Sale 2520 | Lot 400

(YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK--"HIKEOLOGY") Charmingly annotated and neatly compiled album by Alice Ring Smythe, a female hiker, with 160 photographs chronincling her open-air on-foot escapades through the magnificent Yosemite Valley.
With innumerable scenes of the towering granite cliff faces and powerful plunging waterfalls that have captivated photographers since Carleton Watkins turned his lens on this land. Smythe, a hiker-cum-naturalist, captured locations such as Bridal Veil Fall, Half Dome, El Capitan, Nevada Fall, Mirror Lake, and the seemingly endless range of the High Sierras. Also depicted are Smythe and her fellow gal-pals during hikes to these high-altitude destinations. The album is crammed with expresssively informative and endlessly poetic captions, including describing the rush of flowing rivers as a "silver apron" or "white ribbons," or a pair of lone trees protruding from the cliff-face as "Two Adventurers," among countless others. Laid into the album are two manuscript certificates from the "Department of the Hike Sierra," each light-heartedly congratulating Smythe for successfully partaking in the kindergarten course of "Hikeology." Silver prints, the images measuring 3x2 to 4½x3½ inches (7.6x5.1 to 11.4x8.9 cm.), tipped recto/verso to black pages, each with captions, in ink. Oblong 4to, black leatherette; ties. 1927

[1,000/1,500]