Time & Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 @ 7:30 PM (Social hours and free beer for members at 6:30)
Directions: From Highway 101 at Santa Rosa go west on Highway 12 to Stony Point Road Exit. Go straight from the middle lane at the light onto Occidental Road. The Round Table Pizza is on the right just down the road.
Valley Walls and El Capitan
Glen Denny was born in Modesto, California in 1939 and grew up in the nearby town of Livingston, where his father taught mathematics and music at the high school. His first outdoor experiences came through fly-fishing trips into the Sierra with his father. When Glen moved to Yosemite in 1958 to learn to climb, the first ascent of El Capitan was under way. Inspired by this historic event, he was soon climbing the most challenging routes in Yosemite Valley, including some of the early ascents of El Capitan, with many of the big-wall pioneers of the late fifties and early sixties. He has also made first ascents in the Cordillera Huayhuash in Peru and the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. Originally self-taught, Glen began photographing Yosemite climbs and climbers in the early sixties before studying photography and filmmaking at San Francisco State University, where he earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree. His climbing films have won awards at several film festivals; his photography has appeared in a number of publications, culminating in his 2007 book, Yosemite in the Sixties. Glen currently lives in San Francisco.
Glen will introduce and show his classic film El Capitan. He will also present his first-person perspective on the early history of climbing on El Cap and other important Yosemite Valley routes of the late 1950s and early 1960s, along with excerpts from his just-published book, Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite. Glen will have his Valley Walls book for sale at the meeting.
