Lonely Grave in the Sierra:
Banner Peak Ascent

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I am intentionally being vague about the exact location of the grave. If you are a genuine hiker or climber, and familiar with the area, you will easily recognize geographical features mentioned in the text. For others, who might see the grave site as a tourist attraction, and plan to come solely for that reason: Please do not bother, you will never find it.

On Friday, July 16, 2004, Dom and I left Palo Alto early in the morning, and arrived at Mono Basin Scenic Area Visitor Center in Lee Vining at about 9 a.m. We picked up our permits, then proceeded to Rush Creek trailhead on the June Lake Loop road. The trail climbs to Agnew Lake, then switchbacks to an unnamed pass above Spooky Meadow, and finally reaches Sierra Crest. We entered San Joaquin River watershed, with Mount Ritter and Banner Peak standing in full view right in front of us. It was about 4 p.m. when we got to the Thousand Island Lake outlet. We would have had enough time to make it to our intended target, Lake Catherine, had I not began showing symptoms of high-altitude sickness. We therefore changed our plan, pitched the tent on the far end of Thousand Island Lake, and retired for the day.

Banner Peak from Thousand Island Lake, at dawn. (Photo by Lidija Grazulis, reproduced with permission).

I wandered how the Rettenbachers had reached this place on their last journey. I'm not sure the trail that Dom and I had followed was built and available back in 1934. Another possible approach would have been via Agnew Meadows, reachable by a road from Minaret Summit. This road, paved today but a dirt road back then, was opened for vehicles in the early 1930s. The Rettenbachers' third option would have been to follow the newly completed John Muir Trail, perhaps from Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, several days away by foot. Which route did they take?

Some rain fell overnight, but Saturday morning was clear and sunny. My weakness was gone. We took our ice axes, packed some food and warm clothing, and continued uphill following a stream. A remote valley opened to the left, with still plenty of snow on its upper reaches. As we progressed up the valley, we looked for any sign of the grave, or for a reflection from a shiny bronze plate, but saw neither. Could it be that Alan's description was incorrect, and that the grave site was in a different valley? The closer to the snow we came, the more obvious it became that the grave had eluded us this time. We would look more carefully on our way back. We soon hit the snow field and then reached the pass that would lead us to the big glacier that extends from Lake Catherine all the way to the Banner-Ritter col.

We needed our ice axes on a small steep snowy ridge just before the main glacier, but on the glacier itself the snow was excellent and we could have probably negotiated it without any gear. (The situation was completely different just four weeks later, when crampons and an ice axe were a must, see the next page!).

At about 1 p.m., we were done with the glacier. It was fun going up, but it would be even more fun glissading down on our way back. We were taking a brief rest at the saddle when we heard the unmistakable and hair-raising noise of falling rocks, first distant and weak, but quickly becoming louder and closer. Several huge boulders tumbled down the right hand chute, the most often used route between the saddle and Mt. Ritter's summit. We also spotted a small dot at the ridge above the chute, a solo climber who was coming down the mountain, and who has caused, no doubt unintentionally, the rock slide. It was almost a miracle that no other climbers were on this narrow steep passage several hundred feet long, on a weekend of the peak summer month for climbing. The dislocated boulders finally found their new temporary resting places, without doing harm to anyone this time, and everything quieted down again.

Southwest slope of Banner Peak, from Mt. Ritter. (Photo by Morgan Brown, reproduced with permission).

While Dom and I had been contemplating a Mt. Ritter ascent on the way up the glacier and to the saddle, we were now sure that it would be extremely risky to continue that way, because we didn't have helmets. Dissapointed, we therefore turned our attention to the other side of the col, where Banner Peak was hovering above us. It looked impressive, and we soon concluded that there was no reason for dissapointment. Banner Peak is a worthy target, and it would be a nice feather on our peak-bagging hats. We could leave Mt. Ritter for another time, we both agreed. And so, we proceeded up the steep but wide and not particularly hazardous southwest slope of Banner Peak. We could see that the solo climber, who had been descending Mt. Ritter's perilous chute, made it safely to the col, and then quickly disappeared down the east snow field, probably on his way to Lake Ediza. This person and two climbers mentioned below were the only souls that we saw the entire day.

