Cliffs and Challenges : University Press of Kansas : 9780700627974 : 0700627979 : 30 May 2019 : When she couldn't find hiking boots that fit, Laura White Brunner explored Yosemite backcountry barefoot, and at times alone, in an era when grizzly bears still roamed the park. When told she couldn't hike in pants, she pinned up her skirt. Brunner showed admirable pluck, but, more remarkably, she did it as a teenager in the 1910s?and she wrote it all down. Her memoir, recovered from the Yosemite archives and published here for the first time, recounts two summers spent working and hiking in Yosemite Valley during a time of great change?in the park and in the world beyond. In captivating prose Brunner describes her unlikely adventures in the summers of 1915 and 1917, as well as what she calls "the interlude" between them. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always engaging, her account captures the "trails" and tribulations of a young woman coming of age in America's most beautiful national