In early November 2023, James Hart Dyke and I went to San Francisco. The highly rewarding exhibition MONT BLANC: The Summit Paintings had ended less than a few days earlier but to catch the last of the autumn weather window in Yosemite National Park we made haste and set off to California. In just under a week, James covered many miles and vertical feet to capture some of Yosemite’s magic en plein air. He managed to produce enough oil sketches from many vantage points on and above the valley floor to return with a body of work destined for an exhibition dedicated to Yosemite, a place which, in spite of its worldwide fame, has hardly changed since the great glaciologist and naturalist, John Muir, first visited the valley in 1868. Back then California had less than half a million residents and only 6 million of its 100 million acres were improved farmland. The Sierra Nevada Mountain range and Yosemite were wild country full of prowling grizzly bears and magnificent unlogged forests.
We were lucky to be accompanied by a renowned Californian mountain guide, Armin Fisher, with whom I have made many climbs in the Alps too including our ‘sunset on Mont Blanc’ ascent. Together with some down jackets, James prepared his travelling paint box cum easel as meticulously as ever and the three of us arrived in the Valley one weekday evening long after sunset. Neither James nor I had ever set foot there. The first thing we did was to wander out on to the wide meadows opposite the 3,000-foot granite wall of El Capitan. Lying down on the grass, we waited for our eyes to adjust to the dark. Far above, one star after another came out of the cold velveteen heavens and then, as if by magic, some tiny lights emerged from El Capitan’s vertical face. Armin, no stranger by any means to that monolith himself, counted what must have been at least five separate hanging tents, or climbers’ portaledges and it was only then that I could really begin to gauge and appreciate the sheer scale of the Yosemite Valley.
