In 1890, twenty-six years before the passing of the National Park Service Act, Congress set aside fourteen hundred and fifty-two square miles to make the Yosemite National Park. This visionary act was in large part brought about by the writings and efforts of one of the first in the long line of California's distinguished mountaineers: John Muir. The jewel of the park has always been the Yosemite Valley (the ``Valley''), and the Valley has been the focal point of a rich California mountaineering tradition. Rock climbing in the Valley, which started almost as soon as the settlers arrived, has a distinguished history that belongs to local, regional, national, and even world history. But one period in that history stands above all others and alters everything thereafter: For a moment in time that commences in the 1950s and runs through the early 1960s, the young Americans who climbed in the Valley were the best rock climbers in the world. Their vision and achievement changed them into world legends, and changed the Valley into the world center of rock climbing.
In the middle of the Valley, along its northern rim, is a campground called ``Sunnyside'' by the National Park Service and ``Camp 4" by all the climbers who use it.
Shortly after World War II, a group of young Americans, continuing the long tradition of Valley mountaineering, made Camp 4 their base camp, home, and cultural center as they invented new techniques, created new equipment, laid out new mountaineering ethics, practiced their skills on the camp boulders, and dreamed of climbing the great walls of the Valley that were long deemed unclimbable. In astonishingly short order, these young Americans established ascents on the most famous rock edifices of the Valley: the Lost Arrow, Sentinel Dome, Half Dome, El Capitan and others.
So astonishing and magnificent were the routes the Americans pioneered, and so creative were their accomplishments, that Camp 4 became a mecca for the rock climbers from every nation. It can be said without a scintilla of hyperbole, that it is the aspiration of every serious rock climber in the world to come to the Yosemite Valley, to live in and absorb the history of Camp 4, to attempt these great routes, and if possible, to improve upon them.
Tom Frost and Pat Ament lived in Camp 4 and participated in these historic achievements. Their application to place Camp 4 on the National Historical Register is currently pending. The American Alpine Club, through this supplementary application, wishes to join their efforts by providing additional information on the historic context and integrity of Camp 4. Because the history associated with Camp 4 resonates so widely, it is necessary to provide perspectives from local, regional, national and even international viewpoints.
The American Alpine Club, founded in 1902, is the leading national organization in the United States devoted to mountaineering and the multitude of issues facing climbers today. Among other things, its bylaws dedicate the organization to ``the conservation and preservation of the mountain environment . . . and the representation of the interests and concerns of the American climbing community.'' The club presents this supplementary application not only on behalf of its members, but on behalf of climbers from throughout the world who have for the last half-century seen Camp 4 as their spiritual home.
The criteria for determining the eligibility of a property for inclusion on the National Historical Register are established in 36 Code of Federal Regulations 60.4 (hereinafter ``36 C. F. R. 60.4"). Bulletin 15, ``How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation'' (hereinafter ``Bulletin 15"), amplifies and interprets those criteria. It seems worthwhile to state what the criteria are and to reflect on their interpretation.
To obtain registration, a site, building, structure, or object must possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association, and must additionally meet one of four independent tests. It must be:
(a.) associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
(b.) associated with the lives of persons significant in our past ; or
(c.) embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction, or that present the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
(d.) have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in pre-history or history. (36 C.F.R. 60.4, emphasis added).
Bulletin 15 illuminates the overall tone and sweep of these criteria. Since placement on the National Historical Register (hereinafter the ``Register'') is merely ``the beginning of a national census of historic properties,'' the criteria are ``written broadly to recognize the wide variety of historic properties associated with our . . . history'' (Bulletin 15, p.1, emphasis added).
This guideline of inclusivity does much to help interpret the criteria. Bulletin 15 makes it clear that in determining whether a place is ``associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,'' or with ``the lives of persons that are significant in our past,'' the criteria are meant to refer to a wide or extensive range of individuals or events. Events or people can achieve sufficient prominence because of their connection to any of a plethora of themes in our past experience that may seem minor when compared to the larger, dominant experiences of American history. For example, Bulletin 15 lists as potential "Areas of Significance" such disparate themes as Recreation/Entertainment, Conservation, Social History, Invention, Exploration, Settlement, the Performing Arts, and even ``Other'' (ibid, p.8).
Since ``the significance of an historic property can be judged and explained only when it is evaluated within its historic context'' (ibid., p.7), the first task of any Register applicant is to establish that historic context. Again, the term ``historic'' is used in a democratic and inclusive manner: the history may be a local, regional, state, or national history (ibid, pp. 8-10).
The examples of registered properties given in Bulletin 15 clearly illustrate this democratic, inclusive meaning of the phrase ``historic context.'' A local politician and businessman's home was registered because the man was instrumental in founding a town in Illinois around the turn of the century (ibid, p. 14). A log house in Alabama was registered because it exemplified a vernacular architectural style called ``Dog Trot'' (ibid. p.19). 1
Some of the registration criteria help evaluate material things such as ``objects,'' ``buildings,'' and ``structures.'' However, Bulletin 15 makes clear that the Register is also to include appropriate properties even if they are only `` sites'':
A site is the location of a significant event, a . . . historic . . . activity, or a building or structure, whether standing or ruined or vanished, where the location itself possesses historic [or] cultural value regardless of the value of any existing structure. (ibid., p.5, emphasis added)
Significantly, for our purposes, Bulletin 15 explicitly lists as examples of sites both ``campsite'' and ``natural feature (such as a rock formation) having cultural significance'' (ibid., p.5). Indeed, a site can be nothing more than ``a hilltop'' (ibid., p. 13), ``an open field,'' or a ``knoll'' (ibid. p. 8) if the requisite integrity and historic significance are established. Since a site is not evaluated for the quality or significance of the edifices built upon it, many of the criteria established in 36 C.F.R. 60.4 are irrelevant when evaluating a site. For example, it would be meaningless to try to determine whether a site is the ``work of a master craftsman'' or whether it has the ``distinctive characteristics of a method of construction.''
To assure that enough time has past to develop an historical perspective, Bulletin 15 generally requires that properties considered for the Register must have achieved significance fifty or more years ago. However, even this rule is interpreted in such a way as to be inclusive rather than exclusive. ``A resource whose construction began over fifty years ago, but the completion overlaps the fifty year period by a few years or less. . .'' can be placed on the Register even if the property achieved its ``significance'' within the last fifty years. (36 C.F.R. 60.4(g), Bulletin 15, p. 41).
A property may also be included irrespective of the date at which it achieved significance, if the property is deemed to be of ``exceptional importance.'' (Bulletin 15, p. 42). In the spirit of inclusivity, the Bulletin again makes clear that exceptional importance, does not require the property to be of national significance. Exceptional importance is simply a ``. . . measure of a property's importance within the appropriate historic context, whether the scale of that context is local, state or national. For example, a laundry in New Orleans was deemed to be of exceptional importance because it was one of the few examples of the Art Deco Style remaining in New Orleans.
Furthermore, neither 36 C.F.R. 60.4 nor Bulletin 15 allows a property to be accepted or rejected for registration because of an evaluator's opinion of the lifestyles or idiosyncracies of the users of the property. It might be relevant, when considering the registration of a property, to determine whether a certain group that used the property had distinguishing characteristics (for example, did the Native Americans who used a ceremonial site, or the jazz musicians who used a nightclub, represent a cohesive community?). Clearly, however, Native American gathering places, gold mining encampments, and Civil War campsites may be eligible without first determining whether the site users were rowdy, independent-minded, or pious. Certainly, an emigrant trail might be registered even if it was established that some of the trail users were bandits or horse thieves. In short, moral judgments are irrelevant.
Bulletin 15 suggests that an application to have a property placed on the Register contain information about the chronological period and the geographical limits, that will provide a perspective from which to evaluate the significance of a property.
The chronological period has been discussed by Mr. Frost and Mr. Ament in their application and is incorporated herein by reference. Suffice it to say that Camp 4, which became the gathering place of choice for all Yosemite Valley climbers after the Second World War,
quickly developed into the cauldron out of which Americans forged world-class mountaineering achievements for decades. Those achievements continue to the present day.
The term ``Camp 4" refers to approximately five to six acres of forested meadow extending northward from Northside Drive to just short of the boulder-strewn talus slopes at the northern rim of the Valley. Its western border is roughly marked by a natural rock formation called Nixon boulder and a group of campsites. Its eastern border is roughly marked by the edge of a dirt parking lot to the south, and a natural rock formation called the Thriller to the north. Its northern perimeter runs along a trail roughly parallel to Northside Drive. That trail proceeds in an east-west direction with a natural rock formation called the Wine Boulder on its southern side, and a boulder sometimes referred to as Higgins' Face along its northern edge.
To the immediate east of Camp 4 lies an open area called Swan's Slab Meadow. To the east of that meadow lies a series of low lying cliffs. These cliffs, called Swan's Slab, provide one of the few areas in the Valley where beginning rock climbers can practice.2
The essence of Camp 4 is open space, trees, campsites and boulders.
