A Sierra Adventure
By Jeff Putman, a good friend of Clara and Peter’s
Winter 1999-2000
Mount Whitney, Sierra Nevada Mountatin Range
The definitive Sierra trip is merely challenging and fun. Though hardship and misery can be had, the range is most famous for its benign weather, so rare in the world among mountains so stupendous. And so we set out on our climbs not to see just what pain we can endure, but rather just what enjoyment we can conjure. It’s mostly a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and not doing anything too stupid; the pleasure piles up, both in the doing and in the recalling. Choose an appropriate route and the right climbing partners. The Sierra takes care of the rest.
Consider this past Christmas holiday. On our hike up Mt. Williamson, I walked in front much of the time. In the absence of any real trauma, Peter and Clara seized on that fact to create the joke of the week: these mountain trips were ‘fully guided’. With me as a passive non-leader, and on a route that is just above walking, the very term ‘guided’ drips with sarcastic humor. Still, all three of us recognized that without my non-leadership Peter and Clara would never be in such situations as they had found themselves repeatedly within the week: winter hiking at 14,000 feet; bivouacked in a steep hillside camp squeezed between brush, rock and tree; pulling 3rd class moves in a plumb-line gully, even as a technically easier route lay just a few hundred yards away; and now contemplating a winter climb of Mt. Whitney. But the concept of ‘guiding’ anything but a rock route on Whitney is clearly a joke, ripe for mockery. So off we stumbled: me reprising my ‘Bogus Guide’ role, Peter and Clara as ‘Non-Clients’, awake early for a January 2 attempt on the Mountaineer’s Route.
Dawn found us twenty minutes up the Mt. Whitney Trail. If winter puts the wild back in the wilderness, darkness makes it twice over. With just our footsteps to accompany the steady stars overhead, the mystery was back in the Portal. Granite cliffs lost their daylight certainty, looming instead as nameless shapes blocking the horizon. We felt our way up the initial, rocky quarter-mile. The trail seemed convenient in the darkness, yet still more a pathway into the unknown than the dusty freeway of summer. We could’ve been walking into the stars themselves.
Surprisingly, we came across two other dawn hikers where the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek crosses the Whitney Trail. Though headed for Mt. Muir by trail, they stood discussing the nature of the North Fork watershed and climbs. One of them proceeded, as Clara later lamented, ‘to ask us what we were doing, then tell us about things we didn’t want to know.’ Hikers love to provide information, either of the ‘been there, done that’ variety or of the weather, trail, campsite, firewood conditions variety. In the well-meaning guise of ‘helping’, they would kill the wilderness and adventure for everyone. Enthusiasm and friendliness are admirable. In the age of information, so is a secret. The chance for each of us to make a discovery lies in the balance.
We didn’t say much except to wish the hikers well, then dashed off the trail and up along the wilder North Fork. A few decades of heavy use have created a fine trail where, in 1979, I found mystery and a bit of misery that I treasure in the recollection. Now, it is impossible to miss the creek crossing to the Ellerbach Ledges, key to a brush free ascent of the steep lower gorge. Above, the boulder-field traverse to Upper Boy Scout Lake is now littered with on-and-off-route trails, the consequence of thousands of mountaineers like me struggling to find a best path. This time, we took none of the trails, opting for a high traverse on relatively solid talus that avoided the dirt and precarious ball-bearings underlying other’s passage.
With mounting surprise, we passed a tent on a knoll above one lake, a tent just down from the outlet of a higher lake, and a party of four descending early from what had to have been a frozen higher lake. With our three, that makes ten or more people, in dead winter, in a somewhat obscure drainage, on the highest peak in America outside Alaska. Far from wreaking my ‘wilderness experience’, it instead filled me with pride that this many pathetic Americans were mountaineers, capable of climbing-by choice even!-into these cold conditions. I didn’t need to talk with any of them. Neither did Peter or Clara. Maintaining at least the veneer of this wilderness outing still seemed important. But neither did I begrudge them this intrusion into our adventure.
