Anyone have a Palisades photo like this?

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Don Lauria

Trad climber

Bishop, CA

Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 22, 2010 - 05:33pm PT

View from 4th Lake circa 1963

Betcha nobody can take one like this again.

tom woods

Gym climber

Bishop, CA

Jul 22, 2010 - 06:05pm PT

That's pretty cool.

The cabin is gone then?

I seem recall there was a saga, but I don't remember the details.

Don Lauria

Trad climber

Bishop, CA

Topic Author's Reply - Jul 22, 2010 - 06:26pm PT

Yeah, Glacier Lodge, or was it the Glacier Pack Station, set up tent cabins every spring on the cliff above 4th Lake. They had a permanent cabin built there that housed a small store and a lunch counter. They rented the tent cabins and brought people in on horseback. It all went away with the advent of the Wilderness Act.

Gene

Social climber

Jul 22, 2010 - 06:32pm PT

Don's just showing off his mad Photoshop skills. Never happened.

Fantastic stuff Don. Keep 'em coming.

Gene

From this angle the V-Notch looks more like a U-Notch and vice versa.

Charlie D.

Trad climber

Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra

Jul 22, 2010 - 06:48pm PT

Wow, what a view. Check out the length and depth of the bergschrund. Rowell pointed out to me the year he passed away of the very rapid melt rate as evidenced by the changing color of Third Lake with all the fines being washed down. Amazing such change just in our quick life times. Thanks Don for sharing.

Banquo

Trad climber

Morgan Hill, CA (Mo' Hill)

Jul 22, 2010 - 09:27pm PT

There is the old (~1920?) movie set

It's still there

I'm looking for an old photo I had of the lodge at the lake. You can still see where it was from the old foundations and such.

Banquo

Trad climber

Morgan Hill, CA (Mo' Hill)

Jul 22, 2010 - 09:44pm PT

Found it

Charlie D.

Trad climber

Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra

Jul 22, 2010 - 09:46pm PT

Thanks Banquo, wow ot and heading in the right direction.

Tony Bird

climber

Northridge, CA

Jul 22, 2010 - 09:58pm PT

seems like that lodge was wiped out twice, right? fire and a kidd mountain avalanche?

lodges are special places, and it's a shame to lose one. it's nice up there anyway at the big pine trailhead, but there's nothing quite like a lodge.

some of my best memories involve the sierra club's harwood lodge on mt. baldy, everything from budding romances to nostalgic/historic get-togethers, to playing live music for folk dancers, to my kids' birthday parties.

the latter were probably the best--taking a half-dozen of their overurbanized classmates into the high, forested mountains for a look at something they'd never seen up close before, and hopefully whetting their appetites for more. the nice thing about a lodge is the comfortable informality for meeting strangers. you can come away with some pretty good friendships.

tom woods

Gym climber

Bishop, CA

Jul 22, 2010 - 10:57pm PT

Tony, this lodge was up by fourth lake, you had to pack in.

It's confusing because the lodge at the Trailhead is also the Glacier Lodge.

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Jul 22, 2010 - 11:34pm PT

Remember those ladies you take home can take photos with their cell phones.

Roger Breedlove

climber

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Jul 22, 2010 - 11:37pm PT

Talk about lost civilizations!!!

Tony Bird

climber

Northridge, CA

Jul 23, 2010 - 01:09am PT

upper glacier lodge--what became of that?

Don Lauria

Trad climber

Bishop, CA

Topic Author's Reply - Jul 23, 2010 - 03:05am PT

Let us make a distinction. There is and still is Glacier Lodge - even though it burned down once. Glacier Camp was an extension of Glacier Lodge placed at Fourth Lake way up the canyon. The Camp was destroyed by the Forest Service by edict after the passage of the Wilderness Act.

Tom

Big Wall climber

San Luis Obispo CA

Jul 23, 2010 - 09:05am PT

Gotta love the Palisades. Thanks for the photo.

Tony Bird

climber

Northridge, CA

Jul 23, 2010 - 10:18am PT

i thought it's called glacier lodge, but it's mostly just a store and cabins and some campsites--never rebuilt the lodge itself as a lodge-type lodge. and wasn't it destroyed twice, by fire and then by avalanche? sorry to be such a history buff.

426

climber

Buzzard Point, TN

Jul 23, 2010 - 10:25am PT

Room with a view

Doug Robinson

Trad climber

Santa Cruz

Apr 28, 2014 - 09:45am PT

Thanks, you guys for this thread -- hadn't seen it until today.

I've been starting to research these very things for an article on the Palisades for Alpinist. I've got the history pretty wired back to the mid-60s when I showed up, with vivid recollections of Bob Swift, Don Jensen and of course my contemporaries. But the "Fourth Lake Lodge," as Jensen called it, and especially the Movie Set, have remained mysteries. Intriguing.

I can fill in a few details here.

Glacier Lodge, at the roadhead, was a full-on place like Tony describes down south, with rooms for rent and a dining room where I ate a couple of times with clients and the other guides. One glance down at its foundation from the "new" trail that cuts across the opposite hillside, heading up from the "new" hiker parking, easily tells the story of it being avalanched. Don Jensen, I think it was, said there had been five Glacier Lodges. That each had been avalanched off the thousands of feet of that horrendous hillside behind it. One time the slide knocked the regulator off the top of its propane tank and an explosion did it in. Will have to find out more.

Movie Set: Nice shots, Banquo! Yes, anyone can visit the remains, built on a knob SE of Fourth Lake maybe half a mile. (Off the trail to Black Lake, before it starts to descend.) The big question here is, what movie? Don Jensen thought it was Khyber Rifles, or maybe The Guns of Khyber Pass. But a quick look at the IMDB doesn't seem to confirm either. I would love to see the footage of the Palisades masquerading as Afghanistan!

Norman Clyde: See another of Don Lauria's threads for Norman Clyde's favorite Norman Clyde story. Tree climbing in the Palisades...

Norman Clyde at Glacier Lodge: Yes, he was the winter caretaker there for decades. Said he skied up the canyon nearly every day. Yes, Clyde was a skier too. Perch yourself for a second back up on the main trail to the North Fork, across the Creek looking down on the Lodge foundation, and your avalanche eye will quickly show why Clyde didn't live in the comfy Lodge for the winter, didn't get avalanched along with it. His cabin is the last one upstream, a bit hard to see in a grove of old-growth trees. Two advantages: those trees show that it never got hit by the avalanches that kept taking out the Lodge. That boy was no fool. And out the window over his bed he could catch first-light alpenglow on his "favorite peak in the Sierra," the one that how harbors his ashes and bears his name.

Oh, and Dingus, it's interesting to notice that Lon Chaney's cabin, down in Cienega Mirth, did not get destroyed along with the Fourth Lake Lodge when the Wilderness Act came along. Detour a hundred feet off the trail up the North Fork to sit for a moment on its cool stone steps that descend to the shore of the Creek, and it's easy to see why the Forest Service just could not bring themselves to blow up such an elegant and architect-designed historic structure. The mountain retreat of the man of a thousand faces.

I'd love to hear more info, see more old photos...