Bulletin 15 (p.8) also suggests that an applicant choose from the list of "Areas of Significance" before developing the ``historic context'' to be used when evaluating a property for placement on the Register. Mountaineering (defined here as mountain and rock wall climbing for pleasure, moral and imaginative adventure, spiritual fulfillment, and a sense of achievement) easily fits the area of significance described as ``Entertainment/Recreation'' and will be dealt with as such. However, defining mountaineering merely as ``entertainment'' or ``recreation'' does not reflect the depth of its impact on the human spirit. So much of its history is entwined with the development of an ethic that has a proper respect for the mountains and walls upon which it is practiced, that climbing might be considered under the rubric of "conservation." Mountaineering in California is so connected to both the preservation of Yosemite Valley and the history of the state that it could be considered a part of "social history." Because mountain climbing so frequently takes one into the unknown, both geographically and emotionally, it could also be classified as a form of "exploration."3
Whatever theme the evaluator deems appropriate, we hope he will agree that the history of mountaineering, and its connection to Camp 4, is palpable and significant on both a local, regional, national, and international level.
We would digress if we lingered long on the international antecedents of the mountaineering that occurred in Yosemite Valley.4 However, since the Valley eventually became the center for ``big wall'' climbing worldwide, a copy of Doug Scott's, Big Wall Climbing: Development, Techniques and Aids, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) is included with this supplementary application. Scott, a well-known British climber and writer, traces big wall climbing from its earliest antecedents through its development in nineteenth-century Europe in the eastern Alps, Germany, Austria, and the western Alps, and culminates his history of big wall climbing as the pursuit reaches its highest state of development in Yosemite Valley. The front matter and first chapter from Scott's book, and the introduction and first chapter from On Top Of The World: An Illustrated History of Mountain Climbing, by Schowell Styles (New York: MacMillan Company 1967), are also attached as Exhibits 7 and 8 to our supplementary application. These excerpts provide cursory but helpful discussions of climbing from a world perspective.
A few points may help set the broad historical context for Camp 4. Scholars seem to agree that the peoples of Asia found a love of the mountains far earlier than their Western counterparts. Chinese and Japanese poetry, from the sixth and eighth centuries respectively, celebrates the mountains with great delicacy and force. Many of the peaks of the greatest mountain ranges on earth have been held sacred for centuries by both the Hindus and the Buddhists (Styles, On Top Of The World, pp. xvi-xvii). Although Europeans came comparatively late to the love of mountains, their embrace of mountaineering is easily traced. In 1492, Monseigneur de Ville accomplished the goal set by Charles II of France by climbing the "inaccessible" Mont Aiguille. In 1786, Michele Paccard and a companion stood atop Mont Blanc. By the mid-1850s, the golden age of European climbing was in full swing, with British amateurs climbing throughout Europe. In 1850, the Alpine Club of London was formed. In 1867, the "impossible" Matterhorn was climbed by Edward Whymper. 5
And what of climbing in the Americas before the Europeans arrived? In the fifteenth century, Chilean Indians reached the summits of the 22,000-foot peaks that border the Atacama Desert (Chris Jones, Climbing in North America [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976], p. 23). John Muir reports of "heavy obsidian arrowheads found on some of the highest [Sierra Nevada] peaks . . . and Indian hunting blinds on the summits of the nearby White Mountains" (John Muir, The Mountains of California [Berkeley, California: Ten Speed Press, 1991], p. 320). ``First ascent'' parties also found Indian structures on the summits of Colorado's 14,345-foot Blanca Peak and Wyoming's 13,165-foot Cloud Peak (Jones, p. 23).
A modern climbing tradition was already established in North America before the great Yosemite Valley ascents and is described in Tom Frost's and Pat Ament's application to the Keeper of the National Historical Register. California climbing will be treated separately, since it is so intimately connected with the accomplishments in Yosemite Valley, but some remarks about climbing elsewhere in North America are also relevant to the context being established. Canada's Mount Bonney was climbed in 1888. Two Americans from Yale University climbed Mount Temple in the Canadian Rockies in 1894. The Appalachian Mountain Club of Boston was launching climbing expeditions before the turn of the century. Such was the popularity of climbing on Seattle's Mount Rainier that a guide service was started as early as 1890 (see, generally, Jones, Chapters 1-10).
The point of these randomly chosen facts and rough history is that the love of mountains is endemic to all cultures that have access to them. The universality of their appeal, and the impulse to record and celebrate that appeal, is testament to the strength of the ties between mountaineering and the human spirit. Those ties must be considered when determining whether the historic mountaineering achievements associated with Camp 4 have significance as defined by the Code of Federal Regulations and Bulletin 15.
We will shortly describe the climbing that occurred in Yosemite Valley and the significance of Camp 4 in this story. However, it seems worthwhile to pause momentarily and place this California climbing history within a broader cultural history of the state lest we take too myopic a view of its significance.
The California State Librarian, Kevin Starr, is well qualified to provide such an overview. A native Californian, Starr worked at the Yosemite Lodge, just south of Camp 4, during the summers of 1960 and 1961. He has a master of arts and a doctorate from Harvard University and a master of library science from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Starr has been engaged in a thirty-year study of the cultural history of California and has published four volumes of that history through the Oxford University Press.
Dr. Starr's statement, taken at the headquarters of the California State Library in Sacramento on July 2, 1998, for submission with this supplementary application, and Chapter 6 of his book, Americans and the California Dream: 1850-1915 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), are attached as Exhibits 9 and 10. Both documents should be read in full to grasp the depth of the role mountaineering has played in California's cultural history.
The central points of Starr's scholarship can be briefly stated. California immigrants were challenged by a bold and dramatic landscape: two major mountain systems, the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, lay longitudinally down the Western and Eastern extremes of the state. Though much of the California mountain experience was ultimately destructive--consider the effects of the gold rush--as early as the 1850s a sort of ``tourist'' began to argue against ecological indifference and, indeed, to vehemently rebuke it. Within a very short time, a ``sense of sport'' arose (Starr, Exhibit 10, Americans and the California Dream , p. 175).
While Californians began to engage in other tourist activities (such as camping), it was in mountaineering that the state most closely articulated its emerging character. Starr concludes that:
Of all attempts to connect imaginatively with the environment, mountaineering had the highest degree of self-consciousness. From the start it was more a matter of science and art than necessity.'' (ibid., p.177).
Starr explains this love of mountaineering among the settlers who first distinguished themselves in the California mountains:
The first generation were New Englanders strongly infused with the American Protestant Puritan imagination of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [They] tended to see nature not just in exactitude, but they blended John Locke's sensationism with theology. They found it as an evocation of the divine mind. To find nature in the American continent was to find something akin to scripture itself, a scripture of divine creativity. (Starr, Exhibit 9, p. 7, lines 7-14).6
...Mountaineering played a crucial role in the defining of the California ethos in the nineteenth century in terms of trying to say that California should be more, and the premise is this: If nature is a reservation in some sense, not that of scientific reality but the divine mind, then certainly the divine has developed him or herself . . . in the great mountains of California....'' (Ibid., p. 12, lines 4-12).
In looking at the early history of mountaineering in California, one is struck by this fusion of the practical with a moral imagination. Starr notes:
If you look at the great mountaineers of California and writers--Whitney, William Brewer, or Clarence King and, of course, the great John Muir and the great Joseph LeConte--you see this fusion; you see this wonderful fusion of mountaineering as physical fact and as moral adventure. (Ibid. p. 10, lines 9-15).
Who were these great early mountaineers? The distinguished founders of the California
mountaineering tradition are many. Starr includes:
· William Henry Brewer, Field Director of the California Geological Survey . A graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, Brewer came to California in 1860 after two years of climbing and studying in Europe. He then led the field work for the California Geological Survey. Starr concludes that by 1864, no man knew California, and especially its mountains, better. Although unpublished until 1930, Brewer's letters and journals, issued under the title Up and Down California: The Journal of William Brewer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), must be considered the founding statement of California mountaineering. (Starr, Exhibit 10, Americans and the California Dream, p. 179).
·Clarence King. Henry Adams considered him the outstanding young man of his generation. King assisted Brewer with the California survey and, at the young age of 24, was named by Congress to direct the Fortieth Parallel Survey. His writings for the Atlantic Monthly were later published in a series of sketches under the title Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872) which is, in the estimation of W. C. Brownell, the literary critic, ``one of the very few books that have a clear title to be called `unique'. '' Brownell continues, ``It stands so completely by itself that it is hard to find the comparison that fits it'' (quoted in Thurman Wilkins, Clarence King: A Biography, [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988]). Starr concludes that ``in Clarence King, mountaineer, the American in California made symbolic contact with the lost life of the continent itself: and from that union there came new wonder and new power of soul.'' (Starr, Exhibit 10, Americans and the California Dream, p. 180).
