Lonely Grave in the Sierra - Five days in August 1934

Lonely Grave in the Sierra:
Five days in August 1934

Unlike today, there was still plenty of open space between the string of towns nested by the main route from San Francisco to San Jose in the 1930s. One such distinctive township was Burlingame. Just to the west of it, in the foothills, was its affluent but much smaller neighbour Hillsborough, where the Rettenbachers worked and lived in 1934. Even mid-size towns had their own daily newspapers at that time, and Burlingame was no exception. The paper was called Burlingame Advance Star, and covered local Burlingame-Hillsborough events, as well as general state and world news.

Fiona Hamilton, from the Burlingame Historical Society, helped me to locate Advance Star articles printed at the time of the Rettenbachers' disappearance. Surprisingly, the information in the local paper was just a repetition of the stories picked up from wire services. The reporters and editors of Burlingame Advance Star missed the opportunity to tell us more about Conrad and Anna, their interests, their hobbies, their lives, their friends. The Rettenbachers were foreigners, and had a rather low social status, and the editors perhaps decided their life stories would be of no interest to the readership. Such a pity! Still, to the credit of Burlingame Advance Star, they were the only San Francisco Bay Area paper that had coverage during the entire five-day period while the mountain drama was unfolding.

What follows, is a comprehensive review of articles from various California papers describing the Rettenbacher accident. It is often said that if you are searching for truth, you shouldn't be reading newspapers. However, here we don't have much choice, and could only hope that at least some of the information in the newspapers was accurate.

WHAT NEWSPAPERS REPORTED

Associated Press (AP) broke the story from Yosemite National Park on Sunday, August 12, 1934. A reporter working for that agency must have gotten a tip from the Park headquarters. Several local papers picked up the story on Monday, not all of them crediting AP. From Monday on, the coordination of search and recovery efforts was assigned to the Sierra National Forest (SNF) staff, and all later AP reports originated from the headquarters of the forest supervisor of SNF at North Fork, Madera County (far away from the actual scene of the accident!).

Articles' summaries, categorized in several topics, are presented. When the same information is repeated in several articles, it is only shown once, the earliest time it had appeared.

Monday, August 13, 1934

: San Jose Mercury Herald, p.1, article title: "San Mateo couple lost on hike in back of Yosemite".
SOURCE: AP, August 12 [i.e., Sunday], from Yosemite.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: (The paper calls them Mr. and Mrs. Rittenbacker). They were reported to reside at 252 West Santa Inez Avenue, San Mateo, and work for Mr. Howard Parks [the correct last name is "Park"; H.G.]
ABOUT SEARCH: The search was started at the request of Mrs. Parks, who said the couple was to have returned to San Mateo a week earlier. Yosemite National Park rangers found the Rettenbacher camp in the Thousand Island Lake district, about six miles east of the Park limits.

: Burlingame Advance Star, p.3, article title: "Fear couple lost lives".
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: (The paper calls them Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Rittenbacher). Both were about thirty years old, members of the German Hikers Club, well known in hiking circles, both experienced mountain climbers, and were due to return the previous week from a mountain climbing trip.
ABOUT SEARCH: Six fellow members of the German Club aided rangers in the search in the wilds of Yosemite National Forest[!], near Mt. Lyell. Rangers found the camp late Sunday at the base of that mountain. The rescue party also searched the precipitous sides of 13,150-foot Mt. Ritter. Both Mt. Lyell and Mt. Ritter have glaciers on their sides and are particularly treacherous due to avalanches and falling ice. Fear for the lost couple's safety was felt by both forest officials and friends.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME: The couple's employer, Howard G. Park, was a well-known San Francisco broker.

Commentary: It appears that Anna and Conrad were in the mountains alone, not as part of a group. It is likely that their name and address were taken from a register in Yosemite, then incorrectly transferred to AP. Some information may have also come from their friends, who arrived at Yosemite to help with the search. "German Hikers Club" is probably how the friends tried to describe what really was Die Naturfreunde. The search was apparently focused on the section of John Muir Trail between Tuolumne Meadows and the Ritter Range. Of the two contradictory statements about where their camp site was found, the one mentioned in San Jose Mercury Herald ("Thousand Island Lake district") has more credibility. Mt. Lyell is too far away from the actual location of the accident. Burlingame Advance Star corrected their statement the next day. We also learn that the couple was due back on the previous Sunday, August 5, seven days before, but there were no indications on when they arrived at the mountains. Was this a multi-week expedition, or just a short several-day trip?

