IMAGING AND INTERPRETING THE HIGH SIERRA AMONG AVIATORS, MOUNTAINEERS, AND OTHER ADVENTURERS

Most adventurers record their exploits by recording the landscapes over which they travel with photographs, sketches, and journals. The reasons for this are many—to fulfill a scientific or cartographic mission, or satisfy funding organizations, or express artistic emotions, or aid in personal reminiscence. Whatever the inspiration, the imaging work of those who explore wild lands has great value for those who seek to understand their natural and human histories.

We are using the imagery of explorers to better understand the High Sierra in two ways. 1) Legendary fish biologist Phil Pister (d. 2023) captured thousands of aerial images of the High Sierra, at altitudes ranging from 12,000'-15,000' and covering all seasons, during flights for the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. This archive provides a valuable record of seasonal and temporal changes in snowfields and glaciers going back to the 1950s. As many flights originated in Bishop, the archive contains numerous photos of Fish Slough, home of the Owens pupfish, a species that Phil singlehandedly saved from extinction in 1969. We began scanning slides in 2022, before Phil's passing, and the project will continue. 2) We are also using photographs, maps, and accounts of ascents of the steepest peaks in the High Sierra, produced over a century by mountaineers such as John Muir, Joseph Le Conte, Norman Clyde, and Doug Robinson. The information gleaned from their accounts allowed us to publish the first comprehensive guidebook to technical climbs in the High Sierra since Steve Roper’s 1976 guide.

These sources allow us to document geologic and ecologic changes, and changing patterns of human interaction with the mountains and, in the tradition of Jim Moore's Exploring the Highest Sierra, help us build tools to expand Earth Science literacy in communities of adventurers.