· Joseph Le Conte. Le Conte, according to Starr, was one of the ``signature'' Californians. A professor at U.C. Berkeley, Le Conte taught such writers as Jack London and Frank Norris and was one of the founders of the Sierra Club. He was trained as a scientist and engaged himself intellectually with the reconciliation of Darwinism and traditional religion. According to Starr, mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada ``was essential to [Le Conte], absolutely. He was part of the Sierra Club group.'' (see, generally, Starr, Exhibit 9, pp. 28-30).
· John Muir. It would be hard to cover John Muir's achievements succinctly, and so much has been written about them that it hardly seems necessary to review them. His time in the Yosemite Valley and the experiences that he had climbing had a powerful effect on him, on the history of the state, and on the direction of the conservation movement in the country. He wrote eloquently of the first attempts to climb South Dome in Yosemite Valley (see Exhibit 11). His article on the climbing of Mt. Ritter in the Sierra Nevada is a classic of mountaineering literature. His book The Mountains of California , ``had a great effect on the National Park Movement'' (Starr, Exhibit 9, p. 24, line 23). Muir was the first president of the Sierra Club and a president of the American Alpine Club. Starr notes that to Muir, ``mountaineering was a form of religious witness, a worshiping of that sacred and awful power which pulsated at the core of creation. As a prophet of conservation, he warned Californians not to squander what the ages had prepared. He became an avatar of all the Sierras promise: simplicity, strength, joy and affirmation.'' (Starr, California and the American Dream, p.188)
Starr's book on the California mountaineering tradition ends as of 1915. He notes, however, in his statement taken on July 2, 1998, two other more recent mountaineers who have distinguished themselves in the cultural history of the state:
· David Brower. Brower, who made eighteen first ascents in Yosemite Valley, is best known as the executive director of the Sierra Club from 1952 to 1965. He created the Sierra Club photographic book series, was an endless fighter in many of the major conservation battles in the United States, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, to Starr, it was Brower's efforts as part of the Tenth Mountain Division in World War II that made him ``a hero as well as a great man.'' (Starr, Exhibit 9, p. 38, lines 12-16.)7
· Galen Rowell. Rowell's book, The Vertical World of Yosemite , is enclosed herein as an additional document submitted in support of this application. Rowell has spent years staying in and visiting Camp 4. His nature and mountain photography earned him the title Photographer Laureate of Yosemite Valley (this honor is a rotating one), and he is one of the best-known nature photographers in the country. While his climbing exploits are well known throughout the climbing community, it is interesting to note that Starr sees Rowell's photography as following in the tradition of such famous Sierra photographers as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. These three photographers are, according to Starr, collectively ``classed by themselves, and they are all, especially Adams, profoundly affected by the mountains.'' It is Starr's opinion that Rowell's work will make him an important figure in the cultural history of California. (Starr, Exhibit 9, page 36, lines 22-37.)
Finally, any discussion of the intellectual and cultural significance of Yosemite Valley climbing would be incomplete without a mention of the formation of the Sierra Club. Many of the club's founding members and leading figures, including Dick Leonard, Bestor Robinson, David Brower, and John Muir, were to become prominent names in the pre-World War II climbing history of Yosemite Valley. The club as a whole is an outgrowth of the Yosemite mountaineering tradition, teaching climbing skills to new mountaineers and contributing greatly to the environmental cause in the United States.
In summary, the mountaineering tradition in California is as rich as can be found in any part of America and has played an enormous role in the intellectual and cultural history of the country. Many early California mountaineers became prominent not only locally, but nationally and even internationally as well. It is out of the tradition they created that modern day Yosemite Valley climbing emerged.
During the nineteenth century, rock climbing in Yosemite Valley developed into a popular recreational sport. The written record of climbs dates almost from the moment the early settlers found the valley. The sport continued to grow during the early twentieth century. By 1931 the Rock Climbing Section of the Sierra Club was guiding organized attempts on some of the most spectacular individual faces. Between 1933 and the start of World War II, some forty first ascents were made.
The application of Tom Frost and Pat Ament discusses this history and is incorporated herein by reference. In the introduction to his Climber 's Guide to Yosemite Valley (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1971), Steve Roper excerpts an excellent account of the pre-war era (see Exhibit 13). The account is taken from the Yosemite Valley chapter (written by Richard Leonard, David Brower, and William Dunmire) of the 1954 edition of A Climber 's Guide to the High Sierra.
For the sake of completeness, sections of that history are included:
``It was not until 1833 that the white man is known to have seen Yosemite Valley. Joseph Reddeford Walker and party came from the vicinity of Bridgeport . . . to the Valley rim. There they marveled at `lofty precipices . . . more than a mile high.' The first rock-climbing attempt by white man was soon stopped by difficulty, for `on making several attempts we found it utterly impossible for a man to descend.'
``. . . Yosemite soon became a source of attraction for tourists from all over the world. One of the earliest to arrive was James M. Hutchings, who first came to the Valley in 1855. Throughout the early history of the Valley he was interested in attempting to climb every point around the Valley.
``John Muir first came to the Sierra in 1868. Through him more than any other man has the beauty of the region been made known to the entire world. His climbs in Yosemite Valley and the High Sierra, many of them the earliest of which we have knowledge, place him among the pioneers of California mountaineering . . . . He made the first ascents of Cathedral Peak and Mount Ritter, and was the first to traverse under the Lost Arrow along Fern Ledge . . . .
``In early October of 1864 Clarence King . . . made the first serious topographical and geological reconnaissance of the Yosemite Valley. On this survey they climbed practically every summit on a circuit of the rim of the valley. This circuit included only the easier points, such as El Capitan, Eagle Peak, Yosemite Point, North Dome, Basket Dome, Mount Watkins, Sentinel Dome, and the Cathedral Rocks. Any summits which were much beyond this standard of difficulty seemed to them completely beyond the range of human ability. In 1865 the California Geological Survey wrote concerning Half Dome, Mount Starr King and Mount Broderick, `Their summits are absolutely inaccessible.'
``. . . James M. Hutchings and two others made the first recorded attempt on Half Dome in 1869, but were stopped at a saddle east of the Dome. After at least two intervening attempts . . . , George G. Anderson, finally engineered his way to the top on October 12, 1875.
``Inspired by the success on Half Dome, adventurous climbers turned their attention to Mount Starr King, the `extremely steep, bare, inaccessible cone of granite' referred to by Whitney in the Yosemite Guide Book. George B. Bayley and E.S. Schuyler made the ascent in August 1876 . . . . Bayley was one of the most remarkable climbers of the time. In 1876 Muir recorded that `Mounts Shasta, Whitney, Lyell, Dana, and the Obelisk (Mount Clark) already have felt his foot, and years ago he made desperate efforts to ascend the South Dome (Half Dome), eager for the first honors.' Later he was distinguished by an early ascent of Cathedral Peak, and an ascent of Mount Rainier during which he was seriously injured by a fall into a crevasse . . . .
``After the great ascents of the `inaccessible' summits of Yosemite, there was a period of quiet in the climbing history, for everything seemed to have been done. Hutchings had claimed the ascent of all Yosemite points, except Grizzly Peak and the Cathedral Spires, and a climber of another generation came forward in 1885 to make the ascent to Grizzly Peak. He was Charles A. Bailey, who later became an enthusiastic member of the Sierra Club, locating, climbing, and naming Sierra Point for the Club.
``Since it now appeared that all the major summits in the Yosemite region had been climbed, there was a long gap in the climbing history, broken only by the exploratory routes of a few outstanding climbers of the period. Those whose climbs are best known are S. L. Foster, Joseph N. LeConte, Charles and Enid Michael, William Kat, and Ralph S. Griswold . . . . LeConte has been remembered through the description of his ascent of the gully on Grizzly Peak, which permits a route to the Diving board on Half Dome. He also wrote of several other `scrambles about Yosemite' of nearly three decades ago. It has been said of the Michaels that they climbed everything that did not require pitons. The same description might apply to Kat and Griswold . . . .
``Again it seemed that nothing more could be done. However, in the early thirties, a new phase of rock climbing was growing, based on the development of modern technique in Europe. In the summer of 1931, Robert L.M. Underhill, the leading American exponent of the use and management of the rope in rock work, interested Californians in this phase of climbing. It has been mentioned that some very remarkable climbing was done without the knowledge of this safety technique; but the early climbers who have discussed the matter agree that their climbing frequently involved unjustifiable hazard. Moreover, it was clear to them that they could not attempt routes of very high angle and small holds. Thus the introduction of a new type of climbing, combined with the protection of piton craft, again opened a new field.
