With a 30-pound pack on my back, my ice ax drilled into the snowpack before me, my feet jammed into the two footholds I had just hacked out, and 11 hours of hiking and climbing under my belt, I rested my head against the compact snow that made up the 60-degree-angled slope on which I was perched. Consciously breathing deep into the bottom of my lungs, I peered under my left arm. The world dropped out below me, the snow stretching several hundred feet downward where it ended in its rock-strewn terminal moraine. Above those rocks, the upside down view of the deep red, brown, and beige-striated, shear, rock-face of Superior Peak on the Cottonwood Ridge spread to the east and west beyond my view. It was dizzying.
I was now just a little less than halfway into my journey. I had started the previous day at 3 pm from the White Pine Trailhead, then hiked past the Red Pine cut off to an overnight bivouac in Maybird Gulch. My tent was cradled in the cirque above Maybird Lake, just below a snow field. Twice during the night, I was awakened by thunderous rock-falls peeling off the Pfiefferhorn. After a cold and restless sleep, I arose at 5:30 a.m., quickly ate my two pre-cooked, home-made amalgam waffles, and navigated over the Pfiefferhorn’s northern ridgeline between Maybird Gulch to Hogum Fork. I could already feel the miles and the thinness of the air burdening my body.
The climb wasn’t exceptionally dangerous, but dangerous, nonetheless. If I’d had the skill and courage of doing exceptionally dangerous things and had lived, it was likely that more than just my mother would care about the fact that I questioned my sanity by asking in a whisper: “What am I doing here?” Without debate, I continued my path upward, sixteen steps at a time. While I take risks, I don’t take them casually, nor ignorantly. I prefer to take my risks with deliberate calculation. I had picked the slope I was on as the one with the longest leveling off at the bottom, so that if I slipped and failed to self-arrest, I might survive the slide down to the rocks at the bottom. I also moved with great care: slowly up the snow field with no less than two points of contact in the snow at all times – ice ax in, one foot moving, then the next, and repeating the sequence. When the snow became too hard to beat out an adequate toehold, I would hack them out with my ax.
I moved further up as the face steepened. Then, I moved laterally to my left to the rocky granite crag where I could clamber up to the ridge line where I would head west. I climbed north along Lightning Ridge, past a half-dozen minor peaks with hay stacks of massive splintered boulders, until slowly making my way to South Thunder Mountain. I was alone. In the event of a mishap, no one would be at hand to tell people where they could find my body or conduct some first aid and call in the rescuers. I did, however, have my whistle and the most miraculous modern invention – my cell phone! If I was conscious, I could whistle, or, if in range, call for help. Not that I wouldn’t mind having company, but at this point, all the people I know are smart enough to either decline the invitation, or to come with me, or to just make movies instead of actually climbing the mountain themselves.
Leaving the snow, I scaled the 50-foot crag, scrambled up, over, around, and through the granite boulders to top the ridge. There, I encountered the only people I would see the entire remainder of my day – two thirty-year-old men. “You just came from down there?” one asked, pointing below me. “Yeah,” I answered, breathing heavily. “Well done!” said the other, enthusiastically, “That’s something!” “Yeah, look!” said the first, pointing down to my tracks up the snowfield, as if they couldn’t believe it. “You can see his tracks!” We chatted a bit and then the two went on their way, scrambling up the maze of slabs, outcrops, and monoliths towards South Thunder Mountain, where I was headed. By the looks of their progress, they would probably be done with their day five hours earlier than I would be.
I do a lot of hard things in my life, in my law practice, and in my film and acting career. Rarely does anyone say, “Well done,” even when I win. It was unexpected, un-needed, but nice to hear. So why was I there on that mountain? I thought about that question. I had no good answers, other than I do it because I like it. I like the isolation, the solitude, and the abject austerity and simplicity of it. I like the immersion it demands of me, the challenge that requires total commitment of mind, body and soul.
With Chipman Peak and the Pfiefferhorn at my back, I traversed up Lightning Ridge amidst the maze. At times, I stopped to peer over the sheer, several-hundred-foot drop-off to my right, in the east, until I finally attained the ill-defined top of South Thunder Peak. I had wanted to climb Chipman, Lone and North Thunder peaks, but like many of my plans, the distance was beyond my capacity and allotted time. After a moment to revel in the achievement, and sign my name in the mail box register, I glissaded down as many snow fields as I could and bushwhacked my way below to the Upper Bell's Canyon Reservoir. A few of my glissades were too fast, but safe. With my legs tiring and my knees starting to ache, I moved evermore slowly, telling myself to concentrate to avoid any slip, stumble or fall. I stopped to take a lot of pictures.
After reaching upper Bell's Reservoir, I found a trail that, because of snow patches, was hard to follow for a couple miles until I ascended far enough to its more well-worn parts and managed to follow it from thereon out. That was fortunate, because it soon grew dark. With my headlamp and the roaring constant song of the stream, I slowly made my way down. Though anxious to be done, I still stopped here and there to shine my headlamp on water falls that fill the air with mist, cause the earth to tremble, and fill my mind with wonder. Despite Bell’s beauty, most only go to the first waterfall below, which I found myself walking in a swirl of dust that still hung in the air, sparkling in my head lamp’s beam. After what seemed like an eternity, the city’s lights burst into my line of sight and, thereafter, periodically came into view to beacon me onward. When my feet finally reached the valley floor, I peered back up into Bell’s canyon. At that moment, I swear I could hear – though unexpected and un-needed – the mountain whisper to me: “Well done!”
Back home in bed – bruised, scratched up, and aching – I slept well. Who can ask for better than that?
Loren M. Lambert © July 2, 2017
