Bestor Robinson

Bestor Robinson (February 9, 1898 - December 9, 1987) was an American mountaineer, environmentalist, attorney and inventor. He was a law partner of Earl Warren, later governor of California and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Robinson was a long-time leader of the Sierra Club.

Bestor Robinson was the son of Edward Constant Robinson (originally from Oregon) and Sarah T. Merritt (daughter of James Bestor Merritt). He was born and raised in Oakland, California, at 552 Montclair Street. He attended the University of California, Berkeley (1914–1918) and went on to both Boalt School of Law (1919-1921) and then to Harvard Law (1921–1922) where he received his JD. His father was a prominent attorney and later a Superior Court Judge of Alameda County. After Law school he joined his father's law firm. Bestor went on to marry Florence Breed, daughter of powerful Republican State Senator Arthur Hastings Breed of Piedmont, CA. They had four children, Ned, Merritt, Warren and Carolyn.

In 1931, Sierra Club leader Francis P. Farquhar had invited Harvard philosophy professor and Appalachian Mountain Club member Robert L. M. Underhill to come to the Sierra Nevada to teach the latest techniques of roped climbing. Underhill had learned these techniques in the Alps, and had used them earlier that summer in the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies. After the basic course was completed, the more advanced students, including Robinson, Glen Dawson, Jules Eichorn, Norman Clyde, and Lewis Clark traveled south to the Palisades, the most rugged and alpine part of the Sierra Nevada. There, on August 13, 1931, the party completed the first ascent of the last unclimbed 14,000+ foot peak in California, which remained unnamed due to its remote location above the Palisade Glaciers. After a challenging ascent to the summit, the climbers were caught in an intense lightning storm, and Eichorn barely escaped electrocution when "a thunderbolt whizzed right by my ear". The mountain was named Thunderbolt Peak to commemorate that close call.

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