The Loma Prietan
May/June 2000
Remembering a Leader: Jules Eichorn (1912 - 2000)
by Dale F. Mead
Eichorn, a school music teacher by profession and premier climber by passion, died in his sleep at home in Redwood City on Feb. 15, eight days after his 88th birthday. An imposing personage with the long, thick beard of a mountain main and an impish love of life in his eyes, he remained active and accessible to the end of his life.
While remaining in contact with his world-class climbing friends when his mountaineering days were over, he also threw himself into the leadership of the Club, not only serving on the national board but immersing himself in the conservation battles of his Redwood City home, San Mateo County Group. once he moved to Redwood City. He was featured twice in the Loma Prietan, in 1989 and 1992.
He appeared at a Club centennial dinner held by the chapter in 1992 and was interviewed as recently as four years ago.
Indeed, he busied himself in life, maintaining a farming lifestyle with cows and chickens, and teaching his children the myriad skills of self-sufficiency, according to Ollie Mayer, who often called on his children to baby-sit hers. His voice still rings and his eyes still sparkle in the recollections of the many Chapter and Club members who knew him, as well as the memories of his former students.
For Eichorn, who made a career teaching music in the Hillsborough School District, life was a duet of music and mountaineering. Born in San Francisco to German immigrants Hilmar and Frieda Eichorn on Feb. 7, 1912, Eichorn grew up hiking with his brother, John Peter, and sister, Eleanor, around Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, where his parents moved soon after his birth.
He studied violin at an early age at the San Francisco Community Music School under the tutelage of Gertrude Field, his future teaching mentor, according to his son, David. He was introduced to the mountains by none other than his childhood piano teacher and Sierra Club hike leader, young Ansel Adams. Jules paid for the lessons by washing Ansel's photo enlargements in the Adams family bathtub. Adams introduced Jules to rock climbing when he took the 15-year-old on the 1927 Annual Outing, where they climbed Alta Peak. It was "probably the greatest single event in my outdoor life," he told fellow climber John Schagen in a fascinating 1982 interview for the Sierra Club Oral History Project.
His lifelong friendship with Ansel reflected the intertwining of Eichorn's music and mountaineering careers throughout his life. Adams, as everyone knows, went on to introduce the world to the outdoors through his stunning photography; Jules sometimes served as his "mule," carrying his equipment into the wilderness. Eichorn went on to become a renowned mountaineer who eventually had three peaks named after him, as well as the Jules Eichorn Memorial Grove in Big Basin, where a memorial service will be held May 20.
Throughout the late '20s and early '30s he and a small coterie of Alpine Club and Sierra Club climbers attacked the unclimbed peaks of the Sierra Nevada and then sought greater challenges that elevated his reputation as high as the pinnacles he conquered. They included Thunderbolt Peak, where his climbing team was surprised by a lightning storm and their hair was standing straight up and sparks were jumping off the ends of their fingers as they scrambled off the ridge. He also loved to climb in the Minaret range; one peak later was named Eichorn Minaret. Jules' breakout mountaineering came the year after he graduated from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, in 1930 when he took on pioneering climbs in the Tetons. In 1931, Sierra Club president Francis Farquhar and Robert L.M. Underhill introduced western mountaineers to the use of ropes in climbing. Eichorn, who had been avidly practicing climbing in the Berkeley foothills, joined them in climbs previously deemed impossible, including the East Face of Mt. Whitney, highest peak in the United States.
During this time, he taught music in San Francisco's Chinatown, Visitation Valley and wherever the opportunity arose, as he explained to Schagen.
In 1933 Eichorn teamed up with Dick Leonard and Bestor Robinson to demonstrate new technology to pioneer high-angle, big wall climbing in North America. The trio used rope, pitons, carabiners, and dynamic belays to reach the top of 700-foot Higher Cathedral Spire in Yosemite National Park, an achievement hailed as the beginning of technical climbing in America-even though climbers then wore low-cut tennis shoes and used hemp rope, unthinkable equipment today.
Eichorn's climbing prowess even "financed" his college education in music at University of California, Berkeley, in a most improbable and poignant way: he was sponsored by a grieving but grateful father of a felled climber. Walter Starr Sr., wealthy father of writer-climbing pioneer Walter "Pete" Starr, Jr. contacted Farquhar with a heart-rending request. The son had died while climbing alone in the Minarets, but his body had not been found by well-meaning, non-climbing friends of the family. Could Sierra Club climbers search for it? Farquhar gave the job to Jules.
"We [he and renowned but reclusive mountain man Norman Clyde] eventually found the body on the north side of Michael Minaret," Eichorn told climbing enthusiast George Sinclair in a 1996 interview. "He had apparently fallen and was instantly killed."
The two men couldn't get Starr's body off the mountain, so Eichorn gave it a mountaineer's burial. He stood it in a crack in the rock and spent hours erecting an eight-foot wall around it, he recalled to Sinclair. At the elder Starr's request, he returned a year later to confirm that the resting place remained undisturbed. (Pete Starr presumably remains entombed there.)
