Comeuppance's

By

Ray Purcell

I lay awake in the darkness of our bedroom. The soft whir of the window fan pulled in the cool evening air. A pale blue glow from the full moon filtered through the window shade, the same as it had through the filmy nylon wall of the tent just last night. I hurt; I hurt like I never have in my entire life. Despite two Naproxyn and, yes, two shoots of tequila, every muscle fiber in my body burned deeply, unremittingly. Burned as though the oxygen rare air at 14,000 feet above sea level had suffocated each muscle cell, starved them of fuel and water, and worked each relentlessly to it's limit- it had.

Eyes open, eyes shut, it didn't matter; the pain remained unchanged, as did the scene that replayed over and over in my minds eye. It was Steve and I, and we stood on the downhill side of the bergshrund that separates the Palisade Glacier from the U-Notch, Polmonium Peak, and North Palisade. We were staring down into the iridescent blue that reflects out of the glacial ice. The chasm of the berg was perhaps ten to fifteen wide but inestimably deep. Seemingly bottomless, but then how deep does something really need to be to feel as though it's usurping your very soul.

As we peered over the lip of the berg it felt as though we were piercing a bubble of coolness, penetrating a threshold, an environment that is always purely cold, always purely silent. About ten-feet down on our side of the bergshrund was a bridge of ice and rock; a bridge of material that had either calved off of the uphill side of the ice, or slid into the maw of the berg and yet defied being swallowed by it- but only just barely. The bridge looked like it could collapse with a thought.

Steve began to look again at the face of ice on the uphill side of the couloir, the U-notch. He had been assessing it since we had arrived, since we began our traverse across the glacier, and, I suspect he had been assessing it since he'd last been on the route one year ago. I watched his light green eyes trace possible paths through the inhomogeneous ice that hung above us and was just off vertical for about fifty-feet. He turned away, his head down, eyes closed. "Does it look like it did last year?" I asked. "No." he replied almost solemnly. I risked the understatement, and leaned more on the pry bar to open the lid of Steve's thoughts. "Does it look harder?" "Yes." Was his economical reply with a barely increased emphasis on the affirmative.

I leaned a measure harder on the pry bar as Steve turned again to regard the ice face. "Can you lead it?" I said softly, as if not wanting the ice to hear and collapse the bridge in defense of it's self. He stood a moment; looking as depthless as the berg it's self, and again tracing a line up the ice. Then he turned away replying. "No fucking way." He had a dejected look as though the berg had absorbed a bit of his soul as well. But I didn't sense the full conviction of resignation in his response. But I wanted to be cautious about encouraging Steve since I wasn't fully divested of a conflict of interest. True, Steve had been here twelve months ago, but I too had walked away, and was aware of my bias.

For me, my first trip to the Palisades had been a Father-and-Son machination. Sean hadn't been particularly interested in participating in his high school graduation, and I had wanted to substitute it with, in my estimation, a more grand, memorable, and perhaps worthy right-of-passage. So began our June of 2002, Instead of High School Graduation Expedition to North Palisade. I had researched the climb and felt that the Class 4 of the U-notch in snow conditions was within my skill level. In the end both Sean and I had ascended past the bergshrund that was then still bridged with snow, but once above found that the snow in the couloir was loose and unconsolidated from several late spring storms. Fortunately we had good mountain-sense and retreated. I latter learned from Doug Robinson, a master of Palisades climbing, that the unconsolidated snow had avalanched several weeks latter. All's well that ends well, but I still wanted comeuppance, and that's all there was to it, not that the choice of partners' didn't matter of course.

Steve, on the other hand, wanted to return to the U-notch and North Palisade to cleanse his palate. In October of last year, while we were climbing Crest Jewel on North Dome in Yosemite, Steve had shared what was still a bitter experience from his own trip to the Palisades. In brief, an incompatible chemistry of partners, the bad humors of altitude, and an unfortunate/unsafe experience with another climbing party on the same route had lead to his retreating after ascending nearly half of the climb. Steve possesses a rare sensibility as a climber and a partner. He prefers to savor the entirety of the experience and will quickly abandon a goal, if he even has goals per say, if the process and/or company turn out to be... unsavory.

