A star fell from the sky into the mountains on a warm summer day in
1933. No one was there to witness the descent; nor to see or hear the small form arc through the air and land in a crevice between rocks just below the summit of Michael Minaret, one of the highest peaks in an angling arm of the Sierra Nevada, a group of steep rocky crags in a line of mountains to the northeast of Kings Canyon known as the Ritter Range. Yet even though the eyes of men were not present to record the incident, word of the possibility of the passing spread quickly all the way to San Francisco, and then just as quickly to a party of men who set out to discover the landing place. These men were not scientists, nor was what they were seeking a cold rock from a distant part of the universe. They were mountain climbers, and the fallen star they set out to find was Peter Starr, a San Francisco attorney who had set out to climb a steep mountain named after a Yosemite postal worker. Starr was one of the best mountain climbers in the country; a fellow mountaineer who had suddenly disappeared without a trace. Peter Starr was in his thirtieth year that summer. He was known by his friends and family to be a man who had always been strong and fit; a man who had excelled in athletic as well as academic accomplishments; an attorney who spent much of his time gazing east from his office windows to the distant Sierra, the mountains he loved so strongly. By the summer of 1933 Peter had ascended more than three dozen of the highest Sierra peaks, as well as several more in Europe, and was developing an international reputation for his high mountain exploits. He was a fast climber who brought little or no equipment with him, and reminded many of his fellow mountaineers of the legendary John Muir in his younger years. Yet as famous as he already was within the relatively small mountain climbing community, his was a name which was as yet unknown to the rest of the world. Yet that was soon to change. On July 29th of 1933 Peter Starr began the day by attending the wedding of a friend; a fraternity brother from his years at Stanford University. But Starr left the wedding party early to set out for the Sierra; he was impatient to get started on a two week adventure of climbing in an area known as the Minarets. Leaving San Francisco he drove to Yosemite, then across the mountains via Tioga Pass to his entry point. This much he had told to his parents and friends, but he had made the mistake of not mapping out an exact route beyond that point; the spot from which he was setting out on foot. Or, if he had, he did not choose to leave a copy with anyone. This was a classic mistake; one which has brought death to many mountain climbers. He should have known better. It would be almost a month before Peter was seen again, although that wasn’t the plan. The plan – such as it was – was for Peter to take a break from his climbing on August 7th and meet his father, Walter, and some friends for a mid-vacation lunch together. Peter wasn’t even going to have to leave the mountains to do this, because the meeting place was high up at just under eight thousand feet in elevation. But Peter never showed up. Although disconcerted, Walter Starr decided that searching for Peter at that time was unnecessary; that Peter’s exit date from the mountains of August thirteenth was still almost a week away and that his experienced son was probably fine; most likely having lost track of the dates while immersed in the euphoria of climbing. So he and his party returned home, and waited. The thirteenth of August passed, and there was no sign of Peter. So on the morning of the fourteenth Walter Starr sounded the alarm, calling on the cadre of family friends who were mountain climbers to begin the search. And those friends answered. Francis Farquhar, who was a close family friend and at that time president of the Sierra Club, quickly took charge to organize the search efforts. He retained a plane and pilot and spent the next two days flying low over the mountains in a small open cockpit aircraft, over the area believed to be hiding Peter. Even in August the wind in their faces was bitterly cold, and after braving it for two long days Farquhar returned to San Francisco to hurry preparations for the ground search, little noting at the time that he had just performed the very first search and rescue operation over the Sierra to be carried out from the air. Even while searching by air Farquhar was simultaneously organizing a ground search party. He immediately contacted two men whom he knew to be amongst the best mountain climbers in the country – Glen Dawson and Jules Eichorn, both barely in their twenties. He wanted to add a third to that experienced group, a relatively old man by the name of Norman Clyde who, in his forties, was more than the combined age of the two others. But Farquhar couldn’t find Clyde no matter how hard he looked, until a friend told him that Clyde was out climbing a mountain, which was the only place he really liked to be – away from the things of man. Norman Clyde really didn’t like to be around other people. He was a quick-tempered loner, content only with his own company, irritable and impatient when he found it necessary to be in the company of others. At the same time he was strong, tireless, and his energy knew no bounds. And if you were his friend, then you had a loyal friend. He had once given civilization a chance and, in his younger days, had gotten a job as a school teacher. But his patience ran thin even then, and one day he pulled a pistol in school and fired shots into the air to quiet a group of rowdy pupils. For some inexplicable reason a number of parents became upset with him and banded together to have him discharged. His argument that he had fired the shots into the air and not into the students fell on deaf ears. From that point on Norman Clyde left behind the things of men and found happiness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the ensuing decades Clyde ascended hundreds of peaks, and likely surpassed even the total set by John Muir. He always carried copies of classic literature in his pack to read by the campfire at night. Of all the people Farquhar could have chosen for a search party, none was more capable or qualified than Norman Clyde. In fact Farquhar could have shortened his list of search party members to only one – Norman Clyde – and the job would have been accomplished. Luckily, for Farquhar, the mountain which Clyde was said to be ascending that day was near to the intended search area. So Farquhar sent a messenger to Clyde asking for his help, and within hours of receiving that message Clyde was at the base camp with the rest of the search party – which by now had actually grown quite large. In addition to the mountain climbers and Peter Starr’s friends, there were now law enforcement officers, forest service personnel, and members of the Conservation Corps all eager to lend a hand. And on the first day of the search – August fifteenth – they were lucky and found Peter Starr’s