Fallen Starr

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.