Adventure Why?

I have a whole thing written on adventure someplace I will try to dredge up and send it along. It was written 15 years ago when I discovered some of this. I guess I wrote about this about 20 years ago too when I first realized that there was this alternate reality but did not know how to describe it except through terms of the road people I met while traveling around the country on my bicycle. That was the first place I learned to do this sort of thing. Adventure is different from just regular living or vacation or most anything a person normally does. When a person sets out on an adventure they often have a basic goal in mine and that keeps them moving in a direction even if it some lose direction. I have had friends who have ridden bicycles around the world, "traveled" around the world, traveled the western hemisphere, traveled the Americas, spent two years living and working in tropical research stations, climbing the highest peaks on the seven continents, and other lofty goals. Sometimes that goal can change. The purpose of the adventure is to experience being alive, all of the sensations that go along with it and to witness everything in life that people miss by living day to day in the life of time. On an adventure a person inhales up every minute like it was their last by putting them self into situations for which they are ill prepared, have no idea of the outcome, and that they leaves the ending up to the gods discretion. Everyday the sun comes up and the sun goes down, but what goes on in between is up for grabs. On the adventure all you can count on is the passing of one day to the next. Every emotion is valued and expected. Pain, and pleasure, comfort and torture, aggravation and tranquility are all valid and all expected and equally welcomed on an adventure. Nothing is run away from. Time doesn’t matter it moves differently.

When I heard about the Aconcagua trip I thought I didn’t want to do it because I really don’t like heights. I don’t like getting up on a roof. I dream about climbing, about being up on mountains and cliffs, about jumping off and flying or falling. I dream about trying to go up boulder cliffs. I like the physical challenge of climbing but I am also attracted to the terror I have of heights. I am attracted to climbing. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame and find myself hanging out on cliffs or out on trails that fade into little shelves of broken rock stuck to the edge of the face of a crumbly cliff hanging out over a 500 foot drop wondering how did I get myself into this mess and why am I here? I am scared and shaking at that point and if I think about the height and the fall and the rock, I can’t really go on. I have been at that point and not been able to go on. If I couldn’t go back what is left? Just stay there and die? Not an option. I always have gone on, pushed myself past that point of terror and somehow did what I couldn't do, which was often stupid and finished the "trail" or climb.

I was hiking/climbing with my brother and one other guy, Eric, in the Sierra Mountains right after this proposal for the trip to Aconcagua to see if I had it in me to really do a crazy climb. This was a summer hike of a couple of weeks out of Kings Canyon with a few Sierra Peaks involved. These are some of the 214 highest of most prominent peaks in the Sierra Mountains that have Journals at the top that people climb and then sign in to say they have been there. We got hung out on the wrong part of a peak and Eric, who was leading and an excellent climber, technical climber and all (I am not a technical climber V., just barely a scrambler IV. and a whimpy one at that). We got to a place where there was no way up but to trick out this one part. We didn’t have any equipment because all of the climbing was class IV or less. Here at this place we really needed protection, but hand none and the rock was all crumbly and shitty. It was beyond my capacity to really do as far as I was concerned. Eric knew I was tentative about going up but saw no other alternative except going back which was way to long a hike. Dennis was ok with it, he has done more than I have and isn’t such a whimp with heights. This is before I had done any climbs really when I was seeing if I had it in me to do Aconcagua. Eric scrambled up the first pitch to a safe ledge. Dennis made it up and Eric came down to help me. I started up scared to death and shaking, literally shaking the rock lose that I was holding onto. Eric said he learned to climb by climbing with his girl friend who is a dancer. She gave him the perspective of climbing as a dance. Eric said think of the climb differently. It’s a dance with the rock. Step, pull, look where your foot will go because the rock is shitty and is breaking, swing your foot before it breaks and while your foot is moving find the next hand hold. When you foot finds a perch start moving a hand and looking for a hand hold. Keep moving and shifting the weight moving up the hill and keeping the weight moving up and around to another place feeling the rock to keep the part that the breaking from letting go while another hand or foot is in transition. Dance with the rock, hear the music, feel the rhythm, move with it.

There was no other option. I could grab hold of some shitty rock shake it off with my trembling hands and come crashing down, which didn’t seem like a good option. Or I could try to think of the climb differently and do it like Eric said and do a Zen thing. Once starting up I had to go quickly or the rock and gravity would dictate the direction I would travel. Eric encourage from below and Dennis from above and I just moved up scared to death thinking of dancing with rocks, hot-footing it, more like the rock was hot and I had to hot-potato to the next place watching, a Zen thing, not a dance thing. Worked for me. There were no ropes and no protection on this climb/scramble and that is very dangerous and not really climbing, it is kind of in the realm of dumb. We did this push in two sprints, or two pitches (the length of two ropes) up sort of a shoot. There was a resting point halfway up.

Once on top of that three hundred feet or so which was about as far as I could go physically like that all out boogie up the rock without making a mistake, we found that surprise, surprise we had made yet another mistake. Our goal was to summit one of the Sierra Peaks, which are all named and numbered. Well this one had no book, just a straight cliff on the other side that dropped off about 1000 feet. I was laying flat on the knife-edge of the top of the rock asking Eric what we did now, because I was terrified that we would have to go down what we just went up. This Hog Back (knife edge of rock that fell away on both sides vertically) ran along for about 500 meters to a point that must have been the summit. Eric said we’d walk over there and check that out. Right walk over there and check it out. Again, I am laying flat on my stomach gripping the rock an arm on each side of the knife edge of rock, while my brother and Eric were standing looking around and talking about it without fear. Lifting my head caused me to get dizzy. What could I do just lie there and die? Big brother had to suck it up, “Oh, I’m… ok, just looking at this… ahhh… this… lichen here, it’s pretty cool that it’s growing way up here, yea, cool lichen.” “I think I will just crawl along here and look for some more of them.” I think we got down on one side of the cliff and scooted along so it wasn’t like tight rope walking or at least I did that, but I do remember thinking that there was no way I could stand up without something next to me to hold on to and since we were on top there was nothing to hold onto so I couldn’t stand up. When I sat up I felt like I would fall over. My fear of height somehow made it so when I stood up with nothing else around me I could not figure out exactly up and down so I wobbled. The rock we were standing on was uneven and there was nothing else higher than us for many miles since we were literally on the top of the highest mountain. I lost my balance trying to just stand there straight.

I had no sense of accomplishment at that point: I just wanted down. I could see no way down and just wanted a helicopter to come and take me down or to wake up from the dream and be down. Looking ahead all I could see was scary stuff and no better way down than what we just came up and that was a deadly way. I was pretty terrified and promised myself that I would not do this again. I remembered all the times I had gotten myself hung out like this in the past. I wondered why I hadn’t learned from that. There is a feeling inside my stomach or behind my stomach that swirls like a wave along my back, along my spine, coming forward at about my heart and circulating towards my ribs, splashing down to my solar plexus then rotating back again in a tight circle of anxiety or energy at times like this. Hung out is how I have always described this sensation since I was a little kid because it is me alone with no attachment, exposed, not able to get a grasp on a solution no matter how well prepared I seem to have made myself before hand or how hard I seem to work at a solution. I am afraid, but it is not just of dying it is of something else. The solution is not along the hog back there 500 meter ahead on the impossible ridge, but right there in front of me. I have to harness all of the emotions and gain control and do something. Each thing I do that brings me one step close to the goal is one less step that has to be taken even if it is just a half baby step. One half-baby step is all I have to muster to be 499.5 meter from the end which is closer than before.

On that little adventure I did find lichens and I did crawl along looking for them. Actually the lichens were very cool, blue-green in color and almost iridescent. I also found that I could just crouch along the edge of the ridge and walk along the edge without standing and balancing and that gave me hand holds. When we made it to the actual summit at the end of the 500 meters and signed the book the way down was a cakewalk, so to speak, compared to the death climb. We jumped from boulder to boulder, perch to perch. It was fun because we were coming down. Every step down was lighter and closer to the ground. I felt relief and accomplishment. I felt I had overcome something I was afraid of and I also told myself I didn’t have to do that again because I made my point. I talked to Eric and Dennis about being terrified; I didn’t try to say I wasn’t terrified.

