Yosemite in the Fifties

Companion to the classic Yosemite in the Sixties, this book uses the words of
the climbers of the time and artfully restored photographs to chronicle the
historic first ascents of Yosemite’s ‹mile-high› granite walls, the legendary
personalities who risked their lives to climb them, and how their endeavors
initiated the birth of adventure sports.

Better than half a century after the first ascent of El Capitan, the deeds of
Yosemite’s 1950s-era Iron Age are no longer viewed as climbs or mere
adventures. Rather, they are assaults on the human barrier, pushing that much
higher. Yosemite in the Fifties gives the stage almost entirely over to the
original source material, the first-person narratives, archive photos
(artfully restored), and memorabilia particular to the seminal ascents of the
era.

These words, images, and design, when cast from critical angles, all reach
across generations to resurrect vanished worlds. Yosemite in The Fifties is
fashioned not so much as a book but as a wormhole back to an enchanted time in
the history of exploration, and a classic era of Americana now lost in time.