Earlier, while we were still negotiating the glacier, we had noticed that two people were scaling rocks on the precipitous North Buttress of Banner Peak, their figures clearly visible against the sky. These were not amateurs! While we were going around the mountain in order to reach the col, they must have climbed from the remote valley straight up towards the top. Presently we lost sight of them because they were approaching the summit that was hidden from our view point. However, when we were half way up the slope of Banner Peak, we again saw and then met those mountaineers, who were now on their way down. It was a young couple, the man carrying a very light backpack, and the woman holding an alpinistic rope. They said they hadn't needed or used the rope at all on this climb, and carried it only for an emergency situation. We later found their signatures in the summit register, but I can no longer remember their names. They had started from Thousand Island Lake in the morning, left the valley half way up, and taken a technical mountaineering route.

Seventy years earlier another young couple might have followed the same route. Had Anna and Conrad reached the summit? Are we ever to know? Their names in the Banner Peak summit register would mean that they had made it to the top, and had perished on their way down the mountain. There is a possibility that Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley still has Sierra mountains registers from that era, but at the time of this writing, I still haven't made a serious effort to visit Berkeley and check the old registers. Perhaps one day I will.

It was probably 2 p.m., when Dom and I reached the top of Banner Peak. We brought heavy jackets to protect us from cold wind, but there wasn't even a breeze, and we were basking on the sun-splashed summit rocks at 12,945 feet (3,946 meters), in our T-shirts. We couldn't see the southern sky, because the entire southern view was dominated by Mt. Ritter, but there were no clouds worth mentioning in any of the other directions. Heavy smoke from a recent fire was still covering Tuolumne Meadows and the Yosemite mountains to the northwest, but Mammoth Crest, Volcanic Ridge, Shadow Creek basin, San Joaquin Mountain, Garnet Lake and Thousand Island Lake to the east, and all the mountains surrounding the North Fork of the San Joaquin River to the west were clearly visible. I could have stayed there forever. In the years past, while my son and daughter where still little kids, we had watched majestic Banner Peak together many a time from Shadow, Garnet, and Nydiver Lakes, and here we were now, at the top of it. Too bad we hadn't brought a camera to this trip to help refresh our memories in forthcoming long winter nights.

As it often happens in the Sierra, the weather changed completely in a very short period. We had barely reached the bottom of the glacier when rain and hail hit us with a vengeance. The jackets that were to have been used against the wind now became rain protectors, but we were still well soaked. Worse, the rocks became slippery, and we had to watch every step carefully. Clearly, this was not a good time to wander around in search of the grave site. Without a camera, we couldn't document it anyway. We took a shortcut over hills to our right, and reached our tent safely. The rain was now over, but darkness was slowly falling on our part of the lake. Further to the north, the sunset glow richly colored pinnacles on Koip Crest in incredible shades of red. Soon we could see several distant campfires around the lake, and then the night came.

It was hard to believe that tomorrow at this time we would be in our car, on a crowded highway, in hazy Central Valley, on our way home. But I knew I was going to come back here soon. There were things to do: (1) See if there is a safer approach to Mt. Ritter from the west, and do the ascent, if possible; (2) Find the grave site, if there really is one, photograph it, learn more about the Rettenbacher accident, and write something about it.

The night was quiet and peaceful. One similar night, seventy years ago, two people didn't come back to their tent. Something, perhaps beyond the usual mountain hazards, must have gone terribly wrong. If the Rettenbachers were recreational hikers, they could have certainly found a safe way to the top of Banner Peak and back, just as Dom and I had. An injury could have happened, but not a death, let alone two deaths. Would that indicate that they were experienced technical climbers taking an exposed and risky route? If this were true, they would have almost certainly been members of a specialized alpine club or climber organization. Their deaths would have been registered, widely discussed, and commemorated by their peers, just as had happened when Walter Starr Jr, a well known climber, died on nearby Minarets in 1933.

I decided that when back in 'civilization', I was going to check all old Sierra climbing books that I could get hold of in Stanford Library, and find something about this tragic event.

Well, it didn't happen quite that way!

NEXT: Visiting the grave site

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

indicates that more information is available in the footnotes section.