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FRUMY
Trad climber
SHERMAN OAKS,CA
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FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
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Aug 22, 2013 - 08:37pm PT
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bump
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FRUMY
Trad climber
Bishop,CA
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Nov 14, 2013 - 11:25pm PT
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bump
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 28, 2013 - 07:36pm PT
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Whitney Bump...
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allapah
climber
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Mar 13, 2014 - 04:15pm PT
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worked on this a long time but nobody wanted it, thought i would offer it to this cool thread...
Purificatus Non Consumptus
Tuesday, August 14, 1934. The search for Anna and Conrad Rettenbacher had been in progress for a week by the time Clyde arrived in the Minarets. He passed a long train of horses and mules heading out as he was heading in. Good, thought Clyde, make the job easier. The forest rangers and the CCC boys had found no bodies (and bodies, Clyde was certain, were all that was left of the German couple) but this meant nothing: Clyde had seen neither ice ax nor Tricouni Nails in the whole troop. So the Germans, he knew, would be up on the glacier.
The pattern of these affairs tends to repeat itself, thought Clyde. First, the ground crews assemble at the trailhead. They start to miss the comforts of home, draw the presumptive conclusion the bodies have disappeared into a bergschrund, and return to the fleshpots. This time would be no different. Soon the Blow Flies would be buzzing along to show Clyde the way to the Rettenbachers.
Except this time, it was buzzards. As Clyde neared the camp at Lake Ediza, the fact became increasingly obvious that the Germans were up on Banner Peak. Cathartes aura, thought Clyde: the purifiers, way up here... Tomorrow he and District Ranger Mace would go up on the snowfields and pinpoint the location of the bodies. Mace was easy company, Clyde knew, an older man who would stay out of trouble on the green slopes if Clyde had to cut steps on hard snow.
But that night, staring into the campfire at Lake Ediza, Clyde experienced a whopping anxiety attack. None of the other men sitting round the fire noticed anything; Clyde sat silent and morose as usual. But on the inside, the Old Gaffer was working violently to suppress an image: not an image of the Rettenbachers, lying up above them, getting picked apart by vultures… No, it was last year's cadaver, strewn up and down Michael Minaret, pieces of which they had hastily interred exactly a year ago. Pete Starr... thought Clyde... Walter. Clyde felt a sensation rising behind his solar plexus he mistook for gag reflex. He brought every fiber of his will to bear upon screwing his face down tight.
Clyde excused himself from the communal campfire and retired to his pine bed, but thoughts kept him awake. One year ago, exactly... He had been on so many body recoveries— why was he haunted by Pete Starr's? Over the whole search, Clyde remembered, not without a tinge of opprobrium, had hung the deadline of a party: Farquahr's highfalutin' soiree in San Francisco, to which not one person had thought to invite Clyde, though they spoke of it incessantly around him. They had searched until the very eve of the party, when suddenly they declared Walter Starr Jr. "vanished in the bergschrund" and made off for their Studebakers parked at Agnew Meadows.
Not only that, thought Clyde, working himself now into high dudgeon: some of the young fools just wanted to make first ascents. Even Jules… had he and Dawson not spent so much time on their so-called "Leonard" Minaret, they might not have missed Starr's body on the way down from Michael Minaret later in the day. No, thought Clyde. The search for Walter Starr Jr. had been a sham, a debacle. Though Clyde had never met the man, he felt he had known Starr personally, known him from the summit registers, known him as a man knows his own doppelganger. The sense of intimacy was too great for Clyde to bear. He hoped all this mental gobblety-gook would clear up before morning.
But that night Clyde had a very strange dream. In the dream (an astral projection, unbeknownst to Clyde) he was walking somewhere nearby in the Lyell Fork, or a place like it, ten or twelve miles from the actual spot where Clyde's body lay sleeping by Lake Ediza. He seemed to be walking down a winding trail through a dim forest, when he became aware of a shadowy figure walking ahead of him on the trail. The man's movements seemed a mirror of Clyde's, like two Brockenspectre hiking at a steady and considerable pace. The shadowy figure must have turned to meet him; Clyde found himself face to face with the man.
He was a hale fellow of around thirty, with an odd look about him: he seemed almost to be wearing pajamas, with luminous yellow boots, and a bright blue cap. Clyde figured it was another of the Naturfreunde from the German hiking club, until the man spoke in a peculiar, but decidedly American accent.
"No way!" said the stranger. "Norman Clyde!"
"Beg pardon?" replied Clyde.
The man drew an object from his pocket. For a split second, Clyde readied himself for a pistol, but it proved to be some sort of tiny camera.