The temperature grew colder, especially in the small lake basins, as we hurriedly gained altitude. Cresting a ridge after almost three hours, we stopped into a sun-drenched hanging valley filled with morainal rubble. At its head lay the base of the great east faces of Whitney and its satellites. We took an extended break, backs against a sunny granite block. Between bites of Cheryl’s banana bread and swigs of cold water, we listened and looked.
A distant roar drifted our way. Up on the heights, pale orange wispy clouds sprinted across the sky, just high enough to avoid clawing summits. Even after 25 years roaming the Eastern Sierra, I am still too stubborn to take that roar seriously. We even commented about the wind and clouds, but none of us thought much of it. I put another layer on my hands and tried to kick the cold out of my toes, but other than that it was onward and upward.
Thirty minutes later we entered the windstorm and the world turned.
At 13,000 feet Peter paused for a difficult bathroom stop, buffeted by strong gusts. We chided him for his poor timing. I put on my gaiters, bringing immediate warmth to my legs though freezing my fingers in the process. Just why I was up here in thin cotton pants and Lycra tights? The pants were already used when I picked them up at the thrift store. The tights provided dubious insulation. About two vertical miles below, my warm wool pants and tough wind-blocking pants lay snug in some anonymous box in a dim recess of my garage. If only I’d unpacked them in September, before a second avalanche of moving boxes buried them alive!
Already on this day we had laughed at each other’s decidedly low-tech approach. All three of us wore the perfect clothing…for summer. Peter’s thin jacket promised him nothing but a handy parachute should the wind launch him off the summit. Clara had to borrow gloves; I proudly handed her the ones I use when cycling to school on cold
mornings. She did have a fine cycling jacket on, but she confidently told us she was ‘relying on my body fat today’, maintaining that she had more than Peter and I combined. We allowed her this deception, despite the fact that her athlete’s body might warm her for an hour on a balmy autumn noon.
A few hundred feet higher took us into the deep shadow of Whitney’s east buttress. The Mountaineer’s Route gully transformed into a dark chasm and the top seemed to retreat even as we ascended. Halfway up, our progress stalled as the wind-that roar!-dove down off the heights, stood us upright, and threatened to topple us. As loose, windblown gravel stung our faces, we bent down to avoid the worst of it. Lulls-lasting a minute or less-allowed for quick scrambles from anchor rock to anchor rock. But when the sound of jumbo jets came down off the ridges, it was time to curl up into a ball and batten down the hatches. The ensuing blast lasted up to a half minute. Sometimes, we would scurry up on all fours as the gust slackened, only to get caught out, almost as if the mountain had spied us, taken another deep breath, and blown with purpose. We didn’t have to talk about it. Knowing what to do during and between the gusts was primal, though a million years of evolution had killed a more prudent response: flight.
The funky transition from a steep snow-patch to a sloping granite slab slowed us enough to bring on the cold. As bogus guide, I had ignored both Peter and Clara’s physical states. Why not? Clara’s already medaled twice in the Olympics, with 10 years of the hardest physical and mental exertion among elite athletes already behind her. And Peter’s a veteran of more foot and saddle miles than any 50 of my friends and I put together. But they clearly suffered from Non-Client’s Syndrome, accepting as gospel anything I did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say. And I was still hiding my invisible leadership behind invincible sunglasses. Now I was good and cold, but hungry for the top. Was the summit important to them? I didn’t ask.
At the narrow Col that marks the top of the Mountaineer’s Route gully, we traded ski poles for ice axes. I removed Peter’s axe from his pack as he huddled behind a sheltering rock. I did not see his face. Calmly bogus, maybe even Eastern Bloc Bogus, I didn’t even ask him how he was doing. It’s a good thing for my summit hopes too. If I hadn’t been so bogus, Peter would have told me that he was shivering from his very core. I would have turned us away from the summit and headed for the calmer weather a thousand feet below.
