduate student in Letter and Science for the summer session of 1910 (p. 642). He is also listed in the UC Berkeley Catalogue of Officers and Students for 1911-12 ("Clyde Norman, Beaver Falls, Pa., A. B. Geneva College 1909, graduate student in Social Sciences, [address] 2529 Dwight way, Berkeley, [phone] Bkly 4474"), and in the UC Berkeley register of students in the summer session of 1912.

His name was first made known to general public when several major newspapers picked up the Associated Press wire report about Clyde's record setting climb of Mt. Shasta in July 1923. Apparently, Clyde climbed from Horse Camp to the summit in "three hours and seventeen minutes", thus "breaking a record that had stood for forty years". One of the papers that brought this information was Los Angeles Times. This newspaper kept its readers well informed about Clyde throughout the rest of his life. I found more than forty Los Angeles Times articles that had mentioned Clyde and his mountaineering related experiences between 1923 and 1963. But long before the Shasta record of 1923, which launched his public career, Clyde's name was mentioned in an article that had nothing to do with climbing or mountains. In a Sunday issue of Los Angeles Times from June of 1915, we can find a brief description of his wedding. In a simple ceremony, in a small house on West Mountain Street in Pasadena, Winifred Bolster became his wife! (Winifred died in 1919).

The complete list of Clyde-related articles can be found in Appendix B. Although Clyde was a major figure in the history of the Sierra Nevada, his comprehensive biography yet remains to be written and published. If you want to learn something about Clyde, you have to rely on one of several shorter texts about his life, scattered in various (often hard to find!) books. I have tried a different approach here. What follows is a view that an avid reader of Los Angeles Times might have gotten of Norman Clyde, over the course of forty years.

Two months after the Shasta "record", Los Angeles Times of September 16, 1923, brought an "exclusive dispatch" with the subtitle "Thirty-six Mountains Scaled by Man on Vacation". The article introduced Clyde as "36 years of age, a small-town schoolmaster of Weaverville, California, …, and a member of the Sierra (a mountaineer) Club of San Francisco". Actually, Clyde was 38 years old at that time. Throughout his life, Clyde's habit was to mislead the reporters about his true age. The accomplishment that the article refers to was Clyde's climb to 36 peaks in as many consecutive days, including eleven first ascents, during the summer of 1923 in Glacier National Park, Montana. Not too bad for a "man on vacation"! In the following years, several other of Clyde's climbing successes were described in various Los Angeles Times articles. For example, his ascent in 1928 of Mt. Robson, the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, was declared to be "one of the most difficult climbs in the world".

However, one major event in Clyde's life from that era would remain undisclosed to the readers of Los Angeles Times for the next 36 years. Only in the 1960s, the reading public would find out that Clyde, in spite of his mountaineering achievements, had been fired from his teaching job in 1928. At that time, Clyde was a high school teacher and principal in Independence, Owens Valley, California. Here is a brief description of the event that led to Clyde's dismissal, taken from an article in the Sunday issue of Los Angeles Times of September 22, 1963: "His teaching career ended suddenly on Halloween in 1924 [the event happened in 1928, not in 1924. Clyde was first hired in Independence during the summer of 1925; H.G.] Clyde fired a revolver into the air, according to his recollection, to turn some young pranksters from school property. Although no one was hurt he was discharged from his job. From then on his home was the Sierra wilderness".

Norman Clyde gives talk at Switzer's Resort, in Upper Arroyo Seco (Angeles National Forest) on May 11, 1929. The ad appeared in Los Angeles Times and other local papers.

One consequence of this event was that Clyde could now fully pursue his passion for mountains, free of the confinements and social obligations related to his teaching job. But it also meant that he would from now on have to rely on his writing, lecturing, and guiding abilities to earn enough for his food, shelter, and equipment. This would probably explain how Clyde's name ended up in the advertisement section of Los Angeles Times and other local papers in the spring of 1929. In a paid ad, the popular Switzer resort in Upper Arroyo Seco, Angeles National Forest, was inviting the public to a lecture by "noted mountaineer and writer" Norman Clyde. For the visitor for whom mountain tales were not the most favorite pass time, a soprano and a pianist would be at hand to provide additional entertainment, hinted the ad. Several other lectures and courses by Clyde were mentioned in Los Angeles Times during the early and mid 1930s, and many more probably didn't make it to the newspaper. Clyde was also submitting his photos of mountain scenes to newspapers and periodicals. One such identifiable "filler" photo appeared in Los Angeles Times in April of 1935, but there could also have been a few more unsigned ones. Each little honorarium was a big help to this man who no longer had a steady job. Guiding tourists was another way for him to earn income. Clyde was, for example, presented to the readers of Los Angeles Times as a fishing expert (which he really was), who could lead parties of sportsmen and fishermen to remote Sierra lakes with abundant supplies of fish.

