How could someone die here?
Flash back two years:
I’m taking a break for an afternoon snack at Timberline Lake on day two of Onion Valley to Whitney Portal. Ranger Rob Pilewski walks up, says hello and asks me if I have a permit. I show him my permit and he notices that I entered on the previous day. He mentions that I’m moving pretty fast and asks where I stayed the previous night. I explained that I picked up the permit when the Visitor’s Center opened, drove up to Onion Valley and then hiked in over Forester Pass down to a more reasonable elevation. The conversation continued with me mentioning that I do some climbing. This got Rob started on talking about Randy Morgenson. He went on for quite a while and I could see that there was a deep connection between the two. He talked about climbing Peak 13,920+ and placing a register on the summit in honor of Morgenson. Based on his suggestion, I finish off the trip with a climb up the Artic Lake drainage (during one of the most spectacular lightning and thunder storms that I’ve ever seen) and down to the Portal via the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek.
Eight weeks later, I did the first of two trips around Mt. Whitney via the Wallace Lake drainage. (See: “Around Whitney” and “Around Whitney II” ) During that trip, I suffered the symptoms of AMS which prevented me from making a climb up Mt. Morgenson. A week later, on September 27, 2006, I finally reach the summit. (See third link below.)
Links you might be interested in reading:
“Book about missing ranger” started by Ken Murray on 04/16/06.
“Mt. Morgenson” started by Ken Murray on 09/25/06.
“Mt. Morgenson - September 27, 2006” started by me on 09/29/06.
I let myself get drawn into all of the discussion and controversy surrounding Morgenson to the point that I read the book twice over the course of a few weeks. I was also drawn in to wanting to make a “pilgrimage” to the site of the “accident.” (By that time, I was convinced that it had been an unfortunate accident caused by the collapse of a snow bridge.) So eight weeks after climbing Mt. Morgenson, I headed up Taboose Pass, south on the JMT and up to the top of Pinchot Pass, (See: “Taboose / Pinchot passes” ) thinking that I might be able to get to the accident site through the light, early season snow on the ground. It was so cold, I didn’t want to spend a second night at elevation and headed home on the second day (night actually, and since I had hiked up much of Taboose Pass in the dark, it made for the most time I’d spent hiking in the dark in a long time).
Moving forward to the recent past:
Back in June of this year when SteveC was out doing a section of the John Muir Trail with a SPOT tracking device, BeachAV8R mentioned that it looked like Steve was passing through some of the country described in “The Last Season.” This triggered a reminder that I still had not completed the task I had set for myself a couple of years earlier. I started trying to track down my GPS (I had moved three times in the intervening years.) with the data entered as a waypoint.
I finally found it a few weeks ago. After that, it was just a matter of picking a three-day weekend.
Planning and getting it done:
The next step was plotting the accident site on a map again. When I saw the location, I realized that there would be several options for entering the wilderness. I started a post on the message board (See: “Sawmill Pass, Armstrong Canyon, or Taboose Pass?” ) asking opinions about Sawmill Pass, Armstrong Canyon and Taboose Pass. At the same time, I inquired as to whether GigaMike and MooseTracks would be interested in joining in on the adventure. Mike couldn’t get the time off of work and Laura was committed to some crazy climb in Death Valley, so I’d be heading out solo again. (I was still trying to get Laura to agree to head up over Taboose on Sunday for an epic day-climb that only gets done on extremely rare occasions. I mentioned that it would add to her fame.)
Thursday evening, just shy of closing I arrived at the Visitor’s Center and pulled a permit to enter at Sawmill Pass that night. While the permit process was going on, Laura called and stated that she’d be a go for Sunday. Rather than ask for a change in permit, I left it as it was.
I headed up the road and ordered a foot-long to go from the Subway in Independence.
I got to the Sawmill Pass Trailhead at a few minutes before 7:00pm. Since I knew that I would have to carry everything that I brought, I had nothing beyond ID, money, credit card, MP3 player and telephone as personal items. (Helmet, gloves and a clean shirt were locked to the bike.) (I also brought my Digital Rebel with a telephoto zoom, a super wide-angle zoom and a tripod for documentation purposes.)
I hit the sand at almost exactly 7:00pm. (Misty May-Treanor would probably feel right at home walking here (and watching her walk up the hill would have provided a welcome relief). A call to my wife was a very acceptable alternative method of dealing with what I was going through.)
By 8:00pm, I was ready to put the headlamp on. Unfortunately, the battery compartment had opened while I had it wrapped around my wrist, and three fully charged NiMh batteries had hit the desert floor. I found two spares and pulled another fully charged battery from my MP3 player, so I was able to get light as I WALKED DOWN to try and find the batteries that I had lost. (Two reasons: I wanted those new rechargeable batteries back and I didn’t like the idea of someone else finding my “litter” in the desert.) Of course, I didn’t, so after about half-an-hour of walking downhill, I retraced my steps back up to my gear.
I continued on for what seemed like hours. It was! It was 11:00pm by the time I cleared the Hogback and was approaching Sawmill Meadow. I dumped gear, set up bedding and really enjoyed the soggy Subway sandwich (Black Forest Ham with all the fixings).
Up at the crack of dawn, with relatively little water left, I headed up for the pass. As I had been told, the scenery improved dramatically the morning of day two. Not much, but mountains are seen from Sawmill Pass, but I still spent quite a bit of time taking it in.
Mike had mentioned that he’s always wanted to see the Woods Lake area, so I was anticipating that. It was a spectacular view!
I continued on down to the JMT junction for lunch.
