Time & Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2017 @ 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.
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. His first ascents include the Dihedral Wall on El Capitan, the west face of the Leaning Tower, the north face of the Rostrum, and the Prow on Washington Column. His first ascents of the southwest face of Mount Conness and the east face of Keeler Needle were the first big wall climbs in the High Sierra. 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 and his photography has appeared in a number of exhibitions and publications, culminating in his 2007 book, “Yosemite in the Sixties.” Glen currently lives with his family in San Francisco.
Glen will be reading excerpts from his recently published book, “Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite.” After the presentation and Q&A session, he will be signing and selling copies of this book and the posters he has made of Yosemite climbs in the 1960s.
