A Branch of The Sky: Fifty Years of Adventure, Tragedy, and Restoration in the Sierra Nevada

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From the week he finished high school, Steve Sorensen began a fifty-year adventure of climbing, skiing, and working in the southern Sierra Nevada. After learning to rock climb in Yosemite Valley, Sorensen spent fourteen years working for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, where he became the leader of a backcountry crew, a skilled tree faller, an emergency medical technician, a wildland firefighter, and a mule packer. Working with park botanists, he developed new techniques for restoring damaged backcountry meadows, and he spent several winters conducting backcountry snow surveys. While raising his family in the town of Three Rivers, just outside of Sequoia National Park, he wrote the first two hiking guidebooks for the park’s frontcountry trails, both of which became bestsellers in the park’s visitor centers. His tales of life in the southern Sierra Nevada are told with style and humor, both informative and touching at the same time. Though his blunt criticism of the National Park Service might anger some, many seasonal park employees will recognize the honesty and accuracy of his observations. Sorensen’s writing is infused with the love and respect he felt for his friends and coworkers, many of whom he lost to accidents and disease. How he learned to make his peace with their ghosts is a unique and captivating story, beautifully told.