Summit Attempt

I worked on it while they watched a movie. There must have been six pounds of multi-colored sweet bell peppers. I’ve always enjoyed cooking. Pushing my thumbs down past the stem and ripping the peppers in half was a meditation. Crushing garlic cloves for my secret garlic butter sauce. A great time to reflect on the last few weeks and what my friend Ryan and I had been through.

Two fingers on my left hand were still ash grey. No feeling there at all. Five days ago, in the Cascades at 9700 feet, we almost had our asses handed to us by one hell of a storm.

I remember sitting in Ryan’s basement going through our gear and looking at maps of the mountains in Washington State. As we commented on places called ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ and ‘Disappointment Cleaver’, Ryan’s mom Catherine’s face turned pale. “You’re going where?!” she asked.

I had to make a contribution for the barbeque tomorrow. Jim and Jessi sounded the alarm and you can bet that the whole neighborhood will be there. Bend, Oregon is a wonderful place. If you ever go, and you like beer… you’ve got to pay the Deschutes Brewery a visit.

Standing in the kitchen with a bottle of Black Butte Porter, I had to keep shifting my weight. My left heel had a fracture in it. You might think it would have something to do with the summit attempt, but it happened a few days later.

If you’re going to do a high peak attempt, don’t switch gears. That’s some of the best advice I could give anyone. Ryan and I did all our research around this one mountain. We were diligent and planned it out with great detail and that’s exactly what you have to do. With any mountaineering, there’s very little room for error. Some mistakes will kill you and the mistakes we made should have killed both of us.

Two days before the attempt, we learned that the high pass where we planned on starting was completely snowed in. The next lower pass added three more days of snowshoe ascent and a lot more food weight. Given the resources we had and our concerns about time management, we just couldn’t do it.

Our mountaineering plans should have ended right then and there, but like the idiots we were… we started looking at other peaks. It took us months of planning for the original target, what on earth could have convinced us that we’d be fine switching gears with only two days of research?

In that time, we contacted as many people and organizations as we could to get the best possible picture of current conditions and specific concerns for our new target. It was about as non-technical as mountaineering gets, but still required ropes, harnesses and axes for a rope aid traverse.

After a haul up the mountain the following morning, we parked Ryan’s Ford Ranger pickup and did one last complete gear check. Each of us had a pretty heavy load. We weren’t about to cut corners. I’m glad Ryan was my partner because we both had the same transmission gear set so to speak. Slow and steady wins the race and this was a big up. Days and days of elevation gain, but I couldn’t complain.

The weather was perfect. The views were incredible and the sunsets at altitude were spectacular. At altitude there is a phenomenon which occurs sometimes when the sun goes down called alpenglow where everything is bathed in this blinding orange haze. It’s something you can’t easily explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

We made camp in the late afternoon. The following morning around 4 AM we would begin our ascent on the summit. We cooked a nice dinner and decided to do a fast and light ascent to a ridgeline that was about 250 feet or 80+ meters above us so that we could plan the ascent.

At the top of the ridge, we had a long view to the peak of another mountain and off to the side of that peak was a living, breathing thing. Another sight I can’t easily describe. It was an exposed storm system at altitude. It looked like a dragon. Several spiral rings, circular arms comprising an undulating mass. We both looked at it in awe. It was terrifying, but we rationalized that across the valley between peaks it must have been at least 15 miles away. No reason to believe that it was heading toward us.

Any reasonable mountaineer would have headed back toward camp and battened down the hatches for the night, but not us. We decided to shift our focus to the peak and decide which side of the cleaver we were going around in the AM, do a declination read etc.

About 15 minutes later, we looked across the valley to find that the storm disappeared, and then we looked down. It was in the valley and it covered well over three quarters the distance from where it was. It was barreling up the mountain straight toward us.

Without a word, we shoved the map and compass into our jackets, pulled the ratchet straps tight on our snowshoes, got up as much energy as we could in the space of a few strides and leaped off the ridgeline. 20 feet over some exposed rocks landing on one snowshoe, sliding 12 feet or so and then launching again, landing on the other snowshoe, sliding and launching over and over down the 200 foot couloir. The term for this is called glissading.. or uncontrolled panic.

The beast crested the ridge and it was right behind us as we plowed through the snow toward the tent. We unclipped the snowshoes, dove into the tent and for the lack of better words to describe an extraordinarily powerful force, the hand of god flattened the tent. Despite the fact that it was a four season tent and anchored quite well.

So there we were, inside a collapsed tent, holding onto the floor as the whole thing violently flapped around us. The storm gusts sounded like a freight train and a cacophony of dissonant voices wailing in terror. The barometric pressure dropped so sharply that both of us had splitting headaches. I had to pull myself out of this state. Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I might have pissed myself. I was convinced that we were going to die.

We had to come up with a plan to fix the tent. We took our trekking poles apart and extended them against the spots at the back of the tent where the tent poles crossed. We used duct tape and anything else we had to tie the poles together and somehow we managed to get the tent back up.

I had to venture back outside for a moment to secure part of the tent. I took off my left glove to tie a knot and in those few minutes I had a burning sensation then lost all feeling in that hand. The storm stalled out right above us and it took less than an hour to blanket the tent with a layer of snow that was several feet deep.

At least the tent wasn’t blowing around anymore and the snow layer deadened the noise of the storm but we had other concerns. The tent was a loss so we didn’t think twice about cutting a hole in the corner and stomping the snow down enough to create a makeshift privy. We had to cut a hole through the roof of the tent and maintain ventilation. We had -20 degree sleeping bags and many layers so we managed to stay warm. I buried my left frostbitten hand in my crotch which was just about the only smart thing I’d done.

