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.

NORMAN CLYDE

This 20th-century mountaineer (1885-1972) achieved more than 130 first ascents, many in California's high Sierra and Yosemite. He set a speed climbing record on Mount Shasta in 1923, where he climbed from Horse Camp (at 8,000 feet) to the summit (14,179 feet) in 3 hours and 17 minutes. In 1925, he completed 53 climbs in the Sierra Nevada. Clyde has 1,467 articles archived at the Bancroft Library at the UC-Berkeley. He was a guide, naturalist and author.

"In my 80s, I still prefer to sleep outside at my ranch house, in my sleeping bag, not a bed," said Clyde, according to the Bancroft Library.

In 2018, Tapon returned to his California home after a series of expeditions in which he hiked 10,000 miles, including 2,000 miles across Madagascar, and climbed 50 of 54 of Africa’s highest peaks. Tapon has traveled to more than 100 countries and has written two books, “Hike Your Own Hike,” from 2006, and “The Hidden Europe: What Europeans Can Teach Us,” in 2012.

“The whole five years in Africa, it cost me $110,000,” he said. “It’s a lot of money, it’s true, but a lot of people could afford to do this if they wanted to. I camp, I live simply, buy street food. My biggest expense was a reliable 4x4 pick-up truck to get around Africa.”

GALEN CLARK

Clark (1814-1910) is best known for his discovery of the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees and for his role as guardian of Yosemite National Park for 21 years. In 1853, Clark had tuberculosis and doctors gave him six months to live. He then moved to the Wawona area of Yosemite as a homesteader. His lungs healed and he subsequently explored and climbed much of what became Yosemite National Park.

Upon his discovery of the Mariposa Grove, Clark persuaded Congress to pass the Yosemite Grant, which provided first-of-a-kind park-like protection for the Mariposa Grove. Clark then became the first civilian ranger of Yosemite.

He ran a hotel in Wawona and wrote three books, including "Indians of the Yosemite" (1904) and "The Yosemite Valley" (1910). After being told he would die a young man, he lived to be 96 and is buried in the Yosemite Cemetery. Said Clark: "I went to the mountains to take my chances of dying or growing better, which I thought were about even."

BILL KARR

Some 400,000 youth and their parents have taken part in Karr's "Youth Outdoor Fair" and "Shoot For the Future" programs. Karr invented programs offering hands-on outdoor experiences for kids with their parents, along with 25,000 giveaways. It is little known that Karr has never been paid a cent for the thousands of hours of work required to produce the events. He is the only two-time winner of the Public Service Recognition Award, honored by the Outdoor Writers Association of California, OWAC's most prestigious award.

Karr is better known as the Northern California editor of Western Outdoor News, but he also led a drive to save the fisheries of the Salton Sea. He has managed duck clubs and wildlife preserves and is an expert woodsman, hunter and offshore angler. His adventures span the hemisphere and beyond, and he often hosts groups and introduces them to world-class outdoor experiences. He fishes, boats, hunts or camps some 125 to 150 days per year -- and no one in the past generation has shared this world with more youngsters.

RAY CANNON

“Man’s quest for the goal of complete pleasure can be achieved. But it is seldom blundered into.”

That is the opening of Raymond Cannon’s book “How to Fish the Pacific Coast.” Sunset Publishing released it in 1954 to enormous acclaim. Cannon’s book sold out of its first printing in two months and is one of a handful of epic outdoors books published in the last century. The book helped define Cannon as a preeminent communicator and fishing legend across the western United States.

Ray Cannon lived in Southern California and Baja, Mexico. He became well known as the founding outdoors columnist for Western Outdoor News out of Huntington Beach. He evolved into legendary status for his columns on Baja, as well as the success of “How to Fish the Pacific Coast” in the 1950s and beyond. Cannon developed a vast following across the world of the outdoors and appeared across Southern California to draw crowds to learn his expertise. He was an expert angler with a reach that spanned from Mexico to California, Oregon, Washington, Canada and Alaska, and he inspired a generation of anglers to follow and take part in his adventures.

