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Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection
MS 164
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Title: Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection,
Date (inclusive): 1906-2009
Date (bulk): 1984-2008
Collection number: MS 164
Creator:
Clyde, Norman, 1885-1972
Pavlik, Robert C., 1956-
Pavlik, Robert C., 1956-
Extent:
11 boxes (3.76 linear feet)
Languages: English
Repository:
Special Collections, Robert E. Kennedy Library
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Abstract: The Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection contains the research notes, correspondence, interview notes, vital records,
background materials, and secondary sources compiled and created by Pavlik in the course of writing his 2008 biography,
Norman Clyde: Legendary Mountaineer of California's Sierra Nevada. Also included are original Norman Clyde materials given to Pavlik as he researched the mountaineer's life and career. Multiple
drafts and galleys of the book, together with correspondence with Pavlik's publishers are also included.
Donated by Robert Pavlik in 2009.
Collection is open to qualified researchers by appointment only. For more information on access policies and to obtain a copy
of the Researcher Registration form, please visit the Special Collections Access page. Collection stored remotely. Advance
notice for use required.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
In order to reproduce, publish, broadcast, exhibit, and/or quote from this material, researchers must submit a written request
and obtain formal permission from Special Collections, Cal Poly, as the owner of the physical collection.
Photocopying of material is permitted at staff discretion and provided on a fee basis. Photocopies are not to be used for
any purpose other than for private study, scholarship, or research. Special Collections staff reserves the right to limit
photocopying and deny access or reproduction in cases when, in the opinion of staff, the original materials would be harmed.
Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection, Special Collections, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Norman Clyde
Legendary Mountaineer Norman Asa Clyde was born April 8, 1885, in Philadelphia, the descendant of Irish and American parents.
His father, Charles Clyde, was born in Antrim County, Northern Ireland and his mother, Sarah Isabelle Purvis, a native of
Glade Mills, Pennsylvania, was from an established Irish family. A Reformed Presbyterian minister, Charles Clyde died at the
age of 46, which forced sixteen-year-old Norman to assume a position of responsibility in the family.
Norman graduated from Geneva College in Pennsylvania in 1909. He worked his way west to California and the Sierra Nevada,
taking on a number of jobs along the way, and was a high school teacher in North Dakota, Utah, and Arizona. Teaching enabled
him to explore the Sierra Nevada during the summer.
In 1914 Clyde made first ascents of Electra Peak, Mt. Parker, and Foerster Peak. He married Winifred May Bolster in 1915,
and after her death in 1919 he spent even more time in the Sierra. In 1928, Clyde menaced students with a firearm, ending
his career as a principal at Independence High School near the Owens Valley. As a member of the Sierra Club, Clyde found work
and a home.
During his lifetime he explored and ascended hundreds of peaks in the mountain ranges of western North America, from Mt. Robson
in the Canadian Rockies to El Picacho del Diablo in Baja California. In
Who Was Who in America, Clyde is described as an explorer of western mountains, and is given credit for making over 1,000 ascents, to include 200
first ascents, as well as mapping new routes. In 1932, Clyde established a world record by climbing a mountain a day during
a 36-day hike through Glacier National Park. Mountain features named after Norman Clyde in the Sierra Nevada include Clyde's
Minaret, Clyde's Spires, Clyde's Ledge, Clyde Meadow and Clyde Peak.
He honed his outdoor skills over a lifetime. He was remarkably self sufficient and skilled at a variety of tasks, including
not only rock climbing and mountaineering but skiing, snow-shoeing, fishing, hunting, axemanship, and mountain rescue.
In addition to being a mountaineer, guide, rescuer and prolific writer, Clyde was a scholar who read the Classics in their
original language. He was well read, and knowledgeable in a broad spectrum of disciplines, in the arts and humanities as well
as the natural sciences. A prolific author, he wrote many articles for the popular press and for mountain journals. And, contrary
to popular belief, he was not a hermit, but in the winter season could often be found in the Los Angeles or San Francisco
Bay regions, visiting with friends, replenishing his supply of reading material, and planning new excursions.