All those secondary functions did not keep Clyde from his main activity: climbing unconquered peaks and finding new, ever more challenging routes to mountain tops. In 1929, a Los Angeles Times article said that Clyde was "the only man who has climbed all of the California mountain peaks over 14,000 feet high", but the article didn't elaborate on when this feat was completed. On August 16, 1931, Norman Clyde, Glen Dawson, Jules Eichorn, and Robert Underhill, were the first to make an ascent to the top of Mt. Whitney via the East Face route. Los Angeles Times was a little late in reporting this spectacular climb. It only informed the readers about it in 1937, but better late than never. In spite of such occasional tardiness in reporting by the paper, its readers could still get the idea that Norman Clyde was an exceptional mountaineer. For example, in an article from 1932, Clyde was called "one of the best known mountaineers of the West", and two years later, in 1934, he was described as a "veteran of more than 600 mountain ascents".

The more Clyde's climbing skills and unparallel familiarity with the mountains became known, the more frequently was he called upon to search for missing persons in the High Sierra. Sometimes his help would be sought by the family of a climber or hiker who didn't return at a scheduled time. In other cases he was summoned to a rescue mission by forest service officials, or just happened to be near an accident scene and willingly helped in the rescue efforts. Los Angeles Times reported six search and rescue/recovery missions between 1929 and 1950, in which Clyde had played a role (see Appendix B), but that was probably just the tip of the iceberg. For example, Clyde's participation in the Rettenbacher search was not mentioned in Los Angeles Times, and there were probably many other occasions when Clyde's help in mountain searches had simply not been registered in the newspaper. One story that attracted a lot of attention in the early 1930s was the disappearance of a young boy, Howard Lamel, on Mt. Whitney. One day in July of 1930, Howard had left the Mt. Whitney trail to explore the mountain on his own, and never showed up at the meeting place where his father and brother had waited. In the following days, airplanes and more than 100 forest rangers and volunteers participated in the search for the lost boy. Norman Clyde joined the search at the request of the boy's father. Clyde and Robert Evans eventually found the boy's body high on the cliffs on the east side of the mountain. Three years later, another young man didn't show up for a meeting with his father in a mountain lodge. The missing man's name was Walter Starr, Jr.

The compelling story of Starr's disappearance is well presented in William Alsup's book Missing in the Minarets. Several articles in Los Angeles Times were devoted to the Starr case, and in three of them Clyde was mentioned. Readers learned that he was the one who had discovered the body after an eight-day search, then helped with the burial. Clyde apparently stayed in Mammoth Lakes after the burial, and, according to the newspaper, talked about his search in an evening lecture at Tamarack Lodge in early September of 1933.

By 1934, Norman Clyde's career had reached its peak. In January of that year, Lowell Brodgart published a long article about "These Strange Peak-Grabbers" in the Los Angeles Times' Sunday Magazine. Clyde is mentioned several times in that report. It was Brodgart who, without hesitation, named Clyde "the best known mountaineer of the West". Several months later, Ed Ainsworth called Clyde's first ascents of ten of the Devils Crags (with Dave Brower and Hervey Voge), "the most remarkable mountaineering feats ever accomplished in the United States".

On Monday, July 23, 1934, the Rettenbachers were getting ready for their trip to the Sierra, and probably couldn't wait for the working week to end. Their first destination was to be Tuolumne Meadows, in Yosemite. On that same Monday, some eighty miles to the south of Yosemite, a USGS surveyor, Jim Murphy, had disappeared on Outlook Peak. A search began. Jim was a federal worker, and two Army bombers were used in the search together with ground crews, but no trace of the missing man could be found. According to Los Angeles Times of Thursday, July 26, Norman Clyde and his climbing partner from Mt. Whitney's East Face and El Picacho del Diablo, Glen Dawson, had been asked to come down from Tuolumne Meadows to assist in the search. From a followup article in the newspaper we learn that Murphy's body had been found by members of his own Survey party the next day. There is a possibility that Clyde and Dawson were immediately informed about the tragic ending of the search, and didn't have to leave Yosemite after all. A day or two later, Anna and Conrad Rettenbacher arrived at Tuolumne Meadows. Did their path cross with Clyde's? If Clyde was still there, were the Rettenbachers aware of his presence? No doubt, they had heard of the legendary climber, and perhaps would have hoped to meet him one day.

A week later, the Rettenbachers themselves became the subjects of a massive search. Los Angeles Times printed two wire service reports about the Rettenbacher case, but Clyde was not mentioned in them. Unknown to Los Angeles Times readers, Clyde's and the Rettenbachers' stories had briefly overlaped that summer. For Clyde, it was a sad event quite similar to many others that he had witnessed. For the couple, it was the end of the road.

