"The pack that walks like a man" Norman Clyde

Norman Clyde (April 8, 1885 – December 23, 1972) was a mountaineer, mountain guide, freelance writer, nature photographer, and self trained naturalist. He is well known for achieving over 130 first ascents, many in California's Sierra Nevada and Montana's Glacier National Park. He also set a speed climbing record on California's Mount Shasta in 1923. The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley has 1467 articles written by Clyde in its archives.

Life in the mountains

Clyde began climbing in the Sierra Nevada in 1910, when he visited Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, writing to his mother that "I climbed the highest mountains in the region". He also visited McCloud, near Mount Shasta, that summer. He began a regimented program of mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada in 1914, including the first of his first ascents. He also joined the Sierra Club in 1914. He first climbed Mount Shasta in 1916, and climbed that peak a total of 12 times. While living in Southern California during his wife's illness, he climbed Mount San Jacinto in 1917. Following his wife's death in 1919, he climbed extensively in the Kings-Kern Divide region of the southern Sierra.
In 1920, Clyde journeyed with a Sierra Club group from Yosemite Valley to the Evolution Basin, completing many climbs along the way. He set a speed climbing record on Mount Shasta in 1923, ascending from Horse Camp at approximately 8,000 feet (2,400 m) to the summit at 14,162 feet (4,317 m) in 3 hours and 17 minutes. That year, he also spent 36 days in Glacier National Park, Montana, where he climbed 36 mountains, including 11 first ascents. The National Park Service issued a press release praising his accomplishments in Glacier National Park. He returned to climb in Glacier National Park in 1924 and 1937.
In 1925, he completed 53 climbs in the Sierra Nevada, and told Francis Farquhar that "I sometimes think I climbed enough peaks this summer to render me a candidate for a padded cell—at least some people look at the matter in that way. However, I get a lot of enjoyment from this rather strenuous form of diversion." In 1926, he climbed in Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, the Beartooth Mountains and Absaroka Range of Montana, and the Sawtooth Range of Idaho. He made several additional first ascents in California that year.
In 1928, he was a leader of the High Trip to the Canadian Rockies organized by the Sierra Club, the Mazamas of Oregon, and The Mountaineers of the State of Washington. During this trip, he encountered professional mountain guides, and probably decided on this as his own career path. He spent six weeks traversing the San Gabriels of Southern California, probably in 1929. In 1930, he wrote an article describing his trip from the summit of Mount Whitney to the lowest point in Death Valley between sunrise and sunset.
Clyde's first published works appeared as a series of articles entitled "Close Ups of the High Sierra" in 1928, in the Automobile Club of Southern California's magazine, Touring Topics, and were later republished as a perfect-bound edition in 1962 by La Siesta Press (Glendale, California), edited by Walt Wheelock.

1931 was a seminal year in the history of mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, and Norman Clyde was in the midst of it. Sierra Club leader Francis P. Farquhar invited Harvard philosophy professor and Appalachian Mountain Club member Robert L. M. Underhill to come to the Sierra Nevada to teach the latest techniques of roped climbing. Underhill had learned these techniques in the Alps, and had practiced them himself earlier that summer in the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies. After some young climbers were instructed in the techniques, a group including Clyde, Jules Eichorn, Lewis Clark, Bestor Robinson and Glen Dawson traveled south to the Palisades, the most rugged and alpine part of the Sierra Nevada. There, on August 13, 1931, the party completed the first ascent of the last unclimbed 14,000+ foot peak in California, which remained unnamed due to its remote location above the Palisade Glaciers. After a challenging ascent to the summit, the climbers were caught in an intense lightning storm, and Eichorn barely escaped electrocution when "a thunderbolt whizzed right by my ear". The mountain was named Thunderbolt Peak to commemorate that close call.#california sierras,#Norman Clyde, #wilderness, #Backpacking.