June 20, 2024

Shit Happens

Any mountaineer would have been ashamed of how late I started.  However, I am not any mountaineer.  I’ve been running dogs since 2003.  For this I did several 24/7 continuous races and they run at night.  I learned to operate in darkness outdoors.  Modern GPS’s and great LED headlamps make this particularly easy.

Anyway, I started moving at the crack of noon.  I did run into Seeley Lake for both water and gorp.  Still, noon is noon.  I set out for the top of Crescent Mountain.  It’s a walk-up with normal route-finding issues.

The day started with a surprise, a very well maintained access trail.  The freshness of saw cuts I saw told me somebody had cleared the trail within a week.   It’s early for the trail to be as dry as it was, but it has been that kind of year.  Hiking up to the point at which I left the trail and started climbing the mountain itself was easy.

The last time I climbed anything was in 2013.  That was Holland Peak.  We did some light work in snow along with some class three—definitely need hands---rock.  On that trip, I figured the stuff I was carrying was too heavy.  Since then, I’ve updated and changed every piece of equipment I carry.  Okay, water bottles are new, but same design.  Recent purchases included the pack, the boots, an ultralight down jacket, and the pants I was wearing.  By recent, I mean within a couple of months. 

For Holland Peak, I followed somebody the whole way.  For this, I was alone.  There are minor tricks to route finding, but we learn these naturally.  And even easy cases like this are enjoyable.  I started out by moving east and up to get to a broad couloir, an avalanche shoot, I had eyed from the trail.  The rule of thumb is to try and gain a bit of altitude on every step, and I did.  It was a soft upward diagonal, but it was there. 

Once in the couloir, the line that seemed least risky of petering out was to go up a burned slope on its eastern side then follow a ridge to the summit. 

While steep, the route worked fine. What did happen was I started getting cramps in my quads.  I’ve done a lot of mountain biking this season, so this surprised me.  Still, while I could probably push through any number of minor injuries and get my ass out at a reasonable time, cramping could stop me in my tracks.  I started resting anytime my muscles started twitching in a threatening manner.  
Along the way I considered turn-back times.  They were never really rigid.  I only wanted to make it back to the trail by full darkness, basically 10:00 PM.  I had a good headlamp, but route finding of any sort is much harder by headlamp than by sunlight or even moonlight. 

I made the summit at a quarter past seven.  Actually, I dropped my pack, kicked steps into a 20 degree neve snow bank, crossed it and tagged the cairned summit.  The ultra-light mountaineering boots were new, too, and had to be tested.  
My thought remained that as long as I hit the trail before ten, I’d be golden.  My margin for error was the headlamp, that even if I missed that time, getting to the trail by headlamp would be a little tedious, but quite workable.

I rested, snacked, drank water, and added snow to my canteen.  I then packed up, put on my pack, checked to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind, then started down. It was a few minutes past eight.  I figured that unless the cramping reared its head—I expected much less if I kept moving given how different downhill is from uphill—I could clear ten without a problem. 

The two route finding advantages of going down are you cross areas you’ve been through and there is a lot less that’s hidden from view that could peter out, particularly in couloirs.  I crossed off of the ridge and into the couloir a ways above where I had walked out of it.  It was an easier route and sported a spring.  In my old age I have become much better at staying hydrated.  I know that that was the big player in many of the times I’ve been exhausted at the end of a day.  It has also played a big role in cramps.  Surprisingly, I’ve found less cramping with plain water than I have with my favorite, orange Gatorade.  And, of course the spring water was delightful.  I took a liter away.

Route finding was fun if not overwhelmingly challenging.  I just had to make sure I hit the trail.  For most of the way, while I couldn’t see the point at which that happened, I could see Crescent Lake and the trail went there. 

As it gets dark there’s always a playoff between the natural ability we have to see in the dark and turning on a headlamp.  I still do both bike rides and ski-tours that flirt with this.  With all of these I’m guessing I get within five minutes of the perfect time for my switching.  On that evening it came at 9:42 PM, a tad after sunset.  My headlamp was in an ultralight ditty bag.  Dropping my pack and pulling it out took less than a minute.  One of the things I like about the model is it has an off mode that requires a steady five second push to reverse.  Basically, that’s not happening in a pack.  I was a bit surprised when it didn’t respond normally by going on after the steady push.  Still, I opened the back.  I had reversed one of the batteries, an old school technique to keep flashlights from turning on.  I corrected this, closed the back, then pushed the switch.  Nothing happened.  I reversed all three batteries thinking I had mistaken the markings on the headlamp.  Nothing happened.  In spite of my having reversed one of my batteries I figured they had died.  I cursed myself for not checking the headlamp prior to starting the hike, but not for long.  Getting to the trail in the waning light was critical and self-deprecation wasn’t going to speed that up.  Stopping took less than four minutes. 