Interestingly, almost a year passed from the time that Steve and I had the germ of an idea to return to the Palisades until now. In that interval we had intended to get together and climb more, but for one reason or another didn't, and yet, in retrospect I never had any doubt that we would hold to our commitment to return to the Palisades together. It's an odd characteristic of male relationships, at least in my own experience, that we can say that we are close friends to this person or that and yet time and separation doesn't seem to diminish the quality of the relationship. I don't know if there is an allele on the Y Chromosome that allows us to sustain our friendships along a separate timeline from our day-to-day affairs, or possibly the absence of the redundant X Chromosome that might otherwise prevent it.

True to our word, the Earth's nearly full rotation around the Sun, the gravity of our respective commitments to the fairer sex and family, and other matters of cosmic significance had little sway, give-or-take a few weeks, over this adventure. We had agreed to meet in Lone Pine for dinner, and from there, based on some unquestionable assumption incumbent in the nature our maleness, we would proceed to our climb as both friends and as a team.

As I drove north through the Mojave Desert on Highway 395 my joy at beginning this trip was polluted. I struggled to escape the reflections, if not ruminations, of my troubles at work. I had recently felt as though at every turn an obese sweaty man, in a soiled "wife beater" T-shirt, and badly in need of a bath stood directly in front of me smoking a cheap cigar. Only now, as I tried to leave work behind me, it was though I was trying to swim to the dim light at the surface, but the fat man had a hold of my ankle.

But as soon as I saw Olancha Peak and I was able to kick free of the fat man's grasp. I swam desperately toward the brightening light, my lungs searing, and my head about to explode. In view of Lone Pine Peak I breached through the surface and gasped. Then Steve and I sat down in front of dinner at a Mexican place in Lone Pine. With a steaming plate of Carnitas and a cold beer in front of me I felt like I had rolled over and was floating in the warm sun on a tropical sea. I was exhausted but feeling better. I tried to decide if these abated visions were propitious or if I needed more help than this short adventure could ever provide.

After dinner we drove a short distance west of town to spend the night at Tuttle Creek Campground. Steve and I just sat, bathed in the cool desert breeze, too tired even for small talk, and content in the silence each other's company. That night I slept the sleep of the just. The next morning with the Sun having risen over the Inyo Mtns. We leisurely sorted and distributed gear between our packs, and headed back in to town for a last "cardiac” breakfast.

The drive out of Big Pine was brief and uneventful and we arrived at the trailhead parking area late morning. After last minute agonizing over what was too much or too little, the essential and unessential, not to mention the minimum essential creature comforts, we shouldered backpacks that at first always contain oppressive loads. The packs might have actually been delightful if not for ice tools, ropes, helmets, and all the other weighty accoutrements of even minimalist alpine climbing.

If not for an unusually cool morning, our late start could have meant hiking in sweltering misery, since the first several miles of trail ascend a grade on the sun baked southern exposure of a sage and cactus covered slope. But after we acquired our trail legs we each seemed to slip into our own meditative reverie, or perhaps monastic silent suffering. Soon we came to Second Falls on the North Fork of Big Pine Creek, a cascade that is a delight to the hot and parched hiker, but futile in it's efforts to quench the surrounding xeroscape. It's a labored grunt gaining the height at the falls after the ramp like grade that precedes it. But once above the cataract we began to hike through the cool parkland in a part of the valley called Cienega Mirth. Here the creek becomes a rosary of riffles and pools, and spills languidly past willow, cottonwood, and aspen.

It's a gentle grade through the shaded parkland that surrounds the creek with the occasional glimpse of the harsh mountainous desert that surrounds the creek waters protective influence. This is a valley of the unexpected. It's the second time that I've passed through this valley, and each time I've been pleasantly caught unawares by the unexpected shape of a cabin cloaked in pines. A cabin nearly invisible, with a high pitch gable roof, overhanging full round log rafter beams, and native granite block masonry walls. A cabin that might easily go unnoticed by a distracted or hurried hiker if not for the sign that identifies it as the Wilderness Rangers Cabin.

The sign is somewhat misleading, but only barely so since the Forest Service did purchase the cabin in 1932 as a Backcountry Ranger's residence. The truth that the sign does belay is the cabin's larger historical significance. The cabin was the design of the first African American granted a fellowship in the American Institute of Architects, Paul Revere Williams. The architect may have been better known for any number of award winning celebrity homes that he designed in the 20's and 30's, or for the architecturally stunning Saks Fifth Avenue building on Wilshire Ave. in Beverly Hills. But this rustic elegant cabin that blends into it's landscape so deceptively as to be nearly invisible could not have been a more apropos summer retreat for any other than Lon Chaney, Sr.