Tuesday, August 14, 1934

: Burlingame Advance Star, p.1, with picture ("brick stairway picture"). Picture title: "Mountains alone know answer", article title: "No trace of missing two".
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: Their address was now correctly identified as a Hillsborough, not a (City of) San Mateo address.
ABOUT SEARCH: Forest rangers, experienced mountain climbers and members of their club have been engaged in an intensive search in the region of Banner peak, Mt. Lyell and Mt. Ritter. Their camp was found near Thousand Island Lake at the base of Mt. Ritter. Little hope that the couple was still alive was held out by rescuers. The three peaks are 13,000 feet in elevation, with precipitous slopes, glaciers and jagged rocks.

: San Francisco Chronicle, p.1, article title: "Man, Wife Feared Dead in Sierras".
SOURCE: Special to the Chronicle, from Northfork, August 13 [i.e., Monday].
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: They were described as a venturous San Mateo couple. They were due in San Mateo more than a week before, and it was because friends and relatives were alarmed that the intensive search was instituted.
ABOUT SEARCH: The couple's deserted camp was found in the Thousand Island Lake region Friday. The couple had left dishes upon their table, which indicated their intention to make an early return. Searchers were organizing separate groups, each to take a definite trail up one of the three peaks, Banner Peak, Mount Lyell, and Mount Ritter. Outposts of the Forest Service were equiped with radios. The Sierra National Forest headquarters was to be notified immediately by one of the radios if the couple were found.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME:
Gilbert Davis, Forest Service guard in Minarets country, was identified as the man who had found the Rettenbachers' deserted camp.
Possible location of the Rittenbachers would be relayed (via radio) to Forest Service Supervisor, M. A. Benedict at Northfork.
Assistant Supervisor R. H. Blood had communicated with the outposts twice on Monday.

: Los Angeles Times, p.1, article title: "Mountain climbers hunt missing pair".
SOURCE: AP, August 13 [i.e., Monday], from Northfork.
ABOUT SEARCH: Daring mountain climbers fought their way on Monday over glaciers and up crags in the perilous minarets country of the Sierra National Forest, in search of a couple missing after an attempt to climb one of three 13,000-foot peaks.

: San Francisco Call Bulletin, p.A, article title: "Sierra crypt for missing 2".
ABOUT SEARCH: Radio equipped forest rangers spurred the hunt for the pair who vanished a week earler. The search was directed "by the forest rangers' headquarters in Devils Post Pile".
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME:
Norman Clyde, ace tracker who had found the body of Walter A. Starr joined the search on that day.
Mrs. J. H. Fox of San Mateo, a relative, authorized a mountain crypt in case the search reached a tragic end.
Fears that the couple may have fallen while attempting to scale the 13,000-foot Mt. Ritter, at whose base they had established a camp, were expressed by Forest Supervisor M. A. Benedict. "I'm afraid they are gone", he said. "Even if they didn't fall, it is unlikely that they carried enough food to last them that long".

Commentary: For the first time, Banner Peak was identified as a possible accident scene. Note also that on Monday (and thereafter), AP was reporting from North Fork (spelled in many reports as "Northfork"), a seat of a Sierra National Forest ranger station. This is surprising, because Mt. Lyell is in Yosemite National Park, while Thousand Island Lake and the search region east of the Ritter-Banner-Davis crest are in Inyo National Forest. Only a remote area west of the crest is in the North Fork district. It is puzzling why the search efforts were now coordinated from a distant Sierra National Forest headquarters, instead of from, e.g., Inyo National Forest ranger station in nearby Mammoth Lakes! Did the searchers have some indications that the couple's whereabouts were west of the crest?

The Rettenbacher search might be one of the first times when a portable radio was used in a High Sierra operation. There was no mention of radios in the search for Walter Starr, a year earlier.

