In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley
--Robert Browning, 1785
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Chloe Potter and her husband play a role in today's account. We'll tell you more later...
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The descent
On the way down, Roger told me about the man he knew who tried to climb Rainier five times (or was it seven?) and never made it. And he noted that despite the fact he has climbed Mount Adams nine times or so, there were three times he didn't make it.
This was one of them.
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The objective. The flat edge at the top is the false summit, from which we planned to glissade. Three hours up, 10 minutes down. The trick is getting there.
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It was so hot. So really hot. And dry. We knew it would be a drudge, but we didn't expect such a drudge. And we didn't expect to lose Wilson.
Day 1, July 2
We met up south of Auburn, where we loaded the Voyager for the 140-mile trip to Trout lake via Puyallup, Morton, Randall and a few other small towns. The roads were slow, including one long rutted gravelly stretch that seemed to last forever. At the Trout Lake Ranger Station we purchased our Volcano pass and completed the final leg to the Cold Springs Campground, following what appeared to be a winding forest service road,with potholes big enough to eat a moped. A lesser vehicle would have high-centered. This final stretch was dusty and dismal. We were flanked by dead trees, scorched by a fire that passed through the Cold Springs Campground a year or so ago.
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Part of the scene that greeted us during our arrival on the flanks of Mount Adams.
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In 2011, there were snowbanks here; in one of them we found a cache of Coors Beer someone had left for us. But this time the campground was parched and dead looking. We arrived about 7:30 p.m., ate some pretty good dehydrated meals, set up the tent and turned in.
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The voyager and Roger's two-man Half Dome tent at Cold Creek campground.
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Scorched pine cones and lichen, lock in a death grip against their host.
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From atop a scorched and sawn-off trunk, a squirrel contemplates his next meal in a wasteland.
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When morning came, a full moon was waiting to greet us.
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Day 2, July 3: The Heat
We rose about 4:30, but set out about 7:30 a.m. with full regalia--a bicycle helmet strapped to my back to hold the GoPro camera, Wilson, bobbing along behind, right next to the crampons for dlimbing on snow. Our outbound path was flanked by hundreds of dead sentinels,trees scorched by wild fire, stripped of their lesser branches, some of them merely white naked skeletons, their bark fallen away, a silent, macabre receiving line.
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Dead sentinels flank the path to the mountain.
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In 2011, Roger summited in two days. I stayed behind at the staging area (called the "Lunch Counter") because, although we were literally walking on water (vast snowfields) our stove had burned up and we couldn't boil snow to replenish my supply. Four years later we had a different plan: Take two days to reach the Lunch Counter, melting snow along the way. Roger had paid more than $100 for a new, light stove that packs well.
But the weather had different plans for us, and these dead sentinels were a suggestion of the heat to come.
In the photo below, you are looking at an area that four years ago was solid white. There was snow everywhere. But from this vantage point, the snow was yet another 1,000 feet higher, and even then the snow fields were scattered. Wilson is looking out over a hot, dry, rocky and slightly dangerous landscape where it's easy to slip and fall, and there is no soft snow to land on. We knew the snow was higher, but we had no concept of how truly hot it would be and how far we would walk before we reached a snow field.
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The road up--and down. During the descent Wilson took a moment to survey the path that had undone us. What previously was white with snow is now barren and hostile.
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Along the route I encountered a large dry gully. Four years ago and a month earlier in the year, I had hiked around that gully because it was full of snow and I didn't want to descend and then climb up the slope, when I could simply walk on the snow-covered ridge line. I would not be surprised to learn that the snow was at least four feet deep at that time. Now it was bare.
Around noon we encountered a rushing creek. You don't drink water from creeks. Back in the 70's, my wife would carry a cup pinned to her backpack and scoop up a nice drink of mountain water along the way. Try that now and you may gain a nasty little intestinal parasite called giardia. But Roger had the solution: a hand pump that could filter out microbes and giardia and fill your water bottle in no time flat. He handed it to me.
The pump moved grudgingly. It was almost frozen. It hadn't been used for years and wasn't tested prior to the hike. Later, at camp, it would produce some water, but not in the quantities we needed. Well, we still had our stove to boil water later. We pushed on. A troupe of Boy Scouts passed us on a steep slope. Later, as we rested, others toiled past more slowly, noting that this was truly a drudge. The photo below gives an inkling of what it was like.
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Roger clambers over loose rock on the trail. To his right is the first snowbank we encountered, at about 7,700 feet elevation, about 2,000 feet above where we started.
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At 7,800 feet, we were just below an area known as the crescent glacier. Ahead of us was Riley Ridge, pictured below. Four years ago I became lost and walked along that ridge, trying to find my way. The entire steep slope was covered in snow. I finally backtracked diagonally down the slope. It was slippery, but not treacherous. Now it is hot, dusty and sometimes slippery gravel.