We continued past First and Second Lakes, which are rendered their distinctive opalescent tourmaline by the Glacial Flour that mixes with glacial melt to become what else, Glacial Milk. Our plan to spend the night at Third Lake, instead of pushing daylight all the way to Sam Mack Meadows, had all the feeling of an old school, men-in-tweeds, leisurely approach. Which is odd since our pace from the perspective of the mountaineers of the 20’s and 30’s would surely be perceived as absolutely frenetic.

Just as we reached Third Lake we shrugged off our packs to find a spot for the night. I wandered down into a swale between the lake and a trail right into a campsite already occupied. I’ve always felt like I was barging through the door of someone’s home if I blazed into an occupied campsite. So I offered my apologies to the smiling, shaggy blond man with the deeply sun creased face who was sitting casually on a rock. With laconic surfer-like bon-home the “dude” reassured me that no offence was taken, and suggested some more sites further on. I introduced myself to be cordial and Peter Croft returned the courtesy while we shook hands; the texture of his grasp was like gripping tree bark.

Steve and I threw out camp and settled in for an evening in the company of the grandeur of Temple Crag. I had inadvertently economized so tightly on weight that I left my spoon behind, so Steve and I were resigned to sharing his and eat in shifts. However, my insect repellent was unnecessary weight since the mosquito population had long since attended to their reproductive needs, and we delighted in a pestless evening.

The next day ended with a camp set above the still lush carpet of emerald sedge in Sam Mack Meadow. After attending to the needs of camp and our lunch time appetites, we began up the slabs that lead to the terminal moraine below Palisade Glacier. I still remembered the glacier from when I was last here, then it was fresh out of winter. So when we topped the moraine I was halted but it’s end of summer look. Boulders and rock fall had pocked its surface like fallen meteors, and crevasses creased its surface as if raked by the claws of a giant cat. Then, bisecting the curve of the mountainous cirque, my gaze was drawn to the improbable, visually vertical, couloir of the U-notch.

More improbable than the, what I knew to be illusionary, vertical appearance of the ascending ice was the gaping bergshrund. Steve, who’s sense of route finding is far better than mine looked, deflated. We spoke of possibilities, probabilities, and improbabilities, there seemed to be a disconcerting abundance of the latter. But when I threw out alternatives to our primary objective my proposals may as well have sifted into the talus and been carried away with the glacial melt; there was only one thing that either of us were really interested in.

As the day passed we iterated and reiterated our starting time. At first we decided on a five a.m. alpine start, then a party passed our camp that had just descended off of the Swiss Arête on Mt. Sill, and commented how amazingly hard the ice was until well into mid morning. We decided to advance our start to six. Each of us spent that evening and following night a little anxious. Our apprehensions were magnified when a buffeting wind crescendoed through the night. But when Steve’s alarm woke us with the tent still heaving in the gale we resigned ourselves to powers greater that our own intentions. On the verge of fully abandoning any expectations of the day the wind suddenly halted.

Our packs had been prepared the previous evening, so we hurriedly dressed, eating at the same time. We were happy to not have to head out with headlamps and made good time returning to the top of the terminal moraine. Steve picked an economical line that traversed a contour on the talus and scree below Glacier Pass, along the south margin of the cirque. Soon we labored up to the rock glacier, and not much further on the rocks thinned out until there was mostly crusty ice. We stopped to put on our crampons as the slope steepened, and continued up, weaving through the crevasses that cleaved the glacial ice. As we traveled we felt or heard groans and snaps from deep within the glacier beneath our feet.

It was early September but the morning refused to warm. Despite the exertion I kept on all my layers of clothing, and when we reached the base of the U-notch I moved in and out of the shade like a lizard seeking warmth. As Steve agonized over the first crux pitch, I agonized over the prospects of having to turn back. But the technical difficulty of the ice was over my head so I held my thoughts, not that Steve enjoyed the prospect of retreat any more than I did.

