Jules Eichorn
That summer, Eichorn joined Adams on the Sierra Club annual High Trip, which included a climb of Alta Peak in Sequoia National Park.
[2] After graduating from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco in 1929, Eichorn traveled to the Teton Range of Wyoming in 1930 for a summer climbing trip.
Sierra Club Secretary Will Colby wrote, "Some youthful enthusiasts, including Glen Dawson, Jules Eichorn and John Olmstead, swarmed over everything that looked formidable in the way of a mountain peak.
After the basic course was completed, the more advanced students, including Eichorn, his climbing partner Glen Dawson, Norman Clyde, Lewis Clark, and Bestor Robinson traveled south to the Palisades, the most rugged and alpine part of the Sierra Nevada.
There, on August 13, 1931, the party completed the first ascent of the last unclimbed 14,000+ foot peak in California, which remained unnamed due to its remote location above the Palisade Glaciers.
After a challenging ascent to the summit, the climbers were caught in an intense lightning storm, and Eichorn barely escaped electrocution when "a thunderbolt whizzed right by my ear".
"[5] Three days later on August 16, Eichorn, Clyde, Underhill and Dawson completed the first ascent of the East Face of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States.
"[8] Eichorn's 1931 experiences led to a lifelong friendship with Norman Clyde, who was, by most accounts, California's greatest mountaineer of the first half of the 20th century.
Beginning on August 15, a dozen skilled climbers including Eichorn, Clyde and Dawson spent four days searching unsuccessfully for Pete Starr.
Starr's grateful (and wealthy) parents rewarded Eichorn with a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in music and earned a teaching credential.
Among his colleagues on the board in those years was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, photographer Ansel Adams and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Wallace Stegner.
The Jules Eichorn Memorial Grove is located in Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz County, California.
