Day 6
The wind has blown through the night, now and then a short rain sprinkling on the tent. I force myself off bed around 5 am and get on photography right away: Sunrise is already casting glorious light on a spectacular shredded cloudscape still pouring in high winds from behind Banner and Ritter.
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This is an off day. The pattern repeats again, on and off. Yesterday was a big, long strong hike day and today I am paying the price, tired, beat, limp.
Today’s original plan was a “Zero day” - leaving the camp in place and going berserk scrambling up the mountain with a light pack. My very prime objective, given the right conditions, was to summit Banner Peak - spent many hours studying that climb, I asked for this forum’s wisdom about it, and on the paper, with good weather it is within my capacities, no technical climbing. Before the hike I had to promise my wife I would not attempt it if I was not feeling strong, if the mountain “looked bigger than me”, if the weather was bad.
Looking at it this morning, thick fast clouds are still pouring at high speed through the summits, and this does not look like a climbing day. I have long passed a decent start time, and my body feels beat. I conclude it’s urgent to not take a decision, let’s wait a little and see what comes. I do some maintenance, a little sponge bath, the weather is too frigid for a swim.
7 AM. I stare at the threatening clouds still spewing from Banner and I make a strong decision for the next step in my adventure: a nap.
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11 am. After a long inner debate, I am heading towards Glacier Pass and Banner. My pan B was to day hike to Garnet lake cross country across the ridge south of Thousand Island lakes, but Banner is pulling at me. Clouds are pouring in still, at very high speed near the summit, but the weather could stabilize while I ascend Glacier. It’s very late in the day to get started and I know my odds for summit are now extremely thin, but who knows, one step at a time. At least I can study the way up and learn a thing or two. I grab a light pack and leave the camp in place, pot filled with water, a reserve of filtered water at the ready and stove ready to fire, the promise of an easy lazy evening.
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The first step of the ascent is yet another fairy garden, the hard rock version of the one past Donahue. This one is louder and less gentle than yesterday’s : roaring waterfalls, fast creeks, lush grasses, thick concentrations of wildflowers, the rocks here are angry, angular, sharp, fresh breaks of the mountain mostly not weathered yet, their volcanic colors are bolder and more threatening, shades of stark blacks stained with rust and lichens.
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There was a small use trail guiding me from the lake at the beginning, but I lost it early on and I am now going up the mountain, trying to make wise choices about there to head. I exit the vegetation layer and arrive at last large balcony with a tarn and some faint weather beaten greenery, at its far edge I see a small alpine tent. The wind is irregular, sometimes blowing hard in a rage, sometimes a little milder. Patches of blue appear in the sky, some patches of sunlight reach me, the clouds are maybe a notch higher, but they still look too fast and a bit threatening.
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I reach the rockfall in the center of the pass. A large gully filled with large angular rocky chunks from the mountain faces surrounding it. At the center some rocks are very large, the size of cars, trucks and houses, on the outside they are smaller size. I start in the center, retract the hiking sticks and pack them, it’s easier to rely on my balance as I clamber from one rock to the next. This is fun, I am enjoying myself quite a bit but I recognize that pace has slowed down dramatically, on the large rocks I am now half hiking and half scrambling to get from one rock to the next. It’s time to get off the center and I head to the south slope, towards the smaller easier stuff and the first snowfield.
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I meet two hikers with tiny day packs there, taking a break on the way down. They are maybe a little older than me, big smiles on their faces. “Hi guys! How high did you go?” They went through the pass, around lake Catherine and reached the base of the glacier on the saddle between Banner and Ritter - the “easy” route for the summit that I was hoping to follow. They say they have wanted to climb Banner on this route for years, but today is still not the day - too late in the day and the weather is too harsh. Still they are delighted to have reached the final glacier and that accomplishment illuminates their faces, bright smiles and sparky eyes. They have climbed Banner and Ritter several times in times past from the south side of the mountains, via Lake Ediza. “The summit looks really close from here”, I remark. All three of us stare at it in silence for a minute, there is a bit of longing and computation of effort and time in our gazes. “That is true”, one of them says, smiling. We laugh and make jokes about shamefully walking back from a commitment to a summit climb with made up excuses. We bid each other safe and fun travels, and I resume the ascent.
I am now on the steep snowfield and I don the microspikes and ice axe. The ice axe is still a bit of an exotic object for me, and I drill the emergency self arrest motions on each arm for a couple minutes.
The snow travel teaches me a first good lesson - Just as some of you tried to explain to me, the microspikes are rubbish in summer, their tiny teeth cannot reach the hard frozen snow through the top wet snow, and they offer very little solid footing. Next time I come here I will bring crampons. On the other hand, the ice axe feels great, at each step I plant the spike and it feels solid in the frozen ice underground - this is something I can hold on and trust, and it feeds great confidence in the travel on the long slope.