Compared to when my son and I had been here in early June, the route vaguely even resembled the same climb. I tried so hard not to influence Steve, one way or the other. So I don’t know if it was something I said or nothing I said, but like a rock breaking free of the headwall Steve began to rack the ice screws and other gear, and I followed by flaking the double ropes.

Once tied into the rope and on belay, he slid down into the berg and crossed the Ice Bridge. He reached high and swung several times with each ice tool for solid purchase. Shards of ice flew and he seemed to confidently step up. With the precision and efficiency that I would have expected from an engineer, or a Canadian, since they’re well known snow and ice savants, he continued, trending up and left over the better quality ice. Six feet up or so Steve placed his first ice screw, after about another eight feet a second screw. Repeating the pattern he continued until he reached a bulge of ice and called for me to watch him- as though I was doing anything but. I obliged with the reassurance that I was totally attentive.

Shortly after Steve had safely pulled over the bulge I heard a sickening crack, as though a log had been snapped through at once over a giant’s knee, and I had the sense that air was being sucked into the berg like a drawn in breath. The Ice Bridge had broken away. Once Steve was secure at the upper anchor I broke the news after timidly peaking over the lip. Not only had the bridge collapsed, there was no sign that it had ever existed. I felt oddly blasé about it especially since I now had no way to cross the berg without jumping.

Of all the crazy shit that I’ve ever done, I can’t even picture what I must have looked like when I yelled “THREE” and leapt the, albeit small gap. I don’t even clearly remember the rope pulling taunt while my chest thudded against the ice. One tool and one crampon had stuck. My second tool was too light and the hard ice made a mockery of my pick placements, bouncing off over and over without a decent stick; I must have looked like I was having a tantrum. Without looking down I began to inch up. Like an Albatross on ice I pulled too hard on my arms and wasted precious oxygen before I started to gasp for air and my arms burned from the lactic acid.

No natural on the ice it took me most of the pitch to figure out a more frugal rhythm. I was hopelessly outgunned by the conditions, so Steve led out again. On the next pitch the angle let up only slightly while the ice became brittle. Shards of ice sprayed down constantly as Steve swung his picks. It’s necessary to stay to the right in the couloir to avoid the typical path of rock fall, but this happened to be where the ice was most dirty and full of small gas bubbles.

I followed the next pitch, passing what I had named Sean’s Ledge from our last trip. Only then, we only needed to easily pull up onto the ledge. This time the ledge was a full six-feet up from the ice. The route continued to trend left as I approached the next belay; it was still before eleven a.m. As I clipped in I asked Steve if he hadn’t said that he recalled the route easing up considerably. He recalled that it had, but now showed no sign that it would.

Looking up at the next pitch there appeared to be a right trending bend in the route. A band of gray ice appeared to angle down to the apex of the bend from the south wall of the couloir, as though channeling water. As I followed the next pitch and approached that same bend, the ice seemed to be wet and warm- I know it sounds nuts to say such a thing about ice. Where the angle of the slope didn’t seem to be letting up much, at least my lighter tool began to get some purchase, instead of dragging like a third leg. But just as one set of conditions seemed to improve, the sun struck the south wall of the couloir and rocks began to whiz and buzz past. Our hearing became heightened for each pop, crack and, whoomp that signified rock fall. At times all I could hear was a warbling zzzz as small stones spun past.

As the next pitch angled back to the right, the north side of the shooting gallery became loose and gravelly, while the margin of ice angled awkwardly up to the left. We had hoped to reach a point where we could climb with a running belay, but never felt comfortable. At about the point where the guns and artillery seemed to let up, large chunks of ice dropped from somewhere on the gully’s North Wall. My partner about became unhelmed by the icefall.

When at last we were probably no more than two pitches from the notch and much easier terrain all but taunted us, we found that we were out of water with not much more than two hours of light. The prospect of having to find our way across the berg in the dark was ample motivation to cast off any purism and call this climb a challenging success. As we prepared to rappel we talked about the satisfaction we had experienced, how scared shitless we’d been, and how we’d never climb anything like this again.

I thought for a moment and looked at Steve and asked if he meant never as in I’ll never drink like that again never; or, never, as in a, I’ll never go through a pregnancy and labor like that again, NEVER. Then it occurred to me that he probably had experienced the former, but certainly hadn’t experienced the latter. Of course where I’ve definitely gone through the former, I’ve only had second hand experience with the consequences of the latter. You know they say there’s a cumulative brain damage from repeated trips to altitude. After that discussion we decided to be really cautious descending.

