Valley Walls: A Memoir of Climbing and Living in Yosemite

Half a century ago a rag-tag group of innovators was building a foundation for modern American rock climbing from a makeshift home base in Yosemite. Photographer Glen Denny was a key figure in this golden age of climbing, capturing pioneering feats on camera while tackling challenging ascents himself.

In entertaining short pieces enlivened by his iconic black-and-white images of Yosemite's big wall legends, Denny reveals a young man's coming of age and provides a vivid look at Yosemite’s early climbing culture. He relates such precarious achievements as hauling water in glass gallon jugs up the east face of Washington Column, nailing the 750-foot Rostrum in a punishing heat wave, and dangling overnight on El Capitan’s Dihedral Wall in a lightning storm. Each true tale captures the spirit of historic Camp 4, where Denny and others plan the next big climb while living on the cheap and dodging park rangers.

• On the Nose: A Lifelong Obsession with Yosemite's Most Iconic Climb
• Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber
• Yosemite in the Fifties: The Iron Age
• Alone on the Wall (Expanded edition)
• The Push: A Climber's Search for the Path
• The Dawn Wall [Blu-ray]
• The Push: A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits
• Yosemite In the Sixties
• Sixty Meters to Anywhere
• The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life