Snowed out of Mt. Adams

HikingLog 11089

On the dash: Starlight and Storm by Gaston Rebuffat

On Friday afternoon Shonda and I were standing at the computer in OR1, talking in hushed tones. Walt Hales, hand specialist in practice 30 years was working steadily behind us. The patient was awake. All was good in the OR. I directed Shonda's attention to the forecast for 6000 ft on Mt. Adams this weekend. She pointed to the boxes serried on the screen and read:

"'Snow, a hundred percent probability; snow; snow. Temperature 24 degrees at night. Winds up to thirty miles.'" She turned to me, "Well Dr D, you are going into a very cold place this weekend. I'd rather be here." She pated me on the middle of my back. Shonda meant she'd rather be here in the Tri-cities than Florida, with a Cabana boy. What she implied is that she thinks I am a radically adventurous fellow.

"Yup." I agreed. "Good chance we will see some snow."

Later in the day even Jim became aware of our plans. It is like he knows things before anyone else. He questioned me, sitting by a large open wound in a patient's forearm. "What time would you like to get up in the morning?" Jim, too, had plans for this weekend. He was going to drive the lovely lady to Seattle, there to spend their twentieth anniversary.

"I hope we get up by nine," I replied down to him.

He was not satisfied with my answer. "But," he withdrew his paws from the field and held them perfectly still. "When would you like to get up in the morning?"

"Oh, I would prefer to get up at like three and get on the trail by four," I had to reply. "It depends on social matters," and I left it at that.

Before I left for the day I announced to Teresa, and the rest of the women scuttling around the the nurses desk, "Not only am I preparing for an attempt in these conditions. I am going to be picked up by Tami and leave directly from the surgery center." Tami was going to do all the packing.

"I can just imagine," Shonda was animated. She stepped her feet and toggled her hands up and down above her head like she was jogging up a cliff and calling behind her. "Hey, Tami, did you bring the such and such?" Shanda who is (and Tami would agree with me out the yin-yang) the coolest, most collected, respectful, and sincere person one could hope to find. I love Shonda.

Just as the last happy patient left the facility, Tami drove up in the Denali. "I got everything in the packs, including the crampons." My jaw dropped. We have always had difficulty attaching the crampons to the outside of our packs. They hurt when they bumped into you. 'It was constant.' My Tami had done well. "They are packed tight." Tami packs manically.

We were on I-82 just by her dad's place at the edge of town when she realized she had forgotten to put food out for the cats, and she thought I had my Layers 1 and 2 with me at work. So we made a small detour back by our place. It gave me a chance to leave my work attire - brown leather shoes, smooth black pleated pants and long sleeve crew-neck shirt - at home. That was a good thing, because they would have gotten a year's worth of wear had they stayed in the interior of the Denali on this particular adventure.

By ten o'clock we were driving East on I-84, a wide easy highway on the Northern border of Oregon. We hugged the south shore of the Columbia and followed her down-stream, to the West. The sun had long since set and our thoughts were not yet on the mountain, and our conversation wandered. I found myself compelled to enumerate the many wonderful things in my life. I conjured family; friends; job; a childhood spent in the U.S. National Parks and the lowlands and hi-lands of Central America, and so many wonderful things. But at the end, it seems, I told her the time I said good-bye to Mr. Berman...

It was a cool spring day in nineteen-eighty. I was seated on the sill of a gothic window, swung wide open to catch the breeze that seemed to be taking Mr. Berman away from me. Every inch of his walls had been pasted over with a painting, or a quote, or a sonnet but not the wall behind his desk was already partially dismantled. It was sad for me to see it like that. Just over his left shoulder was the image "Earth Rising." He called to me from his desk:

"Don't fall out there." His meaning was clear.

How can I describe the honor I hold for that man? I can only do so by continuing on the path of dedication upon which he started me. He cared for me as I should do for others more.

I explained to Tami, beyond the wonderful things in my life, the beautiful arcs that inhere in the jumbled life I have lead - long time dedication to study leading to, inter alia, climbing. In the climbing realm we try to follow the deeds and words of the giants that came before us and wrote. But we don't get very far. And in the cognitive discipline area probably even less far. I take it as an un-falsifiable fact that I have only a glim of understanding. My studies allow me to follow the thoughts and emotions of the giants, like a tale told of the Mycenea after a hundred-year dark ages. And it is only to that very small extent that I incur perhaps the greatest arc of my hackneyed life: responsibility.

I accept what little responsibility rests with me, and I take it very seriously. It is thus that I lead us on this adventure, and all the other ones, with care and vigor. We are carving out of this world our own morsel of free will. We set out beyond where others typically go and blaze our own trail through life, and we do so increasingly on our own rules. This is possible only if I guide us responsibly and provide 'constant enthusiasm for the climb' - climbo ergo sum. On like this we talk until almost midnight, when we pulled into the little center of commerce that has sprung up around the John Day Dam over the Columbia.