Wednesday, August 15, 1934

: San Francisco Chronicle, p.19, with picture ("skiing picture"). Picture title: "Sought in mountains", article title: "Mountaineers join in hunt for lost pair".
SOURCE: Special to the Chronicle, from Northfork, August 14 [i.e., Tuesday].
ABOUT SEARCH: The couple had been missing for more than a week now. Hope of finding them alive was virtually abandoned. Huge corps of experienced mountain climbers were making an inch by inch search of Banner Peak and Mt. Ritter. They were joined on Tuesday by Norman Clyde. The searchers were equiped with portable radios, and directed by the forest rangers from the station in Northfork.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME:
Assistant Supervisor R. H. Blood confirmed on Tuesday evening that the couple had not been found yet, either alive or dead.
Norman Clyde was a well known Alpinist who had discovered the body of W. A. Starr, who had lost his life in the minarets a year earlier.
Mrs. J. H. Fox of San Mateo said she was the only relative of the couple in the United States. She initiated the search when the Rettenbachers were overdue a week in returning home. On Tuesday she authorized the burial of the couple in the high Sierra regions in the event they were found to have been killed.

: Burlingame Advance Star, p.1, with a large-font header over the entire page. Header: "FIND TRAIL OF MISSING S.M. COUPLE" [where "S.M." refers to "San Mateo"], article title: "Hope revived that they may be alive as hunt pressed".
ABOUT SEARCH: Search continued on both Banner Peak and Mt. Ritter. Slight hope that the couple might still be alive was revived by the report that their trail was found on Banner Peak. However, buzzards circling over a canyon at 12,000 feet caused additional fears on the part of the searchers.

Commentary: Search in the areas that could be reached relatively easily hadn't yielded a result, and it probably became clear that the help of an expert climber would be needed. An obvious choice was Norman Clyde, who had participated in many Sierra search, rescue, and recovery missions. A year earlier, almost to the day, Clyde had arrived in the same region, searching for the missing well-known Sierra mountaineer, Walter A. Starr, Jr. When everybody else had given up, Clyde stayed in the Ritter Range alone, and eventually located the victim's body.

Burlingame Advance Star reported that a mysterious "trail" was picked up on Banner Peak, but it didn't elaborate on what kind of evidence was actually found and where.

San Francisco Chronicle credited Mrs. Fox with alerting the authorities, not Mrs. Park. It also seems very strange that poor Mrs. Fox was forced to give authorization for a mountain burial, even before the couple's fate was known. It looks as if the Forest Service officials wanted to be sure that there would be no additional cost related to transportation of bodies to the low land if the Rettenbachers were found dead. A year earlier, once Walter Starr's remains were found, his family agreed to have him entombed at the place of the fall, partially because they didn't wish to run the risk of further accidents during the body recovery (see, e.g., William Alsup's book, p. 118). However, such consideration couldn't be a factor in the Rettenbacher case at this stage of the search.

By the way, there are no buzzards in the High Sierra. Licentia poetica, I guess.

Thursday, August 16, 1934

: San Jose Mercury Herald, p.1, with a picture on p.4 ("brick stairway picture", detail). Article title: "Missing Couple Dead in Sierra".
SOURCE: AP, August 15 [i.e., Wednesday], from Northfork.
ABOUT SEARCH: The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Rittenbacker, amateur mountain climbers, were found crushed and broken, a radio message received from a searching party on Wednesday said. The couple had apparently fallen from Mt. Ritter. Evidence indicated that they fell from near the top of the peak. The message stated they had been dead several days.

: San Francisco Chronicle, p.1, article title: "Pair hunted in mountains found killed".
ABOUT SEARCH: Word of the discovery was received in Northfork via field radio carried by a searching party. The bodies of the young couple were found on the foot of Mount Banner on Wednesday. Somewhere high up toward the summit of Mount Ritter [sic!], one of them slipped and fell. The other, presumably in an effort at rescue, fell at the same time. Mrs. Rittenbacker's body was found on a glacier ledge 600 feet from the top of the peak, and her husband had struck the ledge and then rolled 600 feet further down the glacial slope. The couple were believed to have been dead for at least ten days.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: They were enthusiastic amateur mountaineers. He was employed as butler, and his wife was a governess. They were to be buried together in a mountain meadow on Thursday.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME:
Searching party was lead by Norman Clyde, widely known California mountaineer, who was pressed into the search by officials of the Sierra National Forest.
District Ranger Benjamin Mace would be in charge of the burial services. According to Mace, the side of the peak the couple attempted to climb was almost perpendicular and would have been considered all but impossible by even the most experienced Alpinists.