After lunch, the real work of the day began. I knew about where I wanted to cut off of the trail and head up towards Window and Pyramid Peaks, but finding the right spot was much more effort than I expected. The gully that I chose would be a spectacular cascade during spring and early summer, but was mostly dry now. It made for some fun scrambling!
It seemed like I climbed up on to at least three plateaus before the GPS finally started reading less than half-a-mile to go. I dropped my pack at “Window Lake.”
Looking upslope, I chose what seemed to be the more “dangerous” terrain – a slot that still had running water. Since I was tired, it took quite a while to climb up the cascade. With occasional looks at the GPS, I figured I’d be climbing out of the slot before reaching the waypoint. Slightly below the top of the slot, the pointer started indicating that I needed to move to the right. I started looking for ways to climb out, but nothing was easy until I reached the plateau above. I circled around and headed down a very gentle sloped that appeared to be a stream in the early season. A few hundred feet down the needle on the GPS started wavering back and forth. I zeroed in on what appeared to be the spot and planted my trekking pole. I set the GPS down next to it and started to wander around the surrounding terrain. I couldn’t get my mind to accept the fact that a legend of the National Park Service, someone with years-and-years of mountaineering experience had lost his life here. How could someone die here?
I built a small cairn (that will disappear with the winter snows) at the spot, wandered up and down again taking photos and then finally headed back down to camp. Dinner tasted especially good due to the amount of effort I had put in that day.
It was a restless night. I don’t know whether it was the thoughts running through my head or the fact that I was feeling a lot of aches and pains.
I woke up to frost covering everything on Saturday morning. I had collected water the night before and the three liters in my bladder were partially frozen. I had a meal of oatmeal, granola bars and Red Zinger tea.
I waited around while everything dried out, spending the time taking photographs. At one point of the morning, before I had packed things up, someone wandered past my campsite and continued on into the woods. I was shocked to see someone else up in this neck of the woods and was also surprised that they did not say a thing as they passed. I felt like shouting out to get their attention as they approached the trees, but didn’t. (I would have liked to know if they had come over from Bench Lake. The route was still a big mystery to me.)
I finally packed up and hit the trail around 8:00am. I climbed up past the accident site, pausing for another moment, and then got on with trying to figure out my route to Arrow Peak and Bench Lake. There were loads of choices, all including gorgeous views of plate glass lakes and tarns. After several hours of climbing, I reached the headwalls of the drainage. I sat and ate lunch while looking at the map. I had three choices that presented themselves to me as I climbed up. None looked like it would involve more than a little class 3, if that.
My final decision was to head up to the center pass. I had also decided during lunch that I would not make a second attempt if my choice “cliffed-out,” and would return to the JMT for a long walk north.
When I reached the top of the pass, I was rewarded with spectacular views. My heart sank as I looked at the terrain down the other side. I could see an easy ramp about fifteen feet below me, but the vertical walls leading down to ramp looked to be exposed class 5 climbing. I didn’t want to believe it, so I wandered back-and-forth for several minutes looking for another way. The real heartbreaker though, was the fact that if I had chosen the left-most pass (skirting Pyramid Peak), I would have been on much easier terrain. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that I would stick to my original decision to bail if I cliffed out.
Rather than passing by the accident site for a third time, I descended farther to the right. More beautiful tarns were encountered on the descent and I passed down through the slot that I had climbed up the previous evening. I hung to the “south” after passing “Window Lake” and had a mixture of bush-whacking and wonderful slabs to descend.
I reached the JMT at around 3:00pm, the JMT/Sawmill Pass Junction for dinner at around 5:00pm, Pinchot Pass at about 8:00pm and the JMT/Bench Lake Junction a little after 9:00pm.
It was another restless night as I wondered what Laura would think of me telling her that I didn’t have it in me to even make the hike in to Bench Lake. I woke up the next morning at around 6:30am, took some photos while waiting for it to warm up (the stove wouldn’t light in the colder conditions), had lots of my remaining food for breakfast and then hung around until the seventh hour passed (since Laura’s start).
I headed out at 10:00am, wondering whether I was going to get a ride out. Wondering what had happened to Laura.
I told a couple of hikers that I passed that I might be found shriveled up in the desert, since I doubted I could make it back to the Sawmill Pass Trailhead. (A little bit of melodrama here.)
An hour, or so, into the hike down from Taboose Pass, I saw a flash of orange. I debated hiding in the rocks, but thought better of it. We walked towards each other and gave each other a big hug. I squeezed a little tighter this time, since I really was glad to see her.
Taboose Pass is one heck of a pain-in-the-…feet. By slightly after 3:00pm we were sucking down the brews at the TOF.
By 5:00pm, we were at the Portal Store having good conversation with Doug Sr., Ranger Doug, Ranger Brian and Jim F. I knew I wasn’t going to have any problem with the “Laura the Moose Double Bacon Cheese Burger.” (I did leave a few fries on the plate.)
Photo Gallery (I'm still working on captioning more than 300 photos.)
Afterword:
- I do plan on returning to the area again. I do think that I’ll head up via Taboose Pass, Bench Lake and Arrow Peak. There’s a whole other drainage to explore between where I was and Arrow Peak. This was also Morgenson’s direction of travel. Now that I know the terrain…
- I’d also like to see the site in spring/early summer to see what the terrain looks like covered in snow. A ski trip in is in the planning already.
- I truly believe that it was an unfortunate accident. Looking at the terrain, I could see myself just cruising along, not paying a whole lot of attention to it. Even covered in snow, it would be just too easy…
