Your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.

A Note from the Editor

In the news this week is Matt Cornell, who just set the fastest known time (FKT) on the Evolution Traverse, located about 100 miles southeast of Yosemite, deep in the High Sierra. On Aug. 21, Cornell clocked 15 hours, 21 minutes car-to-car, shaving 2 hours, 7 minutes, and 15 seconds off the previous fastest time of 17:28:44, set by Dylan Doblar on Jul. 26.

Mountain Project calls the traverse:

The best of all the traverses in the Sierra… It is a great, long, and sometimes intimidating outing. The rock is mostly excellent, with a couple of loose spots in between—better than on the Palisades’ Thunderbolt-to-Sill. Getting down from Darwin is the most dangerous and difficult part of the climb, with either a manky rappel or a 5.9 downclimb.

The eight-mile ridgeline links nine 13,000-foot summits in an arc above Evolution Basin. The skyline runs north to south over Peak 13,360, Mt. Mendel, Mt. Darwin, Peak 13,331, Mt. Haeckel, Mt. Fiske, Mt. Warlow, Peak 13,221, and Mt. Huxley.

Car-to-car, including approach and descent, the outing stretches close to 30 miles, with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain and loss. Most climbers begin at the North Lake Trailhead and finish at the South Lake Trailhead, both reached via Highway 168 about 20 miles west of Bishop, CA—North Lake is near Lake Sabrina, while South Lake sits above the town of Aspendell.

Cornell wrote on Instagram:

“Bonked within the first mile. Thought about bailing. Disassociated with reality, and opened myself to the experience. Somehow managed the Evolution Traverse in 15 hours, 21 minutes, car to car.”

In other news, Laura Bliss at Bloomberg Businessweek (Aug. 25) reported:

Yosemite Workers Vote to Unionize: Park rangers in Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon have organized in response to Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce.”

She continued:

Across the two parks, more than 97% of ballots cast in elections that ran from Jul. 22 to Aug. 19 were in favor of unionizing—results that were certified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority on Monday.

On the weather front, despite weeks of high heat, Yosemite and the Sierra foothills saw rain.

Grace Toohey at the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 25) wrote:

Monsoonal storms upend Burning Man, soak Yosemite and spark lightning fires across the West… In Yosemite National Park, hikers were surprisingly soaked, while thunderstorms across California’s interior launched rapid-fire lightning strikes that sparked several forest fires.

Last week, we reported on the premiere of the IMAX film Girl Climber, which follows Emily Harrington on her quest to free El Cap’s Golden Gate in fewer than 24 hours. YCA Board Secretary Alison Waliszewski saw the film over the weekend and shared:

GIRL CLIMBER felt like the third part of a climbing trilogy after The Dawn Wall and Free Solo. It pulled me into the tension of the sport and showcased what a badass athlete and elite climber Emily is… and it underscored that for me that climbing is a deeply human craft where mastery can’t be rushed. Above all, it’s a raw testament to her perseverance.

Gregory Thomas at the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

Honnold’s climb is considered by many to have been a flawless, superhuman feat. Harrington’s plays in her film as an exhibition of steely resilience in the face of an onslaught of setbacks.

On a separate topic, Waliszewski also pointed me to the Access Fund Anchor Replacement Fund, which writes:

We invite local climbing and anchor replacement organizations to seek funding and support for anchor replacement initiatives at their local climbing areas… Grant applicants must demonstrate both need for the project and support from the local community. Due Sept 15.

For this week’s feature story, we spoke with Eastside photographer Vern Clevenger about his upcoming coffee-table book, due out this winter. Title is still in the works—potential names include Walking into the Light and 50 Years of a Photographer’s Evolution. MSRP is $75 plus shipping and handling.

Chris Van Leuven

Editor, Yosemite Climbing Association News Brief

YosemiteClimbing.Org

50 Years in the Light

Eastside legend Vern Clevenger reflects on a lifetime behind the lens—and his upcoming coffee-table retrospective

“It’s amazing what it takes to get it done,” Vern Clevenger tells me from his home in Mammoth Lakes about completing his oeuvre. “I’m gonna have to draw the line and say this is gonna have to be it.”

