R06 TR: Oct 2006 Late season trips that could have gone bad

[paul]

Speaking of Whitney brings to mind an early October many years ago. I was headed up Whitney planning to spend the night at the summit. Had been at altitude off and on for a couple weeks prior and was young and strong, and accompanied by a friend with little backpacking experience, but lots of ultra distance running - so very fit. Leaving the Portal, things looked great. By the switchbacks, it was windy but still clear skies. As we climbed the switchbacks, the window got stronger. Near the top, a sizable rock came down from above. At the crest, we hit big wind and looked over to see a wall of dark grey coming our way. I realized that the rockfall had been due to the wind - by way of the wind eroding sand and little rocks out from under the larger rock, so that it tipped over and started down.
The summit overnight was not happening; but I thought we still had time to tag the top and get back down. when we got to the first of the "windows" in the ridge, we just barely got through without being blown to Lone Pine. Shortly after, I realized this was nuts, and turned us around. By the time we got back to Trail crest, the wall of grey was upon us, and soon after, it began to snow lightly. We trudged downward. When we got down off the switchbacks, at the first level-ish area, my friend wanted to stop and camp. I had a solid tent but I said no, we are getting as far down as we can go. I did not realize it at the time but my friend was borderline hypothermic already, and before we got to Outpost Camp was wanting to just lie down anywhere and sleep. I kept us going, and at outpost camp I set up the tent and got her inside, into both sleeping bags, and started on hot food and drinks. After that we were fine, and in the morning we walked out with no problems through 6 or 8" of snow to begin with that tapered off as we descended.
I'm not sure that was the closest call I've ever had myself in the mountains - I never really felt I was in trouble personally - but I've never had anything like that close a call while being responsible for someone inexperienced. Taught me a lot about taking that responsibility very seriously.

[Harlen]

paul writes:

I kept us going, and at outpost camp I set up the tent and got her inside, into both sleeping bags,...

That was a very selfless and magnanimous move Paul, but at that young age, I'm surprised you wouldn't have opted for that other recommended cure for a partner's hypothermia.

[scottmiller]

Har! I was a teenager when I got hypothermia, and that other recommended cure didn't even cross my mind, even at an age when it was ALWAYS on my mind!
When I had my hypothermia experience, the people who were with me while hiking didn't notice a thing. I was kind of dragging ass, but that's nothing unusual for me. I'm always in the slow group. When I got back to camp, someone who had not been hiking with us, someone who was known by all of us to be a very perceptive person, took one look at me and said "He's sick! He needs help!" I was totally out of it and I had no idea what was going on by that time. Like your friend, I just wanted to go to sleep. Hypothermia is truly a hidden killer.
Anyway, I got all bundled up and fed warm drinks, but now I'm thinking maybe I missed an opportunity there...

[Gogd]

Since one's brain de-evolves down to the level of a protozoa when hypothermic, any thought of sex goes out the window. But reproduction by division may come to mind - ponder that option next time you are stupid cold.

Ed

[Harlen]

Gogd writes:

Since one's brain de-evolves down to the level of a protozoa when hypothermic, any thought of sex goes out the window. But reproduction by division may come to mind - ponder that option next time you are stupid cold.

Yes, well, my yipocampus/hypothalymus-- whatever it is, may be more active than yours Gogd... or even Gogs or Magogs*!

Look here:

In the 1970s, certain psychosurgical techniques were developed to target sexual behaviour. These were based on experimental work in animals that demonstrated that destruction of the hypothalamic ventromedial nuclei led to the conversion of feline post‐amygdalectomy hypersexuality to hyposexuality.13 Roeder and colleagues14 subsequently developed a stereotaxic method of treating “sexual deviations” in humans.

Don't understand it, but I reckon it's valuable information for somebody. Good night.

*Sorry, obscurantist biblical ref.

[stevet]

obscurantist biblical ref.

either this thread is coming to an end or about to get a second wind

[maverick]

Let's get back on subject please.