I came back from this hiking/climbing trip thinking that if I got down to South America after spending a year and a half training having four people depending on me and I freak out on them, I would be a long way from home and nobody would be going to drive down and get me: Better be sure. I talked it over with Joann and she said that Aconcagua was a “walk up” and we would do shake downs before so we would be sure. So I met the team an Oriental rice bowl fast food restaurant in Modesto that was closed down the next day when 15 people came down with food poisoning. Bad omen? This was crazy talk they were saying, but I liked it. I like being part of it. They were including me. I was their bike man. They sought me out in all of Modesto because they knew I was the right age, in the right physical condition, and knew a shit load about bicycles. They came to me! How could I say no? I felt pillaged and Adrian is so crazy: he is the pied piper of Adventure anyone would follow him. Insanity and everyone agreed. Our plan for training was so cool. Climb all the 14,000+ mountains in California and do them in the worst conditions possible and even take our bikes down as many as we could sneak them onto. One climb a month or some training with a major training every other month. High altitude stuff ever week prior to leaving with lots of cold weather stuff prior to leaving. The climb was a year and a half away. There was so much that could happen that the chances of it actually happening were slim to none in my book and the training would be fun to do. I could always bail on the thing and give some lame excuse is what I thought, but I also thought I would hang in there as long as I could. One step at a time. I would go as far as I could get myself to go. I would do as much as I could do.

The group of four Adrian, Joann, Brian, Myself were the original team. Adrian said he didn’t need to train with us much because of a lot of things, but would get with us some as time permitted. The three of us needed to follow a plan of training he kind of laid out and have meetings a couple of times a month with all four of us to make sure we were all on track and all still were clear on our plans. I felt like I had joined an elite team which I had I guess. We all had assignments for our meetings that were held at pubs, microbrewers, and pizza places that had brew (I don’t drink beer, but the other do). We all stayed in shape and got in better shape. Our training climbs and rides were savage and bonding experiences and a kick to do. Fun with friends like kids out playing. I got to know these people pretty well spending a weekend a month getting “hung out” on another mountain some place and laughing until I thought I would die at the situation we would find ourselves in, grown adults getting stuck like a bunch of dumb kids. It was an excellent year and a half getting ready one step at a time. These were people I could count on, friends. People I trusted my life to once a month at least and often trusted my life to on the rides and other times as well. On climbs it was real life and death: trust me or trust me not. People often don’t get into situations like that with their friends ever or only once or twice in the life of the friendship. We did that many times a weekend once a month every month for a year and a half. That builds a special kind of relationship.

You wanted to know about Shasta. That was actually our last climb before leaving for Chile. We left about three weeks after that climb. There wasn’t enough time to really think about that climb or even thaw out from it before we were on a plane winging our way to some really big hills. My tent still had dirt from Shasta in it when I set it up on Aconcagua. By that time I had gotten use to the idea of going up the hill (a mountain) a step at a time it was time to go to South America. On Shasta I was very nervous with that churning energy in my stomach. The weather was the big deal on this trip. We hadn’t faced that on any of the other trips before. Adrian is an expert on weather, but we also had an avalanche to go along with the weather and they are more unpredictable. I just didn’t know about the cold since I had not been around the cold much. Adrian has sort of a lighthearted cavalier air about him, but he is deadly serious about adventure and no one dies or loses toes or fingers. When we needed to know things to keep us safe he told us and let us know why and for that I was grateful and felt safe. I would not have felt safe with just anyone. Still living out there on the edge of what human life can endure a mistake is fatal so it is very edgy, and I it is tense always thinking about the equipment and stuff I have with me and where it is. As Adrian says, “On a big climb, you take only what you need so if you lose one thing, you could die: know what you have and where it is.” Imagine that being on your mind or in the back of your mind all the time. Someone says, “Hey, can I get the knife?” You are in charge of the Swiss Army Knife you had better have it handy or know where it is. If you left it on the rock back at the last rest stop and it the temperature just dropped 40º and iced up and the knife is needed to cut a knot on a crampon because hands are too cold to work you are going to kill someone through your forgetfulness. The crampon may not get put on before your friend’s hand freezes or at all because the knot can’t be untied, so the friend can not move anywhere because it is too icy without crampon, so your friend will die unless you carry him or her which you can’t. They may lose their fingers because they had to fiddle with a knot without gloves because the knife was not there. Even that, frozen fingers, may cause them to go into shock and die. Your friend may get pissed and kill you because that is what altitude does to people. It is deadly serious, life and death, no joke every minute over a certain altitude, under a certain temperature or hung out in certain places.

With all of the snow on Shasta our trip was turning into one of these near death adventures. We had heard about a guy earlier that year that had crawled out of his tent in a snowstorm without putting on his clothes and before nature got done he was so hypothermic he walked the wrong way back to his tent and died. We had a laptop computer and a cell phone with Internet and got satellite pictures of the storm coming in so we saw what was coming and got prepared which was good. Adrian prepared us well. We were outfitted well with clothes. I liked the challenge of the exercise to see how hard I could work out before I collapsed. That part was fun. Post holing up the mountain like a machine was fun. I just turned myself on and just kept moving like a machine going without feeling the pain or the tired like the machine would do. I didn’t think of the distance down or anything. What scared me was the dark, the fog, getting lost, the wind, the snow, and the cliffs. I really didn’t trust Adrian’s navigation at night in the dark, the fog, the snow with only one barely working light and no real trail since the wind had blown it away. I was afraid we would fall off a cliff in the dark. I was so happy when we turned around. I have a terrible fear of getting lost. That is because I don’t have a good sense of direction I think. I sure didn’t know where I was up there on Shasta. Couldn’t see in the fog, the snow and the dark.

Then there is the tired factor. How tired can a person be? If I got to the limit and I was at the top of Shasta, how would I get back? How would I know when I was just tired enough to have enough energy to get back? That worried me when we reached the shoot up Red Banks. I was wasted royally and decided not to break trail anymore. I was tentative about getting back at that time but was not going to say anything. Push on, push on. When we turned around I got this second wind and though I could run back to the tents. Actually that lasted about ten feet. I soon was overcome with exhaustion. When we found the tents I was again overcome with a second wind and rebuilt my tent and got my place set up to sleep. I was feeling great. The next morning when Adrian said we had to get out of there because there was too much snow and an avalanche was coming if the next storm hit before we got out I was elated. I felt a real sense of accomplishment having seen that my limit is far beyond what I think it is. I saw that I can take much more than I was aware of. I figured out that cold was not my enemy and I could dance with it and live with it nicely enough. Respect is all that is needed of the elements. I knew that I could push things with my equipment and get a lot out of it and I could push things with my body and get a lot more out of that too. The line and the limit had been set way out there for me and that made me very comfortable. Faith in Adrian also went way up. I saw that Adrian was able to make rational decisions and pull out when the going really got deadly. I could count on him.

People have been given a gift of future and past conception. They can look to the future and predict things that might happen and prepare for that and this gives them an advantage over most of the other thinking beings. Memories of the past gives them the advantage of storage of information and learning from past mistakes and mistakes from many generation past if they can communicate that information. Unfortunately it has led to people living in the future and the past. Most people in our society spend their time preparing for the future, getting ready for things that will never really happen or that will happen whether they prepare for them or not. They also go over and over memories of the past as if they are important, changing them and reliving them not extracting useful information that will make the present more livable. The only moment there is to live is the present moment. Most people miss that present moment trying to get the future just right or adjust the memories of the past to fit some reality they have in mind. They miss the present.

Life as I see it is moving along a track like a train. We cannot really do much about it. We can occasionally change the track we are on by hitting a switch at just the right time and diverting our course. That might take a future look and a desire to move in a different direction. A lot of people think they will have big changes and go here or there, but they really have no affect on the course of their life unless they make the changes at just the right time. The change they make is always small like a train switching tracks it takes a while to head in the new direction.

The sun comes up and the sun goes down and what happens in between in up for grabs. We have no control over it. If we live in the present and ride the train we can relax and just enjoy the ride and notice everything that goes on in our lives. It all makes sense and all fits together. Rather than fighting against it we can just live our lives in the present and feel every moment for what it is. When we do see that we have new goals and objectives we can look ahead with this gift of ours and look for switches in the track and make those subtle changes that put us on a new track that will lead us eventually to a new direction. We should not confuse the straightness or curves of the tracks with changes: Tracks are not always straight. Some people think that when their train goes around a curve they have made a change in their life or that their direction in their life has been altered for some unknown reason. If they would just relax and ride the moment they would see that no switch has been made and the curve will straighten out and the direction overall will be back on course or maybe it won't and they will have to switch tracks. If they want to go in a new direction then just keeping in mind the new direction will allow the activation of the switches as they come up so the rider of the train can still live in the moment and ride their train. The goal of life is to just relax and enjoy the ride not to fight against the ride because that is futile. Living in the present is riding the train in a relaxed way.