: Sacramento Bee, p.1, article title: "Rangers Attempt to Recover Bodies of Hiking Couple".
SOURCE: AP, from Northfork.
ABOUT SEARCH: Norman Clyde reported to forest service officials at North Fork that the couple had apparently plunged together from the peak, which they had set out to scale.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: They were employed as domestics by Howard Park of San Mateo.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME: R. H. Blood, assistant supervisor of Sierra National Forest, set out with a party equipped with ropes and special tools to make the perilous attempt to recover the bodies.

San Francisco Examiner, p.1 & p.3, with two pictures on p.3 ("brick stairway picture", and a photo of Banner Peak). A huge title across the entire first page: "COUPLE PLUNGED 600 FEET". Article titles: p.1: "Found Dead Upon Glacier", p.3: "Missing Couple Dead in Sierra". Picture title (p.3): "Die on Glacier".
ABOUT SEARCH: Buzzards dipping and soaring over a glacier northeast of Mt. Banner guided searchers on Wednesday to the broken bodies. The remains were spied on the glistering ice by Norman Clyde at 2:30 o'clock in the afternoon. With him was Benjamin Mace, district forest ranger. The couple plunged from the perilous northeast slope of Banner Peak which is so difficult to scale it is seldom attempted. They had reached 12,000-foot elevation, then made an almost sheer drop. Mrs. Rettenbacker's body lodged in a crevasse 600 feet below, but her husband rolled and tumbled another 700 feet before his torn and lacerated body came to rest. They were identified from the distance by members of San Francisco German Hikers' Club. The coroner waived the need of an inquest.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: They were intrepid mountaineers who had scaled many of the State's difficult peaks. They came from Germany.

ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: The perilous attempt to recover the bodies would be attempted on Thursday, according to R. H. Blood, assistent forest supervisor stationed at Northfork. It would require the use of some 700 or 800 feet of rope and the participation of half a dozen rangers or more. The couple were to be buried in a peacefull mountain meadow about a quarter of mile below the glacier.

: San Francisco Call Bulletin, p.4, with a huge title across the entire page. Header: "RANGERS DARE DEATH TO RECOVER 2 BODIES", article title: "Rope Descent Into Abyss Planned".
ABOUT SEARCH: Norman Clyde, California mountaineer and guide, found the bodies of Anne and Conrad on a glacier, guided by birds of pray. He reported the couple apparently had plunged from the crest of Banner Peak, after accomplishing the dangerous ascent.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: A young San Mateo couple who came to America from Bavaria, about five years before, according to their employer, Howard Park. They were members of the San Francisco Tourists' Club.
ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: Carrying 800 feet of rope, picks, and other equipment, forest rangers under the command of Assistant supervisor R. H. Blood, Northfork, set out to recover the bodies. Risking the same fate which befell the couple, the rescue party began Thursday a perilous climb over the face of glacier-scarred Banner Peak. The couple were to be buried in a mountain meadow about a quarter of a mile below the lover rim of the glacier.

: Burlingame Advance Star, p.1, article title: "Broken bodies of lost pair found on High Sierra peak".
ABOUT SEARCH: Searchers were guided to the bodies by the ominous flight of soaring buzzards. The ill-starred couple had plunged from the perilous northern slope of Banner Peak.
ABOUT RETTENBACHERS: They were natives of Bavaria.
ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: The bodies were removed from the glacier with the aid of 800 feet of rope and a half dozen forest rangers. According to authority given by Mrs. J. H. Fox, the couple would be buried Thursday in a mountain meadow near the frowning peaks on which they met their deaths. Mrs. Fox was reported en route to the Sierra to attend the simple last rites.