ATRIBUTES USED TO DESCRIBE NORMAN CLYDE IN LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1923-1963 1923  • school teacher of Weaverville • small-town schoolmaster • member of the Sierra Club 1926  • country school teacher 1927  • Norman Clyde of Independence 1929  • noted mountaineer and writer • the only man who has climbed   all 14,000+ peaks in California • member of the American Alpine Club 1930  • veteran mountaineer • experienced mountain climber 1932  • one of the best known   mountaineers of the West • one of America's foremost   mountain climbers 1933  • Norman Clyde of Bishop • experienced mountaineer • former superintendent of schools   at Independence • Inyo county school teacher • mountaineer of the Sierra Club 1934  • an author, and a climber   of many record-breaking feats • the best known mountaineer of the West • expert Sierra Club mountaineer 1935  • veteran mountain climber • widely known for his exploratory   trips on high peaks 1937  • Norman Clyde of Lone Pine 1940  • famous mountain climber 1942  • veteran Sierra Club mountaineer 1948  • mountaineer Norman Clyde 1950  • one of the oldest and most skillful   of the guides in that area 1963  • legendary High Sierra figure

Less than eight months after the Rettenbacher accident, Norman Clyde found himself in great peril. This dark episode from his life began early in 1935, when Clyde and his friend and occasional climbing partner William Dulley were wintering at Andrews Camp in the High Sierra. Nothing unusual for Norman Clyde. Since he didn't have a permanent dwelling at that time, when fishermen and hikers left with the first snows, Clyde would frequently spend winters as a paid caretaker at vacant mountain resorts. Andrews Camp on Bishop Creek was one such a place.

It is known that the snow cover was well above normal during the winter of 1934/35, but Dulley and Clyde didn't mind: Both were fond of skiing. During the stay in Andrews Camp they had already made several mountain tops together. On Saturday, April 6, they decided to take food, sleeping bags and heavy bed blankets and do another skiing trip over the Sierra crest, from the east to the west side. The weather forecast, Clyde would recall later, was favorable. (How/where did he get the forecast? A battery operated radio? But he was right, and that weekend's forecast was one of the great blunders in the history of the Weather Service). The depth of the snow, according to Clyde, varied from five to thirty feet. About half way up Piute Pass the wind had swung to the southwest bringing heavy clouds and a fresh fall of snow. At about 4 p.m. they reached the pass at 11,428 feet (3,480 meters), then went down the other side, about a mile below, where they spent the night in a makeshift camp. The next day it was snowing heavily and they remained there. On Monday morning, August 8, the storm was still raging and nearly three feet of new snow had fallen. They scrapped their plans for further exploration of this region, and decided to return. Although Clyde had suggested waiting another day, Dulley thought they could negotiate the ten miles back to Andrews Camp without running undue risks. They started the trip back at 9 o'clock in the morning.

What happened next is described in an article in Los Angeles Times from June 5, 1935. The climb on skis to Piute Pass through the fresh soft snow was exhausting, but they made it. It was only downhill from there. However, the wind was heavy and snow was falling again. About half a mile below the pass Clyde had to wait because Dulley had fallen behind. When he finally caught up, he didn't complain or show indications that anything was wrong. About a mile further, Dulley was out of sight again. Clyde waited for him at Piute Lake. This time Dulley said he had had two falls on this section of the trail. They continued together, but as they struck a field with very soft snow, Dulley veered from Clyde's trail. Clyde made it to Loch Leven Lake, but by now the wind had doubled in velocity.

"One could not see more than fifty feet and the force of the blizzard was such that at times I had to prop myself on my ski poles to prevent being blown over", explained Clyde later to a Los Angeles Times reporter. Clyde continued slowly, calling his partner frequently, but Dulley was nowhere in sight. Clyde was still several miles from the relative safety of Lake Sabrina road. The blizzard seemed to increase in intensity. It was impossible to go back and search for Dulley. "I figured", said Clyde to the reporter, "that Dulley, if in trouble could throw away his heavy pack and follow me without it or crawl into his sleeping bag and remain there until help should come on the following day". By that time, Clyde was in big trouble himself: Cold and wet, exhausted, and no longer feeling his fingers and toes. At seven in the evening he stumbled into a miner's cabin near Lake Sabrina, where he spent the night.

Clyde leading Virginia Adams up the east face of Mt. Whitney, June 1937. Photo by Dexter Richards, Jr. From the collection of Dennis G. Kruska (posted with permission).