Adventures are a time when a direction is set and the train is ridden day by day. Every day, every moment is lived for the moment and all of the things that happen are allowed to happen. The whole cascade of events unfolds naturally without interference and surprisingly life goes on and surprisingly the train gets to the station at the end. What is seen along the way is always unbelievable. It is indescribable because it is unanticipated. No one can paint a picture like an adventure or write what could happen or what might happen because things are just that strange. Living day to day, moment to moment, each moment is unique and has never happened before and never will happen. Each moment is to be savored, not even remembered, just enjoyed and passed through to the next and the next and so on. Time is of little consequence. People of the world of time are like cardboard cutouts and cartoon figures that invade an adventure. They come and go as extras, like billboards and signs along the way. People outside of time glow and are plain to see. They show up all over the place. Comrades on the road to reality. It takes a month or so to really get into the world of adventure and to be there. Once you have been in this world you can't go back to the world of time, not really back knowing that this other reality exists. I am always drawn to the world of adventure, to the real world. Living in the moment.

The Shasta Trip: A Climb in the Cold of winter.

Adrian Crane, leader of our merry band of middle aged adventurers, said to form our thoughts as well as we could and write them down right away, so we could capture the moments for our book: Aconcagua: Bicycles Not Recommended . The title of our book comes from a fax from the Argentine embassy in response to our inquiry about any restrictions on the use of bicycles on their mountain, Aconcagua. They replied to the inquiry about bicycling from the summit to the Ocean that, “While bicycles are not specifically prohibited, bicycles are not recommended.” Actually we had surmised that for ourselves, since only one other person had taken a bicycle to the 24,000 ft summit, and then he carried it down. Here is what I remember about the Mt. Shasta shake down training climb to check gear and endurance in the most absolutely miserable conditions we could come up with to help us simulate what we thought we might encounter on our primary adventure [It turns out that a law was passed a week before we arrived in Argentina that specifically prohibited bicycled in the Aconcogua park. We did not know about it until we applied for our climbing permit so we had to change our project a bit]



After packing most of Thursday morning and then finishing all those activities that go along with leaving on a three day near death experience, I left the house. My van was filled with my stuff even before I picked up Joann and Tom. Tom is Joann's current love of her life and was willing to attempt the climb even though he had never climbed higher than the roof of his house to put up the Xmas lights. Joann is 38, a 5th grade teacher in Modesto City Schools and runs ultra marathons (finished the Western States 100 in less than 24 hours). Tom just turned 43 and is just starting to move from marathons to ultra marathons. He may accompany us to Chile and take photos for the first 5 days or so while we get permits and figure out how to climb to the highest point in the Western Hemisphere carrying bicycles then ride them to the ocean in less than 24 hours. Some people doubt our sanity, but then adventure defies sanity. Tom and Joann somehow crammed their stuff into the van and wedged themselves into the remaining space for the drive back across town to Adrian’s house.

Our fearless leader, Adrian, was next to be picked up. Mr. Crane is a 39 year old, red haired British citizen who lives permanently in Modesto, California with his wife and two children. This god of adventure has a business resume, which says he is a system analysis and teaches computer classes at the Junior College from time to time. No one is quiet sure what a system analysis is nor has anyone ever seen him teach a course in computers. Come to think of it I don’t think anyone has seen him go to work. Adrian is amazing. He runs ultra ultra marathons (like 2,000 miles through the Himalayan Mountains in 100 days, climbed all the highest points in the US in record time 60 days or something, ran over 500 miles in a six day race, holds the world two day run record of 248 miles...). He is also an adventurer, a guide for Mt. McKinley, has bicycled UP Mt. Kilimanjaro, and held the world altitude cycling record for cycling down Mt. Chimbarosa in Ecuador some 21,000 feet. His altitude cycling record stood until someone else carried a bicycle to our mountain Aconcagua, sat on it on the summit and stole the record away. Adrian at least rode his bicycle down Chimarosa.

Adrian, of course, had not only backpacks, but also boxes and bags of gear all of which were yet unpacked. He tends to do things on the fly, which usually means getting all the gear he can out of town and just doing it. Apparently earlier in the day a bank of lights and the corresponding electricity went out at his house and he check the circuit breakers and found one tripped. About five minutes before we arrived two more banks of lights in the house went out and it wasn’t just the circuit breakers that failed. Tom and Adrian scurried around trying to figure out what was wrong with the electricity at the Crane household. The final solution, I think, was to string an extension cord from an outlet that worked directly to the television and then to give a reminder to his wife of where the flashlight were located if anyone needed to go into that parts of the house without electricity. A kiss for luck from his stranded wife and the first four adventures were on the road to Brian's house in Lodi. Joann and I had thrown all the stuff that Adrian had set out into the van, an easy task since none of it was packed and we could just stuff it anywhere we wanted and fit it in here and there.

Brian Sarvis is 44, but a few weeks older than me (the old guy). He is a psychologist, with a doctorate in something. Currently Dr. Sarvis works for Modesto City Schools and is the Director of Curriculum and Testing, or something equally impressive and nondescript. Brian runs a little bit but doesn’t really like to run, I think he has done a marathon, but he does some kind of jazzercise aerobic workout at a health club. Brian is the most positive and happy person I've ever met and the one I expect to keep up the spirits on the trip. He is along because he can keep us going when things get tough. Brian is the only administrator in the Modesto City Schools that has kept their job in the last couple of head slashing that have happened in the last couple of years. I think it is because no one can quite figure out what he does so they don’t quite know if he is doing a good job or not or if he can be replaced or not. Brian keeps it that way.

At Brian’s house he greeted us with "down boys, down!" as his rotwilers and German Shepherd acknowledged our intrusion on their turf with sniffs and implied, if not gutturally uttered, snarls and growls. My mini van now full to beyond overflowing was unloaded into Brian's monster van and our stuff filled it nicely with Brian’s neatly packed labeled, inventoried, cataloged and indexed goods already loaded. By six thirty in the evening we were a merry band of five heading for the hill, Mt. Shasta, discussing everything except the climb and the challenge ahead. Five and a half hours of time to kill while we drove north along I-5.

It seemed like we rolled into the parking lot of Bunny Flat (a parking lot at the end of the plowed road on Mt. Shasta), about 12:00am. It was an incredibly clear night as I stepped out of the van. The stars absolutely filled the clear Northern California sky at this 6,500 foot snow filled parking lot. Brian said “Wow, there it is!” and I looked to where he was staring. There was nothing there, only stars and nothing. Staring longer, I realized that the nothing blocking out the stars was the silhouetted mountain. No details were visible, only the mass of this giant rock standing alone right in front of me: Black nothing. Tomorrow we will be looking back at this parking lot from our base camp somewhere up there, and the next day we will look back from the summit.

About then I realized that everything was covered with snow or ice and the temperature was about 15 degrees; far too cold to stand around with thin cotton socks, one layer of thin polypropylene and a gortex wind shell. I was freezing and I hoped it wasn’t a prediction of things to come. Within 30 minutes of arrival the four of us were snuggled down and sleeping inside the van. Adrian, in true adventurer’s spirit bivied outside to see if he brought the right stuff. I was pretty toasty inside my bag inside the van with four other people and so I slept pretty well.

By 6:30 a.m. after about 6 hours of sleep, we were all dressed and werelooking at the detail in the hill (mountain) in front of us. We packed up Adrian's campsite next to the van and drove back down the hill to a bakery shop and a climbing equipment rental store to round out our bellies and our gear. At the rangers station we filled out the wilderness permit and noted that we would be alone on the mountain for the weekend: everyone else had cleared off the mountain for New Year’s Eve. I guessed it would just be less crowed for the climb. With pastries in our stomachs, newly rented snowshoes and crampon, and climbing permits in hand, we cruised back up the hill back to Bunny Flat. On the way up the road we even picked up a hitchhiker who was riding his snow board from the Bunny Flat parking lot down the mountain to the road below, a distance of three miles or so. (That is a whole other story of close encounters between the longhaired 20-year-old hitchhiker and the gray haired 40+ year olds about to climb Mt. Shasta to watch the New Year arrive). The Bunny Flat parking lot was hopping now with the parking lot three quarters full of tubers (not potatoes) and cross-country skiers. The sun was high, the sky clear, and the temperature in the mid 30s. Ice was turning to slush.