``It was not until September 2, 1933 that the first rock climbing section of the Sierra Club felt competent to make organized attempts upon the spectacular unclimbed faces and spires of Yosemite. Although as long ago as 1886 Hutchings, in reporting the relatively easy ascent of Grizzly Peak, claimed that the last `unclimbed summit' of Yosemite had been ascended, nevertheless the Cathedral Spires, the Church Spires, the Church Tower, the Arrowhead, Split Pinnacle, Pulpit Rock, Watkins Pinnacles, and the Lost Arrow still stood forth without even an attempt ever having been recorded against them. In addition to these summits, there was a field, practically unexplored, of route finding on faces, aretes, gullies, and chimneys. Among these may be mentioned Washington Column, Royal Arches, Panorama Cliff, Glacier Point, Yosemite Point Couloir, Cathedral Chimney, and the arete of the Lower Brother. Ropes, pitons, and trained experience in their use were the keys to these ascents, which were later to become so popular. Climbers, profiting by the achievements of their predecessors, added still more ascents to the growing list of Yosemite Routes . . . .(quoted in Roper, A Climber 's Guide, pp.2-7).
Roper continues:
During the eight years between the 1933 trip and the entry of this country into World War II, about forty first ascents were made. The most active climbers of this period were Kenneth Adam, David Brower, Jules Eichorn, Morgan Harris Richard Leonard, L. Bruce Meyer, and Harvey Voge. Brower made eighteen first ascents, twelve of them with Harris.
During World War II there was a climbing hiatus, but when the war ended a new generation of climbers quickly appeared.'' (Roper, A Climber's Guide, p. 7)
The Frost-Ament application submitted to the Register contains an extensive review of climbing in Yosemite Valley after the Second World War. This account is incorporated by reference into this supplementary application of the American Alpine Club.
The Frost-Ament application made reference to bouldering in Yosemite Valley, but focused largely on the history of rock climbing and big wall ascents in the Valley. To ensure that the record is complete, it should be understood that ``bouldering,'' a form of mountaineering that started out as a way to practice for larger climbs, developed into a subcategory of mountaineering that moved on to the world stage with Yosemite Valley and Camp 4 as one of the centers of the sport. ``Boulder problems'' are usually extremely difficult, and it is exquisite to watch a climber maneuver them. Grace and strength are essentials. Because the word ``boulder'' conjures up anything beyond a large rock, it is important to understand that many of the boulders are magnificent natural features that have enormous aesthetic appeal.
To assist in understanding that aesthetic appeal, a copy of the excellent guidebook Stone Crusade: A Historical Guide to Bouldering in America , by John Sherman (Golden, Colorado: The American Alpine Club Press, 1994), is attached hereto. (See also photographs from Camp 4 in Kevin Worrall's article, attached hereto as Exhibit 4). Because it provides both relevant information about the historical context within which to view Camp 4, and powerful evidence (i.e., the integrity of Camp 4's site) regarding the ``feelings'' associated with Camp 4, a portion of Sherman's guidebook is excerpted herein.
Yosemite Valley
It is only fitting that the mecca of world rock climbing have some awesome bouldering. Periodically, massive chunks of granite calve off of Yosemite's towering walls, and tumble down to the valley floor. Boulders are found throughout the Valley, but three areas get the most traffic: Housekeeping boulders, Sentinel Boulder, and Camp 4. [Emphasis added]
Due to its boulders and early morning sunshine, most climbers pitch their tents at Camp 4
. . . You could also drive right up to Columbia Boulder, the big rock in the middle of camp. Things have changed. Camp 4 is now called Sunnyside Campground by the Park Service. . . . Most climbers still proudly call it Camp 4.
The early bouldering history of Yosemite is the most poorly recorded part of Yosemite climbing history. Up through the 1950s, bouldering in Yosemite was confined to the rocks in Camp 4 . . . . A few [bouldering achievements], however, were not forgotten. On his first trip to the Valley, Royal Robbins was eager to test himself against the Northern Californians. ``We didn't know any of the Northern California climbers,'' Robbins says, ``but they had a reputation--they'd climbed Sentinel Rock and Lost Arrow Spire. They were, how do you say it, presences.'' What better way to test himself than to tackle the local bouldering testpiece. ``The big challenge that people pointed out at that time [1952] was the Steck Overhang (5.10+).'' Robbins conquered this route on the northwest corner of Columbia Boulder, then became a ``presence'' too, as America's most noted rock climber of the 1950s and 1960s.
Robbins established his own testpiece on Columbia boulder, the Robbins Eliminate . Robbins' skill was held in high regard, and this problem reinforced that. It foiled all who tried it until Harry Daley, a climber not known for his bouldering prowess, repeated it . . .
Though Robbins had the big reputation, he and others from the same era give the nod to Chuck Pratt as being the best free climber of the time. ``Royal and Pratt both were tremendous boulderers.'' says Pat Ament. ``Pratt was bouldering at the highest standard of anyone in Yosemite way before Royal.'' One night Pratt left the campfire and climbed up the lichened face right of the chopped holds on the west face of Columbia Boulder, a route involving off-the-deck 5.10 slab moves. Curious as to its difficulty, Ament tried it one day. ``I wanted to see what it was like, and it was so dangerous, you could slip off it so easily, that it boggled the mind.''
. . . Hard bouldering mantels remained a Yosemite trademark throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Ament added some of his own desperate pressing problems, as did Dale Bard. Currently, manteling is out of fashion in the bouldering world.
. . . Ament made many pilgrimages to Yosemite in the 1960s. In addition to some hard mantels, he added the standard-pushing Ament Arete (B1+) and some slab problems desperate today even with sticky rubber. He also introduced chalk to Yosemite. He treated bouldering as an end in itself, a view few Valley locals shared, obsessed as they were with the big walls. One local who shared Ament's views on bouldering was Barry Bates. Ament says, ``Among all the climbers I bouldered with out there, Barry Bates was a step above the rest of them''
. . . Though equally desperate problems existed elsewhere in the Valley, the Bates Problem (B1), in the middle of Columbia Boulders's north face, was the most visible and opened the door for the next generation of Yosemite boulderers. Bates often climbed up and down this steep and necky testpiece while few others could even go up, so it ended up with his name.
. . . Mike Graham, Dale Bard, John Long, and particularly John Bachar and Ron Kauk dominated the scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ``Kauk and I thought bouldering was one of the greatest things,'' Bachar says. Together they put up the lion's share of Valley testpieces . . . . Both were naming problems after Jimi Hendrix songs, so the history of who did what is somewhat muddled, but the history of one Hendrix-inspired problem is clear--Midnight Lightning .
. . . Finally, on what promised to be another heel-bruising day of attempts and failures, [on Midnight Lightning] Kauk was again at the lip. The crowd figured he'd jump off for sure, but instead he rocked over his right foot while popping a quick mantel with his left arm. He grabbed the finishing jug and the crowd fell into a shocked silence. Eventually Bachar succeeded, rocking over the lip in much the same funky mantel way that Kauk had done it. For years the show went on, drawing large audiences who spread the word of this incredible problem that nobody else could do.
. . . Midnight Lightning (B2) would go on to become the world's most famous boulder problem . . . . But most important was its highly visible location, smack dab in the middle of America's most notorious climbers' camp. Nearly every climber who has journeyed to Yosemite has stared at its commanding position on the giant Columbia Boulder. Not only is it America's most famous problem, but also the most tried and most failed on . . . .
Appropriately, Midnight Lighting has the most famous hold in the world . . . . Other than Midnight Lightning and the aforementioned problems, these are the classic Camp 4 ticks: Initial Friction (5.11-), Blue Suede Shoes (B1); and Elegant Gypsy (B2) for slabs and less than vertical face; The Kor Problem (5.11+), Cocaine Corner (B1) and Shiver Me Timbers (B1+) for bad landing mind control problems; Bachar Cracker (B1) for hand and finger jamming through a roof; Battle of the Bulge (B1+) and Tendons Give (B1+) for overhanging face; and for difficult beyond Midnight Lightning there are King Cobra (7b+), Thriller (B2+), and The Dominator (8a+). . . . Climbed on terribly sloping holds, it [The Dominator] is currently Yosemite's hardest boulder problem and went months without a repeat. Brit Jerry Moffat did the first ascent. In the last 12 years Moffat has repeatedly visited the United States and is the only European to have left more than a passing mark on United States bouldering . . . .
For the beginning to intermediate boulderer, there are good problems near Swan Slab (at the northern end of the Camp 4 boulder belt), on Sentinel Boulder's smaller satellites, and across the road from the Housekeeper Camp. These areas lack the intense atmosphere sometimes present at the more famous Camp 4 boulders. (Sherman, Stone Crusade, pp.102-110)
Yosemite Valley is the center of big wall climbing; though the world of bouldering is more diffuse, the Valley and Camp 4 are nonetheless a mecca for practitioners of this hugely popular sport. Midnight Lightning is unquestionably the most famous boulder problem in the world-- history was made when it was climbed--and it is smack in the middle of Camp 4.
The term ``history'' has subtle meanings. A personal recordation may be a part of history, but may not have made a significant contribution to the ``broad patterns of our history.'' Interesting past events may be considered ``history'' in the larger sense even if the participants did not think to record them. How do we judge whether a ``history,'' or a ``historic context,'' once established, is connected to the broader patterns of our experience?
