"Campy" Cansphausen
2765 Sierra
Vista Way
Bishop CA 93514
(619) 872-2338
l5 Februaiy 1990
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Richard Ceilarlus, President
Sierra Club
PO Box 7959
San Francisco CA 94120 |
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Dear Mr. Cellarlus:
I must refuse to
respond to your request that I contribute money to the Sierra Club In the guise
that this will help meet future environmental challenges.
You have
chosen to neutralize the formerly strongly supportive mountaineering voices
within the Club by requiring that an impossibly stringent liability insurance
requirement be met. Predictably the result has been underwriter no-bid. The
limit of liability to cover similar risks required even by the Federal
government (NPS) is only 10% of that which you have imposed. I note also that
you did not bother to reply to my earlier letter to you regarding this
matter.
Many people have learned to love "John Muir's environment" by
way of Sierra Club led training programs and climbs. Indeed, some have gone on
to become champions and stewards of the mountains and deserts as their way of
life and work. But many must realize now that because of opportunities lost
during your watch many potential environmental guardians doubtless will not
evolve, nor grow and explore and live within the mountains which John Muir had
loved.
As I would not tie into a rope with a climber who has no Spine.
I will not lead future mountaineering trips for the Club which has lost sight
of the mountains (or to turn about a phrase. which "...cannot see the trees for
the forest"). I will speak out against the Club which can even think of
expending budget to sell fancy flashlights and imported walking sticks but will
not afford to train mountaineers. I will speak out against Club directors who
proclaim on the one hand that its active mountaineer members are a negligable
minority and then go on to assert otherwise within its own magazine advertising
rate cards. I will be found elsewhere Instead. I will back organizations which
teach that the "environment" should be home, as the Sierra was "home" to John
Muir and to Norman Clyde and to all of us lesser mountaineers as well.
Very truly,
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