[giantbrookie]

I just returned from a car camping geologic recon trip in the Klamath Mtns this weekend and the adventure reminded me of another "late season trip that could have gone bad" experience that I had forgotten about. I was reminded of the experience because of the cold conditions on this weekend's trip. This included frost on many of the bridges in the Trinity and Salmon River canyons and day-round persistence of frost and ice in shaded areas at low elevations (mostly less than 2500'). In fact my 20F bag that I had brought to camp at Jct City campground W of Weaverville proved to be inadequate leading to a very long and uncomfortable night in which I'm not sure I achieved more than an hour of sleep. There were some really long drives on super narrow cliffside roads and the uncertainty as to whether we could depart our Sunday geologic target by the short route over Callahan summit or have to retrace a long drive back on that thrilling road (Cecilville to Sommes Bar headed in the downstream direction). Fortunately the road was ice and snow free over Callahan Summit so we "escaped" Cecilville yesterday afternoon.

Anyhow as I was thinking of my list of most stressful Klamath Mtn adventures I recalled a backpack trip in September 1985 to Big Blue Lake in the Russian Wilderness.....

This was the first and last time I headed into a fall backpacking trip with an iffy weather forecast. My preferred route to Big Blue Lake is all off trail from Taylor Lake, climbing up the cirque wall above Taylor L, heading across a high plateau, then dropping down a steep talus chute to Big Blue. The sky was overcast and tree branches laden with snow that had fallen within the past few days. It had warmed since the snowstorm and we (my girlfriend at the time, whose relationship covered the last part of the pre-Judy era) were occasionally doused by snow that was dumped on us when the wind blew shaking the snow clumps off of the branches above. The skies went from somber light gray to dark gray at about the time we reached Big Blue and set up camp near the outlet.

As we headed to the lake to fish, it began to rain. We both had our raingear on, so I didn't worry about keeping dry as I caught one 13-14" brown after another. However, after an hour or so I felt a bit damp and cold. I checked under my poncho and found that it wasn't doing its job. I was in fact quite wet. We decided to head for the tent to take shelter. The rain continued. With a surplus of snack food, we figured we could relax in the tent and have our snack food substitute for dinner. It is always cozy feeling to be sheltered in a tent while a storm rages outside. But soon the cozy feeling was badly disrupted. The rain became heavier and a drop of water hit my head, then another, and soon I was getting peppered with dripping water from a leak in the tent spine. Because my girlfriend's poncho was in fact waterproof, unlike mine, I headed out into the deluge with her poncho to put it over the tent spine. Once back inside the cozy feeling returned. Problem solved. Or so we thought. Night fell and the rain continued unabated. No big deal, we were snug and cozy in the tent (even if I was still a bit damp). It was time to turn in so I rearranged the tent accordingly. In doing so I first noticed that the sleeping bags were dripping wet, then my flashlight (I don't recall having head lamps back then) revealed the reason. There was a very active artesian spring in the floor of my tent which had turned the back part of the tent floor to a small pond. I headed out into the deluge again picked up a loose rock, then trenched around the tent. This took awhile and the effort left the knuckles of my right hand bloodied. The engineering succeeded in diverting the water around the tent so we could now turn in for a soggy night of sleep.

By the next morning the rains had eased considerably to a light drizzle. Mist hung over the lake and surrounding peaks like white beards. Whereas we had originally planned for a two-night trip, we'd had enough, so we packed up our soaked gear, loaded our packs and headed to the base of the talus chute to escape Big Blue. Whereas we were damp we, weren't badly chilled, but we were certainly on the cold and soggy side of things as we labored up the talus. Not long after beginning our ascent we came across these two chipmunks in an embrace. They were very wet and very dead. We looked at each other and noted the grim symbolism. The hike out was uneventful. In hindsight I suppose the trip itself was symbolic in another way in that it was the last hiking trip I'd take with this girl who jettisoned me the following May (good timing because otherwise she would have got dragged along on the hardest backpack trip I ever did---Edyth Lake from Cherry Lake--she dodged the trip because she was spending Memorial Day weekend in Monterey with her new guy). There is no question that the September 1985 Big Blue trip could have been a lot worse, which is why it was the very last time I headed out on a fall trip with a finite chance of precip in the forecast.

So as I was listing the "most stressful" Klamath Mtns experiences with my student as we drove home after "escaping" Cecilville, I recalled the Big Blue Sept 1985 trip as no.1. Yesterday was no.3 and no. 2 was also automotive related when I returned to my car at a remote Marble Mtns trailhead in July 1982 to find my battery dead.