"Sorry," the man mumbled, "phone's dead." He seemed to chuckle to himself. "Norman Clyde!" he repeated, then, "Sheesh!" But what he said next would get stuck in Clyde's head. The man looked at Clyde with blue eyes and said: "You know... I'm not where they think I am…"
The hoot of a Boreal Owl woke Clyde from his sleep. Never had the jitters like this before, thought Clyde.
Hiking up the scree slopes early next morning, Clyde kept glancing southward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Michael Minaret. Soon enough, however, Clyde came within sight of the first Rettenbacher. He could see from far off it was the woman— Anna, thought Clyde— stuck in the moat of the glacier.
Clyde planted his hand on his knee and craned his gaze upward to the cliffs above. Second person falls right after the first, he surmised.
Suddenly, Clyde knew he was going to be alright. He felt nothing. Steely cold. No need to waste time climbing over to her, he told himself. Job just to locate the body. Clyde began to fairly bound down the snowfield, where he soon espied Conrad Rettenbacher lying in bits and pieces up and down the slope. Clyde considered making a closer inspection, but decided better. Let the Supervisor pick up the pieces, thought Clyde, I have clients waiting in the Palisades. Clyde took a moment to pay his respects to the Ritter Range, and started down.
Ian McRae
December 2013
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 13, 2014 - 04:48pm PT
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Very nicely written! But I'm not aware of Boreal Owls being seen in the Sierras. ;-)
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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May 14, 2014 - 04:14pm PT
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Sewellymon, earlier, on page one, you mistook Our Hero for one of "the loyal opposition," a Stanfoo man. Not to quibble, but simply "to say," so that Clyde's name as a serious student is not slandered here, of all places, his own thread.
I trust Walt Wheelock's words, Sewellymon, which specifically state that Clyde went to UC Berkeley, like all Great Mountaineers of the Sierra Nevada should. Not only that, he left before getting his master's degree. Where have we heard that one before?
Norman enrolled in Geneva
College at Beaver Falls, but as he had had no formal schooling, he had several deficiencies
to make up at the prep level. Graduating in the classics from Geneva in June, 1909 he
immediately started west. He taught at several small rural schools across the country,
including Fargo, North Dakota, and Mt. Pleasant, Utah. One summer was spent at the
University of Wisconsin, John Muir's alma mater; another on a cattle spread in Utah.
Deciding that he needed more education to progress in the teaching field, he enrolled at
the University of California at Berkeley in 1911. Summers were spent in the mountains.
and in teaching at summer schools. One was at Elko, Nevada, where he spent his spare
time climbing in the Humboldt Range.
At the end of two years at the university, Clyde found that he still lacked one course in
Romance Drama and his thesis. He balked at the drama course, maintaining that Italian
plays should be read in Italian, French dramas in French; neither in English. He could see
no sense in struggling with a thesis that nobody would ever read after he received his
degree, so he quietly left the university without his master's degree.
--Walt Wheelock
http://www.owensvalleyhistory.com/stories3/norman_clyde.pdf
DO BEARS CLIMB IN THE WOODS
(celebrate the fact that they climb BETTER than us)
We are indeed a motley crew,
The climbers wearing gold and blue.
We're known for deeds of derring-do:
We put up a first ascent or two,
While conducting music in camp for you.
UC Bears! UC Bears!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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May 14, 2014 - 04:55pm PT
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Doing a bit more research on Mr. Clyde's academic record, I came on this link.
I bow to the Road Genealogist/Scholar, who provides us with an obituary.
http://theroadgenealogist.blogspot.com/2011/03/two-mountaineer-obituaries-norman-clyde.html
Educated at five different universities, (held an AB degree and a sciences doctorate from Geneva College of Pennsylvania) he attended the University of Wisconsin, the University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
Mea culpa, Badgers, Troy and the Bruins.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 26, 2014 - 09:55pm PT
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Ian- Thanks for sharing your piece with us!
This has been a really enlightening thread with so many different glimpses of Clyde.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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May 26, 2014 - 11:56pm PT
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When I play word association what leaps to mind after Clyde is integrity.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 27, 2014 - 05:20pm PT
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Norman Clyde Bump...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 20, 2015 - 07:24pm PT
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Dick Butkus with the soul of Socrates.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
Boise, ID
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Jan 20, 2015 - 07:26pm PT
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Excellent heap of pics.....TFPU, Stonefly.
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Gene
climber
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Jan 20, 2015 - 07:29pm PT
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Wow! Thanks Stonefly.
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Jan 20, 2015 - 08:26pm PT
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A treasure-trove! Thanks!
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Bought this last week at a local used book store for $6.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 8, 2015 - 08:49am PT
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Outstanding photo of the pack with legs!
I wonder what tickled him?
TFPU!
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Great thread. Can't be bumped enough times. Wish it was easier to find threads like these...
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