More unsolicited mountaineering advice: Don’t leave your food and cooking gear outside when you leave your tent site even for a few minutes. Gone. It was all gone. Between the two of us, we had a bit of jerky and 4 power bars.

For almost 2 days, the storm continued and the snow piled up. Ryan was trying to keep my spirits up with dumb stories that made Ryan well, Ryan... and I was grateful for his company. It was a really scary situation that I never thought I’d find myself in.

Then, one morning there was blue sky visible through the vent shaft and we began to dig ourselves out. We still had our packs and most of our mountaineering gear, but a bunch of equipment was gone, buried deep or just blown away. The tent was wrecked and we packed it out along with what was left. We had 4 days of snowshoeing ahead of us and precious little food. We couldn’t melt snow anywhere else but our mouths. Up there it was well below freezing.

When we made it to the truck, it took a while to dig it out. Not as much snow, but we were tired, hungry and beat up. Back down at the base of the mountain was a lake and a small town. Even though it was 72 degrees down there, it was off season. The lake explodes with happily recreating visitors in the summer but at the moment it was still a ghost town.

We were slumped over the tailgate when we heard a voice ask, “were the two of you up there?” We nodded our heads. This guy was a fellow mountaineer and the owner of the tavern. He saw us park out front. We were hoping his place was open for the season, but it wasn’t yet. His name was Mike. We told him what happened and that we were lucky to be alive. He told us that he just bought some sausage that he was about to cook up from a local co-op and asked if we’d like to share it with him. You didn’t have to ask us twice.

Ryan and I sat at a table with our savior, ate sausage, sautéed peppers and onions and drank some good local brew. Mike told us that we were welcome to stay the night. He and his wife let us use the shower in their house which was right behind the tavern. I’ll never forget their kindness.

Ryan came up with a brilliant idea to wash the tension out of us. He said that he knew of a hidden hot spring that we should check out. Sounded like a plan to me.

We took off in his pick-up in search of the dirt road that led to the spring. It turned out to be one hell of a washboard. Miles and miles of the bumpiest road I had ever been down, bouncing around the cab and holding on for dear life. When he pulled off the road, if you could call it that, Ryan got out, jumped up into the bed, hoisted up his backpack and started putting it on. He said, “when you put yours on, don’t do the hip-belt.” I turned around to look at a raging class 3 creek and turned back to him. "You’ve got to be kidding, right? We’re going to cross that?" He nodded his head with a smile.

Ryan went first, working his way into footholds that weren’t too slippery. There was moss on every rock. He had to lean forward into the current. He was getting pounded. Even though he wore his pack as high as he could, the lower section was still getting wet. Finally, he made it to the other side. He dropped his pack, pulled out a towel and started to dry off. Just then I remembered that this creek was all ice melt from the peaks.

He yelled at me from across the creek, “come on!” He had to yell. The noise of the rapids drowned out anything else. With a gasp of dread, I started making my way across. It was freezin’ ass cold. By the time I worked my way to the center, the lower half of my body was completely numb.

I found myself in a spot where I was getting decked by the rapids and couldn’t find another foothold. Balancing on my left foot, I searched around gently with my right foot and the force of the water pushed hard enough that I began to lean back a little too far. My right foot had found a spot, but my left was being lifted by the current. All of this happened in a split second, but it seemed like slow motion.

If I didn’t do something immediately, I was going over backwards for a deadly ride down the rapids with a full pack.

I mustered every bit of strength I had, seemingly defied gravity and pushed forward overcoming the obtuse angle that would have spelled disaster. I plunged my left foot forward and it found purchase between a rock and another hard place. Before you know it, I was on the other side with Ryan. Ready to go again after warming up, we set forth into an amazing first growth forest. Ryan introduced me to ‘Grandfather’. A tree so big around that it would have taken seven people hand to hand to span it.

There was green moss hanging from everything and big yellow Banana Slugs. What an amazing north-west treasure. A few painful miles later, we came across a cabin. Ryan exclaimed enthusiastically, “we’re here!”

By that time, my foot had swelled up so bad that I almost couldn’t get it out of the boot. When I slammed my foot down to get purchase while crossing the creek, I fractured my heel. The water was so cold that I didn’t feel a thing when it happened.

There was a caretaker who lived in the cabin for part of the year. It was private property. Ryan had met him before and his cabin was in such a removed location that you couldn’t just go down to the grocery store, so we brought him a pineapple, oranges, kiwi fruit, a bunch of veggies and they were the heavy, completely unbalanced reason why I almost went for an unexpected tumble down the rapids.

The hot spring was awesome. Imagine a small cave that goes 50 feet or so back into a cliff wall. The cave is about 12 or 13 feet tall and the bottom half is steaming hot mineral spring water. At the very back of the cave there’s a wood plank bench. It’s pitch black and through all the steam, you can barely see daylight at the mouth of the cave. Ryan and I sat on the bench in the back and we just started humming. The echo made it sound like an entire room full of monks at some monastery in the midst of a Gregorian chant. It was a very relaxing and much needed soak.

Thankfully, the way back across the creek wasn’t as harrowing less the fruits and veggies. When we finally got back to Ryan’s mom’s place in Seattle, I wished them well and took off… heading down the coast to visit my friends Jim and Jessi in Bend, Oregon.

As I prepped my garlic roasted peppers in their kitchen, I thought about everything I’d been through and all the stupid mistakes I’d made. It was the perfect evening for a barbeque. The bocce ball area was all set, the tiki torches were ready for sundown, good food, good company and a good day to be alive.