Rating: ★★★★☆
Reviewer: Mark Epstein
Not sure how I got talked into this one. Frankly, if I did not know why urban Jews do not climb mountains when I started, I was perfectly clear on the reasons by the time we made it back to the car.
My recollection is that this was a four day trip starting at the parking lot where we left our car and, lightly geared up, headed to a midway point at Lake Helen approximately 10,000 feet above sea level in order to acclimate to the higher altitude before summiting at 14,190 feet. I somehow found myself with an ice pick and crampons on a multi-hour hike to a what turned out to be a frozen flat spot that was, in fact, a glacier with lake in its name. We had just enough time to get our tents set up and make some “just-add-water” camping food and bed down for the night.
Mind you, I was young and had no fearful thoughts about climbing Mt. Shasta. It was, after all, a beginner’s ropeless climb (that I was told was more like a vertical hike) the way it was described to me weeks before as the trip was being planned. “Help, help…we need help” someone cried and woke us around midnight. We all looked at each other feeling torn by the desire to help with the simultaneous desire not share their fate —- knowing that it was pitch black, heavily sloped and icy on our way to a place where someone had just injured themselves in the same dark we would need to traverse to get to the person crying out in the night.
We all looked at each other wondering what a good person would do in this situation. Finally, we agreed to see what other people were doing to help this poor injured person. We came across a fellow climber in a tent who had some sort of emergency radio who said he had call the rangers. Around 1AM a helicopter came and presumably rescued the poor fellow.
The following morning our thoughts turned to whether this might not be just be a walk in the park and that someone could get really hurt. We had the day of acclimation to formulate a plan and drink the best cup of soup I have ever eaten in my life — before or since. We resolved to get an early start as we concluded that the injured hiker had made the mistake of starting to late and ending up hiking in the dark — a mistake we planned to avoid.
Early the next day we began our hike after sunrise leaving our tents and most of supplies at base camp with the plan to ascend the peak and return before sunset. The hike itself was an optical illusion. It seemed like we were much closer to the first ridge than we actually were so that just before midday we arrived as a blood-stained spot where we presumed the injured hiker from our first night had fallen. You could see a slippery outcropping of ice above the spot that probably was where he fell. I was not expecting blood.
As the morning turned to afternoon, our thoughts turned to how soon it would be dark and, for me, thoughts of darkness turned to thoughts of that blood. Finally we crested the ridge of the first leg of the day’s climb known as Misery Hill — it was given this name because as you crest it you can grasp the considerable remaining territory and terrain that must be crossed to get to the summit. As we crested the ridge, there was an odd wave-like ice overhang that was difficult to get over requiring that you imbed the ice pickaxe and then pull your full body weight up using the axe handle like a rope to carry to the load. I found myself up in the air — off the ground put not able to pull myself over the odd wave-like ice formation which jutted out in an awkward way — when Carlos grabbed my arm and gave me just enough pull to get myself literally over the top of the ice wave formation. At the time I wondered if Carlos had just saved my life. At a minimum, he saved me the humiliation of marking the trail with my blood and perhaps an unwanted helicopter ride.
By late afternoon, we made our way from Misery Hill to the summit in a much earlier leg of the climb. We signed the summit roll that was kept inside a grey box, took our pictures and admired the beautiful views as we caught our breath and had some cold snacks and water. We all knew that we might be flirting with a nighttime hike if we came back down the exact way we went up — so we agreed to an alternative plan that had a preferable set of risks. We would get ourselves back to Misery Hill but instead of walking down through the ice, we would look for a way to come down on the least steep part of the climb “skating” through gravel on slopes leading back to Lake Helen. Skating meant digging into the gravel with your shoes enough to get a grip with your feet and then, using a skating motion, descend using the gravel as a way to control the rate of descent.
Having had a brush death or serious injury earlier in the day, this risk seemed modest and the plan worked perfectly — amazingly. We did, in fact, make it back to camp before dark and to the awkward reality of having only one packet of spectacularly delicious cup of soup left — not exactly contemplating cannibalism, mind you, but it was a delicious packet of warm savory soup. I honestly don’t remember what happened to that soup. I would like to think I gave my share to Carlos for potentially saving my life but I have blocked that moment from memory so there is probably some shame there.
In short, this was a once in a lifetime trip. Having been saved from death or humiliation, I vowed this would be the only mountain I ever climbed. I have never climbed a mountain since and there are no mountains on my bucket list. Like the ultimate camping trip, this trip was so much better in retrospect (than it was at the time) that the reward of the memories of it fully justified the misery of the thin air, the bad food, the cold, shivering in my not-sleeping bag waiting for the morning to pee, the unknown man crying out in the night and the near death summiting of Misery Hill. Carlos was , of course, an excellent guide and companion. How can you not give a man sho saves your life five stars?
This trip helped me understand what it might have been like to be our Boathouse parrot companion Topper — a bird who came to love Carlos not for putting him upside on his finger — which he did with some regularity —but for lifting him rightside up after doing so.
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