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to CCC HomepageI had vowed to spend the psuedo-Millenium in the mountains somewhere, but it didn't seem likely I could actually be doing the best thing, climbing. Then just after Christmas Sean Ward e-mailed the list: with Tioga Pass still open, who would like to go do South Crack on Stately Pleasure Dome?
Selection of team, of course, was all important. Sean, arguably the best all round climber in Richmond, California, was seeking a high-powered assortment of specialties and temperaments. He had to settle for the one other person who could get away, myself, best known for the frequency and variety of my unplanned bivouacs.
The upshot was that while sensible people were sleeping it off in the gloaming on New Year's Day, Sean and I were tooling east on 120, imagining a write-up in old-fashioned expedition style...
Though confident of our abilities, we could not silence the questions churning in our minds. Were we headed for a first New Year 's Day ascent, even a first winter ascent? (If such a thing has been done before, the AAJ says nothing about it.) How would we deal with the utter solitude on a route where one expects a friendly and supportive chatter in all the accents of Europe ( " Your partenaire, he is going to be foraiver, hein? "). Would we come back with all segments of all digits? What about the ice bulge? As Daumal says, each of us swallowed his saliva in silence.
When we parked at the base of Stately Pleasure Dome, the morning was gray and cloudy and cold enough to be daunting but not cold enough to get us off the hook. (The nearby johns, though, were at 20 degrees Kelvin.) Sean had made up some commemorative signs, and we snapped some first pictures beside the car, to have a record, just in case. We started up the hill about 11:00.
Now it is a cruel fact about South Crack that the two most interesting sections are the second pitch, with its skinny cracks, and the fourth, with its friction: so that the same person will lead both unless there 's an order switch. In what had the potential of being the expedition's first crisis, I volunteered Sean for the crack because I'd never led the friction and because the crack is harder. Characteristically, he did not demur. When the time came, he led out smartly, occasionully extracting a hand from the cleft to shake some warming blood into it. One 's hands indeed got pale and chilly, a sort of being-pumped in reverse.
Following the pitch, I cursed the fingerless gloves I'd bought the day before. No good-they loused up friction, of course, and even got in the way of the crack work. Lesson learned. Fortunately, it wasn't that cold, and we even were getting some sun.
At the top of the pitch I congratulated Sean and added hopefully, "Maybe we should be thinking about bivouacking9" But I had to admit it was still a little early.
Soon I was on all fours on the delightful friction pitch, balancing and splaying and shaking out my hands whenever I felt secure. (Gloves gone, of course.) Then the long ramp; then the Exit Crack, and no ice bulge in sight.
We did not linger long at the top. The day was turning on us, darkening to gray; the wind was cutting through our frail defenses. Our window of good weather was closing. We had cut it very fine. In gathering gloom, we hurried down to the rap bolts and launched into the void. Miraculously, anchors materialized when we needed them all the way down. Scarcely had we retrieved the ropes when the storm was upon us.
--Well, it was actually upon us about six hours later. In the meantime, Sean skated in the fog on Tenaya Lake, and wound up modeling Patagonia gear for a freelance photographer. But eating dinner in Mammoth Lakes, we looked out the window and saw the air full of heavy flakes. Was it a front from the west, or just a Tonopah Low? Thinking it might be well to get back over the pass, we headed north-and found it already closed.
Fine, we'd been thinking of ice climbing anyway. Next day at June Lake, as I followed Sean up our first pitch, one of my crampons broke. I had to laugh: this was the same pair I'd been wearing in 1992, when I met a falling rock on the Dana Couloir, and I hadn't used them (or touched ice) since. If they had given up the ghost 30 minutes earlier in their career, David Sanger and I would have aborted the Dana climb, and I'd still have the knee I was born with.
Today, in order to keep climbing, we switched to a thin mixed pitch where I could use one booted foot: demanding and fascinating. Ice climbing, yes! I was so psyched that I bought a pair of spiffy new crampons off a fellow who was hawking them in the parking lot (payment in kind for working at a gear store, he said. Of course, maybe he was a burglar.) All the long way home over Carson, I imagined myselfbreaking the news to various people I'd told not to worry: even if I was climbing again, it wouldn't be ice climbing.
(Uh-uh. My artificial knee didn't like the jarring from front-pointing, and punished me with a month of pain and swelling. So I'm looking to unload a pair of Black Diamond Switchblade crampons, for the $90 I paid. In the stores I see they've been superseded by the similar Mako, which goes for $180. I have a Lowe ratcheting screw and some other ice items to dispose of too.)
But that was later. Purple prose aside, the weekend was one
of the half-dozen best climbing outings of my life. Thanks, Sean!
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