Winter of 1977 I was holed up in a Yosemite Valley hotel room writing. Took an afternoon break with a friend to get a beer at the Broiler Room and nearly everybody was talking about The Airplane, about the marijuana being salvaged from a lake toward the south end of the Park. If I’d been more on my game I might have noticed that the bar was full of climbers and Curry grunts, not folks who ordinarily have the extra cash to drink in a bar. There was money around.
I spent that night talking to people who’d been to the lake. Next morning I called Rosalie Wright, my editor at New West, and told her I had good story that couldn’t wait. I did not want to get beat into print. The New West piece is linked here.
Tom DeVries 