ALEX HONNOLD

He gained world renown for the rescue of COHOF Class of 2021 member Emily Harrington on El Capitan and the featured climber and starring role in the Oscar-winning documentary feature “Free Solo.” In the world of big wall climbing at Yosemite Valley and elsewhere, Honnold has long been held as one of the world’s best for free solo ascents (without ropes).

He is the only person to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. In 2012, Honnold and Hans Florine (COHOF Class of 2016) set the record time on the Nose route on Yosemite‘s El Capitan, which he later broke in 2018 with Tommy Caldwell. Honnold’s first free solo ascent of El Capitan in 2017 has been described as “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever,” and became the foundation for “Free Solo.”

He has appeared in many other films and television shows, including “60 Minutes,” and broke the barrier to bring the world of climbing into the homes of millions. His achievements include all the big walls of Yosemite, at Zion National Park in Utah, the Horseshoe Wall in Arkansas, and far beyond in Patagonia and the Czech Republic.

CLARENCE KING

Posthumorous

The travels and science of King — with his range of adventures and scope of public impact — was in the league of William Brewer (Class of 2005) and Josiah Whitney (Class of 2007). Along with Brewer and Whitney, he was one of four leading team members to make the first historic geologic survey of California over a four-year period by foot, horseback and boat. In September 1864, President Abraham Lincoln appointed King to make the first boundary survey of Yosemite Valley. Whitney then arranged for King to make the first survey of the Mojave Desert. In 1879, Congress chose King as the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

As an academic, King published “Systematic Geology,” where he is credited as “defining the geologic history of the Western U.S.” The work was called “one of the great scientific works of the late nineteenth century.” As an author, he wrote “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada” (1872), which made him a public figure recognized across America, and for those who can find a copy, a cult classic. Mount Clarence King in Kings Canyon National Park is named for him.

JIM BROWN

After he developed the program that opened nine long-closed San Diego city lakes to the public, he set rules that helped create the best trophy bass fishing in America. His advocacy for public access elsewhere includes helping open the Owens River Gorge and the Haiwee reservoirs.

Brown is an avid, accomplished angler who has fished lakes across Southern California and an expert turkey hunter who has ventured throughout Southern California and beyond. He has used that expertise to also create a series of youth fishing programs, including one in which off-duty police officers served as fishing guides for at-risk youth, and creation of Chollas Lake as a “kids only” fishing hole. He pioneered the first catch-and-release warm water fishery in America to protect northern strain largemouth bass, expanded a waterfowl hunting program and a hunting program for turkeys that included a blind for hunters confined to wheelchairs. He is the co-founder of San Diego Trout. As co-founder and co-host of the “All Outdoors Radio Network,” many have followed Brown’s travels and adventures throughout his career.

The retired manager of the San Diego City Lakes Program fought for public recreational access

by Bryce Miller, San Diego Union-Tribune

To understand why Jim Brown will be inducted into the California Outdoors Hall of Fame on Saturday in Sacramento, imagine the fancy footwork of Fred Astaire mixed with the determination of marathoner Meb Keflezighi.

Brown, the retired manager of the San Diego City Lakes Program, championed public access to recreational opportunities. Where he found walls, he patiently and persistently built doors. When he encountered tired or outdated resistance, he partnered rather than pound fists.

Bureaucrats responded more effectively to bridge-building than bellowing, he reasoned — so he shook hands instead of shoulders.

“I found ways to build relationships with people who might have been opposed to ideas initially,” said Brown, a Tierrasanta resident who turns 73 on Sunday. “If someone said Fish and Game wouldn’t allow me to do something, I’d make them a partner.

“That’s how we started the turkey-hunting program at Lake Sutherland, which might be the only program of its kind on city-owned land.”

This Astaire figured out when to lead … and when to follow. This Keflezighi understood some races required sustained focus and effort, not sprints. That unique combination inspired friends Bruce Bochy, the former Padres and Giants manager, and Poway’s Kevin McNamara to nominate Brown for the hall.

Brown will enter with a class that includes fearless climber Alex Honnold, the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.” Although Brown’s contributions lack Honnold’s cinematic splash, the commitment to ensuring the public shared in San Diego County’s outdoor riches became a dogged climb of its own.

In eighth grade at an outdoors career conference, the Roosevelt Junior High student joined others asked about what job path they might consider. Some said wardens. Others said rangers. Brown pointed to county lakes manager Orville P. Ball.

