• probably early 1900s — Conrad (Konrad?) Rettenbacher is born, most likely somewhere in Austria or Southern Germany (Bavaria). He was probably too young to participate in World War I, but old enough to remember the hunger and misery brought by the war.
• 1926 — Conrad arrives in the United States. His wife Anna follows soon. East Coast is their first stop.
• October 24, 1929 — Black Thursday, or the Wall Street Crash, leads to the Great Depression in the U.S. and all around the world. Work is scarce, and those who have it are lucky.
• April 18, 1930 — Conrad and Anna are registered in the 1930 US Census in Lapeer County, Michigan (by mistake, under the last name Conrad!) I thank Kit Bomar for finding this information.
• end of 1931 or beginning of 1932 — Anna and Conrad arrive from Philadelphia to California, and settle, possibly in Mill Valley.
• January 15, 1932 — The Rettenbachers register in the local San Francisco (Muir Woods) chapter of Die Naturfreunde.
• 1932 or later — After working briefly for a San Francisco family, Conrad and Anna take jobs in the Hillsborough home of San Francisco broker Howard Park, and live there, working as a butler (or chauffeur?) and governess.
• August 3, 1933 — A well known Sierra climber, Walter Starr, falls and is killed while trying to climb Michael Minaret, in the Ritter Range. His body is found on August 25, by Norman Clyde.
• August 3, 1933 — Five members from the Los Angeles (Sierra Madre) chapter of Die Naturfreunde climb Mt. Ritter and sign the register. Later, they might have given a presentation, or have written about their trip to friends in the San Francisco chapter. This perhaps inspired the Rettenbachers to go to that area.
• July 5, 1934 — Bloody Thursday in San Francisco. In a battle between the police and striking longshore workers, two people are killed and more than one hundred wounded. On July 15, the San Francisco Labor Council declares a general strike that lasts three days.
• July 13, 1934 — Night of the Long Knives. The execution of hundreds of Roehm's Sturm Abteilung senior officers in a purge organized by Hitler, is publicly announced in Germany. This becames front page news around the world, including the U.S.
• July 26, 1934 — Norman Clyde is climbing in the mountains north of Toulomne Meadows (Yosemite). He is asked to come to the Bishop area in the Southern Sierra to assist in a search for a missing federal worker.
• end of July or first days of August, 1934 — After spending some time with the Parks children at Lake Tahoe, the Rettenbachers are making a solo trip to the central Sierra Nevada. They register in Tuolumne Meadows, then continue up along Lyell Canyon, and via Donohue and Island Passes towards the Ritter Range.
• August 5, 1934 (Sunday) — The Rettenbachers are expected to return to the Parks' residence and resume their work the next day, but they do not come back from the mountains. Authorities are notified and a massive search organized.
• August 12, 1934 (Sunday) — Associated Press breaks the story about the missing couple and the unsuccessful search.
• August 14, 1934 (Tuesday) — Norman Clyde is pressed by Forest Service officials to join the search.
• August 15, 1934 (Wednesday) — Anna's and Conrad's bodies are found by Clyde at the foot of Banner Peak, the second highest peak in the Ritter Range.
• August 16, 1934 (Thursday) — The Rettenbachers are buried in a remote high valley, near the place of the accident.
• probably mid July 1935 (or later) — Friends from Die Naturfreunde in San Francisco place a plaque on the grave.
• March 12, 1938 — Troops of the German Wehrmacht and the SS cross the German-Austrian border. The next day, Hitler announces the legislation on Anschluss (amalgamation) of Austria into the German Reich. A year and half later, World War II begins with the German attack on Poland.

During the next decade, World War II and its terrible consequences were a primary concern of the people who once knew the Rettenbachers. Almost all of them still had some relatives in European countries directly affected by the war. Visits to the grave site by the friends were probably rare, or ceased completely. The following describes the chain of events that eventually brought the story about the Rettenbachers to you, the reader:

• early 1950s — Young girl, Deanna Schiel, visits the Ritter Range with her family. They are members of The Nature Friends organization and know about the grave, but cannot find it. Witnesses of the search and burial are no longer actively hiking, and newer members have only heard about the event but have no knowledge about the exact location of the grave site.
• 1961 — John W. Bingaman, a Yosemite ranger, and perhaps the last person who saw the Rettenbachers alive, publishes Guardians of the Yosemite, in which he adds a paragraph about the search for the lost climbers back in 1934.