Instead, we headed out across the guidebook’s ‘300 yard traverse’ across the dark north face. A bit of a trail here and there kept my hopes up, especially since the face drops away somewhat steeply. In dry conditions loose rock would arrest a fall within a dozen yards. Snow-covered it would take a self-arrest to end the plunge. Ice-covered, the slope would kiss you goodbye.
I gave Peter and Clara just enough ice-axe instruction to get them in trouble, not expecting to encounter anything serious in this drought year. It was a Bogus Guide’s sad rationalization. I counted instead on their physical and mental toughness and on their faith in me as their friend. But a ways out we approached a sick tongue of year-old ice, glaring and foul. Ignoring a logical descent to a dry break in the ice (Descent? No way! It’s up, always up!), I lead our frigid little party to where the ice tongue narrowed to a few yards wide. A hand traverse from a solid horizontal crack allowed us to stretch across the ice, pointy toed, to solid ground. The Non-Clients later maintained they were in over their heads, but I could tell from my experienced Bogus Guide eyes that they were merely doing things they had never done before. There’s a world of difference between the two.
Another hundred yards put us against the final obstacle: ten feet of ice barring easy ground above. Oblivious to cold, to wind, to the drop, to Peter or Clara’s needs, I blithely placed right foot on the tip of a rock protruding from the ice sheet. Ironic, and not lost on me even at the time: and iceberg of rock in a sea of ice. Left foot reached into the cleft between ice and another boulder. Right hand reached up to find one of those rewards that makes 3rd class climbing so appealing: The Always There When You Need It Handhold. One pull-up and it was all over. Clara, then Peter, repeated the moves with Non-Client aplomb.
We gathered above, then marched onto the summit plateau. Five minutes later, we strode onto the summit, which for me meant the Summit Hut. Nothing could have kept me from that door, those four stone walls, that solid roof, the calm within the storm.
Time: 1:12p.m.
Peter and I dropped packs to the floor, pulled out water and food. We could barely talk or eat, faces solid from cold. As I struggled to swallow crackers and 33 degree water, Peter asked if anyone else was cold. Only then did I notice my own deep shiver. Five layers on top, two below, two on my head, and still the shivers. It would’ve scared me if I could have imagined myself in trouble, but I’ve never been there and thus couldn’t picture it. Only a Bogus Guide could feel so invulnerable, not from having entered the trap and escaped, but from having never been trapped at all.
Clara begged off Peter’s offer of water. As Bogus Guide, I demanded that she drink some because it would be two hours before we would again be at a suitable stopping place, somewhere below the wind. She did, but the look on her face said she was doing it out of polite compliance, not through understanding, much less need or common sense. She was on auto pilot. I figured she’d been there before, auto piloting through some difficult stage race in the Alps. This terrain was different, but I trusted her reaction to suffice. We all stood, shifting from one foot to the other, waving arms, shrugging, eating a few miserable bites. Pack up, leave a few crackers on the window sill for the mice, check the clothing, go to the door.
Time: 1:28pm
Seven hours up. A 6,000 foot descent still to go. Darkness sure to fall before we’re down. A 13-hour day, intense from beginning to end.
And sixteen minutes on top. Does anybody still think we climb to get to the summit? In best Zen style, the path overwhelms the destination. Getting there is the fun, the discipline, the thrill, the friend-maker. The top is just a place that prevents climbing higher. That and it was just too damn cold.
Peter and I walked toward the East Face precipice. We stopped short, lest a gust blow us into the nadir, nodded at one another, and headed back down the plateau. As summit celebrations go, it wasn’t much. But everybody knows the summit is just halfway on most climbs. Our non-celebration was tacit agreement that the getting down, and soon, was much more important.
Below, we reversed the moves down onto the North Face, easily reversed the traverse by heading low to the dry passage I’d ignored on the ascent, stowed ice axes under our shoulder straps, and started down the gully. Big gusts still blew us about. At one point, I dropped my ski pole; it bounced once, caught the wind, and flew a hundred yards down-gully. Later, I was made to wonder who the leader of this pathetic little party was as a strong gust caught Peter full and blew him over when he finally stopped in the ensuing gravel slide, he was sprawled in front and leading me down the gully, though I was loathe to copy his chosen technique.
