Cliffs and Challenges: A Young Woman Explores Yosemite,

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Cliffs and Challenges: A Young Woman Explores Yosemite, 1915–1917

When she couldnâ€™t find hiking boots that fit, Laura White Brunner explored Yosemite backcountry barefoot, and at times alone, in an era when grizzly bears still roamed the park. When told she couldnâ€™t hike in pants, she pinned up her skirt. Brunner showed admirable pluck, but, more remarkably, she did it as a teenager in the 1910sâ€”and she wrote it all down. Her memoir, recovered from the Yosemite archives and published here for the first time, recounts two summers spent working and hiking in Yosemite Valley during a time of great changeâ€”in the park and in the world beyond.

In captivating prose Brunner describes her unlikely adventures in the summers of 1915 and 1917, as well as what she calls â€œthe interludeâ€ between them. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always engaging, her account captures the â€œtrailsâ€ and tribulations of a young woman coming of age in Americaâ€™s most beautiful national park. Lightly edited and put into biographical, geographical, and historical context by Jared N. Champion, the book is also illustrated with historic photographs, many taken by Brunner herself. It provides an indelible picture of a bygone time, of awakening young womanhood in a pristine natural world just opening to tourism on a grand scale.

Late in life, Laura White Brunner (1899â€“1973) told a reporter that she had always wanted to be a national park ranger, but, sadly, was â€œborn too soon.â€ Nonetheless she made Yosemite her ownâ€”in her hiking, photographs, and memoir, but also in a practical sense, when her ascent of Half Dome by the â€œClothes-Line Ropeâ€ inspired the park administration, who feared more women might summit the monolith, to install the iconic â€œCables on Half Domeâ€ route that remains in place today. Brunner went on to a career in journalism and though she tried for decades to publish her memoir, this is its first appearance in print.
Country USA
Brand University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer University Press of Kansas
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2019-05-09
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780700627981

Country	USA
Brand	University Press of Kansas
Manufacturer	University Press of Kansas
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	2019-05-09
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780700627981

Cliffs and Challenges: A Young Woman Explores Yosemite, 1915–1917