Some generalizations might be helpful. The fact that the participants did record an event suggests that the event was considered significant by the participants. If such a record (prepared by the participants) is read, repeated and reflected upon by those not involved, we feel safe in concluding that the participants and the event reverberate with a larger historical meaning. If the circle of people reflecting on and revisiting the past event is a wide one, we know that the historical reverberation of the event may have more than just a local or regional significance. If much time has passed since the event occurred, and it still seems significant from our present vantage point, we know that our common-sense notion of what ``history'' is attaches to both the event and the participants. Finally, we know that an event is historic in the most profound sense if it is not only reflected on and repeated, but mythologized and used by the living to shape their own lives.
We submit that the events in the climbing history connected to Yosemite Valley and to Camp 4 are, when used against these tests of significance, ``historic'' in the profoundest and deepest sense, and that the American men and women associated with them are ipso facto ``persons significant in our past.''
Tom Frost and Pat Ament were participants in many of the events now written about by the recorders of climbing history. In Camp 4, Steve Roper describes the activities of Frost, Ament, and the other climbers who were in Camp 4 and Yosemite Valley after the Second World War. Roper was both a participant in and a historian of these events, and in his book, published four decades after the events occurred, he categorizes the climbing ascents as world-class achievements.
The historical events referred to by Roper are treated with equal reverence and respect, decades after the climbs occurred, by two important non-participants . The standard guidebook to climbs in the Yosemite Valley, published by George Meyers and Don Reed, reaches the same conclusion as Roper and accords world significance to the post-World War II climbing achievements in the Valley, (see George Meyers and Don Reid, Yosemite Climbs, [Denver: Chockstone Press, 1987]). The history chapter from this guidebook is extracted and attached hereto as Exhibit 14.
For a national perspective it is worth noting that the two major mountaineering magazines in the United States, Rock & Ice, (total circulation, 40,000 bi-monthly), and Climbing magazine, (total circulation, 48,000 monthly), both treat Yosemite Valley climbing with the same respect. Rock & Ice ran a series in June and August of 1997 that reviewed a century of American climbing. (Copies are attached hereto as Exhibits 15 and 16.) The series celebrates Yosemite Valley climbs beginning with the April 1934 ascent of Higher Spire. Some points relevant to establishing historic significance are excerpted:
California climbers [from the 1930s], unafraid to experiment with new techniques and creative gear, dominate the upward movement of the climbing scene. (Rock & Ice, Vol. 79, p. 53)
. . . Salathé 's tenure in the Valley produces the three most difficult climbs of the [early post World War II] era and opens the doors to the conquest of the big walls. (ibid., Vol. 79, p. 53)
. . . [The post-World War II attempt on Yosemite Valley's Lost Arrow feature] is an undertaking that involves multiple failures, innovations in gear and a determination previously unrealized in American rock climbing . . . . The five-day climb is unlike anything climbers have previously attempted. (ibid., Vol. 79, p. 54)
. . . [John Salathé leaves] behind a trio of routes with reputations that grow to mythic proportions. (ibid., Vol. 79, p.55, emphasis added).
. . . [Harding, Robbins, Galwas, and Wilson all fail in their attempts to climb Half Dome, but their] competition jettisons American climbing onto the world stage. (ibid., Vol. 79, p. 56, emphasis added)
. . . The late `50s to the early `70s defines the golden age of rock climbing in America. In Yosemite, . . . most of the classic lines are done. During this period, American rock climbing, both in aiding the big walls and in free climbing, catches up with and surpasses the rest of the world . (ibid., Vol. 80, p. 72, emphasis added)
. . . In Yosemite, and perhaps the world, no feature is as monolithic as the Nose of El Capitan . . . [Warren] Harding believes the Nose will be the world's greatest rock climb. [On November 1, 1958, more than a year (and many failed attempts) later, Harding completes the first successful climb of El Capitan.] (ibid., Vol. 80, p. 74)
. . . [Sixties climber Frank Sacherer] free-climbed routes in a day that [the best climbers of the day] said could not be climbed in a day. In a word, Frank Sacherer was a visionary. He did more to advance free climbing as we know it today than any other single person in America at that time. (internationally known climber Jim Bridwell, quoted in Rock & Ice , Vol. 80, p. 77)
Duane Raleigh, publisher and editor-in-chief of Climbing magazine, shares the view of his counterparts at Rock & Ice. In Raleigh's statement, submitted for the Register (see Exhibit 17), he notes the following regarding the climbs in the valley:
These climbs set the world standard for rock climbing, and pave the way for modern high-altitude alpine climbing in Himalaya. Also significant--camming devices--the greatest single improvement in climbing safety improvement--were invented specifically for the parallel-sided cracks that abound around Camp 4.'' (Exhibit 17)
But perhaps the most important evidence of the national significance of the Valley climbing tradition comes from the testimony of those climbers whose lives were altered and shaped by the accomplishment and writings of the Valley climbers who preceded them. David Brower reports in his statement submitted to the American Alpine Club that his life in the mountains was shaped by his readings of Clarence King and John Muir (see Exhibit 12, p. 3, lines 11-15). The carabeeners and nylon ropes developed by David Brower and the other climbers who participated in the development of the Tenth Mountain Division during World War II allowed the American climbers of the post-war era to push the edge of climbing still further. Salathé 's climbs after the war established that the longer, more difficult Valley formations could be climbed through the use of new rope techniques, aid, and determination. Harding, Robbins, Chouinard, Pratt, Frost and others built on Salathé 's efforts and established new techniques and equipment that made the possible ascent of the previously unclimbable El Capitan and Half Dome.
Almost forty years later, Paul Piana and Randy Vogel pushed climbing limits even further: they climbed the Salathé Wall, (pioneered by Frost, Robbins, and Pratt and named by them after their hero from the past) without using aid devices to ascend.8 As Royal Robbins states in his forward to Piana's book, ``no one dreamed of freeing these routes until years after the original ascents'' (quoted in Piana, Big Walls, p. xiv). Piana tells the story of this historic breakthrough on the Salathé Wall in his new book, Big Walls: Breakthroughs on the Free-Climbing Frontier (San Francisco: Sierra Club Book, 1998) (see Exhibit 18). But Piana makes it clear that the accomplishments of the climbers from the past (such as Robbins) shaped his own achievement:
I had studied and almost worshiped the exploits and achievements of the aid and free climbers who shaped my dreams. I had never met those great climbers who came before, the influences whom Galen Rowell calls ``phantom mentors.'' These teachers weren't there to inspire me in person, but did so by their writings, innovative climbing skills, and belief in their personal vision. (Piana, Big Walls, p.36)
What better testament to the historic significance of Yosemite Valley climbing?
In summary, it can hardly be disputed that the climbing tradition in the Valley, and the big wall achievements starting after the Second World War, ``made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history'' and that the great climbers who participated in that history are, ipso facto, ``persons significant in our past.'' (36 C.F.R. 60.4 (a)(b)). At the very least, these climbing achievements are of exceptional local, regional, and national historic importance.
The climbing events in the Valley unquestionably qualify as locally, regionally, and nationally significant. But even this is an understatement. The post-war accomplishments in Yosemite Valley made these American climbers, for one moment in time, the greatest climbers in the world. While they lived in and worked out of Camp 4 in the post-war years, they accomplished feats that put both them, and the Valley, on the world mountaineering stage forever. What is the evidence of this claim? What follows is only a small sample of the international recognition given to the Yosemite Valley and the Americans who climbed there.
Attached hereto as Exhibits 19 and 20 are the October-December 1987 and January-February 1998 editions of the prestigious French mountaineering magazine, Vertical. The former edition devotes seventeen pages of text and photographs exclusively to the American accomplishments in Yosemite Valley during the fifties and sixties. Full-page photographs of post-war Valley climbers Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, Chuck Pratt, and Jim Bridwell are included. It is a sign of the respect with which the French mountaineering community holds the post-war Yosemite Valley climbers that Vertical offers its readers lengthy interviews with Yvon Chouinard, Chuck Pratt, Steve Roper and Dale Bard (see Exhibit 19, pp. 47-50).
The January-February, 1998, edition of Vertical again celebrates great Valley climbs with 23 pages of exquisite color photography, text, and route description. Vertical calls Steve Roper's book Camp 4 required reading for anyone planning to visit the Valley-- further evidence of the high regard the French climbing community has for the American Valley climbers (Exhibit 20, pp. 76-77).
Moreover, Roper's book was translated into French and was published with accompanying photographic prints that turn the American trade version into an art book (a copy is enclosed for your review). The book was also translated into Czech in 1997 (see extract from the Czech edition, attached hereto as Exhibit 21).
