Close Ups of the High Sierra
— Norman Clyde
Norman Clyde began his wanderings of the High Sierra in the 1920's, following the death of his wife. Over the remainder of his life he began wandering the Sierra Nevada, accumulating a list of first ascents that will never be duplicated.
In 1922, Clyde began submitting his writings to the American Auto Club, and they were enthusiastically received.
While Clyde's life seems to represent a Mountaineer's ideal—one spent essentially wholly in the wilderness, without the usual burdens of daily life intruding, one can't help but ponder what a simultaneously magnificent and lonely life it actually was.
In his time, Clyde was a mountaineer without equal. It is unfortunate, then, that our final impression of the man (A Tragedy in the Sierra Nevada) offers the unsavory impression that Clyde abandoned a weaker climber to a storm in a moment of ill humor.
Read this as a way to travel back in time and experience the Sierra as Clyde did: undiscovered country, big and wild, no guides and no maps. Recommended.
