Mountaineering Achievements
Brower came to the environmental movement as a result of his interest in mountaineering. In 1933, Brower spent seven weeks in the High Sierra with George Rockwood. After a close call with a loose rock while climbing in the Palisades, he met Norman Clyde in the wilderness, who gave him some valuable climbing lessons. On that trip he also met Hervey Voge, who persuaded him to join the Sierra Club. On May 18, 1934, along with Voge, he began a ten-week climbing trip through the High Sierra, to survey climbing routes and maintain mountaineering records for the club. Previously, they had established several food caches along their planned route, which began at Onion Valley and ended at Tuolumne Meadows. In all, the pair climbed 63 peaks on this trip, including 32 first ascents. On the first day, they climbed Mount Tyndall, Mount Williamson, and Mount Barnard. From June 23 to 26 the pair made eight first ascents in the Devils Crags along with Norman Clyde, and also climbed Mount Agassiz. Clyde called the Devils Crag climbs "one of the most remarkable mountaineering feats ever accomplished in the United States". In the Palisades range, the pair climbed Thunderbolt Peak, traversed to North Palisade by way of Starlight Peak, and descended the U-Notch Couloir. In the Sawtooth Range, they climbed The Doodad, the West Tooth, and Matterhorn Peak.
Following a failed attempt in 1935 to make the first ascent of the remote, icy Mount Waddington in British Columbia, with a Sierra Club group, Brower added winter climbing to his expertise and made multiple first winter ascents of peaks in the Sierra Nevada.
From October 9 to 12, 1939, a Sierra Club climbing team including Brower, along with Bestor Robinson, Raffi Bedayn, and John Dyer, completed the first ascent of Shiprock, the erosional remnant of the throat of a volcano with nearly vertical walls on the Navajo reservation in northwestern New Mexico. This climb, rated YDS III, 5.7 A2, was the first in the United States to use expansion bolts for protection.
Twelve previous attempts on Shiprock had failed, and it was known as "the last great American climbing problem". The Brower party's success was described as an "outstanding effort" by "probably the only group on the continent capable of making the climb".
Brower made the first ascent of seventy routes in Yosemite and elsewhere in the western United States.
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