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Past the snowfield, I reach the last obstacle of the pass: a moraine of large broken rocks that looks a bit like a great wall. I am at respectably high altitude now, a little under 11200 feet, and the altitude beats me up a little, I feel lazy and tired, I need to rest every few steps. A hiker appears on top of the moraine, he is coming down from the pass. We wave at each other, he screams over the wind “I am coming to your side” and clambers through the rock wall. “I recognize you”, he says with a smile, “we met in Tuolumne”. He was one of the hikers oozing kindness, that offered us JMT patches back on the picnic tables in front of the post office, and I had given him my little bit of excess food. He comes from Ohio, and he made his way to this pass from Tuolumne cross country. Hiking badassery, I am working my way up to it, one step at a time. We say our goodbyes and in one tiny last push, I am over the moraine and on top of Glacier pass, taking in lake Catherine, the Banner and Ritter summits that feel so close now, I could nearly touch them. I stare at the lip of the glacier that separates them and leads up to Banner summit. The black mineral stone walls, with sloping ice and snow surrounding the perfect blue waters of Catherine look otherworldly. Wonderland high alpine landscape.
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It is now 14:30. The wind blows furiously, my rain jacket emits a constant obstinato of whip cracks. There are patches of blue sky piercing above finally, but heavy clouds are still racing over. In my mind I think about the summit... I could maybe make it by 5... And then go down with the headlamp. But this just looks iffy. The wind must be straight dangerous higher up and some clouds are still obscuring the summit now and then. I am replaying our earlier jokes about shamefully walking back a summit commit, I grin and decide to turn back to camp. See you next time, Banner.
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The hike down is peaceful and much easier - coming down I find a small use trail on the south wall, criss crossing a creek. I hear waterfalls roaring from the opposite wall. The slowly falling sun casts wide cloud shadows across the landscape. I make it to the lake’s edge by 4:30 pm, and start to hike back to camp. I am beat, this was not as heavy a day as yesterday but the accumulated fatigue starts stacking up. I am grinning and feel lifted by my little adventure of the day - climbing that pass was fun, and I shall return. I am thinking about my neatly setup camp ready to welcome me. I will relax, maybe go for a swim, read, and do some photography at sunset.
Last night, a good while before setting camp, I passed a blue duplex tent - very recognizable. I nearly reach it now - I must have passed my campsite without realizing, daydreaming does that. I start hiking back west to the mountain. 20 minutes later, I realize I have hiked too far west, I must have missed my camp again. I turn around, now scanning for the small landmarks I think I remember about my camp: this large dried tarn. This strange large angular rock towering over a stained granite plate. There are many similar landmarks but none of them quite perfectly fits. I reach the blue tent again. Maybe I have aimed too low, time to go higher up the ridge so I can see inside the granite balconies. My tent is made of camouflage fabric and it does not help - spotting it at a distance is going to be a toughie, and finding it at night would be a miracle. I start seesawing up and down the slope, westward and eastward, making notes of excellent potential future campsites, each time stopping at the blue tent.
This game lasts for two hours, all through which my adrenaline is amping up, I step faster and faster as various nightmare scenarios start playing in my fuzzy mind. Daylight starts falling as the sun hides behind the Ritter range. I can only point at the dumb stupor fatigue syndrome to explain the mental block. Getting water after nightfall and finding back camp was easy yesterday.
In the end, I pull out the camera and study pictures of the landscape taken from the campsite this morning. Examining details of the pictures on the camera screen is awkward and time consuming. I try to identify the lake’s island shapes in the fading light, their perspective, their position relative to the snowfields on the opposite side, the probable angle of the camera favoring Banner and composition from the campsite. Science, geometry and triangulation can lift the world. I walk past the blue tent and up 50 yards, and drop my pack next to my tent.
This blue duplex tent of course belongs to a different hiker, and he pitched unknowingly just under my invisible campsite. I walk down to his camp, a couple other hikers have joined him to chat, I tell them about the silly end of my adventure day. “I did see you walk by, it was a while ago”. “Two hours ago” I say with a pained smile. “You should have come and ask. I discovered your campsite this afternoon”.
Why did I not come and ask ? The sin of pride, the certitude of self reliance. I flatter myself that my sense of orientation and spatial awareness is flawless, but the memory of a blue tent was enough to wreck it. I am full of dumb, and humility would have served me much better. This was a great lesson with no harm done - I will be wiser in the future.
Time for dinner - Miso soup, channa massala, a handful of haribos, a cup of chamomile. The stars show up, the sky is finally clear. I make a few long exposure stacks and wrap up the day, exhausted. I have two days to make it to Red’s, without any major objectives, easily done. The leisure hike will begin tomorrow.
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