Commentary: There was a lot of confussion in the newspaper reports about the exact place of the accident. It appears that in morning papers, Mt. Ritter was designated as the location of the fatal fall. Later in the day, the wire reports were probably revised, and a Banner Peak glacier was described as the place where the couple's bodies were found. One of the articles put the glacier on the northeast side of the mountain, another on the northern slope. It is difficult to reconcile these statements with the actual position of the grave site, which is at the foot of the west side of Banner Peak.

San Francisco Call Bulletin speculated that the accident had happened after the Rettenbachers had accomplished the ascent. No explanation for such a claim was given. The article in that paper was the only one that identified Conrad's wife as "Anne" [should have been Anna!], all other reports throughout the five day period were using the form "Mrs. Rettenbacher", or rather, numerous spelling variations thereof.

Friday, August 17, 1934

: San Francisco Chronicle, p.17, article title: "Pines Whisper Peak Victims' Last Requiem".
ABOUT ACCIDENT: Reconstructing the events leading to the deaths of Mr. Rickenbacker and his wife, Norman Clyde and Benjamin Mace, who found the bodies, said they had reached a point almost 1000 feet from the peak of Mount Banner. There one of them must have slipped, probably grasped the other, and both were hurtled 600 feet through the air.
ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: With the aid of a 700-foot rope, sent 30 miles through the fastnesses of the Sierra [obviously, from North Fork; H.G.], the burial party lowered the bodies to the base of the mountain. Eight persons labored to the verge of exhaustion to move the bodies, struggling foot by foot through the glacier crevices. The bodies were lowered into a grave about a quarter of mile from the point they were found, at the spot the victims had learned to love as seasoned hikers.
OTHER PEOPLE MENTIONED BY NAME: Those in the burial party, besides Mace and Clyde, were Gilbert Davis, a Sierra National Forest guard in the Banner Mountain district, Forest Ranger Douglas Robinson of the Inyo National Forest, and four members of the San Francisco German Hikers' Club.

: Burlingame Advance Star, p.1, article title: "Simple Rites Amid Snowy Peaks Held for S.M. Man, Wife".
ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: Simple rites amid the snow-crowned peaks were held at dusk on Thursday. The Rittenbackers, who had attempted the almost superhuman feat of conquering Mount Banner, had fallen 600 feet down a sheer ice wall. On receiving word of the tragedy, Mrs. J. H. Fox of San Mateo, the only relative of the couple in this country, left for the Sierra.

: Los Angeles Times, p.1, article title: "Couple buried at site of fall".
SOURCE: AP, August 16 [i.e., Thursday], from North Fork.
ABOUT RECOVERY AND BURIAL: Mr. and Mrs. Tittenbacker were buried on Thursday at the foot of a peak from which they fell to their deaths, their last resting place a lonely mountain meadow. The brief and simple burial service was conducted by a little group of mountaineers and forest rangers who had recovered the bodies from a perilous glacier slope.

Commentary: The San Francisco Chronicle report mentioned eight people in the recovery/burial party, but it is quite possible that more Forest Service personnel were present, for example, the crew that brought the rope from North Fork. One of the people was identified as Douglas Robinson, a ranger with the Inyo National Forest. However, it is possible that this was actually the Chief Ranger's son, Douglas Robinson, Jr, a good climber, familiar with Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak, who took part in the search and burial of Walter Starr in the same area a year earlier.

On the whole, the "specials" for San Francisco Chronicle from North Fork are the most detailed and useful accounts about the accident. It is quite possible that this newspaper had a reporter in North Fork, who spent a lot of time talking to the rangers and trying to understand what was going on in the mountains. Other papers mostly relied on the wire reports. Several reporters apparently contacted the Parks household and obtained some information about the Rettenbachers there, but unfortunately they did their job rather superficially.

Since none of the reporters made it to scene of the accident, their descriptions of Mount Banner and the Ritter Range were based on their rich imaginations, not on facts. For example, the San Francisco Chronicle reporter wrote: "This is … a country consisting of steep slides, glaciers, monstrous rocks, and of rough traveling, a region to which only the most experienced in mountain climbing would dare ascend". In reality, the Ritter Range, and its Lake Ediza basin and Thousand Island Lake area are some of the most beautiful regions in the Sierra. They are (and were in the 1930s) accessible by good trails, and visited by thousands of hikers and climbers every year.

NEXT: What did Ranger Bingaman report

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.