Mountaineers in the United Kingdom, another country with a rich climbing tradition, also venerate the Valley and the American climbers. Bernard Newman, editor of the British mountaineering magazine, Climber, gives the following perspective:
For well over 35 years, the Yosemite Valley has been at the forefront of world rock climbing. New standards of technical excellence have been set in the Valley on several occasions and climbers travel from all over the world to climb in the unique environment. In fact, the ``Valley'' is synonymous for Yosemite in international climbing jargon. Few issues of mountaineering magazines go by without an article on climbing in Yosemite. Indeed, a recent issue of my own title carried an article about big wall climbing gear centered on a trip to the Yosemite Valley. (see Exhibit 22)
Another view is offered by Ken Wilson, the British publisher of mountaineering books and occasional editor of the international climber's magazine Mountain. Wilson concludes that
Yosemite climbing had a revolutionary impact on world climbing during the 1960s and 1970s and it was my privilege to report this in Mountain. We ran numerous articles and interviews concerning Yosemite and its great pioneers (Robbins, Pratt, Chouinard, Frost, Steck, Bridwell, Bachar, etc. . . . .) Recently I published Rocks Around the World by the German ace Stefan Galowacz (with its inspirational coverage of the Salathé Wall) and Deep Play by the British expert Paul Pritchard. This covered Yosemite climbing but more importantly it dealt with Yosemite-influenced climbs in Patagonia and Bathan Island . . .
Looking back, it is now clear that Yosemite climbing has had a profound influence on climbing worldwide during the last thirty years. It got off to an excellent start under the leadership of Salathé and then Robbins and his group, and has remained highly ethical and influential ever since. The critical moment was when Chouinard and Frost . . . introduced and popularized their range of nuts to the U.S. market. These enabled cracks to be aided without hammering and at a stroke, climbers were able to develop the sport without damaging the cliffs. This was in the great conservation tradition set by John Muir and it has had a profound influence on American and world climbing. (Emphasis added)
. . .Yosemite contains the bulk of the biggest and hardest big wall climbs in the world, the others being generally located in far away places with hostile climates.
. . . Climbing is not an activity that is blazoned on T.V. or newspapers. Like ocean sailing, it is a challenging, discreet, and all-absorbing sport. It began in the Alps in the last century and has developed throughout the world ever since. America has played an increasingly important role in this sport, firstly to the exploration of the mountains of Alaska, but during the last 40 years by the great growth of technical rock climbing. In Yosemite, it found the ideal location for climbing to make one of its periodic `great leaps forward' and Yosemite's importance remains immense today. Its exploration and development is one of the great chapters of world climbing history (see statement of Ken Wilson attached hereto as Exhibit 23).
Dr. Peter Grauss, President of the Austrian Alpine Club, in a letter to the American Alpine Club, makes the following statement: ``The Austrian Alpine Club representing 250,000 members fully supports the American Alpine Club in its actions to reserve the status of Camp 4 and the freedom of access for climbing in one of the world's most famous and best climbing areas. '' (Exhibit 24, emphasis added)
Perhaps no one is better able to assess the international significance of the Yosemite Valley climbing tradition than Ian McNaught-Davis, the president of the Union Internationale Des Associations D'Alpinisme (UIAA). This association was founded in 1932 and represents 2.5 million mountaineers and climbers, worldwide, on international issues. It is recognized by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) as the international federation representing mountaineering and climbing. The UIAA's membership includes eighty-one separate Alpine federations from seventy-one different countries. Attached hereto as Exhibit 6 is the statement of Mr. McNaught-Davis. In some highly relevant passages he states:
The big wall climbs in Yosemite are of granite with such steepness and length that even after most of the highest peaks had been climbed, no one had developed techniques to solve the problems of living for days on a vertical or overhanging face. How to haul quantities of equipment, food and water needed for survival, how to find protection against falling whilst climbing holdless, smooth cracks and diamond hard rock and the ability to overcome the daunting psychological experience. As many once believed that the world is flat, many climbers believe that these problems could not be overcome in any ethically acceptable way.
Yet they were overcome and the people who solved these problems became legends worldwide and anyone going to learn the techniques and see the newly-developed equipment came to Camp 4. It became the mecca for the hard climber; where you could find information on routes to climb, a climbing partner, borrow equipment and find encouragement for the climb ahead. There was nowhere quite like it. It was unique. The Yosemite climbers became legends, not just in the U.S.A. but wherever climbers gathered to talk of new developments. The reputations and achievements of John Salathé , Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, Warren Harding, Tom Frost, Layton Kor, Alan Steck, Galen Rowell, Jim Bridwell and Lynn Hill are as well-known as the great European climbers and it is astonishing that most of them are still alive today. They had solved the problems and invented or adapted new equipment. They even created a new language. Warren Harding invented the Bat-Hook. Tom Frost christened the Bong. Chuck Wilkes created the Knife Blade. Chouinard invented the Rurp, the Realised Ultimate Reality Piton. Jumars solved the problems of sackhauling. Salathé made the first hard-steel pitons. All of these were adopted throughout the world where climbs of the highest standard were being attempted.
Not only did the climbs on the big walls in Yosemite lift the perspective of what was possible to all climbers, they also set new standards of possibilities even for much shorter climbs. This opened up climbs that previously had been considered impossible, new cliffs to explore, new techniques for security. The increase in standards can be traced back to what was happening in Camp 4 in the 1950s and 1960s.
To place Camp 4 on the National Historical Register would send a message to the 2.5 million members of the federation that are the UIAA that mountaineering and climbing have a history and we must preserve it. (Exhibit 6)
There are approximately sixty-five thousand properties in the United States that have been placed on the Register. We venture the opinion that the majority of them have not been the subject of nationally distributed books. Surely few, if any, have been the subject of a book subsequently translated into foreign languages. We imagine that there are few written histories that take a campground as their focal point and title. Have any such histories been translated into the language of countries six thousand miles away from the campground? How about seven thousand, five hundred miles away? We venture that Steve Ropers' book, Camp 4: Reflections of a Yosemite Rockclimber, is the only one.
Make no mistake about whether the great climbers of America have lived in Camp 4, or have returned there. In a telephone survey conducted by the author of this supplementary application, a number of the most famous climbers in America were asked about their Camp 4 experiences. Tom Frost lived in Camp 4 in his twenties; he is now in his sixties, and stayed at Camp 4 for two months within the last year. Galen Rowell is now approximately sixty; he first lived in Camp 4 in his twenties, and has camped at or visited Camp 4 almost every year since the days of his youthful climbs. World-famous big wall climber Jim Bridwell (a campground in Patagonia is named after him) stayed at Camp 4 extensively for approximately seventeen years. World-famous climber John Bachar spent most springs, summers and autumns at Camp 4 for approximately eight years. Lynn Hill, the only woman in the world to ever successfully climb the Midnight Lightning problem on Columbia boulder at the center of Camp 4, spent most of her summers between 1976 and 1978 living in Camp 4. She was at Camp 4 to climb Midnight Lightning within the last two months. John Middendorf, age thirty-eight, one of the greatest big wall climbers of his generation, estimates having spent approximately two thousand nights camping out in the Valley and particularly in Camp 4. He was in Camp 4 within the last month. World-famous American climber Steve Schneider lived in Camp 4 through the summers of 1978 to 1981 and has been back to Camp 4 almost every year from 1982 to the present.
Is there better proof that a geographical location has the requisite integrity of ``feeling'' and ``association'' required for placement on the Register, than that those who have achieved international fame within the rich tradition of Yosemite climbing continue to return there decade after decade. But it is not only American climbers who understood the historical power of Camp 4. The camp is a mecca for climbers from every nation. Here are some views from the non-American climbing world:
·John Cleare, British photographer and author, in The World Guide to Mountains and Mountaineering (New York: Mayflower Books, 1979): ``Yosemite has become, arguably, the world's foremost rock climbing center . . . [T]he climbers camp at Sunnyside Campground [Camp 4] or bivouac on the climbs that require it'' (Exhibit 25, pp. 112-113).