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We camped below Riley Ridge for the night, knowing that there was more of this awaiting us on July 4.
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Horses at the camp site
What Roger calls "tired," I recognize as exhaustion. We lay down in the shade. I took a moment to get acquainted with a horse named Charlie, that was tromping on the muscle in my left inner thigh. No question about it. My mouth was parched. I checked my Platypus, the water bag I sipped from that was inside my backpack. It was empty. I must have slept, because I didn't notice that several hikers had arrived and taken two of the best camping spots. We quickly claimed the last one, then walked to a creek, filled trash bags with water and set about boiling the water. It boils more slowly at altitude, particularly when you don't put a lid on the pot. Afterward we chilled the drinking water in a small patch of snow we found nearby.
Forest fire
It was about that time when Roger noticed smoke in the valley. A lot of smoke. And it was rising over Riley Ridge.
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Smoke from a fire rose over Riley Ridge. Was it heading for us?
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Ye Gods, as if it weren't hot enough. My Verizon droid had one bar...no, three bars...no, wait, one bar. It kept bouncing back and forth. I texted several friends asking them if they had any information about the fire. Finally, the Canadian couple that took the best campsite said a Wilderness Ranger reported we weren't in danger. The last fire that passed through pretty much consumed most of the fuel.
We boiled water, cooked dinner and began to consider whether we were up for hiking to the lunch counter. And what we would do about water. At the pace we were going, would there be enough fuel?
Night fell. It got cold for a while. At 2 a.m. I got another charlie horse and sipped some water to take it down a peg. After it eased, I left the tent and walked out into the open, where the moon was so bright you could read by it. There were lights up on Riley Ridge. Two men were hiking early, wearing headlamps to find the way, and getting ahead of the day's heat. If we continued ascending at 7 a.m. the heat would catch up with us. And I was still exhausted. When I crawled back into the tent, Roger was there, trying to calm his own personal charlie horse down. There was a good chance that we wouldn't have enough fuel to purify all the water we would need because of the hot weather.
That's when Roger said the obvious: "You know, I think this mountain's just too big for us."
Descent, July 4
We rose, ate light and began our descent at 7:30 a.m. Going down a trail with loose rocks and slippery dry dirt is even more dangerous than climbing it. I stopped for the photo of Wilson on the cairn. When I put my back pack on, I forgot to attach Wilson. Wilson silently watched us becoming small dots in the distance.
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Pyrrhic victory: I was supposed to be waving Carla's flag on that white spec in the distance.
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Part way down, I posed with the Team Wilson flag in a photo that showed the austere trail we were descending and the mountain in the background. Carla Stanley, the customer service representative at One World Play Project had made that flag specifically for the summit. I was sorry it would never fly there. An hour later, I realized I could have asked the Canadian couple to carry our flag to the top. I was just to tired to think about it...and then I reached behind to see where Wilson was.
I'm not any Lawrence of Arabia. Call me cold, but there was no way I was going to hike back up in that heat to rescue a fallen comrade. I might have done it to save a life, but Wilson is indestructible. The first thing was to go back to the car, rest up, and then consider what to do. And that's when I encountered this couple from Bend, OR.
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Team Wilson gained two new members on July 4.
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"Are you guys going to the top?"
They were.
I told them all about how tough Wilson was and how donors have purchased more than 100 of them for children around the world and I gave them my card, with the One World Futbol Web site printed on it along with my blog address.
She noticed my e-mail address: dancingpotter@gmail.com.
Hey, that's my name!" said Chloe Potter. "And I'm a dancer!"
Her favorite dance is America tango. I was too tired to ask her husband's name, but I learned that he isn't a dancer--yet. Give 'em time. They've only been married two months.
I told them where to find Wilson. And I offered them a bounty to take the Unbreakable to the top of Adams and another bounty, if they shipped The Unbreakable to me when they return. And I made them honorary members of Team Wilson.
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Chloe's photo. This woman has spunk!
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Will they make it to the top? I think so. At the right is Chloe's gmail photo, slightly pixilated, because I enlarged it. Does this woman have spunk? In the slightly botched words of a great American, "
I may not make it to the mountain top, but we, as a team, just might make it to the mountain top". Geeze, I hope they do.
Love,
Robert and Roger
And maybe... Wilson
Afterthought.
At our 7,800-foot campsite, my pulse was 60 when I woke up about 2 a.m. Normally, in Seattle my pulse is 51 at rest. That's what elevation does -- as well as dehydrating you. But back home, at 10 a.m. this morning, my pulse was an unbelieveable 44. I measured it three times. Like Friedrich Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill us, makes us meaner," or something like that.
