Personalities, towering granite walls, and historic photographs for added perspective -- some amazing perspective at times -- are the grist of Yosemite In The Fifties, a 176-page book that captures what the authors refer to as the Iron Age of climbing in Yosemite National Park.

This was the decade when Allen Steck, John Salathé, Warren Harding, a teenaged Royal Robbins and others etched their names, along with some skin and blood, into the American history of climbing by tackling Yosemite's vertical side with a determination that brought national, and even a little global, attention for their feats. Robins was just 18 in 1953 when he and Don Wilson and Jerry Gallwas made the second ascent of Sentinel Rock via the Steck-Salathé route in two days. Harding, in his 30s, garned greater acclaim the following year when he, Frank Tarver, Charles Holden, and John Whitmer successfully assaulted the 2,200-foot North Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, at the time the longest climb recorded in Yosemite Valley.

The climbers all traded headlines throughout the decade by assailing the various challenges that Yosemite harbors. The first-person accounts of many of these climbs captured by Dean Fidelman, John Long, and Tom Adler in this essential tome of climbing history bring to life the essence of climbing in the Yosemite Valley. The black-and-white and color photos -- of climbers in precarious perches, of the tools and pitons the men fashioned to fit the challenges they faced, of the towering sweeps of granite -- add even more depth to Yosemite In The Fifties.

Woven through the narrative is some whimsy -- On El Cap Tower, a bushy tailed wood rat ate through Warren Harding's sleeping bag in several places as well as a plasticized tarp. We were never free of loose down and feathers from that point on. Thank God they didn't have an appetite for the fixed nylon ropes. -- Wayne Merry -- as well as acceptance of the risks the climbers were taking on.

Even enthusiasts must admit a certain amount of calculated risk on a climb of this level. The party recognized that the difficulties of removing an injured climber from the face might be insurmountable. Therefore the emphasis was on climbing as safely as possible, and the ascent proved a great and successful adventure. -- Royal Robbins after a climb of the Northwest Face of Half Dome in five days with Mike Sherrick and Jerry Gallwas, one not only recognized as America's first grade 6 climb but which took the honor from Harding, who had been planning such an ascent.

Yosemite In the Fifties recounts all the major ascents of the day. It was a period in climbing history before helmets were standard, when the ambitious few gazed up at El Capitan and the other granite monoliths and spires in the valley and realized they could be climbed. And then went out and proved it by scaling Lost Arrow Spire, Sentinnel Rock, El Capitan, Half Dome, and other Yosemite pitches. 

Like light from a dead star still visible today, when cast from critical angles, word, image and design can reach across generations and resurrect vanished worlds. Yosemite in the Fifties is not so much a book as a wormhole back to a charmed moment in the history of exploration, and a classic era of America now lost in time. -- John Long.