·Glen Tempest, writing for Australia's climbing magazine, Rock , states: ``Nowadays Yosemite Valley is no longer the faraway mystical paradise where heaven-reaching walls could only be mentally ascended in grubby pages of second-hand mountain magazines . . . Each year sees an increasing number of Australians rolling into Camp 4, brains twisted by cultural shock, bodies destroyed by jet lag and eyes boggling from Valley grandeur . . . (Exhibit 26, page 10)
·The German magazine Rotpunkt (Red Point) in its March-April 1991 issue on the United States tells the young Germans where to stay: ``Camping: Die platze im Tal darunter das beruhnte Camp IV, Sunnyside Campground, imer noch billig. Im sommer oftaushebucht wie auch die anderen . . . [Translation: The campsites in the Valley, including the famous Sunnyside (Camp 4) Campground are still inexpensive. In the summer they are fully booked, just like the others . . .] (Exhibit 27)
·Yves Peysson is the president of the prestigious French mountaineering organization Groupe de Haute Montagne. He writes: ``even from France, Camp IV is considered a unique place. The large editorial success of the french version of the worldwide known book dedicated to Camp 4 in Yosemite, which was recently translated, fully supports this point of view. (Exhibit 28)
·In the French magazine Vertical (January-February 1998) a map is provided specifically showing climbers how to get to Camp 4. (Exhibit 18)
·Rodrigo Jordan, a former board member of the Chilean Mountain Federation, and the Olympic Chilean Committee, Marcelo Grifferos, a board member of the Universidad Catolica Mountaineering Club, and Aldo Boitano, a board member of Chile's DAV (the latter two clubs being the most important mountaineering clubs in Chile), write in support of the efforts of the Alpine Club: ``to preserve the unique piece of mountaineering world's history that Camp IV represents. All of us who stay there and the ones that are planning to go there from Chile can do nothing else but to give you our support on preserving Camp IV future.'' Camp 4 is special to them because of its ``place in big granite wall climbing [and] its unique history.'' (Exhibit 30)
Why does Camp 4 continue to draw climbers, both experienced and novice, year after year, generation after generation, from all over the world? Geography and location are part of the answer. Yosemite Valley, through the efforts of those who lived at Camp 4, is the world rock climbing center. Camp 4 is ideally located within it. The Valley is approximately seven miles long and three miles wide. The great walls face both north and south. Camp 4 is located in the middle of the Valley along its northern rim. If there is sun in the morning, it will reach here first. Since the climbers sleep outside, warmth in the morning is more significant than one might imagine. The great walls of the Valley are intimidating to those who have been on them many times; they are even more intimidating to those who come to climb them for the first time. Just to the east of Camp 4 lies Swan Slab. It is one of the very few practice cliffs in the entire Valley that allows people to make relatively easy climbs before they move on to greater efforts. The shapes and features of this slab, and its relatively low height, also make it useful for people just learning to climb. For years the slab has been used by the Yosemite Mountaineering School to teach beginning climbers (see Exhibit 31 for a photograph of a beginning climbing class at Swan Slab).
Look up from Camp 4 to just outside of the perimeter, and you will see some of the great vistas to the south and east. Half Dome, for example, rises in its magnificence and reminds you that there are stations along the journey to El Cap and that it might be best to try Half Dome first. (See Exhibit 32). Then there are the magnificent boulders in the center of the campground, along its perimeter, and in the adjacent Swan Slab Meadow. Those boulders contain history lessons for anyone who uses the campground: the names of the great climbers of the past are embedded in the oral tradition that exists here. If you go to Camp 4, you will be asked whether you can do the boulder climbs named after Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, John Bachar, John Bridwell, Ron Kauk, Layton Kor, Pat Ament, and so on.
That oral tradition is part of what gives Camp 4 such a strong sense of community. Duane Raleigh, a publisher and editor-in-chief of Climbing talks of this community:
Camp 4 has, since David Brower's first ascent of Sunnyside Bench in 1935, been the proving ground for rock climbing--virtually every advancement in equipment, technique and philosophy had its genesis in Camp 4. Among the highlights, Camp 4 was the launching point for virtually every major first ascent in the park . . . also significant, camming devices--the greatest single improvement in climbing safety--were invented specifically for the parallel-sided cracks that abound around Camp 4.
More importantly, though, is the historical cultural aspect that abounds in Camp 4. . . . For the past fifty years Camp 4 has been the melting pot for climbing. Climbers from around the world over have traveled and camped here to exchange ideas, news, and form partnerships with American climbers. As Camp 4 is the only place in America, its loss would be a devastating blow and undermine America's reputation as the world leader in rock climbing.
Personally, I began climbing in Yosemite in 1980. As a twenty-year old fresh from Oklahoma, the cultural and historical aspect of Camp 4 left a deep and lasting impression upon me. So much so that I left there compelled to pursue a career in climbing journalism. Even today, my identity as a climber depends on the events in and around Camp 4. (see Exhibit 17)
British publisher and mountaineering writer Ken Wilson has a similar view of the sense of community Camp 4 has engendered:
These developments [the great climbs in Yosemite Valley] took place because, apart from climbing, the centralised nature of Yosemite climbing social life had a natural focal point and meeting place in Camp 4. Here climbers from every major climbing nation of the world met and exchanged ideas and advice. They came to tackle the great wall routes of El Capitan and Half Dome, but they brought with them overseas know-how and perspectives that proved equally influential for American climbers. Apart from Chamonix, and now, maybe, the main meeting points in the Karakorim, there is no other international meeting place to rival Yosemite. [emphasis added]
Yosemite is the world's leading center for big wall climbing. The skills needed are very specialized. They can only be learned by years of practice and with informed local advice. This is best done on the crag and with the logistical training and know-how passed on in Camp 4. This is why Camp 4 is of such critical importance.
And, Ian-McNaught Davis, president of the UIAA, adds:
Whilst on the surface Camp 4 can be seen as simply a field and some trees, to climbers wherever they are it is much more than that. It is where a climber knows he can find people with the same passion. It is where issues of concern to climbers can be openly discussed without the formality of an organized debate. Ethical issues such as fixed equipment on mountains . . . the quality of new equipment on which one's life may depend and many others. On my own early visit there I met with many of the American legends. I had never before met an American climber and they didn't know me yet I climbed with Jim Bridwell and Royal Robbins as if we had known each other for years. There is no other place in the world quite like Camp 4. If a Cathedral is simply a pile of stones and Camp 4 only a field, then there is no understanding of what either of these mean to the people that are deeply involved.
To place Camp 4 on the National Historical Register would send a message to the 2.5 million members of the federations that are the UIAA that mountaineering and climbing have a history and that we must preserve it.
But one senses, even in the words of Raleigh, Wilson and McNaught-Davis, that the explanation for Camp 4's relevance may be more complex; that beyond Camp 4's geography, location, and sense of community, there is something else that has long attracted climbers: something that is related to the physical features of the camp and the community that climbers find there, but that is less tangible, more abstract, and perhaps even mystical. Dr. Kevin Starr, the California State Librarian, former Yosemite Lodge employee and author of numerous books on California's cultural history (published through Oxford University Press), intimates this ``something else'':
From there you have a place that is intensely, made intensely imaginative and significant by what happened there. But back behind that assault [Warren Harding's ascent of El Capitan] you have a whole story of mountaineering in California.
In other words, Camp 4 is important for what happened in terms of El Capitan but it is also important as a localization, a physical localization of an entire mountaineering history, in my opinion, of California. And that mountaineering history is just not something peripheral in terms of the nineteenth century; it is one of the most profound ways that Californians encountered and found for themselves what California was all about . . . (Exhibit 9, pp. 5-6)
Camp 4, Starr asserts:
is a place wherein the entire identity of California was consolidated, partially consolidated, in the 1940s, 1950s, and that consolidation is linked to the whole epic or spiritual quest, imaginative quest through mountaineering in the nineteenth century. (Ibid., pp. 45-46)
The reason a physical location emanates a specialness and evokes the ``feelings and associations'' of history, is elusive. How did Camp 4 come to reverberate in the way it does? Starr offers:
[A]ll these climbs transmuted into great literature [which] become part of the canon of American literature and part of the California canon of what California defines itself against and becomes also the reverberations that come in and out of Camp 4 in a place in direct line of all that nineteenth century quest because it took it up to the 1950s and to today. If that is not historic, if [it] is not historic in California, what is then? (Ibid., p. 23, 24)
Dr. Starr further explains the mystery of why certain places--those places where history has ``come to rest''--seem to literally embody history:
I go up to Weaverville in Trinity County [California] and I encounter the great Josse house [a place used by the California Chinese community for worship and meetings] there that survived from the 1850s that is now a state park, in that Josse house encounter I have a window on to what Henry Adams called `reverberations.' I had the reverberations of the entire Chinese experience in California in the late 1850s and 60s, the ethic of labor that constructed the great continental railroad. If I go to Camp 4 where that mountaineering tradition [of the nineteenth century] came to rest--or not to rest; it was active and remained vital to the present--then I have a window in that place. I have a window onto the whole mountaineering history of the nineteenth century. . . (Exhibit 9, page 43, lines 9-24).
Dr. Starr concludes, in response to the question of whether Camp 4 should be put on the National Historical Register, with an unequivocal: ``Absolutely'' (Starr, Exhibit 9, p. 45, lines 17-21).
In summary, American climbers attached the Yosemite climbing tradition to Camp 4 over half a century ago when by choosing it as their Valley base camp of choice ``. . .since the end of World War II.'' (See Report of Harlan D. Unrau, p. 5). That campground has achieved exceptional importance within the meaning of Bulletin 15 to the entire mountaineering world.
The question of whether Camp 4 should be placed on the National Historical Register must be decided by an objective review, with information provided to the Keeper of the Register by all interested parties. However, the report prepared by Harlan D. Unrau of the National Park Service on the question of Camp 4 registration has so many errors and omissions that it seems important to comment on it, lest it cast a distorting shadow on the submissions prepared by members of the climbing community.