Cannon’s book is a rare, outdoors classic. It was written with great style and a unique mastery of the sport. Rare, well-thumbed copies are found online or in bookshops occasionally, thereafter to be treasured as one of the finest outdoors books ever published. He covered the Pacific coast from Baja north to Alaska, with many of his favorite spots detailed along the entire route. His 150-page “Fish Identification” details 203 species that include: names, drawings, size, color, range, bait, tackle, and whether common or rare. In the character of the era, he referred to a Great white shark as a “Man-eater.”

Though not as famous as John Muir, Raymond Cannon held similar renown among anglers as the poetic scribe of Southern California and Baja waters.

TOM STIENSTRA

An American author, outdoorsman and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Tom Stienstra is the consummate outdoorsman and conservationists. He has written numerous guidebooks on the California outdoors including Moon's California Camping, the best-selling and longest running outdoor guidebook series in America. His Moon Pacific Northwest Camping is an Oregon best seller.

In 2018, the Outdoor Writers Association of America awarded Stienstra 1st Place, Outdoor Recreation Photo of the Year. In 2017, the National Academy of Television awarded the Emmy for Health, Science and Environment Special to Stienstra and co-producer Jim Schlosser for their PBS Special, "The Mighty T -- the Tuolumne River." The PBS Special also won the President's Award from the Outdoor Writers Association of America as the best outdoors television show of any kind for the year in America. At the OWAA annual conference, Stienstra was the organization's only member recognized for first-place awards in newspaper, radio and television.

In 2015, Stienstra became America's first outdoors writer to win "The President's Award" as "Best of the Best" for the fourth time from OWAA, when he won best story of the year in the Newspaper Newspaper/Website division at the organization's annual awards banquet in Knoxville. The winning entry was “Paddling with giants,” published in the August 5, 2014 editions of the San Francisco Chronicle. To become a finalist for the President's Award, that story won first place in the Outdoor Fun and Adventure Category of the Newspaper/Website Contest. He is one of OWAA's most awarded members, and in 2009, he won first place for best outdoors column in America.

JOHN MUIR

Posthumous

John Muir (1838 – 1914), also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks", he was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America.

 His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization.

 In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, "The Treasures of the Yosemite" and "Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park"; this helped support the push for U.S. Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.

 John Muir has been considered "an inspiration to both Scots and Americans." Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity", both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he has often been quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world", writes Holmes.

 Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for many people, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism".  403  On April 21, 2013, the first John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.

JOHN POIMIROO

A publicist of public lands and promoter of all things Californian, this El Dorado Hills resident is California’s ambassador to the outdoors. As editor of CaliforniaFallColor.com John Poimiroo chronicled fall color across the state introducing hundreds of thousands to California's most colorful season. As state tourism director in the '90s and an outdoor and travel writer/photographer thereafter, he has promoted every corner of California.  

The son of a Yosemite ski patroller, he followed in his father's tracks as Director of the Olympic Valley Ski Patrol where he oversaw patrolling at the last ski jump held on the Olympic jumping hill. He now directs the American River Bike Patrol (the nation’s best bike patrol) and is a ski patroller at Donner Ski Ranch. He has skied across the Sierra, bicycled the length of California, fished many of its streams and lakes, and trekked throughout Yosemite National Park and countless California State Parks. 

He's directed communications at Squaw Valley (now Palisades at Tahoe) and at operations serving Yosemite NP, Redwoods Nat'l and State Parks, Angel Island SP,  Lassen Volcanic NP, and Ski Lake Tahoe. Poimiroo was a founder of the California Roundtable on Recreation, Parks and Tourism, the Western States Tourism Policy Council, the National Parks Promotion Council and was a principal in establishing the California Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights.

Among his over 70 lifetime awards for writing and photography, he was twice named Writer of the Year by the Outdoor Writers Association of California, received an SATW Bill Muster Award for travel photography and an SATW Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for his website, CaliforniaFallColor.com (the nation’s highest awards in travel and outdoor photography and writing).

He explains his passion for California's outdoors by saying, “I travel California’s byways and back roads, photographing and documenting glory previously unimagined in a journey to inform others about California’s wonders.”