Beside the van we spread out two tarps and dumped out all our stuff to see what we had arrived with from home and what we needed to leave behind in the van. By 11:30 in the morning, we had packs packed, crampons and ice axes secured in non-lethal repose, and snowshoes fastened to booted feet. The beginning was slow with three pound boots, four-pound snowshoes, multiple layers of polypropylene and gortex, fifty+ pound packs and an almost complete lack of knowledge of how to use the snow shoes (at least by Tom, Joann, Brian and myself). Most of the first hour was spent adjusting stuff including stripping off layers of clothes, adding layers of clothes when under the trees, adjusting straps on the packs, and fixing the snow shoes which seemed to secure to each of the 10 feet in the group differently.

By 1:30 in the afternoon, we were at the limits of the x-country skier who venture up the hill and we were alone. Our group had also reached the tree line at about 7,500 feet. The day was still bright and sunny, absolutely clear and beautiful. The mountain was awesome in front of us. The names I had studied on the topo map were real and rising above me. Casaval Ridge: a dark rocky outcropping standing like towers on a castle, above the snow, too steep for snow to stick, all pointing towards the summit. The Heart: a large red wedge of rock that marked the end of the Casaval Ridge. The Red Banks: the edge of the snow, which lead the way to the upper slopes, a vertical wall of red volcanic rock that we were going to climb over tomorrow. This feature defined the upper end of Avalanche Gulch. The Thumb: standing higher than Red Banks, with its a dark spire of rock at the end of the east ridge that defined Avalanche Gulch. And here we were on snow shoes, about to enter the famous Avalanche Gulch, an inverted “U” a mile and a half wide and more than 6,500 vertical feet high from the tree line to the Red Banks. Snow builds up here and avalanches down to the trees below. Pretty cool. (What the maps don’t show, but climber’s guides describe, is a moraine in the gulch that shunt the avalanches to one side and this “safe side” is called Climber’s Gulch. We opted to move along this side, the one along Casaval Ridge, and the Western side of the gulch).

At the tree line the route up steepened like a parabolic curve: the farther hiked, the steeper the hill became. Even with snowshoes with crampon embedded in them , the person breaking trail was sinking in six to eight inches through the crust and spilling more snow on the snowshoe. Each step required lifting a one and a half pound boot (now closer to two pounds with snow, ice and water soaked in), a two pound snow shoe, and about two pounds of snow on top of the snowshoe, all lifted up 6 to 8 inches out of the hole, then dropped back down again. It wasn’t a cakewalk. Going up the slopes was kind of remarkable for me, the novice snow shoer. No matter how steep the route was the snowshoes didn’t slip back because of the crampons or ice spikes on the bottoms. The strangeness of this activity, traveling up a hill that seemed to too steep to walk up, brought muscles never before known into action. Killer pain began in places I didn’t know had pain sensors. No one complained so I stayed quiet about my personal misery.

We crested the only “flat” spot on the mountain as the sun was setting behind the clouds that were bring the storm we had heard about in town. This is called Helen Lake on the map. The lake, which wasn’t to be seen because of 20 feet of snow, couldn't have been much bigger than a swimming pool because that was about how big the “flat” spot was. Stuck directly in the middle of Avalanche Gulch, out of Climber Gulch, about a half a mile above the tree line, under god knows how much snow, Helen Lake really didn't fulfill my expectations of an idyllic lakes side campsite. A little slip from above and there was a bit of snow to drop down and wash us two thousand feet into the trees beneath the sea of snow from the avalanche. The only campsite was dead center in the path of the main chute.

As the temperature dropped from the balmy 40 degrees of midday to the 20's of the early evening, we excavated a camping pit. This camping pit is a hole as deep as can be dug in the waning light that will fit the tents and a cooking area. When the hole in the snow was dug and tents were set up using ice axes, ski poles, and snow shovels as stakes, we fired up the stoves and had a hearty meal of broccoli and cheese sauce over Top Ramen with instant chicken soup. Yum! The sun had long gone by this time dinner was underway and the clouds had replaced the stars in the previously clear sky. The temperature was now in the teens and dropping as the breeze was beginning to blow into a regular wind.

The time for bed was approaching with dinner out of the way. My self-inflating Thema- Rest sleeping pad had frozen and would not inflate: frozen spit inside the pad bummer. I put it inside my sleeping bag and laid on it for about an hour before it thawed enough to inflate somewhat. Inside the tent it was “warm” (no wind and in the mid twenties). When it started to snow right after getting the therma rest inflated, Brian and I discovered that the rain fly was being pushed against the tent and thus not allowing the moisture to escape from the tent. Moisture from our breath in the tiny tent condensed on the top of the tent and either froze or ran down the tent. Along the sides of the tent along the floor there were ice puddles. Icicles were hanging from the ceiling that had now pulled down to nearly touching my bag and my face. Because of my body heat, my sleeping bag was soaking wet on the outside from the moisture that could not escape because the wet tent was touching my bag. There was one place where there was not wetness but the wetness had frozen and that was around my feet. My feet did not produce enough heat so moisture formed a sheet of water around my feet and froze a solid sheet around them. I got up with frozen socks, got dressed and fixed the tent while Brian slept (or pretended to sleep, bastard, he was as wet as I was and had iceless hitting him in his face). With the snow falling, the temperature outside had kind of gone up to about 25 degrees or so, but the wind made it seems colder. After finishing the repairs on the tent, I gathered all my clothes I planned to wear to the summit and put them inside my sleeping bag to trap air, absorb moisture and provide more insulation since my bag was now frozen and not much of an insulator. I actually slept well, and warmly, the rest of the night.

Late, after the sun should have come up, Saturday, we got up, ate oatmeal and other caloric snacks, and, of course, repacked for the assent (everyday needs a repack for something). The snow had stopped, but the clouds were still drifting at all levels over, under, and around the mountain. With full bellies and light packs we trekked off about mid morning, on snowshoes, up the hill headed for the summit at a leisurely pace. It soon became obvious that what we had thought was steep yesterday was normal now and what was steep now, was REALLY steep. Now the snow shoes would slip or churn up the snow without making progress. By 12:00 the snow started to fall lightly. Eventually we were making so little progress with the snowshoes that we left them by one of the few exposed rocks on the face so we could find them on the way down. Our group continued on, “post-holing” up the hill. Each step went in up to the mid calf or deeper and it seemed to take forever to pull it out swing it forward and punch it down to solid footing. The top didn’t seem to get any closer despite the huge expenditure of effort. By about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were not so much stepping as kicking steps on the snow wall heading to the Red Banks cliffs. A constant rhythm was set up: breath in, kick, kick, kick, step up and breath out, rest a breath, then start over again with the routine. Machine like movements with no regard to the energy or the top of the mountain.

Adrian kept saying that we would just “go through” the Red Banks and reach the upper ridge. From the bottom, the base camp, the place where we left the snow shoes, and most of the afternoon, the Red Banks looked like a solid continuous vertical wall of red volcanic rock with no way through, just up and over requiring some good rock climbing abilities. Finally, there it was, an ice shoot through the cliffs. The shoot was about 10 feet wide, with cliffs about 30 feet high on each side and sloping up about 100 yards at an angle I can’t believe a human could stick to. I thought we were going to put on crampon, but again Adrian said we could just kick steps and scramble up. He was right. At the top of the shoot was another few hundred feet of climb to reach the next ridge. The Thumb ridge fell off from the Red Banks cliffs and on down the mountain forming the side of Avalanche Gulch. Higher up behind Red Banks the ridge ran up to the next objective on the mountain. On the Thumb ridge there was a steep slope we had just ascended, but on the other side it fell vertically into the clouds a few thousand feet below. It was now about 4:00pm, getting dark, wind rising, snow falling faster, and the bottoms of the clouds kissing the mountain making it foggy and here we were, exhausted with a slippery slope on one side and a sheer death vertical cliff on the other.

