A Branch of The Sky : Picacho : 9780962941849 : 0962941840 : 10 Oct 2018 : From the week he finished high school, Steve Sorensen began a fifty-year adventure of climbing, skiing, and working in the southern Sierra Nevada. After learning to rock climb in Yosemite Valley, Sorensen spent fourteen years working for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, where he became the leader of a backcountry crew, a skilled tree faller, an emergency medical technician, a wildland firefighter, and a mule packer. Working with park botanists, he developed new techniques for restoring damaged backcountry meadows, and he spent several winters conducting backcountry snow surveys. While raising his family in the town of Three Rivers, just outside of Sequoia National Park, he wrote the first two hiking guidebooks for the park's frontcountry trails, both of which became bestsellers in the park's visitor centers. His tales of life in the southern Sierra Nevada are told with style and humor, both informative an