NILES AND LOUISE WERNER AND DPS EARLY DAYS
by John Robinson

Anyone looking back at the record of DPS activities in the 1940s and '50s would notice, time and again, the names of Niles and Louise Werner. Niles and Louise, more than anyone else, epitomized the section during its formative years. They led numerous trips and introduced many people to the delights of desert peaking. Niles was skillful climber and consummate leader. Louise was usually back in the pack or bringing up the rear, offering words of encouragement and sound advice to novices. How well I remember my first DPS trip, a climb of Keynot Peak over the Memorial Day weekend of 1953, led by Niles and Louise.
I recently visited Louise in her new residence at the Artesia Christian Home, where she lives now after almost a half century in the Alhambra hilltop home she and Miles built in 1941. She vividly recalled the formative years of the DPS and the adventurous life she and Niles so long enjoyed.
Niles & Louis Werner
She was born Louise Top in Souix Center, Iowa (60 miles north of Souix City) on March 2, 1902. Niles Werner Johannson was born in Goteborg, Sweden in 1890.

Niles Werner and Louise Top met in 1934 on a climb of Telescope Peak. They went on many climbing trips together. Miles proposed "on the trail", as Louise remembers, and they were married in 1937. One of their first projects was to finish off the list of 14,000-ers in California.
In the 1930s and early '40s, active members of the Southern California Chapter (which became the Angeles Chapter in 1954) met every Friday night at Boos Brothers Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. It was here at Boos Brothers, in 1941, the Niles and Louise often listened to Chester Versteeg talk up the idea of a Sierra Club group that would specialize in climbing desert summits. There was a lot of indifference at first. "Why climb these seemingly dry and uninteresting desert peaks when we had the Sierra Nevada for summer climbing and the forested Southern California peaks in winter and spring?", some thought. But Chester's persuasiveness gradually changed a few minds, and the Werners were early converts.
The first scheduled outing of the new desert peaks group was a climb of New York Butte over the weekend of November 15-16, 1941. Chester led and Niles was assistant. Louise remembers the rough
 
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