Joann and Tom were at their limit (so was I, but I didn’t want to bring it up). We decided that they would go back and the whole group would descend to the bottom of the Red Banks shoot where we could see camp almost 5000 feet below us. At that point we would see if we felt like climbing back up and making the summit by midnight on the East Coast (The original plan was to sit on the summit as the New Year came in, but we were constantly modifying the plan as conditions dictated). Brian, Adrian and I decided we would give it a shot and we scrambled back down to the base of the ice shoot then back up the shoot to the thumb’s ridge again. The combination of snow, fog, and dark made looking down the cliff on the other side of the mountain impossible which was all right by me, since I really don’t care for heights. Adrian stressed the importance of moving in straight compass lines along ridge lines and memorizing approximate distances between changes of direction. Right!!! I was so wasted of energy and fogged by altitude I couldn’t tie my shoe. Memorize shit in the fog and dark and snow and so tired and when did I eat last? Who brought a compass?

About 6:00pm, three quarters of the way up the last push called Misery
Hill, Brian discovered the NiCad batteries he tried to charge with his solar charger, wouldn’t fit in his light and we stopped to conference. Misery Hill leads to the crater, which is just a 3/4-mile flat plain. On the other side of the plain are two piles of rock. One is about 250 feet high and the other is about 300 feet high and is the summit. All navigation would have to be done with compass, straight line walking and Adrian's memory (he’s been up this thing 5 times). Clouds had moved in making it a complete “white out”, except it was totally dark because the clouds above the fog were dumping snow and blocking out any starlight. The wind was now blowing about 15 miles per hour in the dark fog and our tracks we had just made were nearly invisible just seconds after we had just made them. There was no way we would find our way back by following our footprints in the snow: they were long since blown clean. The temperature was in the teens and seemed to be dropping. Besides that, I was tired and wanted to go home (but I didn’t tell anyone that). I didn’t know if I could keep going for another hour and a half it might take to cross the plain and make the summit, AND THEN turn around and try to go back down. Most deaths in mountain climbing happen coming down. We voted: three for going back and none to go on. About 400 vertical feet from the summit, 13,900 feet up, in the dark, fog, snow and wind with two barely working head lights, we turned around and started to find our way down. Wrong turns are vertical drops of thousands of feet or trails to nowhere. We have to find a ten foot gap in a piece of red volcanic rock or we have to do some fancy rock climbing.

The trail we made in the snow along the Thumb's ridge on our way up became harder and harder to detect and there was no other visible land marks in the nighttime “white-out” conditions. Adrian kept checking the compass and leading and I kept thinking about the precipitousness of the north face of the thumb’s ridge. We had been standing near the edge of the face looking into the clouds below, so our track went right next to edge. About all we could see now were a few traces of tracks ahead filling with blowing snow. If Adrian screwed up a bit in his navigation or tracking it would be unforgiving. Fortunately going down got us out of the worst of the fog so visibility in the dark was only limited by the snow and the light put out by the two waning head lamps. We avoided the cliff and eventually located the ice shoot in the Red Banks. The shoot looked differently from above in the dark with more new snow.

The shoot had now been used twice going up and once going down so most of the “good” snow was gone and the base of ice was what was left. Adrian got down no problem. I started out ok, but was so physically exhausted I slipped and slid down the shoot. (Earlier in the day Adrian dropped a Hostess Fruit pie he was about to open and eat. I thought it wouldn't stop until it hit the tree line, but it slid for a ways and did “just stop”. Adrian said, "Now look, that pie fell and slid down the hill and stopped. You are certainly smarter than a fruit pie, so if you slip and fall remember you'll probably just stop too even if you don't do anything.") I had just turned over to stop myself with my ice ax as I had practiced when I just stopped. I remembered that fruit pie and thought, “Yea, I am at least as smart as a fruit pie.” Brian followed me down with a much more controlled slide, but he found one of my crampons, which had been tied to the bottom of my backpack, in the snow. The other one seemed to be missing. I didn’t really care. I looked up the shoot, didn’t see it and said, “Oh well, too bad about the crampon.” Adrian, however, wouldn’t have a lost piece of equipment and he dropped his pack and climbed back up the shoot, now glistening with polished ice. He went all along the thumb’s ridge to look for the wayward crampon, but didn’t find it because it was still tied to my pack and Brian hadn’t noticed it. Oh, well. Sorry about that Adrian.

Most of the rest of the trip down to the base camp was a combination of post holing to the snow shoes, then slipping and falling through the constant falling snow in the absolute dark towards the tents tucked in a hole somewhere on this side of the mountain. The tracks of the snow shoes were gone as far as I could tell and the head lamps didn't illuminate any significant landmarks. If we missed the tents on our walk down, it would be a tired walk back up to find them or an all night walk down to the van parked in the parking lot and the keys were in the tent.

We arrived at the tents, thank God, to find Joann and Tom in one of the tents and the other tent, my tent, flattened from the snow that fell throughout the day. While I rebuilt the tent, Adrian cooked some Top Ramen and made tea. Brian helped with both activities and by 10:00 P.M., I was crawling into my still frozen sleeping bag (I mean frozen, like hard and cold frozen, not just frozen like a little cold). It snowed all night. The condensation inside the tent just added itself to last night’s layer of ice on the inside of the tent. I slept well because I was so tired and the cold of the bag was lessened by all my clothes inside the bag, so they wouldn't freeze. (I was also dehydrated which was actually a blessing: getting up in the middle of the night when it is snowing, windy, and cold outside to go to the bathroom is a very major thing to do if you do not want to die. You need several layers of polypropylene, wind pants and top wind shell, hat, boots that are frozen, mittens, wind shells over mittens AND this all has to be put on in a tent that is barely big enough to sit up in. The first night I seriously debated just adding to the ice puddles along the inside tent wall. People get up to dust the dew from their lily and end up hypothermic and die before they get back to the tent.)

Sunday morning about 7:00am with the snow still coming down, Adrian said lets get out of here! We all agreed. How deep can the snow in Avalanche Gulch get before it lets lose. No breakfast except cookies, and trail snacks. My frozen sleeping bag went into the bag. The tent with ice pools along the walls and the icicles hanging from the ceiling was stuffed into the bag as is ice and all. Clean clothes, dirty clothes, pots, pans everything was thrown in like we were packing to escape with the Barbarians banging on the door. Every time something went into the back pack, so did snow that was still falling. By 8:45am we said good bye to our lake side campsite and we set off down the hill. Even though it snowed a lot, the snow was like little pellets not like flakes, it did not seem to be build up much. These pellets blew around and filled in holes or drifted up on ridges. The depth was about the same going out as it was coming in. By 12:30 we were in Jerry’s restaurant in the town of Shasta, ordering real food and drinking real coffee.

New Years Eve Kiss -Interview for a Roomate

I met a young lady whom I saw from a far for a long time before I ever got to know her. She was a nervous kind of person I think; shy, but nervous with not much to say to me usually. She seemed to always have something to do or some place to go when I came around and often had a cigarette to smoke on the way as she left the house. I couldn’t figure out exactly what the situation was because she lived with one guy, Jim, but seemed to have another guy as a boy friend and he was just sort of a drop in kind of a guy that didn’t really light up any eyes when he showed up and there didn’t seem to be any spark anywhere with anyone when he showed up except with Jim who was a good buddy to the boy friend. I was Jim’s friend and Jim was really just a very good friend and just a roommate with this young lady in a platonic relationship, way too confusing.

I can’t remember saying ten words to this young lady over the course of a year or more, but I saw her now and again. There was nothing of note to attach to because all I can remember is the strange living situation, the cigarettes, the nervousness, the shyness, and oh yea the boy friend that really wasn’t there even when he was there as far as I could tell. There was more behind her eyes: something else happening but I never heard or saw enough of this young lady for me to see to learn more. I only saw enough to know there was something more, something intriguing, something beneath the surface, more than was being revealed. This was a person that might not be one to bet against in poker.

I can’t remember the order of things that occurred because chaos entered my life and time changed and my life turn upside down and inside out. After knowing Jim for a few years and thus knowing of this young lady for a few years my life went into a tail spin, crashed and burned. I talked to lots of people and talked to no one. I don’t know what happened or when. I do remember learning more about this young woman and even talking to her. She was very young, but had lived more than she needed too for someone her age. She knew too much about some things and nothing or way too little about many other things that were very vital for a person so smart to not know about. She understood how the world worked, but seemed to be missing some of the fundamental ways to easily navigate around in it using her resources she was blessed with, her brains. It was as if she had been raised in a different country or different society or different something from where I was raised. I was often baffled when I talked to her about things and found that she understood so much but seemed to do so little with it. So much potential here and yet it was not being directed towards anything that I could see as being a future. I probably had no right to judge at that time. In fact I had no right to judge. The phrase “barefoot and pregnant” comes to mind when I think of this young woman at that time, so bright getting trapped. Some big dumb fat slob sitting on a dirty couch screaming, “Yo, lady, Get, your daddy a beer and do it now!” while he watched the WWF on a TV that will never be paid off inside the old single-wide beat up trailer. I digress…There just seemed to be a potential here. Maybe this young lady just wasn’t aware of what was out there for her to strive for or that she could really become anything she wanted to become if she just thought it and wanted it.