• William Alsup's Missing in the Minarets (2001), contains important information about the Rettenbacher case.

  ???? — One as yet unidentified guide book is printed with a note about the Rettenbachers' grave.
• 1995 — Robert Pease finds information about the grave in the guide book, and easily locates the site on the back side of Banner Peak. He mentions the grave to Alan Ritter, but Alan cannot find it during his June 1996 attempt to climb Mt. Ritter, possibly because the grave site is still covered by snow.
• July 16, 1997 — Alan finds the grave, takes two photos, and posts them, together with other pictures from this hike, to the climber.org Web site.
• 2001 — William Alsup's book about Walter Starr is published. Although this is not related to the main subject of his book, Alsup gives a precise reference to a newspaper article that had reported the Rettenbacher accident. He also describes the grave site, and reproduces the plaque text.
• early July, 2004 — While preparing for a trip to the Ritter Range, I find and become intrigued by Alan's pictures of the plaque and the grave.
• September 17, 2004 — Richard Rettenbacher finds and sends me the email address of Susi Raub, the International Secretary of The Nature Friends in the U.S. The same day, Susi confirms that she has heard stories about the grave, but couldn't find the site during her climb to Banner Peak in the 1990s.
• October, 2004 — Susi publishes a short article in The Nature Friends Bulletin about the Rettenbachers and about my quest.
• October 19, 2004 — Deanna Schiel reads Susi's article, and sends me a note with all of the relevant facts from Alsup's book. Based on this information, it is easy to find the original newspaper accounts about the accident.
• October 2004 - February 2005 — Many people invest their time and ideas, recovering documents and background information used in previous sections. Without their help, this report would still be on page one.

In the end, it is difficult for me to judge if this search was a success or a failure. Although some details are still missing, it is generally no longer a mystery why there is a grave high in the Ritter Range. We also have at least some ideas on how the accident happened. On the other hand, very little has been learned about the Rettenbachers. Even the most basic facts, for example, their ages, birth places, and whether they had left any family in Europe, remain unknown. We have a faded wire service photo showing two people apparently happy and in love, and a persistent story that they were on their honeymoon trip when the accident struck. Newspaper reports called them fearless mountaineers who had scaled many difficult peaks, but what else do we know about them? Were they avid readers, or perhaps fond of music? Who were their friends, and how did they spend their free time when not in the mountains? What did they like and dislike in their new country, in their jobs? We may never know.

I cannot stop wondering how much more complete this report would have been had someone else, with more time at hand and better writing and investigating skills, begun working on it several years earlier. A few eyewitnesses would have still been around. For example, the Parks' eldest daughter Anne, would certainly have been able to tell something about the Rettenbachers' personalities and characters. Similarly, Deanna Schiel's father Emil, a long time member of Die Naturfreunde, probably knew Conrad and Anna personally, and could have provided significant contribution to the story with his recollection of the Rettenbachers. Regrettably, Anne died in May 2002, and Emil Schiel passed away at the age of 102, in September 2004.

There are people who say that sometimes it is better not to know everything, and instead, let our imagination fill the gaps. Unless there are new and surprising discoveries in the future, I'm afraid this is exactly what the reader is left with.

At the time of this writing, the grave site lies undisturbed, under fifteen feet of snow. Vast, silent peace. The rosy finch will return to the remote valley in early spring, while the snow is still on the ground, and survive by picking up frozen insects off snowbanks. Larger animals will follow. When the snow cover thins, the first travelers will get to the valley. Some of them will pass near the lonely grave, hurrying up, towards high peaks, chasing their dreams.

Completed in late February 2005. Hrvoje "Harv" Galic, Stanford University

NEXT: Epitaph

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.