MOUNTAIN MEMORIES

Where have your boots taken you?

Tell us about your memorable Sierra Club outing. Send an email (150-word maximum) to mymemory@sierraclub.org. We'll publish some of the best responses on our Web site in September.

"I was in charge of personnel, mountain climbing, lost and found, and 'morals' committee. . . . I'd be up very early in the morning, and I'd try to make some photographs, and I'd have to see that people got off and their bags were ready to pack. Then I would have to go ahead, at a rather fast rate, to pick out the campsites and the commissary location and the latrines. Then I'd go off and try to make some photographs."
--budding photographer Ansel Adams, on his role as High Trips assistant manager in the '30s

"In those days the costumes were quite different from what they are now. The women all wore skirts, fairly long. Some very daring ones had bloomers. When they were actually on the climb of Mt. Lyell, they took off their skirts and went up in their bloomers."
--former Club president and historian Francis P. Farquhar, referring to a 1911 outing

"They brought this old crank phonograph and 50 or 60 records. The first day out, the mule with the records fell in the creek, and all the records were warped and made wild sounds. They found plenty to do after dinner-songs, skits, storytelling."
--Joseph LeConte, on one early attempt at after-dinner entertainment on a High Trip

"The first dinner in camp is a great occasion, especially for the initiates, who receive illustrated instructions in the ethics of our primitive cafeteria. It is then you get your spoon, a sort of visa to all subsequent meals. If you lose it you are in for diplomatic difficulties of no mean degree. The spoon is the insignia of the order; without it you are disenfranchised and helpless. It usually reposes between the sock and boot-top, but some are drilled and hang on the bearers' bosom like medals. Literally, you are born into the Sierra Club with a steel spoon in your mouth."
--Ansel Adams, in "Retrospect Nineteen-Thirty-One," February 1932

Happy Trails | High Trips | Mountain Memories | Peakbagging | Wilderness Walking