I began to talk more with this young woman and even learned her name (I am very bad at names and learning a name is a big deal with me). She turned out to be a nervous, shy person with a lot below the surface that she kept hidden for not particular reason. The boyfriend seemed to be sort of a non-starter. He was never around and when he was, he really didn’t light up any eyes, his or hers. Jim enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed talking and getting to know this enigmatically intriguing lady through my chaos. I enjoyed that someone enjoyed talking (actually listening to) with me. I also had a room available for someone to rent in the house I was living in and low and behold this new found friend was possibly in need of a place to move to because the living conditions at her condo were about to become tense. We were going to discuss this room rental at a party, a New Years Eve party I invited her to. I don’t think I invited her boy friend, but I don’t think I specifically said he couldn’t come to the party. I don’t really give parties and don’t really know who invited people to the party.

I remember the New Years Eve Party at my house and a lot of people there. Lots of people some wine and then New Year, the stroke of the New Year. Kiss a person close to you or something. A tradition that I had actually not participated in and had not even really heard of I think. Maybe I had not paid attention to that tradition before. But what the heck a new year, a new tradition. Oh, here is someone to bring in the New Year: a little kiss. The beautiful young shy, nervous woman happened to be very close at hand. Wow a little kiss? And the kiss didn’t end and it continued and moved into another room without ending, where it moved onto the floor and explored all sorts of permutations and variations and every kind of thing that could be said without words only wet emotional lips and tongues. Eventually bodies and hands were involved and after what must have been well into the new year hours when all the guests had left and there was no one else left in my house and very few things were left to our imagination and the last of the article of clothing was being removed slowly, romantically, and sensually, the young lady, friend and god willing lover, said she had to leave for a little while. Very strange. Very very strange, but who am I? and this is a new year and a new tradition I am unfamiliar with. Wow, like driving down the freeway at 90, having the door open and being pushed out. But done in a nice way by a very sweet person, friend and near lover: welcome to the world of dating in the 70’s.

Seemed to me a few hours later this beautiful young near friend and near lover returned and said everything was ok now. She had such high morals standards and such a high opinion of herself and her boyfriend that she just would not do something that she felt was dishonest or hurtful to another person so she left my house to break up with her boyfriend and then returned to take up the offer to move in to my house and rent my spare room since her house was about to become a bit tense with her roommate taking on a new romantic female roommate. That was unbelievable. Nobody is that honest, that moral, and that upstanding. I remember having gone to bed after saying good night after the three hour New Year kiss, a little confused, but definitely so happy that a beautiful young woman had found me lovable, consented to my advances, and shared a very passionate evening with me and did seem to enjoy herself except for that abrupt ending which was a trip stopper. I respected this woman no matter her motives that on this first evening of passion she did not allow things to go beyond a point she felt comfortable with, that she was able to control things and stop things and “deal with stuff”. Lord knows I could not do that. But knock, knock, knock a few hours later here she is back again. I didn’t expect that to happen.

I remember after answering the door in my boxer and seeing her there, we finished our New Years Eve kiss in more comfortable quarters with less encumberments. Bliss and heaven, warmth and peace. I had not slept really since early the day before and not since our kiss started at midnight. After stopping the kiss and going to bed, I lay there thinking and musing and wondering and enjoying, and reliving, and hoping, and longing, and just glowing all over. Now with the gorgeous reality of this lovely beauty beside me sleep only over took me when physically exhaustion set in and was only interrupted sometime either very late morning or early afternoon with a pounding on the front door. When I rose to answer the door, dressed in less than anything ready to kill whomever would be so rude as to pound on my door at that “early hour” of the “morning” (really 1pm) to wake me especially after such a blissful evening and to chance to wake the lady love who now slept so soundly at last, I swung open the door and there was the cousin of my lady love who had seen the Mustang driven by my lady and this helpful/nosey cousin thought she would stop and see if her cousin had stayed over or was going to rent the spare room at my house. Mumble, mumble, too early, “she’s here, still… sleeping… later… bye not now.” I don’t know if my new love was awake when I returned, but if she was not, I am sure that I awakened her nicely and romantically because I just could not let this beautiful creature sleep there without holding her and being held by her. Young and in love, so warm and trusting and so much a whole mind and body experience. To lie there in the arms of one you love and feel so complete and let sleep carry the two of you off to the dream world together on a ship of peace and contentment sails filled with love and trust. And to wake with the warm scent of the body of the person you love next to you, the feel of their body heat and the softness of their skin. To lie their and feel them breathing, smell their hair and just enjoy that glow in the pit of your stomach that sends fire to all parts of your soul. The smile in the morning when your love wakes up and realizes they have been sleeping and being watched with loving eyes and they reach for you and two becomes one. That is the explosion of new love that makes happens only once in a life time. We spent the whole day and night in bed. The cousin came by that evening and was shooed away and maybe came by the next day too. At some point someone had to go to work or get some food so someone had to get dressed and life had to begin again. It happened once in my life and I treasure it. Maybe I should not have gotten out of bed and not allowed my lady to get out of bed we should have stayed there and grown old together in that bliss.

Oh, starting off a relationship with a bang. An explosion: an atomic bomb.

This was beginning as a room rental at my place not really a move into my bed although after that started I would not have it any other way. I think she passed the interview for the room mate. She did not belong in the other room she belonged in my heart and close to me especially at night when we slept so we could talk and tell each other things before we went to the dream world. I saw that she completed me and the more I was around this friend the more I saw we complimented each others skills and abilities. At this time my lady was a chicken cutter at a factory and I didn’t know what her goals and life ambitions were. God that was awful. I couldn’t believe she did not have a long-term goal in mind. I assumed that college was what everyone thought of: go to high school, then to college, then to grad school and then a profession. If you don’t do too hot in college then maybe you skip the grad school and just get a job after college, or go to two years of business school. Cutting chickens? Job out of high school? What is that all about? I talked to my new roommate now lover friend buddy and had to convince her that she could take care of a lot of my finances and book keeping which I had no clue about while taking some classes at Modesto Junior College. It seems that I had to do some convincing to get her to come over to this idea. She did not want to be beholden to someone, being “supported” by someone else, and I think there was a little bit of reluctance because she might not have seen herself as a college student. I was so happy when she decided to try it for a while, taking classes at college and paying the bills and keeping track of all the household finances.

My new college student started out wanting to be a librarian. I think she chose this direction because it allowed her a place where she could hide in the stacks of books and read the books and learn stuff. If all those smart people were out there she could hide from them and at least learn stuff by reading. If someone questioned her about something she could look it up and get back to them with an answer, “Ha! See how much I know!” She could interact with people only as much as she wanted to and not much at all if she didn’t want to. A good way to lay low and not be seen if that is what she wanted. Stay out of the radar.

All the learning she was doing was changing her. She was brightening up. She was gaining confidence in herself and seeing that she was one of the smartest people in the class and a person that was cut out for this kind of education. My lady love fit into this college life and there were a lot of people like her on the campus. I think she was discovering that there were a lot of options in the world that she had not consider before that were open to her and she could now begin to consider a much wider world. This brainy woman was living in a world that was bigger and better and held a lot more hope for her and because of that she had a lot more love to offer the world around her. Being close to her made me a recipient of a lot of that hope and love.

College sets its programs up in a very smart way. They make a person try a lot of things to get through the general program. In the process of trying all the courses for being Madame Librarian little miss college student took a “science course” or some sort of course to fulfill a requirement across the street in the Ag building. That was a place I never went when I went to MJC. The Ag building and the Forestry program changed everything. This introduced an inspirational teacher and a subject to an open mind at just the right time. That is the best education can do and the best set up possible a professor. When education works best it is when a mind has been prepared to meet the teacher and the subject and the two mesh to inspire a person to change the direction of their life and do something great. This happened to my lady love now college student. She became inspired, so inspired with the directional change that after her education she went on to opened a nursery and severed the needs of people for years because of the classes she took, and to this day she is inspired with nature and plants. I saw that change in her when it was happening. She became a Whaler, the followers of the professor of forestry, Dr. Whaley, which inspired a generation of students. His brand of teaching and his followers were propelled up the hill, the Sierra Mountains, to take over stewardship, of the forests and needs of the people who wanted to have something to do with plants and nature.

