In 2012 the section pulled off another full slate of “Climb-munity” gatherings, which continue to be popular and well attended. These included a January ice-climbing weekend in Cold Stream Canyon, near Truckee; a May rock-climbing weekend at Pinnacles National Monument; a June weekend at Donner Summit; our much-loved Pinecrest event in September with Royal and Liz Robbins and Tom Frost; the Yosemite Facelift cleanup in September; and the ever-popular Holiday Dinner in Berkeley. The latter was highlighted by an outstanding multi-media presentation by AAC Past President and 2012 Piolets d’Or winner Steve Swenson, whose show focused on his 30-plus years of climbing in the Karakoram.

The section’s conservation activities included hosting a weeklong stewardship project with the National Park Service in Tuolumne Meadows in August, and hosting the Fall Highball Craggin’ Classic in Bishop. With over 200 attendees, we and our friends in the AAC Southwest Section contributed over 400 volunteer hours in the Buttermilks, including trail delineation, revegetation, campsite inventory, and graffiti removal. At the climbers’ reception, hosted by New Belgium Brewing, over $2,000 was raised for Western Region Live Your Dream Grants.

We continued to sponsor year-round free coffee with climbing rangers every Sunday morning in Yosemite. Yosemite Committee Chair Linda McMillan and her husband, Tom McMillan, also led free Saturday-evening slideshows in Yosemite as part of the climbers’ interpretive program, generating further goodwill and exposure for the club. New to the calendar this year was a sponsorship of the Meyers Climbing Festival and Bouldering Competition in Lake Tahoe.