TOP VOLUNTEER

 For ten years, Jeff Frome (pronounced Fro-me) was the “Beer Man,” tapping donated Tioga-Sequoia Brewing kegs at parties for his drunken climbing buddies in Yosemite, causing headaches for National Park Service staff. 

“It was fun… it was too much fun,” he said. “We had to stop it; we were too drunk. I mean, they gave a ticket to somebody on a bicycle.” 

When I met Frome on Tuesday, his long white beard spilled out from under a sun-spotted baseball hat. He had just been chosen as a recipient of the 2024 Yosemite Volunteer of the Year Award. 

Frome has been a climber his whole life, even in the sixties, when “if you walked around with a rope, people would look sideways at you.” He attended many events in Yosemite and became friends with Ken Yager, who was a climbing guide at the time. 

In 2004, during a guiding trip, Yager saw that someone had pooped on a rock leading up a bouldering route. 

“There was poop everywhere because they didn’t have a lot of bathrooms on the roads going into the valley,” Frome said. “It was disgusting.” 

Outraged, Yager launched an annual campaign to clean up the park – what’s now known as the Yosemite FaceLift program. The effort began small, just an assembly of climbing guides, but has since grown to become one of the largest volunteer efforts in the National Park system. 

Frome got involved in the program’s third year. The ragtag group of climbers would gather, pick up waste, and then throw big parties. 

“When we started, we weren’t very sophisticated,” he said. “We picked [poop] up with our pickers and put it in our trash bags; when we had to sort the trash, it was really bad.” 

Early on, the group “deep cleaned” the park, walking every road and picking up trash, including leftover logging cables, old asphalt, and pieces of metal way out in the woods. 

The NPS was involved from the start, but the staff initially had a strained relationship with the rock climbers, likely due to those rowdy parties, Frome said. That conflict posed a challenge for the FaceLift volunteers. In fact, the NPS almost stopped the movement altogether multiple times. 

One issue was that the NPS considers anything over 50 years old on the ground in a National Park to be an artifact, which is protected under federal law. So FaceLift volunteers started accidentally picking up “artifacts,” Frome explained. 

Because archaeology was so important to the NPS, the staff threatened to end the program. As a career forester with a background in archaeology, Frome began educating each volunteer on leaving artifacts behind. 

Slowly, the rapport began to improve. “I poured beer with the superintendent on multiple occasions,” Frome said. They all had the same goal, ultimately: it’s all about the park. 

The FaceLift gatherings look different today than they did when Frome got involved in the 2000s. For one thing, there were fewer people back then. 

“In the evenings, we’d have these presentations with the best climbers in the world, and there were only like 30 or 40 of us sitting in the auditorium,” he said. 

Over time, those evening gatherings had a line out the door, and the fire department had to regulate the number of people allowed in. As the program grew, sponsorships came in, and they started holding a raffle. 

They also began regulating the amount of beer people could drink and replaced the kegs with cans. 

“I’m disappointed; I liked the kegs,” Frome said, reminiscing. There are now FaceLift days in mountain towns and national parks all over the country, including Joshua Tree National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. 

The award ceremony was held outside, with Frome’s wife, daughter, son, and grandchildren in attendance. It was a great honor to be recognized. 

He and his friends were in the right place at the right time to create something special, he said. The core group is aging. Some have died, some are in poor health, and some just can’t make it anymore. But some, like Frome, are still going year after year. 

Now, they’re starting to pass the torch to younger generations. He wiped a tear from his eye and told me about his son, who makes custom surfboards that he raffles off at the FaceLift functions. 

“We need to get new blood in there,” he said. “God, we’re gonna make it work; it’s gonna keep going.” 

Frome moved permanently to Mammoth Lakes twelve years ago in retirement. He quickly became an active volunteer for Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra and started participating in shows through the Sierra Classic Theatre Company. 

“I’m obsessive-compulsive,” he said. “So when I involve myself in something, I do it head over heels.” 

Frome is currently rehearsing for the Sierra Classic Theatre Company’s annual Murder Mystery, which opens on November 7. 

He also contributes to the arts financially, thanks to a foundation his father started. His family has a lucrative business owning and managing industrial property in Southern California, which has allowed him to support local organizations. 

Most of his contributions go toward disabled sports, the two theater groups in town, and the Mono Arts Council. 

“I’m pretty happy,” Frome told me at the end of our interview. “I have managed to get a lot done in my life.” 

Oh! And an update on the Yosemite poop – it’s still a problem, but not as pervasive, Frome said. Education has helped mitigate the issue.