John Day is an important figure in sordid history of climbing in these parts. I give you words of Jim Whittacker:

One day in midsummer 1959, a tall, tanned middle-aged gentleman wearing a cowboy hat walked through the [REI] Co-op door, introduced himself, and then said, "I want you to run me up a few mountains."

Jim, Lou, and Day went on to set speed climbing-records up the six highest peak in Washington. The second highest is Adams.

We got a room in the only motel on the intersection. It was the sleaziest place we had ever stayed in. "Good climbing motel!" I tried to make light of it. Tami was too afraid to smoke outside the door unless I was with her. It turns out that I recognized this place, and the gas station adjacent to it. It was long ago, about five years....Tami picked me up at work in the black Acura. She had my laptop (the HP dv9000) and we were off to a wild weekend in Portland. We picked up two 18 year old strippers and we going to meet with three more (including their mother hen and the bouncer) somewhere along the way. I drove us along I-84 until one of them got off her phone. "Oh, my god. They are here! This exit." I pulled off onto the exit ramp and into the lot of a gas station where the illustrious party was waiting.

After leisurely morning we made our way towards Trout Lake, WA. It started drizzling thirty miles out. We reached a plateau on highway 141 at 3000 ft and got our first view of the base of the mountain; the upper parts were in the clouds. There was snow starting about 4000 feet. Despite our preparedness, we were still shocked and daunted by the amount of snow this low. Now, during the season you are supposed to check in at the Ranger Station. But we just stopped into our favorite shingled-window joint and got a cup of Joe and called that our check-in. It was eleven thirty in the morning.

Our conversation was locked, as if a track or railing were keeping our talk, on matters personal. As we rode up through the wet forest of Rifford Pinchot National Forest I recounted the history of my life as a young adult, and the stages I went through. I was beginning to limn for Tami the long trajectories of my past that have gotten us to where we are right now, when we entered the snow.

The only vehicles on the road were pick-up with cabs. Tami saw three people with bright orange outer-coats, and I thought the trip was over. Hunting season. I could just hear her words: 'There is no way on our green earth that the child of my father will climb if there is a chance we will get riddled with bullets.' I needn't have worried, because before long we flagged down a friendly hunter and chatted him up. He seemed happy to talk. Probably in his early thirties, he had bright gray eyes and a smooth, pleasant drawl. "Yup, its the first day of hunting season. No, not deer, just elk, bear, and I think cougar. Oh, no its not like that at all. You'll be safe enough. Yeah, the road is fine like this until you get to Morrison Creek. But from there up to Cold Springs there's not room for two to pass. Snow's pretty heavy there.

"I wouldn't go up there without chains."

We thanked him and continued on. I took his picture before we drove on. Nice fellow. Contrary to his opinion of the present conditions, it was getting tough already. I followed narrow tracks where other tires had traveled, with a four-inch snowy median under our drive shaft. The rain switched to snow and would continue until we traveled back that same drive six hours later. I put us into 4-wheel drive Hi. The thought hit us that there is no way we will make the summit on this trip, and we 'shifted gears' and looked forward to playing. Playing is something that Tami reminds me we should do more of. "Always setting goals. Always writing," she admonished me looking out the window at the beautiful forest scene around us. "Stop. Lets just have fun."

We reached Morrison Creek Campground, 4700 ft. From there the gate was open, and two trenches, axle width apart through 6 inches of snow, clearly showed where FS 8040500 (the larger the number, the smaller the road) began. "Let's play," said we, and I put the car in four-wheel Lo. The snow-fall continued. The wind was perfectly calm. We had no chains.

The trick was just to stay within the lines and give gas. Didn't have much to decide, just slower or faster; like an amusement ride. We climbed steadily. There were three dangerous turns, the worst one was just a bit before camp. We made it all the way without stopping. We were afraid to stop for fear of not being able to start again. At Cold Springs, I make a loop in the clearing and pulled the Denali to a stop on the road, facing downhill. This was good. The snow came up to the center of the tires.

As far as a plan, we had the expectation that if the snow continued falling, we had until about dark before the road would be impassable. Nothing for it but to haul out our packs and gear up. We set off with our ice axes. The start of the trail was easy to find, and several sets of footprints showed the way, but at about a quarter mile they ran out. Just at that location we came across a sturdy lean-to on our right. The peak of Mt. Adams lay due North. Visibility was about a hundred and fifty feet. I got out the compass and took a reading.