I got to watch the mind of a young woman open to new ideas and then be watered with controversy, discussion, and intelligent conversation. Doors were opened to new promises for futures never dreamed of. A young lady gained confidence in herself and found a new love in life and direction of endeavor. My lady’s eyes were always alight with the new things that she was learning, new ideas, or something that was puzzling her she had to figure out. This was a thinking being, a person who had the world in front of her and was going to do anything she put her mind to. The little tunnel that use to be her future had suddenly just opened up.

When you are inspired by some great
purpose, some extraordinary project,
all your thoughts break their bounds:
Your mind transcends limitations,
your consciousness expands in every direction,
and you find yourself in a new, great
And wonderful world.
Dormant forces, faculties and talents
become alive, and you discover yourself
to be a greater person by far
than you ever dreamed
yourself to be
Patanjali
(C.First to Third Century B.C.)
(Author of the Yoga Sutras)

The greater danger
for most of us
is not that our aim is
to high
and we miss it,
but that it is
too low
and we reach it.
Michelangelo
(1475-1564)

Summary of Aconcagua: An Adventure

A few days ago I was waking up to a sunrise on the beach in Con Con, Chile. We actually should have been up a couple of hours before since the sun doesn't rise in Chile until about 7:30 or 8:00am in their summer. We should have been on the road a long time ago. The group hurriedly jumped in our rented car, after loading our stuff, drove 60 miles to the airport and then we flew back to the real world. Been there, done it. What's to say? I am trying to figure out what went on myself.

People have asked about the trip, but the only thing that comes out is, "it was cold." "Was it fun?" is usually the next most asked question about the trip. Realize, I didn't go to have fun, so it was as much fun as I expected and it fulfilled the thousands of other perfectly valid emotions that in no way can be described as fun. Most people ask, "Well would you do it again?" If a person was riding on a train and the train slammed into a large truck and the train derailed, overturned, caught fire, slide down the side of a mountain and you managed to pull yourself free with minor injuries and no one you knew was hurt, it would be an experience that would live forever in your mind and shape your vision of the world. Would you repeat the incident? Probably not, but that doesn't make that train wreck an invalid incident not worth having happened. This was an adventure: an extreme vacation. I was not in search of pleasure. I wanted experiences that I could not get from the world where I live. I wanted to find out where the real world was because the day-to-day world is not the real world; it is only a reflection of something that looks like the world.

Summary: We landed in Chile… who are “we”? “We” started out as four: Adrian, leader of the pack, professional adventurer, British citizen, permanent resident of the United States living in Modesto; Brian, PhD doctor of something, director of curriculum for Modesto City Schools, super guy, funny, positive and all around good fellow; Miles, me, middle school science teacher, runner and bicycle expert brought along to keep the bikes running; Joanna who did not make it because she was getting married, what a lame excuse. All of us over 40. “Better do this before those long haired 20 year olds figure this out and do it first!” said Adrian when we started planning. “Once a bunch of old guys tackle it those young lads won’t have any part of it.” We had trained for about a year and a half to make sure we could do most of what we wanted to do and were pretty sure we had it in us to follow through with our plan, although we had never done this kind of a thing this high, this hard, or done it in a foreign language this far from home with no support…

We landed in Chile on a Sunday and got a ride to the downtown Santiago, area in the back of a pickup truck from someone I met at the airport. No, Hablo espanol, but I got the ride I'm proud to say. We were dropped off at the bus station and hoped to make it to Porta Del Inca or Penetencia at the top of the Andes in Argentina by nightfall via bus. Alas, no bus travels over the hill after 2:00pm and so fate, a tip from a strange, a stray dog, some graffiti, a walk down random streets led us to a very strange place but excellent place to stay in Santiago. It was a "kind-of-hotel" or Hostel-wantabe with lots of eclectic people from worldly places. The next day we set out to the country of Argentina. It turned out to be the same price to travel to anywhere in Chile or Argentina, so we booked a bus to Mendoza, Argentina where the government offices issued climbing official permits and we could get reliable information about the mountain and government rules. Santiago, Chile was a great experience but we left it only a few hours after arriving. We did fill the day and night we were there with as much of the city as we could absorb sleeping little because of lots to do and see.

Mendoza is the most beautiful city I have seen in any part of the world. Our hotel was the choice of the Lonely Planet Guide and was full of travelers and adventurers, lonely planet traveler and adventurers, from all over the world who had gathered there to share adventures and seek information about adventures to come and spend a few days very cheaply. We spent 3 days riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding our bicycles, and seeing every government official who would see us to seek permission for our project. The week before we arrived the government passed a new law, which stated that there could be no bicycles in the Parque Aconcagua. Bicycles it seemed had terrorized mules on the trails, caused erosion, killed and maimed hikers, and were wanted out of the park by the climbers. Officials were unmoved by our project and we got sick of spending time in offices talking to smiling people who claimed no authority to change the law or grant us any kind of disposition despite our previous pile of communication with the government and year of planning based on their assurance of being able to do this project.

So we regrouped and traveled back up the hill (the Andes) to the town of Inca (9,000ft) still in Argentina, a place above the timberline looking like an outpost in Antarctic without snow since it was summer. The first day in this remote town, we rode our bicycles up an additional 3000ft on the main road over the Andes. In the process we went through Argentina customs, and Chilean customs and then came back again to Argentina to see what the problems might be when we did this trip for real with the clock watching our progress. This was a very savage ride that turned into a big hassle with the officials and the elevation, and the 6k tunnels through the very top of the Andes at the boarder that we had to hitch hike through because bicycles are not allowed to ride the tunnel. Timing would be critical because the tunnel and the border are closed at night and there is a no-mans land between Argentina and Chile of about 15k where a person has left one country and not enter the other country and they could get trapped here on a slow moving bicycle if boarders or tunnels closed.

I blew it on the ride and did not put on sunscreen wearing only shorts. My reward for this act of thoughtlessness was fried skin: arms, legs, and face. Even the skin under the thin shirt and shorts at this altitude was burnt. That was the last time my arms, legs and hands saw the sun for the next 16 days. In Inca, the town of Inca, we stayed in a very inexpensive place with no windows, no lock on the door, no door handle, seven beds in one room the size of a closet, but it did have a rest room down the hall with a partial roll of toilet paper the first day. In Inca this we arranged mules to haul some stuff to the lower camp, Plaza De Mule, and we talked with the rangers who had a house in the town. Their reaction to our project was “No bikes in the Park!” The rangers were great people, very dedicated to the park and to conservation. We became very good friends with them and ended up staying with them at their house later on.

Our trip had to take a huge change from our original plan. We changed our original plan of riding to the sea to one of simply descending by human power to the sea. We would try to descend 24,000 feet in 24 hour using human power with all of the descent in the park being running. We would pick up our bikes at the entrance and ride from there to the ocean. A
Triathlon was taking shape: climb 24,000 feet (7,000m), run 50k and bike
200k. Theoretically possible, but there was a problems with time constraint on the trip because the borders were only opened from 7:00am to 10:00pm. Arrangements with Oscar (Scoobie, his handle on the radio) were made for mules to take out stuff up the mountain and the bikes to be at the ready at the entrance when we arrived after our run down the hill. Up the hill we went with confidence and a promise for the project.

Horconis at about 9,000ft is the Aconcagua Park entrance is a few kilometers down the main road from Inca and a few K along a dirt road towards the ridge of the Andes. The main mountain, Aconcagua (The Stone Sentry), filled the end of the canyon about 50k away, full of snow, lots of wind and beyond the scale of any mountains I had ever experienced. In fact when we entered the canyon of the Horconis River, I realized the mountains were also off the scale of reality when I told me that every mountain in sight was far higher than every mountain in the continental United States. From our perch at 9,000 feet the mountains rose, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 ft above us in every color and geologic origin imaginable. After a few hours of hiking and crossing the raging brown river of the Horconis glacier we reach Confluenecia where two rivers join together and is the best place to camp. This first camp was unbelievably beautiful, but held the last plants (no trees, or bushes only small grasses and a few flowers here) we were to see for the next 12 days. We had gained about 2,000 feet elevation in the day’s climb following the river and trekking into the maw of the mountain.