The next morning was clear and cold. Clyde went back alone over the trail. At the lower end of Loch Leven Lake he found Dulley's body. An autopsy later disclosed a stroke caused by "high altitude, plus cold and exhaustion". Frost bites on Clyde's hands didn't last long, but his frozen toes wouldn't heal. Two months later the situation got so bad that Clyde had to travel to Los Angeles and seek medical treatment in a hospital. He was met there by the newspaper reporter who then retold the story in the article entitled Blizzard Tragedy Told by Frozen Survivor. However, there was one thing that Clyde didn't tell the reporter. I have had this newspaper clip in my posession for quite a while, but only when preparing this Web page did I realize what was missing in the article. The day of the tragedy on Piute Pass trail, April 8, 1935, was Norman Clyde's fiftieth birthday!

A lingering question remains: Would they both have died had Clyde stayed with his distressed friend? Would they both have survived? You decide.

From other sources, we know that a month later, Clyde was in the mountains again, and well enough to make eight more first Sierra ascents during that summer. Several years later, in September of 1937, Los Angeles Times reports of another Clyde climbing success. This time it was his ascent of Kinnerly Peak, the "highest unscaled peak in Glacier National Park". Clyde was with three other Sierra Club mountaineers, Ed Hall, Richard K. Hill, and Braeme Gigos.

In 1939, Norman Clyde's alma mater, Geneva College, awarded him the degree of Doctor of Sciences in appreciation of his mountain writings. This got reported to the readers of Los Angeles Times by Ed Ainsworth in his daily column "Along El Camino Real". In the war years, and during the early post-war years, Clyde was mentioned a few more times in the newspaper. In 1942, he found the wreckage of a crashed Army bomber on the south side of Birch Lake. A photo-report from 1948 shows him guiding a group of tourists up the Palisade Glacier. In 1950, Clyde was mentioned in yet another search mission, for two missing boys, Christopher Reynolds and Stephen Wasserman, who disappeared on Mt. Whitney.

Chronological distribution of articles about Norman Clyde's climbing days, published in Los Angeles Times between 1923 and 1964.

The last article about Clyde during his lifetime was published in the Sunday edition of Los Angeles Times on September 22, 1963. This is a warmly written account of Clyde's fifty years of rambling the High Sierra, with a nice picture showing him at a Bear Creek camp, enjoying his morning coffee. It was clear from the article that Clyde continued to act as a guide to private parties on mountain hiking trips well into his seventies. I couldn't get permission from Los Angeles Times to reproduce the article or the picture, nor could I get the name of the reporter who wrote the article, but it was somebody who deeply respected Clyde and his mountaineering feats.

Norman Clyde with Phil Pister in the summer of 1970. From the collection of Phil Pister (posted with permission). Read Phil's interesting recollection of Norman Clyde. Check also Norman Clyde Resources page.

In the last decades of his life, Norman Clyde settled in a simple ranch cabin near Big Pine, and lived there of a small county pension. He died two days before Christmas of 1972. He was 87 years old. I have been searching for his obituary in Los Angeles Times and other major California newspapers, but couldn't find anything. Was an obituary published? Perhaps not. The world had changed significantly since the days when Clyde first stepped into the Sierra mountains. At the time of Clyde's death, the heroes of the day were reaching for far higher goals: America has landed a man on the Moon just a few years earlier. Compared to such spectacular successes, the life (and death) of an old High Sierra climber and explorer might not have looked important enough to new generation of newspaper editors.

Among the documents found upon Clyde's death, some material was apparently related to the Rettenbacher accident. This is now cataloged as "The Vanishing of the Rickenbackers", in the collection "Norman Clyde Papers, [ca. 1928-1945]", BANC MSS 79/33 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. It would be interesting to see if this folder contains more than just a newspaper clip from the Examiner, mentioned in William Alsup's book. (Note also yet another spelling variation of Anna and Conrad's last name!)

It is known that Clyde kept a day-to-day diary ('Field Notebook') during his most productive climbing years. William Alsup used Clyde's diary entries from the summer of 1933 to reconstruct some events related to the Starr search. According to Alsup, the Field Notebook was in the possession of Clyde scholars David Bohn and Mary Millman. If the Notebook also covered the summer of 1934, we would be able to reconstruct Clyde's steps between July 27, 1934 (search for Jim Murphy), and August 15, 1934 (when he joined the Rettenbacher search), and perhaps even find Clyde's more detailed account of the Rettenbacher accident. Unfortunately, I was not able to get in touch with either of the two scholars. It would be wonderful to have this valuable resource about Clyde available publicly one day.

When asked to sum up his fifty years of lonely rambling through the Sierra mountains, without many of the basic commodities that most of us consider necessary to carry on with our lives, Norman Clyde said to the Los Angeles Times reporter in September 1963:

I doubt if there was any bitterness or regret in his voice.

NEXT: What happened on Banner Peak?

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indicates that more information is available in the footnotes section.