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“I said, ‘I want Mr. Ball’s job,’ ” he said. “It was greeted with laughter, but 14 years later I had it.”

At age 15, Brown faced off with the city’s water department about decisions that damaged spawning fish and the false denials that followed. He later forced the hand of that same department, opening Lake Hodges to the public after two decades of closure.

Openings at Barrett Lake and Upper Otay followed.

While shepherding the city’s lakes from 1974 to 2003, Brown launched a program that began in Barrio Logan, collaborating with police to introduce kids in the city to fishing. He wrote a longtime outdoors column in the San Diego Tribune and connected with others by co-hosting a radio show on KCBQ called “The All-Outdoors Radio Network.”

Brown also taught outdoors-related courses as an adjunct professor at San Diego State and the former United States International University.

There’s no one in San Diego I know better than Brown, to be fully transparent. He befriended me without reservation or conditions upon my Union-Tribune arrival. Those same traits and tools, I discovered, helped him to navigate tangled red tape to the recreational benefit of thousands upon thousands across the county.

The number of people Brown has taught fly-fishing techniques to alone staggers. Trust me, there’s no more patient pursuit.

“I really appreciate the recognition,” Brown said of the hall induction. “It’s more like something given to a utility player, who can do quite a bit rather than the guy who hits the most home runs or something.

“The reality is, I feel that I’m in there because there’s a whole bunch of different things on different platforms that I’ve done.”

Humble framing from someone entrusted to oversee and foster, at its zenith, the largest municipally operated reservoir recreation program in the country.

At boat ramps across San Diego County, fishing guides and others lament how the program has wilted without Brown’s visionary, sleeves-rolled leadership. Some talk about the fisherman and game-bird hunter with reverence, like a celebrity dressed in camo.

The road Brown followed seemed somewhat inevitable for a kid who claims he learned to read by thumbing through Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Sports Afield. A few days a week, he would wander to the National History Museum in Balboa Park to soak up information on every animal he could.

An unquenchable fascination with the outdoors fueled advocacy as an adult. Countless scores benefited.

“My approach was, if it’s a public resource, I should find a way to give the public access to it,” Brown said.

Slick, steady footwork indeed.

KENT BROWN

From his seminars, clinics and radio and television shows, he is known across the Western U.S. as one of America’s great ambassadors for the outdoors and fishing. He is a bass tournament champion, and his techniques and public appeal have helped advance the skills for finesse fishing and targeting large fish with swimbaits. In the process, he has fished virtually every bass lake in the Western U.S., a scope of achievement matched by few. Yet, beyond his own accomplishments, Brown has helped organize high school and college angling events, and is master of ceremonies at the largest high school events in California, and several others.

Despite his own accomplishments, his public focus is not on himself, but connecting with each person to help them catch more fish. That success had made him a must-see presenter at the aquarium tank at the International Sportsmen’s Exposition for 30 years, the longest run of thousands of presenters at ISE. He is also the host of ISE’s bass fishing program at all shows across the Western U.S., has been a featured presenter at virtually every sports show in the West beginning with his very first seminar in the early 1980s at the Cow Palace Boat Show. With 77% of the vote, he was this year’s top vote-getter.

TERRY KNIGHT

He is the consummate woodsman, an expert hunter and fisherman in many areas, yet has also reached thousands with his writing, seminars and free skill clinics. As a master outdoorsman, he has guided trips for bass fishing, turkey hunting, deer hunting and pig hunting, as well as nature walks and history tours. The late Rick Copeland (Class of 2008) recognized Knight as the rare talent who was capable of instructing even the most skilled, veteran hunters, and brought him in to teach at seminars hosted by Wilderness Unlimited. Knight is also a historian who has long studied the natural history of California and occasionally gives talks about it, with a specialty of his home water, Clear Lake, Mount Konocti and the surrounding area.

For more than 30 years, Knight has been a staff writer for ESPN Outdoors, Fishing and Hunting News, Western Outdoors, Bay Nature Magazine, Wilderness, Unlimited plus a number of newspapers, and currently writes a twice-weekly column for the Lake County Record Bee and the Ukiah Daily Journal. He has broken the barrier and is able to connect to the nonhunting/nonfishing public by writing about wildlife behavior, the environment, nature and, in turn, how it can affect fish and wildlife.