California, together with Wyoming, has served as the historical, and modern, epicenter of American Alpinism and Wilderness Conservation. In the late 1880’s, John Muir explored the Sierra Nevada and began advertising its need for environmental protection. In addition, he advertised the transcendent beauty of Yosemite by writing, “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. [Yosemite is] the grandest of all special temples of Nature.” These words rippled through the conservation and climbing communities of the United States, attracting the likes of President Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Yosemite.

Overtime, this attention on Yosemite has fueled its reputation as the modern center of American big-wall climbing, attracting elite mountain climbers from all over the world. Climbing achievements have advanced in Yosemite from climbing one big wall in multiple days, to climbing multiple big walls in one day. Less crowded, yet equally impressive, corners of California are protected by National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Some of these protected regions include: Mount Shasta, Lake Tahoe, the Giant Sequoias and Redwoods, Death Valley, and Mount Whitney, which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48.