By the time we’d reached the second to last rappel we were putting on our headlamps. At the last rappel Steve was the first to clear the berg. It was my turn and started to descend. We were both exhausted and using up the last of our adrenaline. I thought I ‘d descended the same line a Steve but found myself on an ice bridge fairly low in the berg and where the lower wall was loose and over hanging- OH SHIT! I had visions of the first ice bridge as it vanished.

I quickly set up a prusik to climb back out, but after talking we decided on a haul-hard-on-the-down-hill-side-of-the-rope-modified- Tyrolean-Traverse. Steve got as far down on the rope as he could, and yarded hard. I don’t weigh much and flipped up like a yo-yo, sliding as planned to the lower wall. I hauled over the lip like an anorexic walrus, and the remaining energy flooded out of me. It’s kind of embarrassing but I think Steve and I even hugged.

We were absolutely giddy as we lopped down the glacier. Earlier that day we had scoped out the same descent over concave terrain toward the medial moraine, and had anticipated little risk of hidden crevasses. True enough none appeared to be hidden, but they were there, deep enough, and hard enough to see in the dim eerie blue of an LED headlamp. The adrenaline began to surge again as we played hopscotch leaping over the open crevasses, with the occasional “poison” square thrown in to keep us agile and alert.

We finally reached the medial moraine and found a runnel of glacier melt. I gulped down gritty swallows of cold, satisfying water. We stowed our crampons, shifted our gear, and stumbled off over the blocky and tippy boulders of the moraine. The Full Moon began to rise and drifted in procession with Mars over the horizon of the southern cirque toward Mt. Sill. It was calm and oddly warm in comparison to the previous night. I turned to look at the high court of the range, and noticed low clouds wrapping around Thunderbolt

and Starlight Peaks. In the moonlight the peaks looked like Fitzroy in Patagonia.

We jumped from boulder to boulder in utter exhaustion, Steve and I alternating from goofy to stuporous. I suggested an “Adventure Race” and Steve said he thought this was one. The medial moraine went on forever, and we fully expected a storm to round out the experience. Rain never came and we dropped down over the terminal moraine. Something primal, primitive must have commanded us, carried us on, since no lucid thought process remained.

We stumbled into camp like zombies, hollow shells; part of us had hidden away or curled up in some dark corner of our minds. I was incapable of linking two words. It was one am, and we had been laboring hard at altitude for eighteen hours. I managed to pump some water, and we crawled into the tent and our sleeping bags. We chewed some sports bars and jerky washed down with careful sips of water, then dropped off into a dead sleep.

I’ve considered myself a climber, and enjoyed all of its variations over the years. I’ve traveled in the alpine environment on foot and on skis, and considered myself a well-rounded alpinist, though by no means expert, or extreme; but this experience tasked me to my limit, physically and emotionally. Sure, I suppose I did get my comeuppance, and perhaps the mountains did too. I suspect that I had returned with a measure too much arrogance and was surely confronted with it and found wanting.

Water is more than a substance and ice is more than a state of matter; it’s a force, an environment of transition. Of course it’s one thing to recognize that awareness on some abstract intellectual level as though safe and cozy in the classroom. It’s quite another to bring that reality home, open your emotions to it, allow yourself be cut and bloodied by it. There is purity about the alpine experience, a real uncontrived opportunity for the assertion of freedom.

One morning I woke up in a starkly beautiful glacial landscape and that night I went to bed at home. For days after I felt like my brain was two paces behind my body from the exhaustion. Though one immediate improvement was that all of my annoyances at work were reduced to silly assed nonsense. But it did disturb me, why I kept going back, back to high wild places; why, like a junky, I craved the ragged edge experience, and the incumbent risk.

My answer came to me one night as I read the account of the adventures of the “Time Traveler” in H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The “Time Traveler” had only spent little time with what the human race will become in the future and found them indolent, and uninquisitive. He speculates that these people’s indifference and apathy is the result of generations of homogenized and increasingly protected existence. Wells’ writes his character with this thought,

As I reflected on the message, I seemed to recall that Wells’ “Time Traveler” too was compelled to return in the end.

September 2003