The following was lifted from the NPS SEKI website:
Other than his carefully crafted newspaper and magazine accounts of climbs and the few recorded recollections of fellow mountaineers, Norman Clyde's long High Sierra tenure passed with sparse biographical record No so Clyde's backpacks. Heading for the mountain backcountry one day, Clyde, weighing 140 pounds then, weighed his pack: 75 pounds. He spent that night with a survey crew who were amazed at the size of his pack. In the morning, the crewmen as a prank badgered Clyde about the dangers of running out of food in the wilderness. First one survey crewman and then another urged "extra" cans of their food on Clyde. Never one to turn down free supplies, Clyde set out that day with a pack that had grown to 95 pounds!
"I can still remember my awe at the collection of gear Norman drew out of his duffle bag," recollects climbing companion Smoke Blanchard. "There's part of the weight right there. The duffle bag was lashed to a six-pound Yukon pack frame, which also supported a full-length Hudson Bay axe. But perhaps the kitchen bag was the most surprising.... Norman's six large kettles, the cups and spoons, the dishes and bowls, the salt shakers, condiments, servers, and graters, and for all I know, cookie cutters.... Boots? He carried several: ski boots, tricouni boots, rubber-soled boots for the rocks, camp slippers."
"It's not true," Clyde told Blanchard once, "that I carry an anvil in my pack." He did carry five cameras: two 35mms, two 120s, and a spare. And the books! Smoke Blanchard recalls "Norman's rather large library in many languages"—in his pack, not in his cabin. Clyde read Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek. On long trips, he treasured the Greek. He was most rusty in it: books in Greek lasted longer.
