Historic summit registers are missing from High Sierra peaks

[Florian]

One by one, summit registers signed by pioneering alpinists from the 1920s and '30s have disappeared. What happened to them is as mysterious as the mountains themselves.

Article from the LA Times a couple days ago ..

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 5895.story

-Florian

[gonehigher]

I remember this discussion from a few years ago. There's a damned if you do and damned if you don't wilderness ethic issue involved. My 2 cent opinion is the historical value of some of these registers needs to be preserved somewhere by someone. There are a few local registers I've seen that qualify.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adven ... erpt4.html

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adven ... q_n_a.html

[zippetydude]

Preserving them sounds like a good idea, but I don't think they're disappearing because someone is preserving them and planning to give them to the Smithsonian as an anonymous donor. It sounds like an avid, very selfish mountain climber has been stealing these to make his own private collection. It would be easy to do and have essentially zero risk involved of getting caught. Same kind of person who steals the water out of the police boxes and leaves trash lying around on the trails.


z

[Ed]

Sad. I signed the Black Kaweah register in the mid-1970's. One of those climbs which are not difficult, but dangerous enough to produce more fear than you want to experience, due to the loose rock. The first thing we did when we opened the book was look for Walter Starr's famous signature in blood.