base camp. His ice axe and crampons were there next to a creek, as was his pack which still held several days’ worth of food. His camera was also there in camp, and they immediately sent a messenger to take it down the mountain to have the film inside developed, hoping it would offer a clue as to what had happened. Before the sun had fully climbed above the mountains on the morning of August sixteenth the men had finished breakfast, formed teams, and spread out in all directions from Peter’s base camp. The professional climbers went up, everyone else spread sideways or down. That day brought also some luck – one party ascended to the top of Mount Ritter and, there in the climber’s register on top, was written an entry by Peter Starr, dated July thirtieth. That same day Norman Clyde came across a bloodstained piece of embroidered linen, which Walter Starr identified as being from one of his son’s handkerchiefs. It wasn’t much blood – just enough to make everyone’s heart sink with the fear of what it might represent. At the same time, less than a mile away, Dawson and Eichorn were climbing a peak called Michael Minaret, named after Charles Michael, the first person to have climbed it – a postal worker from Yosemite. In the register at the top of the 12, 240 foot peak they were disappointed to not find Starr’s name registered. In fact, upon opening the register the first names they saw were their own. Dawson and Eichorn had climbed this peak two years before, and no one had ascended it since. But on the way down, just a few hundred feet below the summit, on a ledge which hung out over a vast emptiness – the kind of ledge where a mountain climber might pause to rest before tackling that final ascent – there on that narrow strip of rock rested the remains of a partially smoked cigarette. Carefully picking it up, they examined it and noted the brand name near the unfinished end – Chesterfield. Peter Starr’s favorite brand, which Walter Starr later confirmed. They looked out over the edge of the level rock, carefully scanning the terrain below. Although they persisted in this visual search long after they felt they should, they saw nothing else that indicated any human presence and returned to camp. On the seventeenth and eighteenth the mountain climbers continued their ascent of all nearby peaks, but no further traces of Peter Starr were found. With only the enigma of a half-smoked cigarette and the foreboding of a blood-stained handkerchief to show for their efforts, the high expectations of the initial search had now faded to gloom. As the men filed back into camp late on the eighteenth, Walter gathered them around the fire and told them that he was bringing the search to an end. He no longer had any hope that his son would be found alive, or that he would be found at all. The next day they all packed up Peter’s gear along with their own and began the disappointing trip back to San Francisco. All of them, that is, except for Norman Clyde. Clyde’s reasons for staying were mixed. The mountains were his home, and there was no reason for him to follow the others out just because they were all city dwellers who, from his perspective, were often just weekend warriors who couldn’t spend more than a couple of weeks in high altitude without getting homesick. But he also had another reason, which was that he had agreed to do a job. He had agreed to search for Peter Starr, and just because the others were giving up didn’t mean that he was going to give up as well. Clyde and Starr had never met, although Clyde had heard of him and held a grudging respect for his reputation as a mountaineer. So, as a point of honor – both to himself and to this fellow Lover of High Places – Clyde decided to stay and proceed with the search on his own. And he probably wasn’t all that sad when the others filed down the mountain in defeat. He didn’t need them or their attitude. Solitude was always best. So he picked up his gear, picked a mountain, and climbed it. No luck. Another day, another mountain. Still no luck. Five days and five mountains. Still no luck; still no further sign of Peter Starr. Perhaps Starr had wandered far from his base camp. Perhaps he had been eaten. Perhaps he had fallen down a hole and lay within a mountain. It seemed inconceivable, but the object of his search had simply and completely disappeared. Clyde returned to camp and, instead of reading a book that evening, studied the mountains around him all night long. On August twenty-fourth the others of the search party were back in San Francisco, meeting that evening at the home of Francis Farquhar to go over the search and perhaps determine if they could have done things more effectively. The Photographer of the Sierra, Ansel Adams, was in attendance, but he had little to offer in the way of counsel. As they sat gathered around the fireplace in that warm San Francisco home, wondering what they could have done, Norman Clyde sat next to his campfire, high in the Sierra, deciding what he was going to do. His eyes were fixed on a peak high above, a peak which shone bright in the moonlight, a peak near to whose summit the remains of a partially smoked cigarette had been found by Dawson and Eichorn. That mountain – Michael Minaret - he felt deserved another look. Clyde started out from camp early on the morning of August twenty-fifth and, climbing quickly, reached the summit by mid-day. He paused often to examine each crack and crevice, but found nothing. After resting for a while at the top and entering his name in the register Clyde started back down, still carefully scanning around him in every direction. When he came to a ledge which he thought might be the one described by Dawson and Eichorn, the one on which they had found the cigarette butt, he stopped. Instead of continuing his descent he thought he would instead follow the ledge sideways for as far as it would take him. It didn’t take him far. It didn’t have to. Within a few minutes he found himself looking down at a body. It was Peter Starr. He was lying on his back with his arms spread wide, face pointed at the sky. He was obviously quite dead. Norman Clyde walked out of the mountains, leaving the body where it lay. When he reached Mammoth Lakes he sent a telegram to the Starr family. That Sunday a memorial service was held for Peter at the Starr family home. On the wall was an enlargement of a picture developed from that last roll of film in Peter’s camera; a photo of Lake Eliza with Michael Minaret in the background, and beneath the photo was a poem Peter had written about the mountain’s beckoning call. A few days later Walter Starr returned to the mountains with some friends. Guided by Norman Clyde they found Peter’s body and buried him beneath a cairn of rocks where he lay; a grave twelve thousand feet high; the highest known resting place in all of the Sierra; a grave which forever marks the Fallen Starr.
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AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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