One of the 'wonderful' things in my past was a three-week hiking trip with the National Outdoor Leadership School. It was founded by Paul Petzoldt, a world-famous mountaineer and a member of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. It was there that I learned, the hard way, how to route-find. Now it was time for me to make amends for my rough first lesson so many years ago. I explained the situation and the strategy to Tami, who agreed to follow me where ever I lead.

I pointed out a tree on our bearing and said, "We go there." Off we went, tramping one behind the other in the deep silence of the forest. It was like a winter wonderland, and we were completely alone. We were dry and warm. The only question was how far could we go and still make it back, and this was the second time we had been in this exact same spot That was the first time we strapped crampons on our feet. Then, it was clear and about the same temperature, and the snow was less.

We trudged (we call it slogging) up hill and down vale, always keeping a prominent landmark in sight, always going North. We marked each point by knocking the snow off a branch or stump with our ice axes. When we got to the fifth marker, we doubled back to marker three and then continued on again. The important thing is to learn the route 'backwards,' in order to follow it on the return. We came to the bowl called Cold Springs - it must be a pond, it was so flat. From there we continued until the next lovely clearing, and sat down to rest.

While I was dutifully getting out the GPS and making a final marking point on it, I looked up to see Tami hugging a 10-inch tree. I took a picture. She turned around and hugged another one. She asked me if I had ever hugged a tree before and I told her 'yes.' Between Trout Lake and Morrison Creek there is a finger post on the side of the road: "Big Tree, a quarter mile." During a previous visit to Adams, we went there and hugged this particularly magnificent tree. We could not reach around it, even the two of us together.

"But have you ever hugged an adolescent tree before?" I had to admit, I had neglected to hug any smaller tree. I have been through a lot, and Tami more, and if hugging trees allows her to come to her place of quietus, there is nothing wrong with that. I told her as much. I looked up again. She was hugging an 8-incher.

My GPS told me that the elevation was 5760 ft. We turned around, South, and followed our markers back to where we started. It was a good thing we turned around when we did because our tracks were nearly obliterated by the time we achieved the lean-to. There, we set down our packs. We hung up each wet piece of clothing we could remove without freezing. I collected snow and Tami cooked up some grub on the picnic table. It was so pleasant to stand out of the snow; it felt like we were playing house. But once we ate, it started getting really cold.

Now we were in a race against the temperature. The camera froze up. I emptied my pack to locate the emergency kit with spare batteries and opened it out on the table. Each procedure took tremendous concentration to avoid any extra steps. More steps meant more exposure. I realized that my mind was racing 1.5 times normal speed, but my fingers would work at only one-half normal speed. I opened the zip-lock plastic bag and switched batteries and replaced the kit in my pack. The camera still didn't work. By this time my fingers were freezing. Tami's were as well, but she had everything almost back together. Due to her impeccable technique, each item was in its proper location in both packs and we were clear to evacuate.

When we had hiked the short distance to our vehicle there was another inch of snow on the road. We dumped our wet packs in the back - everything was wet - and fired up the heat. Realizing it was imperative that we leave the mountain without waiting another ten minutes, we started off down the hill. Now it was dark. The driving was the same, only there was even less leeway for error and the our axles dragged through the snow.

Everything went fine until I negotiated the first curve, the bad one, then we started slipping. It wasn't sudden. It was like slow motion. Tami realized we were stuck and suddenly neither one of us was happy anymore. We jumped in and out of the doors, putting on and taking off clothes as we worked, and generally turning everything inside the vehicle upside down several times. All the while, we ran around shouting instructions and other less helpful words back and forth. This process seemed somehow to motivate us to get the job done than really really needed to be done. We chopped away snow and stuffed ice axes and Charley's blanket and every floor mat in the car under all four tires and finally we were ready for the big test. I pushed and Tami floored it. We got the truck free and back in the tracks.

Quite satisfied with our hard work and successful effort, we resumed our descent. This time Tami drove. Now she got a taste of the difficulty managing the turns. She did great and the snow on the ground was getting less with each quarter mile. The inside the truck was wet or still frozen and nothing was where it used to be but everything was going very well until we came to a tree across the road. It had obviously fallen since we had last been here, seemingly to remind us of the urgency of getting off the mountain.

"There is no way we can clear this!" Tami offered helpfully. It was about a foot across at the base, with many branches, and the tip was buried in the bank across the road. Tami got on the phone, and I got out to assess the situation.

"Don't call anyone," I shouted from the base of the tree. "I can move this!" After getting off the phone with her dad, she came out. Together we worked hard and continuously until we had gotten one end moved enough to be able to push with our vehicle. I yelled from the sidelines and Tami pushed the tree away with the vehicle like a snow plow, and we were clear! We made it the rest of the way down to Morrison Creek and from there it was relatively clear sailing. Our axle no longer scraped the snow. We got back on highway 141 and didn't stop driving until we were all the way home. We were in bed before midnight.