Halfway down the gully, I spied a route that wrapped to the south, out of the worst of the wind tunnel. We ended up on 3rd class ground, steep for my neophyte Non-Clients, but nothing they couldn’t easily handle. At least now we could hear each other talk. Another 500 feet and we could relax. A further half-hour’s march revealed a dangerous stumbling, a lack of concentration, and a knack for incredibly stupid trail finding on my part. I shrugged it off as uncommon, a temporary letdown in concentration in the wake of the difficulties above. Peter and Clara politely allowed me this folly, only occasionally pointing out which way the trail went as I zigzagged drunkenly across the moraine. We stopped trailside to break the ice out of the mouth of our water bottles, munch some snacks, and consider the day.
Elation. We three were filled, enough so that our location-three hours from the truck, with one hour of daylight left-didn’t faze us. Rather, the upcoming nighttime ordeal already felt like a perfectly fitting conclusion to our little epic, and accepted as such. So we didn’t rush. Clara lead out along the trail, then I took over for the slab, brush, and talus descent to the lower lakes.
Clara remarked that it was so hot down near the lake that she thought she might throw up. At this point we almost brought into her body-fat theory, but Peter and I, too, shed layers to accommodate the relative warmth of getting out of the -40 degree wind chill. Our drinking water remained frozen, gossamer sheets of ice cracking as we squeezed the bottles.
At the lip of the final precipice, I pulled out a cell phone to call Cheryl down in town. Oh, the compromises required to maintain a relationship! Checking in with Sweetie so she won’t panic as darkness falls is one of them, and after 10 years I am getting neither better at it nor inured to the idea. I’d already heard Clara talk scathingly about the blathering herd of cell phone junkies atop Whitney, spewing out word of conquest one late summer day a few years prior. Naturally, I asked her to make the call to Cheryl. She demurred.
“How far out are you?” Cheryl asked.
“A few thousand feet above the truck,” I answered.
“How long will it take you?”
“About two hours.”
“It’s ten after five now, so you’ll be home around 7:10?”
“God, I don’t know! It’ll be a few hours.”
“Do you have flashlights?” Of course, she always asks the question I can’t honestly answer. My idea of the ten essentials is count all fingers and toes and divide by two.
“We have what we need. See you soon. Bye-bye.”
The unconditional passion of her concern has yet to penetrate the impeccable logic of my independence. Leave me my mountains, at least! I remain ungrateful, though not proud of it, and unlikely to change.
Almost two hours to the minute, as it turns out, we emerged onto the pavement at my truck. In our wake lay 120 minutes of concentration so total as to wipe out the world. All that had existed was each hiker’s personal tunnel of vision and strenuous recollections of the route from that morning. I almost resented the stray light from Peter and Clara’s flashlights, which provided security at the expense of night vision. I made a few mistakes there on the point, but we easily negotiated the potential death falls along the Ellerbach Ledges, the ice flows at the North Fork creek crossing, and the maze of house-sized boulders near the junction with the Whitney Trail. I rather liked this part of the small epic, where acceptance of the situation created an opening for inner strength, muscle memory, and years of mountain travel to bust through and take care of the inert Me.
Shattered, sprawled out on the carpeted floor: the last unmasking of the Bogus Guide comes when the neo-Sherpani girlfriend feeds, bathes and lays to rest the crippled guide…all in plain view of the Non-Clients! Oh, well, it fell to me to be ready to teach at the high school the next morning. Ha! Yet another Bogus Guide excuse!
As for my Non-Clients, I can only say they were magnificent. My prior, first-hand knowledge of their physical strength and mental toughness meant I never worried once all day and night long. It was as I expected: a long walk with friends, among the mountains of our dreams. Truly, a Bogus Guide’s greatest desire fulfilled.
