Local man publishes account of an epic adventure to the ceiling
of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
”
As the 1914 Mitchell auto inched its way along the road to
Tuolumne Meadows on the afternoon of July 8, 1915, the Lester
family took in the flora and fauna and tried not to fuss over the
roughness of the crude road
… The owner of the car, the Lester matriarch, Sarah, was 68
years old.
”
– from
”
Yosemite: A Journal for Members of the Yosemite Association
”
Local man publishes account of an epic adventure to the ceiling of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
“As the 1914 Mitchell auto inched its way along the road to Tuolumne Meadows on the afternoon of July 8, 1915, the Lester family took in the flora and fauna and tried not to fuss over the roughness of the crude road… The owner of the car, the Lester matriarch, Sarah, was 68 years old.” – from “Yosemite: A Journal for Members of the Yosemite Association”
Nearly a century later Sarah Lester’s great-great grandson continues a love affair with Yosemite and the Range of Light that he’s nurtured for most of a lifetime.
That love led Ron Olmstead and his wife, Jo, to move from San Benito County to Mariposa in 2001 to be closer to their favorite spot – the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Mountains. They returned to live in Hollister earlier this year.
Yosemite has always had a special place in Olmstead’s heart, since his family has a history in the park. His great-great-grandmother was the first recorded visitor to traverse the Tioga Pass by car.
In fact, it’s a story that Olmstead recorded for the Yosemite Association magazine. What’s most interesting about the story’s writer, besides his passion and his long list of ambitious hikes through the mountains, is that the author is dyslexic.
“I’m not a writer, I’ve never taken a course,” Olmstead said. “I’m totally dyslexic, but I enjoyed writing my family’s stories.” His most recent story details an epic adventure, with a family of nine piled into an open car, making it’s way over dirt tracks to the very ceiling of the Sierra Nevada – Tioga Pass. It was the first automobile to make the journey.
Olmstead has always been an outdoorsman, enjoying fishing, hiking and car camping.
“The thing we’ve always loved about Yosemite,” Olmstead said. “Is that you can go on any given day and everything is different – waterfalls, wildflowers, birds.”
As Olmstead got reacquainted with the Yosemite Valley he rediscovered many of the same places where his relatives had camped and fished so many years ago.
“Using their old journals and records that they had kept I retraced all of their trips over the seven years I lived up there,” Olmstead said.
Olmstead’s family had originally been farmers in Santa ClaraCounty, but they would take an annual 30-day camping trip with the entire clan where they would camp, fish and hunt.
One of their original spots was high in the mountains above Aptos, but around 1908 the family decided to try Yosemite instead.
“In their two-horse wagon what might now take six hours to reach the summit of Yosemite might have taken them six to nine days,” Olmstead said. “Only a few years later, when they had the Mitchell, it still took them something like two days.”
Olmstead was not originally from San Benito County. It wasn’t until 1996 that he and his wife moved from San Luis Obispo County, where Olmstead was a mechanical engineer and later an entrepreneur, so they could be closer to Stanford where he was undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease.
Eventually the disease subsided and it was at this point that Olmstead decided he wanted to be closer to the place he had developed a love for. So the couple rented out their home and moved to Mariposa.
Olmstead had started researching his family’s history before he moved to Mariposa, but while he was in the area he took the opportunity to speak with some of the remaining historians in the area and inquire about his family’s episodic journey to the park in their Mitchell.
“Jim Snyder, a retired historian for Yosemite, helped me with some of the research on the family excursion,” Olmstead said.
One of the things that the Olmsteads did when they settled into Mariposa was join the Sierra Hiking Seniors, a group in the area that conducted hikes twice per week. A long hike, usually 12 miles on Mondays and a shorter one, usually about four miles, on Fridays.
“You just show up and you go on hikes twice per week,” Olmstead said. “I became very familiar with the same of the areas up there and got to know some of the ones I hadn’t known previously.”
Olmstead also became a group hike leader and led many hikes himself. Some of his favorite hikes included the Chiquito Pass and Rock Creek.
The Olmsteads also became members of the Yosemite Association, through which they were able to meet Ansel Adams’ son.
The Olmsteads moved back to San Benito County, where they’d kept their home, due to his wife’s heart condition.
Locally Olmstead enjoys hiking at Point Lobos and the Pinnacles and kayaking at Elkhorn Slough.
“I think it’s what’s keeping me alive, staying active,” Olmstead said. “I also enjoy my writing, as long as there are no deadlines. I do a little writing each day where I can.”