[Gogd]

So as I was listing the "most stressful" Klamath Mtns experiences with my student as we drove home after "escaping" Cecilville, I recalled the Big Blue Sept 1985 trip as no.1. Yesterday was no.3 and no. 2 was also automotive related when I returned to my car at a remote Marble Mtns trailhead in July 1982 to find my battery dead.

I once gave a jump to someone with a dead battery at the trailhead. I took this as a lesson to disconnect my battery at remote trailheads or prior to long trips, to preclude accidentally draining it while on the trail.

I always have a fresh change of clothes in the car, in case the weather soddens what I am wearing. Also if snow is a possibility I bring a snow scraper, chains and a snow shovel to extricate my car, and a digging shovel and pick axe to clear snow berms left by the plows that may impede access from the parking lot to the road.

[wildhiker]

The last couple of posts referring to car trouble reminded me of a late season trip that was not a problem for me, but could have gone very badly for someone I helped.

In late September (around the 25th) of 1977, my girlfriend (now wife) and I made the long drive out to central Nevada to do some backpacking in the Monitor and Toquima ranges, partly to see the fall color in the large aspen groves there. This is a very isolated and little visited area. Towns are 50 to 100 miles apart. There are a few widely spaced paved highways connected by dirt and gravel roads. The mountains are uninhabited. The valleys between the mountains have only occasional ranches. And it goes without saying: no cell phones in 1977. In fact, I doubt there is service there even today.

Anyway, we left the highway in the town of Tonopah and headed north on a good gravel road in the Monitor Valley, headed for the Mosquito Creek trailhead on the west side of Table Mountain. It was a warm fall day with clear weather. After 50 miles or so on this gravel road, we turned off onto a dirt Forest Service road for about 8 or 9 miles to the trailhead at the base of the mountains. We had only seen a couple of cars on the gravel road, and none on the trailhead road or at the trailhead. We reached the trailhead about 2 pm and after a short time doing final packing, were just putting on our backpacks when I thought I heard someone shouting.

Looking around, I spotted someone running down a hill to the north of us, shouting and gesticulating wildly, trying to get our attention. Well, we put down our packs and waited for him to come over. A slightly pudgy man of about 40 expressed enormous relief at seeing us and asked for our help. He had taken his parents (presumably in their 60s) on a tour of some jeep trails that headed north and up onto the side of the mountain. This was an area where he normally hunted, and this was his pre-season day excursion. He and his family had no camping equipment and scant provisions for what was supposed to be a "Sunday drive". So, long story short, after stopping his jeep for a lunch break, it would not restart! Battery was dead! He begged me to use our vehicle to jump-start his jeep. We had a well-used VW "squareback" small station wagon. Our supplicant assured me that the jeep trail was in good condition to where his vehicle was stalled and our car could make it there "no problem". He had jumper cables in his jeep.

How could we refuse to help? He had walked a couple hours already coming down the mountain and was expecting to walk the distance out to the main highway, where he could flag down a vehicle in a hour or two if he was lucky. Meanwhile, the day is short and his parents are stuck in the jeep. They don't have any really warm clothing or much food, and the nights get down to freezing. My girlfriend decided to wait at the trailhead with our packs whlle I drove with our new friend back to his jeep. With the hindsight of experience, that was actually not a good idea. What if I got stranded with the car up the jeep trail? We should have both gone with all our gear in the car.

Anyway, my passenger directed me and I gingerly drove very slowly on this "jeep trail" for about a half hour to reach his stuck jeep. He was correct, our car could handle it. His parents were happy to see the cavalry arrive. The battery jump worked fine and his jeep started ok. We then drove back down together to the trailhead. After copious thanks, he left for town and we started hiking up the trail. We had a great trip with fine clear weather (but those cold nights) and beautiful aspen groves just starting to change color.

It was pure luck for the stuck jeeper that these crazy California backpackers happened to show up at a trailhead that gets very little use (except perhaps when the deer hunting season starts) just as he was desperately looking for help. The moral is to think about what could happen if you had car trouble at a remote trailhead in late season with few people around. Our good deed was ultimately rewarded the next year, when on a longer vacation tour, our car broke down in far eastern Nevada (fortunately on the highway) and a stranger, who turned out to be an auto mechanic, stopped and fixed it for us on the spot.

-Phil