The next day was a long one through a braided river valley about 400m wide that seemed flat, but was definitely up hill. We had to cross the river several times through this endless flat rock strewn valley with no plants, grass, or animals. The “trail” was across a landscape that looked like the moon with rocks about the size of baseballs to bowling balls. The valley ended with a set of switchbacks that went up the side of the mountain of scree gravely rocks that slip down as much as you walk up. At the top we got to go most of the way back down to the river and back up several times as we crossed the side canyons with raging streams. This roller coaster trail ended with a set of switchbacks up the side of the hard rock mountain one last time to the glacier where the stream had it headwaters.

The top of the trail was Plaza de Mulas (Mulas) the place of the mules where all the mules from Horconis transported backpacks and gear to the climbers. They would die if they went much higher or so the muleskinner told people. Here was the base camp at the West face of Aconcagua, and at the base of the Horconis Glacier. Mulas is like the bar scene from Star Wars. 80 to 100 multi-colored high-tech tents with strange people speaking 20 different languages, wearing bizarre state-of-the-art and not so state-of –the-art climbing gear from every part of the world. A happening place. Wheeling and dealing buy and sell, supply and demand. Beer 3.00 American, Burger, 7.00 American; dinner 15.00 or more depending. People buying, selling, trading ...crampons, boots, tents, food... We spent three days in Mulas hiking, exploring the glacier, the culture and the mountain, and acclimatizing to the altitude of 14,500 ft. Watched rocks the size of cars roll off the mountain and through the camp and watched an ice dam break above on the mountain sending down tsunami of water and mud that washed a gully 20 feet wide, 10 feet deep from the top of the mountain, through the camp and down the mountain out of sight. Unbelievable sights and sounds of the glacier moving under us and the mountain warning us it was a dangerous place to play.

We did a carry of gear to Nido de Condor (Nest of the Condor) at 17,5000ft straight up the mountain in infinite switchbacks a never-ending task that took forever. We dropped our stuff, put many rocks on it to keep the winds from hell from blowing it away and we went back down to Mules for our last night at the low altitude. We met the residents on our stop at Nido, about 12 tents at this spot. People who had been there two days were the old residents who had all the urban legend and the information needed by the newcomers. There was a dog up there that licked my climbing goggles and received the end of my ski pole in its side. Paul one of the old guys at Nido, asked that we take the scruffy beast down to Mulas when we went so it wouldn't die by his tent where it had taken to sleeping the last few days. We took the beast down, but it ran back up the next day and was there to greet us when we arrive to camp. The next day our group loaded up again and hiked back up to Nido de Condor knowing what was ahead of us having just done it twelve hours before. It was no easier the second day. Up at Nido we found a spot, set up our camp in the thin air and began our domestic chores.

We spent three days staying at 17,500ft at Nido. There is no sleep at this altitude because sleeping slows the respiration and the amount of air into the body makes the person wake up like they were being strangled and that wakes up the sleeper. The third day we did a carry to Refugio Berlin at 19,5000ft. Straight up the side of the mountain through the ice and snow. Here there are three broken down huts that stink. On the way down the biggest and most deadly of the storms hit us. It was a sneaker that came up from behind the mountain. Nine people were trapped near the summit and one died. Many were frost bitten and most were quick-frozen. Every day there were storms that blew and got cold, but this was a real surprise. I thought we were going to die on our hike down. Twenty below zero and gusts of sixty miles per hour while hanging on the face of the mountain in an ice field that was quickly becoming like the dance floor in the gym tilted at 50 degrees. Nido lost a few tents that evening. A guy got out of his tent to go to the bathroom and the tent blew away with everything in it. In these conditions if you lost an outer glove (we wore three pair at least) you could die. A guy stopped to put on his wind pants which zippered up the outsides and inside. A gust hit the pants, they ripped off before he secured them and blew over the cliff 3,000ft down onto the Polish Glacier and were gone. Death sentence in minutes if he didn't wrap his tent around himself and crawl down the hill and get into someone else’s tent. There is no forgiveness for losing anything up here. There isn’t any help, no rescuer, no helicopters can fly this high, no rescue parties could get here in less than a week, and every climber is on their own.

The mountain is not forgiving and not predictable. We thought we had the storms pegged. Hide between 3:00 and 6:00pm and you were ok. If there wasn't much snow then that was a blessing. When the snow fell the snow blew off in the winds that followed and was called "White Wind". Exposed skin and white wind are incompatible. 20,30 below zero with winds of 30 to 60 mph are extreme combinations at 17,500 ft. Heat and water wick away so fast you are unable to do anything when you realize you are cold or thirsty. Get cold and you don't get warm until you go down to a much lower altitude if you can make it. Get thirsty and it's too late, you get sick and can't eat, which means you can't stay warm no matter what you are wearing, so you either stagger down to a lower altitude or die. We ate and drank constantly.

The next move was to Refugio Berlin. Not too happy of a place. One of the residents did not make it down the hill from the top. There were cases of frostbite and people scared nearly to death who did not come out of their tents very often. The last resident who did not make it had just been removed from the tent area a few days before and there were still people who had been packing the Frenchman in snow every morning because it would all blow off in the night. The mountain had not been kind this year. It was a very bad year for climbers. Many had not made it off the hill. Nearly all who came off the summit had frost bite or some problems. Not exactly the happy KOA with a pool and a rec room. An American was in the fresh snow waiting removal to the lowlands. Dead guy.

Berlin was a very bitterly cold, windy, brutal, but a very beautiful place. All the Andes could be seen from the 19,500ft perch on the side of the mountain. 2,000ft straight down to the plain where Nido was. We could see the tents come and go. After three days and three attempts at the summit we were the old timer on the hill at Berlin: Yankee Loco. We had run up the hill in the daytime to stay in shape and see where the trail leads and what was ahead. We all been up to about 22,000 feet a time or two, and I sometimes wonder if Adrian had not been all the way in some of his excursions alone.

Here at Berlin If you want it, tie it down, put it away or put a very big rock on it. Unfortunately to bend over and pick up a rock was about all the lungs could handle. For the first day or so we used a lot of little rocks to secure things since picking up a big rock was out of the question. Sitting up in bed required minutes to catch the breath. Gathering snow in a plastic bag to melt for water on the stove was a task that would require a nap to recover from (if a person could sleep). Now just sitting and resting could reduce the respiration to a point that I felt strangled. There was no sleep.

When the sun went down the temperature went so low that when we got out of the tent with all our clothes on, there was no staying warm. We decided to summit and the timing required doing it at night. We suited up and all left the tent with the moon high the temperature low. Within 10 feet of the tent my feet were numb and my face was frozen under all the layers I had to stay warm. About 15minutes later Brian and I said this was stupid and came back to the tent and spent the next 5 hours trying to warm back up to normal body temperature. Adrian and Peter (a guy we met) came back an hour after we gave up saying it was definitely very cold out and they might need an additional layer of something.

The next attempt was in the daylight but we couldn't summit because a storm might come up. We did get to about 22,000 feet. The last attempt I knew I did not have the gear to stay warm, so I gave my boots to Adrian, my thin gloves to Brian and agreed to pack up the camp. Adrian and Brian left at 2:00am and summited at 9:00 am. Adrian lost his toenails on one foot and had severe frost bite on the other toes. Brian had lost the feeling in his fingers and it didn't return while we were in Chile. I packed up the camp and went back to about 21,000feet and started my trip to the sea. With Adrian’s boots and poor crampons I ended up slipping down part of the slope to Nido separating my shoulder a bit.

We all ran down to Mulas at 14,500ft, got our day packs and ran to the park entrance about 44k away (the distance of a marathon). Main packs were to go out on mules that day or the next. At the entrance we got on our bikes, rode through customs, up the 3.000ft to the pass and down to the ocean a total distance of about 200k. Adrian made it in less than 24 hours, which was his goal. Brian and I made it alive which was our basic goal.

It seems like if you spend 16 days of intense climbing at extreme altitude you really don't feel much like immediately running a marathon at an average elevation of 14,000ft. After you run the marathon you certainly don't feel real positive about riding up a 3000ft hill in 15k from 10,000 ft to 13,000ft into a brutal wind and then riding into that same wind another 180k (110 miles) to the ocean. But, I guess that is what we did.

This summary is like taking a 12 gourmet course meal and grinding it in a blender and sucking it through a straw. Every paragraph is a story in itself with so many unbelievable things that occurred
Miles