So grateful was Walter Starr, Sr. that he financed Eichorn's college education at Berkeley and paid Clyde, who lived in the Sierra, a stipend for the rest of his life. Thus in 1938 Eichorn earned the degree and credential in music that qualified him to pursue his teaching career.
After college, he spent two years working at a school in the San Joaquin Valley until valley fever, a potentially fatal disease, drove him back to the Bay Area. It also kept him out of the military when mountaineering friends were going off to fight World War II . Instead, he landed a job as music teacher for the Hillsborough School District, near San Mateo.
He taught instrumental, orchestral and choral music for 35 years. An inveterate handyman, he bought a parcel in Redwood City and built his own home to house his wife, Sarah, and their growing family. They eventually had six children.
Divorced in 1957, he married Kay Calderhead in 1960; they had a child, and Kay's daughter by a former marriage joined the household. That marriage dissolved in 1973. In 1982 he married Shirley Lhyne, who, with her three children, remained with him until his death.
Eichorn's Sierra treks actually outlasted his teaching career, from which he retired in 1973. He continued to walk in the Sierra until the 1980s when he turned his full attention to environmental conservation. Ollie Mayer, a member since 1947, remembers Jules well.
"He not only understood the earth as a climber, but lived a simple life close to the earth," she remembers. "He could fix everything-plumbing, carpentry."
After Eichorn began teaching in Hillsborough, he bought a large parcel of land. "I was down there quite a lot," Mayer says. "He did his own landscaping. It was a great family. He had a wonderful garden, cows, chickens. His wife used to can fruits and vegetables. I loved all the kids. They were helping all the time, learned all these wonderful skills-how to take care of bees, churn milk, make butter."
"We went hiking; he went on weekend hikes, but not that much. He was more active with the old climbers. There was a whole group of tough Sierra climbers; Jules was with that group a lot. But he trained [hiking and climbing] the youngsters in the school where he taught."
She also recalls an early environmental battle he threw himself into, attempting to create a development-free route along the Bay in San Mateo County.
"Jules got a large group of people helping pull tires out of the mud-Sea Scouts, golfers, students, everybody," she recalls. "He approached me to help make a plan for the Bay side of the county. He had a plan, a trail all the way down the coast of the Bay.
"The plan was adopted by the county. But no more than a month or two after that the county came up with plans to develop the whole damn coast. There was a terrible fight against the county. The school district made a terrible fuss about it."
Eventually Foster City was created on Bay fill as part of the plan, to the bitter disappointment of the conservation warriors. Fellow San Mateo County Group conservationist and Redwood City resident Wim DeWit, who assists at Hidden Villa Ranch in Los Altos Hills where the Chapter was founded in 1933, joined then-retired Eichorn in 1982 for a political campaign with a happier ending.
Eichorn had set up his Redwood City homestead many years before, DeWit reminisces. "He had bought a good piece of ground, maybe 10 acres, and before Redwood City built up, built a house there. Raised his family. "The first time we got involved in things was in 1982 in the fight for Bair Island," says DeWit, who spoke at Eichorn's March 18 memorial service.
"The Redwood City Council gave Mobile Oil permission to fill abandoned salt ponds" beside the Bay. The group spearheaded a successful referendum signature drive.
"We collected $60,000 for that ballot campaign," DeWit notes. "Mobile Oil spent 10 times that much. We won by 41 votes." Jules helped with fundraising for the campaign by holding a garage sale, Wim recalls. "It was part of his way of being a good conservationist." But Eichorn's had a personal impact on people far beyond his stunning mountain climbs and dedicated conservation leadership. "He not only touched many people's lives; he influenced them," DeWit observes. "He brought people together." Dewit should know. Eichorn introduced Norwegian exchange student Rondi Jansen to DeWit's son, Mark. Rondi is now Wim's daughter-in -law.
Bringing people together was just part of his impact on the Chapter, though. Eichorn worked to elect environmentally friendly candidates including Tom Lantos, Byron Sher, Arlen Gregorio and Malcolm Dudley. He showed up at public hearings, where his presence created an aura of depth and purpose. He served the Club at the national level, also, winning election for eight years as a Director. He was a tireless worker to create and enlarge new and existing parks, both local and national.
Thrice married, Jules Eichorn is survived by a large and active family: His wife of 18 years, Shirley Lhyne-Eichorn and eleven children and step children: David H. Eichorn, Gertrude W. Dixon, Julia A. Osborn-Gourley, John W. Eichorn, Hilmar M Eichorn, Peter M. Eichorn, Linda F. Renfro, Cara L. Eichorn-Osos, Robinie Lhyne-Alinejad, Peter L. Lhyne, and Anders Erik Lhyne. Also surviving him are 18 grandchildren, ten great grandchildren, nephew Tom Manning and the children of his brother, John Peter Eichorn.
Conservationists and other friends are welcome to attend a second mountaineering memorial at noon, May 20 at the Eichorn Memorial Grove in Big Basin State Park. Please call David Eichorn at 510-524-973 for directions. Contributions in his name may be made to the following: Hidden Villa, 26879 Moody Rd., Los Altos Hills, CA 94022; Sempervirens Fund, Drawer BE, Los Altos, CA 94023; or Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, 130 Prospect St., Cambridge, MA 02139.