Soul of Yosemite: Portraits Of Light And Stone

Celebrate one of America’s most iconic natural wonders with this stunning and singular photographic feast. Legendary mountaineer and award-winning photographer Ed Cooper captures the soul of Yosemite National Park in an entirely new way, zeroing in on its breathtaking peaks, ranges, and rocks.

With beautiful full-color photographs throughout, this one-of-a-kind pictorial travelogue guides visitors to the park’s great landforms. It is organized in the order that a visitor arriving for the first time in Yosemite Valley would see the natural wonders of the park, which draws 3.7 million visitors annually.

Set to be a treasured keepsake for anyone with a love of the mountains and a passion for this magnificent region, Soul of Yosemite is quite simply a distillation of the most glorious views this magnificent mountain range has to offer.

From the author’s introduction

My first view of Yosemite Valley was short, taking perhaps two hours. I arrived in the valley in one of the many clunker cars I owned then, during a spring break from college. The time was March, it was raining lightly, and only the lower parts of the great rock formations were visible. I had heard of climber Warren Harding’s attempt to ascend the Nose of El Capitan, but he was not on the rock as far as I could see. . . . The year was 1958. . . .

Harding finished his climb of the Nose, along with Wayne Merry and George Whitmore, in November 1958. It was not until four years later that I returned to Yosemite Valley, first to climb, then to enter into a romance with recording images of one of the most fantastic places on this planet.