We’re talking about his still-untitled coffee-table book, fifty years in the making, where full-page images—including Half Dome and Illilouette Falls, Yosemite Valley in March, and Super Flower Blood Moon Eclipse over Mount Whitney—are paired with stories.

“I didn’t really start the stories till the mid-’90s,” says Vern, who, with his family, runs the Clevenger Gallery of Fine Photography. “An accountant said you’ve got to sell a picture and a story. That’s when I started writing them.”

On his Super Flower Blood Eclipse over Mount Whitney image, he writes: “While the West Coast was deep in slumber, the heavens produced a wonderful extravaganza in the skies. The eclipse began at 3 a.m. and was gone by 4:15 a.m.… I only had seconds to make the image.”

Background

Born in 1955 and raised in Oakland, Clevenger spent countless summers in Yosemite as a child. His early mentors included Steve Solinsky, who writes on his website’s bio page: “brings his awareness to what he sees—light and pattern, color, and the symbols in form.”

He also credits influence from the late Galen Rowell, the pioneering adventure photographer whose 1972 National Geographic cover story on the first clean ascent of Half Dome’s Northwest Face wowed readers. “The landscape is like being there with a powerful personality, and I’m searching for just the right angles to make that portrait come across as meaningfully as possible,” Rowell once said.

Their meeting came through the Bay Area climbing scene at Indian Rock in the early 1970s. Vern remembers:

I know Indian Rock quite well. It was a scene even then. He actually got me started at Yosemite in a lot of ways. The first time we drove there together was ’72. He was one of the main influences—being out in the mountains and looking for light, learning how to use the cameras of the time, and how light interacts with the landscape around us.

Clevenger climbed in Yosemite throughout the ’70s before relocating to the East Side. “The golden age of big walls, and I was there for the big free-climbing thing, part of the Stonemasters and that whole thing,” he says.

Survival and Shift

In the early 2000s, Clevenger was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Telling his children was devastating. “My son Dylan, then 14, was scared sh*tless,” he recalls, while his daughter Sabrina was “too young to know what’s going on.”

“I should have been dead. The first five years of recovery were actually pretty hard… but I’m still here, so that’s really good.” Reflecting on faith after survival, he adds: “It makes you feel like I can’t quite say God doesn’t exist.”

But the tumor left lasting effects, and he told me, “These days, a lot more on my left [side of my] brain is damaged because of the tumor. And I can shoot more out of the right side of my brain. It’s actually amazing—even to me.”

But his climbing days ended. “For a bunch of reasons. It’s no longer emotionally appropriate for what I’m doing in my life.”

Iconic Images

We shifted to one of the book’s defining photos—Half Dome and Illilouette Falls—an image Vern says he could no longer capture today, since he doesn’t climb anymore. I couldn’t wrap my head around how he captured it; it looks as if he were floating in the sky. When I asked, he explained that he had envisioned the shot since the late 1970s and finally realized it 31 years later by walking to the base of the falls.

He says he was unroped: “It’s OK if you’re a climber, being careful. I’m saying that with my increasingly [worsening] balance issues getting older, I would not go and do it anymore. The cliff undercut, 20 to 25 feet below me—it’s a big overhang I was on top of.”

As we browse through the book draft together, Vern highlights his other favorites: the Dawn Lunar Eclipse Supermoon, Yosemite Valley in March, the San Juan Capistrano Hallway, and the Bridgeport Fence.

Of Bridgeport Fence, he recalls spotting it while driving back from Nevada City in winter after staying with a mentor who had let him use his darkroom for nearly 10 years. “I looked left, saw the fence with extraordinary light, and thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s still there—I’m seeing something really special.’ I turned the car around and got my two-wheel-drive stuck in the snow. I’ve never seen it look that good since.”

Why This Book

When I ask what the purpose of the book is, he shares:

Initially, I wanted to expose California and the Sierra Nevada to as wide an audience as possible. Since then, I’ve realized how good the images are—50 years of photography. It’s good enough to be published, and there isn’t anything else out there right now like it.

Visit VernClevenger.com or HeritageProjectStudio.com to view the in-the-works book in your browser and pre-order it for $75 plus shipping.