The other thing I did have going for me was a half-moon with a clear sky.  That’s actually a pretty bright night condition.  Still, the most critical thing was getting to the trail before it got really dark.  The other bit of good news was as long as I stayed high I’d either get to the lake or the trail.  And the outlet stream from the lake was loud.  As long as I could see enough to keep from falling, I’d be fine.  An hour later, I found the trail.  That was at 10:45.   Whatever else was going to happen, unless I got careless, I’d make it out okay.  As well, while I have done fifteen hour camp to camp days only a few times, I’ve done lots of thirteen hour days.  I was looking at doing the three miles back to the car in about two hours.  The moon certainly helped that. 

The start went easily.  That was a function of where the moon and trail were.  The forest was also open.  That said, I was definitely a bit sore and not inclined to move fast.  I hadn’t cramped on the way down but was happy to take a little longer so as to get to the car that night.  Still, I remembered the downhills on the way in and was happy when I passed the consequent climbing, a little over 200 feet, on the way out.  From there downhill all the way. 

Any day more than ten hours generally drops into a put one foot in front of the other mode.  Moreover, while more than half the time I was climbing with others, we had generally separated.  Sometimes I was in front.  Sometimes I lagged.  Still the nicety of being alone on a good clear trail was it was my pace and nobody else’s.  With a good headlamp life would have been easy if not enjoyable.
As the evening progressed two things happened.  The moon got lower and the angle relative to the trail got worse.  Eventually, many of the switchback legs became dark. Still, mostly by feel, I was able to find the trail.  There’s much more difference between packed snow and unpacked snow, but there was still a huge difference between groundcover and a good trail.  That said, I was losing the trail frequently and had to reverse course to find it again. 

What I realized was that first light, somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00, would let me navigate normally.  The only real problem was I wouldn’t feed my dogs until I got home, presumably by 7:00.  As it ends up feeding them at 5:00 is inside of my norm, but that’s another essay.  I had given them a lot of water before I left so they were safe if not comfortable.  
At 12:55 it finally happened.  I lost the trail and couldn’t find it.  Five minutes later I stopped. I was in downed trees and brush and moving was hard.  I pulled out my down jacket and put it on. 

When I first stopped, my muscles were quite sore.  That eased up overnight.  Still, the other real mistake was not carrying a painkiller in my first-aid kit.  There have been many day hikes on which that made a difference for me or friends. 

During the night, I moved twice to better spots.  I finished the water.  The soreness in the muscles dropped.  At least, they made far fewer threats to cramp.  I’ve bivouacked twice before.  Both were noticeably colder.  I was never cold, though I did add my rain parka to the down jacket.  At 9 oz. for the jacket and 7 oz. for the parka, I was impressed. 

By 4:30 I was becoming restless.  By 5:10 I was ready to move.  I suspected I wasn’t far from the trail, but really had no idea how and when I had missed it.  I figured that if I traversed west then climbed I’d necessarily hit it.  At the least, once I got to a high point I could see it and get there. Inside of 30 minutes I was hiking, albeit a bit slowly, on the trail. 

I took the walk out at an easy pace.  Just plain hiking on a good trail in a deep forest is pleasing.  I started with the down jacket in my pack and wearing the parka. After a bit, the parka became too warm.  Rather than pressing forward I took the parka off and stowed it in my pack. 

Forty minutes later I got to my car.  Water, gorp, changing shoes, and I was off.  Dogs were fed before 7:00. 

During the day I had two pleasant surprises.  The first was that it was the headlamp that had failed, not batteries.  While I should have checked that it was working because I have made errors that have let batteries discharge, that wasn’t the case this time.  Moreover, I’ve been using this kind of headlamp since 2014 and have never had an unrecoverable failure.  The failure of the headlamp was a big surprise.  The other was that my heartbeat monitor, a Polar H-10 chest strap, had recorded everything.  That’s eighteen hours of data.  It records my pulse every second, so that’s a big file.  I did put a fresh battery in it prior to the climb, so I had given it the “best shot” at working.  Still, I had figured it would crap out at twelve hours. 

Every experience should be a teacher.  In this case the new lesson was how different the specific muscles I use to climb a mountain are from riding a bike even though both are quads.  I’ll check a stowed headlamp before hitting the trail—not a problem when I start at night—and I will pack some vitamin I, Ibuprofen. 

I was a senior in high school when I took the Basic Mountaineering Training Course offered by the Los Angeles Sierra Club.  For the class, you had to do a training hike in the local mountains.  I did Mt. Harvard.  It was during a record rainstorm.  At 5,400’, it was snowing on top.  Gore-Tex was several years in the future.  Still, with a down jacket and constant movement I stayed warm.  And, the leader pointed out that the margin for safety was in the ten essentials and how to use them.  Many times since then I’ve been miserably cold.  I do run dogs in the winter.  Bottom line is any trip you come out of without too much discomfort and unscathed is a good trip.  I learned that on Mt. Harvard and repeated it many times since.  That includes Crescent Mountain.