Yosemite Has a Rich Schedule of Winter Events

This is a special winter for remembering Ansel Adams at Yosemite, a season that has been drawing visitors even without early snow for downhill skiing on the slopes of Badger Pass.

It’s a season brought into focus by the poetic words and photographs in “Ansel Adams--An Autobiography,” in its third printing and becoming a kind of guidebook to this best known of all national parks.

Each page opens vistas through the life story of the photographer who was a legend long before his death in 1984.

The schedule of events includes “Photographers’ Holidays” to be presented for the first time March 29-April 10 by the Yosemite Park & Curry Co. and the Ansel Adams Gallery maintained by his family here in Yosemite Village.

During those two weeks, world-famed wilderness photographers will conduct four sessions to help camera buffs strive for the artistic quality of an Ansel Adams photograph.

Before the photographic workshops, two other “Holidays” events will be staged for Yosemite visitors, each related to the life of Ansel Adams.

Chef’s Holidays

The third annual “Yosemite Chef’s Holidays” will be presented for three weeks, Sundays through Thursdays, beginning today. Visitors will be wined and dined while attending gourmet cooking classes conducted by six chefs noted for specialty American cuisines.

Ansel Adams was an aficionado of gourmet cooking. For 20 years, beginning in 1929, he played the role of major-domo at the Yosemite’s Bracebridge Christmas dinners, wearing his Olde English costume and conducting each presentation on the menu to the squire’s table for approval.

A talented pianist, Adams also composed the musical text for the Bracebridge dinners. This phase of his life will harmonize with Yosemite’s second annual “Musicians’ Holidays” beginning Jan. 25.

Musical Theater Week will be staged in two sessions, Jan. 25-29. It will be followed by two sessions of Opera Week, Feb. 1-5. Writer-director-producer Joshua Logan will highlight Musical Theater Week with talks about “South Pacific,” “Camelot,” “Mr. Roberts” and “Bus Stop.”

Opera Week will feature Blanche Thebom, for 22 years a leading mezzo soprano at European opera houses and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Adams photographed Yosemite for almost 70 years and spent more time here than he did around any of the other wilderness areas in the West. The gallery preserving his work and telling his life story is the oldest concession in the National Park System operated continuously by the same family. It began as the studio of landscape painter Harry Cassie Best in 1902.

In 1921, as Ansel Adams writes in his autobiography, he met Best’s 17-year-old daughter, Virginia. Adams was working toward a career as a concert pianist, and Virginia hoped to become a classical singer with her lovely contralto voice. They practiced together on the old Chickering piano in the Best studio.

Virginia and Ansel were married in 1928, after he had decided to create harmonies with his cameras instead of a piano. She took over the studio after her father’s death and operated it until 1972, when their son Michael and his wife Jeanne began to carry on its operation as the Ansel Adams Gallery.

Virginia Adams sang for many years at the Bracebridge Christmas dinners, playing the role of the English housekeeper with her major-domo husband.

The gallery this winter is featuring special-edition Ansel Adams prints and posters. Both include his classic Yosemite seasons as well as such collector’s items as photographs in the mountains of New Mexico and throughout the Sierra Nevada.

The autobiography spans a career of more than 60 years, publication of many books, exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art. There’s a 1980 photograph of him receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter.

A Yosemite mountain and the 138,000-acre San Joaquin and Minarets Wilderness Area have been named for him in appreciation for what his photographs and dedication have done to preserve “the world of nature.”

Film on Adams

This story is told at the Yosemite Visitor Center Auditorium this winter in the classic documentary film, “Ansel Adams, Photographer,” starring Adams. We saw it after we had seen the film on the life of John Muir, the great naturalist whose work led to the creation of our national park system and who founded the Sierra Club in 1892.

In his autobiography, Adams salutes Muir’s vision of protecting wilderness “in perpetuum against the ravages of diverse forms of exploitation.”

After normal snowfalls there are 32 kilometers of groomed Nordic tracks, with spectacular vistas. For updates on cross-country conditions, call (209) 372-1244. For downhill ski updates, dial (209) 372-1330.

The “Chefs’ Holidays” are led this year by such noted chefs as Marcel Desaulniers of The Trellis in Williamsburg, Va., and Joe Cochran, who brings the best of spa cuisine from Southern California’s Golden Door. The cost per dinner with a chef is $45 per person, plus tax and gratuity. For reservations and information, call (209) 252-2828.

Musician’s Dinner Theater

Evening Musician’s Dinner Theater performances are $55 per person, including show and five-course banquet. Guests of Yosemite Lodge and the Ahwahnee attend lounge presentations without additional charge. Phone the same number for information and reservations as well as for the “Photographers’ Holidays,” which are $95 per person for each of the four three-day sessions.

Cabins with baths are $43.75 for a twosome this winter. Double accommodations in Yosemite Lodge start at $57 and at $144.50 at the Ahwahnee. For all overnight reservations phone (209) 252-4848. Ask for a copy of this winter’s “Yosemite Guide.”

“Ansel Adams--An Autobiography,” published with 277 illustrations by Little, Brown and Co., Boston, costs $50.