Monolith(of a)Man WRITTEN BY RYAN GRAY | RYAN@STNONLINE.COM I


Don Harder lives life to the fullest, whether that’s conquering Yosemite’s El Capitan or leading the school bus maintenance operations near Lake Tahoe


t’s apropos that Don Harder took the route less traveled to become a school bus mechanic. Tat’s how he’s lived his entire fantastical life. A movie should be made, and in fact one probably already has him in it, somewhere. Harder carved out his little place


in his own zany world with his bare hands, precariously hanging—and sometimes falling—off the likes of the El Capitan and Half Dome in the Yosemite National Park. It’s in his blood to take the obscure path, literally not knowing which crack or crevice to grab ahold of next. But that makes reaching the summit that much more enjoyable, right? “I misspent a lot of my youth in the ‘70s living in Camp 4 in Yosemite as an itinerant climber,” said Harder, now the fleet manager for Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District in northeast. And he’s not joking. When they


weren’t scaling rock, many in his crew are renowned for their dumpster div- ing and partying, much to the chagrin of the National Park Service and other campers, as is chronicled in the 2014 documentary “Valley Uprising” on the birth and rise of the Yosemite Valley counterculture. Harder is truly the most inter- esting man in the world, or one of them, and as such he speaks with an ease and a straightforwardness that is instantly disarming. He’s your crazy, loud uncle who says inappropriate things at family gath- erings. But everyone adores him for it. Bill Walton comes to mind, and like the former NBA player Harder is larger than life and extremely in- telligent, befitting of his nickname, “Mastadon.” He also has enough years of college under his belt for several degrees, if only the credits transferred, he laments.


28 School Transportation News • AUGUST 2016


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