The National Environmental Policy Act (42 U.S.C. 4321 et. seq.) and its implementing regulations (40 C.F.R. 1500 et. seq.) require the National Park Service (hereinafter ``NPS'') to weigh carefully whether any major construction projects under consideration might ``significantly affect'' the environment. As part of that pre-construction consideration, the NPS must consider whether a potential project might ``adversely affect sites . . . structures or objects listed in or eligible for listing in the National Historical Register of Historic Places, or may cause loss or destruction of significant scientific, cultural, or historic resources.'' (40 C.F.R. 1508.25)
When considered in light of this federal regulatory mandate, the timing and content of Mr. Unrau's report are curious. In April of 1997, the NPS announced its plan to proceed with a massive construction project, immediately adjacent to Camp 4 on the camp's east side. Indeed, a portion of Camp 4 was to be abolished. Two months after the NPS committed to this project, NPS employee Harlan Unrau was assigned the task of determining the eligibility of Camp 4 for the Register. Unrau toured the property on May 29, 1997. On June 6, he reported that the property was not eligible.
Unrau seems to have deliberately missed the point. Bulletin 15 required him to at least try to establish the historical context within which to consider Camp 4. He does give a construction history of the campsite, but he seems to have made minimal effort to determine what, if anything, of historical significance occurred that might provide a context for evaluating the site. He correctly concludes that climbers have been staying in Camp 4 for more than fifty years, when he notes that ``climbers had stayed in Camp 4 since the end of World War II'' (Unrau's report, p.5). He also notes that ``the camp came to be understood as the `climbers' campground' '' (ibid., p.4). But Unrau does not even attempt to determine whether the activities of those climbers had any historical significance; nor does he attempt to place the climbers within a larger historical framework.
One sentence suggests the possibility that a significant historical context did occur to Mr. Unrau. ``During the early post-World War II years,'' Unrau writes, `` rock climbing in Yosemite Valley slowly developed into a popular recreational activity and ultimately into a sport'' (ibid., p.4). But Unrau fails to follow this statement through to its possible implication: if the statement were accurate (it is not), Camp 4 might be historically significant as the place where a sport actually came into being.
Nor does Mr. Unrau consider the possibility that climbing is more than a popular post- World War II recreational activity, or that it has deeper roots in the Yosemite Valley. He assumes it doesn't.
Is there any literature or scholarship that might have helped Mr. Unrau learn more about Camp 4? He did consult Steve Roper's book, Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber (Seattle: Mountaineers, 1994). Unrau also cites Gary Arce's Define Gravity: High Adventure on Yosemite Walls (Berkeley, California: Wilderness Press, 1996), and he refers to an article from The Vertical World of Yosemite: A Collection of Writings and Photographs on Rock Climbing in Yosemite, edited by Galen A. Rowell (Berkeley, California: Wilderness Press, 1974). These books contain extensive materials on both the antecedents of rock climbing in Yosemite Valley and the historical accomplishments of the Valley climbers.9 You wouldn't know that, however, from reading Mr. Unrau's report.
Roper's lengthy historical account of climbing in Yosemite Valley is sifted through by Mr. Unrau for the exclusive purpose of finding potentially derogatory comments about the lifestyle of the climbers. For example, Unrau reports that climbers' campsites were ``wretched" because they were ``strewn with equipment, etc.'' (Unrau's report, p. 5). He reports that climbers were ``hedonistic and bohemian.'' Gary Arce's book is quoted only to say that most climbers were ``beatniks'' or, at best, were ``dumped by impatient girlfriends'' (ibid., p.7).10 Mr. Unrau had to know that he was including in his report lifestyle evaluations that had no relevancy under either 36 C.F.R. 60.4 or Bulletin 15. His inclusion of the remarks suggests either that he had a personal bias, making him the wrong evaluator for this task, or that he had an agenda he did not reveal when writing his report.
Kevin Worrall's article from Climbing magazine gets much the same treatment by Unrau as the aforementioned books. Worrall writes of a golden age of climbing that he was part of at Camp 4; he also discusses some changes that occurred as the NPS reduced the part of Camp 4 that can be used for camping, and he celebrates the efforts of two British climbers who traveled six thousand miles in 1994 solely to climb the world-famous boulders in Camp 4. Unrau reports on the changes at Camp 4, but he ignores both the historical information provided by Worrall, and the significance of the central story of the world-class British climbers coming to Camp 4. In short, Unrau extracts the material he feels supports his conclusions, and ignores the information that contradicts it.
Unrau must have known that Bulletin 15 clearly defines both a campsite and a natural rock formation as a site rather than a building or structure. When evaluating a site, what has happened to the building or structures on the site is irrelevant. The buildings or structures may be ``standing, ruined or vanished'' (Bulletin 15, p.5). The important consideration is whether ``the location itself possesses historic, [or] cultural . . . value . . . regardless of the value of any existing structure'' (ibid., p. 5). Surely he knew that the date of construction of fire pits, bathrooms, or cement berms, had nothing to do with whether Camp 4 had the ``requisite integrity'' within the meaning of Bulletin 15.
A key question would have been whether the site was sufficiently intact to give a feeling of the ``aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time.'' Another relevant question would have been whether there is sufficient ``association'' between the site and historically important events or persons. (See Bulletin 15, pp. 44-45). Unrau ignores these questions. He acknowledges that Camp 4 is where it always was, although the portion available for camping 11 is somewhat smaller than it used to be. He knows that the famous rock formations in the campsite are still there and that many of the formations actually contain the names of--and indeed are named for--some significant men associated with Camp 4 (Pratt, Bachar, Bridwell, etc.). And yet, instead of applying the criteria applicable to a site, Unrau treats Camp 4 as if it were a building or structure, and he irrelevantly concludes that Camp 4 does not ``represent the work of a master craftsman or possess high artistic value'' (Unrau's report, p.11).
Unrau also seems to be unaware of the fact that his conclusions about the dates in which bathrooms, berms, etc. were built, might be irrelevant even if the integrity of Camp 4 was somehow tied to those objects, buildings and structures, if Camp 4 was a place of ``exceptional importance'' within the meaning of 36 C.F.R. 60.4(g), (see also Bulletin 15, pp. 41-42). Perhaps he ignored this salient point because he didn't think anything of any importance ever happened at Camp 4.
In summary, one comes away from Mr. Unrau's report not understanding much of anything about Camp 4. What is the historical context within which to evaluate the camp? Does climbing have any historical antecedents that render the events that occurred there important? If so, what are they? Does climbing have any significance in local, regional, state, or national history? If so, what is it? Was there a climbing tradition associated with Yosemite Valley that preceded the development of climbing as a popular recreational activity after the Second World War? If so, what was it? Were there climbers associated with Camp 4 who achieved local, regional, or national prominence for either their climbing achievements or other activities that grew out of their mountain experiences? If Camp 4 is in fact a site, rather than a building, does it have the "integrity" required of a site in order for it to be placed on the National Historical Register?
Mr. Unrau has failed to grapple with any of these questions, although it would have been easy to answer many of them. Gary Colliver, the ranger Unrau listed as escorting him to Camp 4, was himself a climber and knows an enormous amount about the history of the camp. The nearby bookstores at the Yosemite Mountaineering Store and at the Ahwahnee Lodge are filled with articles and scholarship relating to Yosemite Valley climbing and Camp 4. The climbers who fill Camp 4 each May and June could have told him what he needed to know. He apparently didn't ask.
The application of Tom Frost and Pat Ament, and this supplementary application, seek to correct the deficiencies in Mr. Unrau's report.
There are historic places throughout the United States that few visit, despite either the plaques that mark their location or governmental efforts to educate the public regarding their importance. Camp 4 is not one of them. No plaque marks its location. No tourist bureau or public agency touts it. Yet, the people come. They come year after year, decade after decade. One generation replaces another in the pilgrimage. They come from states as far away as Alaska and New York; from countries as far away as China and the Czech Republic. They repeat the historical rituals of the past: climbing on the ancient boulders, gathering around campfires with new climbing partners, preparing to climb the old routes, and dreaming about creating the future. This is not history as a dust bin. It is history as a force that shapes a living, vibrant present.
Camp 4 is such a simple setting: forested space, boulders, campsites, sun in the morning, views across the Valley, closeness to the easy Swan's Slab, and closeness to the ever challenging El Capitan. The simplicity itself is part of Camp 4's evocative force. Climbers, by their very nature, seek a direct, intense interaction with nature. For them, the spareness of the campground is far more evocative than any of the more luxurious lodgings available in the Valley.
While simplicity matters, it alone would not produce the deep feelings that Camp 4 evokes. In the opinion of this supplementary application's author, it was Steve Roper, in his book Camp 4, who best captured how and why Camp 4 reverberates with historic feelings and associations. He, therefore, should have the last word. In talking about the young Americans who first came to Camp 4 after World War II, and who turned it into the center of world rock climbing, Roper said:
These . . . rebellious eccentrics . . . were the most gifted rock climbers in the world, and I hope I evoked their spirit and their times. (Roper, Camp 4, p. 15)
He is right. They were. Go to Camp 4 and you will feel their presence. Like Roper, I hope that I have also evoked their spirit and their times.
Dated: July 16, 1998
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Richard P. Duane