Clyde and his colleagues Jules Eichorn, Glen Dawson, owner of Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, and expert climber Robert
L.M. Underhill were the first climbers to ascend the difficult east face of Mt. Whitney in 1931. Underhill introduced the
techniques of roped climbing and belays to climbers in the Sierra. Eichorn and Dawson remained his friends.
His exploits as a searcher for lost climbers include some of the most dramatic stories of tragedy, triumph and heroism that
have ever taken place in the annals of California history. In 1933 Clyde discovered the remains of avid climber Walter A.
Starr, Jr. on Michael Minaret following a grueling month-long search by dozens of government workers and volunteers. Starr's
Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region was published the following year by the Sierra Club. Clyde also located the bodies of Anna and Conrad Rettenbacher and the
crew of a downed Army Air Corps B-18 plane.
Among climbers and skiers, his legend has outdistanced him; among the general population he has been forgotten. Yet Clyde's
contributions to the exploration and description of the Sierra Nevada and to the field of mountaineering are important and
long ranging, and deserve to be known by a wider audience. He once said that he "came between the pioneers and the rock climbers."
Because of the immense size of his pack, long-time Sierra Club President David Brower described Clyde as "the pack that walked
like a man."
Clyde received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Geneva College in 1939. In 1970 he was presented the first Francis
Farquhar Mountaineering Award from the Sierra Club. In the same year, at the age of 85, he went on his last Sierra Club outing.
In 1971, he was on hand to sign copies of his book
Norman Clyde: Rambles Through the Range of Light published by Scrimshaw Press.
Norman Clyde died on December 23, 1972, in Big Pine, California. In 1974, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names bestowed his
name on a prominent peak and glacier in the Sierra Nevada.
Robert C. Pavlik
Robert C. Pavlik is a Supervising Environmental Planner with the California Department of Transportation. A native of Cleveland,
Ohio, he was raised in the San Fernando Valley, but grew up in the mountains of California, hiking, climbing, and traveling
to remote places of quiet beauty throughout the state. He graduated with a degree in Liberal Studies and Anthropology from
California State University, Northridge in 1979, and received a teaching credential from San Francisco State University in
1981.
He has worked as a State Park Ranger in Big Sur, an Environmental Education Instructor in Yosemite National Park, and as an
historian for the National Park Service in Yosemite. Following the completion of his M.A. degree in the Public Historical
Studies program at University of California, Santa Barbara he worked for over six years as State Historian at Hearst San Simeon
State Historical Monument. Bob has published articles and book reviews in several magazines, journals, and newspapers, including
California History, The Californians, Yosemite, The Public Historian, Material Culture, California History Action, Washington
Free Press, and Oral History Review
. His poetry has appeared in the San Luis Obispo
Tribune, Perspectives, Hopedance, Washington Free Press, and the Web site, "Poets Against the War."
One of Pavlik's primary goals when writing the biography was to restore Norman Clyde to his place in history. He compares
Clyde with historical figures John C. Fremont, Joseph Walker, and Jedediah Smith, and even poet Robinson Jeffers, pointing
out that Clyde didn't need to explore or traverse the mountains like other trailblazers and poets; he lived in them for over
60 years as a guide, naturalist and writer.
Sources
Clyde, Norman.
The Conquest of Lower California's Highest Peak, 1932 & 1937. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1975.
Clyde, Norman.
Norman Clyde of the Sierra Nevada. San Francisco: Scrimshaw Press, 1971.
Farquhar, Francis P.
History of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965.
Pavlik, Robert C.
Norman Clyde: Legendary Mountaineer of California's Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2008.
Pavlik, Robert C. Personal interview 16 October 2009.
Rusho, W.L.
Everett Ruess, A Vagabond for Beauty. Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1983.
Voge, Hervey, Ed.
A climber's Guide to the High Sierra. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1962.
The Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection is a record of biographer Robert Pavlik's research and writing for his book,
Norman Clyde: Legendary Mountaineer of California's Sierra Nevada, published in 2008 by Heyday Books of Berkeley. The collection adds substance and dimension to the Norman Clyde story, and
also reveals the exacting and methodical labor undertaken by Pavlik to research, interview, write, and prepare his work for
publication.
The collection includes Pavlik's correspondence and interviews with Norman Clyde's family members, friends, and fellow climbers
and outdoorsmen. There is an abundance of articles by and about Norman Clyde, and the amount of research notes and materials
collected by Pavlik is substantial.
Series 1 contains correspondence, personal papers, and other primary sources belonging to Norman Clyde, which were given to
Pavlik in the course of his research. Also included are articles written by Clyde and Pavlik's transcriptions of Clyde's correspondence
from the Bancroft Library and the Eastern California Museum at Independence.
In the collection's primary and secondary sources, articles by and about Clyde respectively, there are articles Pavlik found
in the
American Alpine Club Journal, the
Sierra Club Bulletin, the
Geneva Cabinet, as well as the
National Motorist, Motor Land and
Touring Tropics.
The genesis of the book took place in 1984 when Pavlik was doing graduate work at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Harold C. Kirker, professor of U.S. Cultural History and author, suggested that he do a paper on Norman Clyde. Kirker had
been a member of the Sierra Club, along with Clyde, in the 1930s. In addition to the correspondence between Pavlik and Kirker
about Clyde in Series 2, there is extensive correspondence between them on a variety of topics to include book publishing
in Series 4 of the collection.
Series 3, Subject Files and Secondary Sources of Norman Clyde, contain Pavlik's research on Clyde's interest and abilities
in specific areas, such as skiing, natural history, photography, fishing, hunting and a fondness for firearms. A subject file
on Walter A. Starr, Jr., includes newspaper and magazine articles, as well as Pavlik correspondence, a transcript of an interview,
and transcriptions of correspondence.
Series 4 contain Pavlik's correspondence with book publishers, reader notes, and book marketing as well as drafts of the manuscript.
Photographs of Norman Clyde, his family and mountains are included in Series 1, 3 and 4.
Where possible, the provenance, or original organization, of the papers has been preserved. However, in order to simplify
access to the collection for researchers, some materials in specific formats and topics were reorganized and refoldered to
more accurately reflect their contents.
The Norman Clyde-Robert C. Pavlik Collection is housed in 11 boxes, with Norman Clyde Book Files, Norman Clyde Primary Sources,
and Research Files on Norman Clyde containing the most extensive portions of the collection. The collection is divided into
four series:
Series 1: Norman Clyde Primary Sources, 1906-circa 2000
Series 2: Research Files on Norman Clyde, 1910-2009
Series 3: Subject Files and Secondary Sources on Norman Clyde, 1923-2009
Series 4:
Norman Clyde: Legendary Mountaineer Book Files, 1984-2009
All cities and counties listed on folder headings are located in California, unless noted otherwise.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has generously funded the arrangement and description of this collection, along
with matching funds from California Polytechnic State University.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Clyde, Norman, 1885-1972
Mountaineering -- Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)
Natural History -- California
Mountaineers -- California -- Biography
Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)
Yosemite National Park (Calif.) -- History
California -- Description and travel
Research notes
Correspondence
Oral histories
Interview notes
Secondary sources
Photographs
Audio Cassettes
Related Collections:
Special Collections, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo:
Kathleen Goddard Jones Papers, 1933-2001 (MS 119)
Laumann Yosemite Collection, circa 1908, 1923 (MS 153)
The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley:
Norman Clyde Papers, 1912-circa 2002 (BANC MSS 79/33 c)
Francis P. Farquhar Papers, 1912-1968 (BANC MSS C-B 517)
Mountain Peaks Photographs (BANC PIC 1971.083)
Sierra Club Members Papers Collection (BANC MSS 71/295 c)
Eastern California Museum, Independence:
Norman Clyde Collection