Watching the Sierra

I'm sitting here wondering what it looks like at 10,000 feet. I know what Fresno looks like right now: It's hazy, dark, wet, cold, unhealthy. Other than that, it's a real garden day out there.

But at 10,000 feet, the sun is shining. So I went online and found the photo above from a Webcam. It's at Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park. I've been through there many times, but it has been a while since I've been there in winter.

That's because you can't drive the Tioga Road in winter. They don't plow it. I don't blame them. It runs about 45 miles on glacial rubble at 8,000 to 10,000 feet. By far, it's the longest trans-Sierra route in California. It is fabulous and virtually isolated in late December.

So Happy New Year in the high Sierra. We're watching those Web cams.

For the holiday ...

A storm is supposed to dump 4 feet of snow on the Sierra today.

Merry Christmas.

It's not a pointy peak

People think Mount Whitney is a peak with a point. Well, it sort of has a point, but it's mostly flat on top.

That's why I loaded this picture. It was taken from the air. There's a little hut on top. You can barely see it.

That's the hut right behind me in the other photo, which is goofy beyond belief -- the guy in the funky jacket, not the hut.

It may be the highest mountain in the continental U.S., but you don't scale it like it's a pointy peak.

One good reason to live in Fresno

I'm not too subtle sometimes. I really like wonderful outdoor photographs. Whether they're mine or not.

I took the photo above at frozen Huntington Lake. It's at about 7,000 feet across the street -- Highway 168 -- from Sierra Summit, a Sierra ski resort in Central California.

I'm sure it looks like this up there now. When people ask me why I would live in Fresno, I show them photos like this one. This is about 75 minutes from my house. Merry Christmas.

Trail Camp on the way to Whitney

This was the scene up at Trail Camp on the way to Mount Whitney. It's from the 1995 trip.

I didn't bring a tent. Crazy. I wound up bunking with one of my friends in his Boy Scout pup tent, which flapped wildly in the wind at night. Never really slept.

Trail Camp was an abomination. People were everywhere. The tarns were terribly polluted. You can't imagine what I saw on huge mounds of ancient ice. It was like a sewer in one place. That was 13 years ago. I hear it's worse now.

I remember seeing a lone woman who was probably in her mid-50s. Tough lady. Camped and climbed by herself. I'm in my mid-50s now. I wouldn't think of doing that trip alone.

Whtney in '95

I'm still putting together the daily blogs -- the journal, if you will -- from the trip to Mount Mendel. I'm trying to put them in the logical order and parenthetically fill in the gaps that my elevation-addled mind left out.

Meanwhile, I found photos of our '95 excursion to Mount Whitney. I had never slept above 12,000 feet until then.

I took the photo above after we cleared the ice field above Trail Camp. I don't know if the ice is still there or not. Haven't been back since.

But I do remember how it felt at 14,997 feet. Cool and breathless. Incredible views on both sides. I kept my down jacket with me the whole way and it was late August.

I couldn't make my usual stupid remark -- where's the Starbucks -- when we reached the top. I was Starbucks illiterate at that point. There were something like 680 Starbucks locations at the time, none of them in places I frequented.

Now they're getting ready to close down my favorite Starbucks, and I'm thinking about going back to Whitney.

Those magical scenes in Yosemite

I thought the Kenny Karst photo on the last blog item was so stunning that I thought I'd put out another one.

This is one is also in Cooks Meadow at Yosemite National Park with iconic Half Dome in the background.

I've been talking with Kenny on the phone for a few years now. Just met him in Yosemite Valley a couple of weeks ago when I was up there to do a story on the rockfalls at Curry Village.

I suppose I could turn this whole blog into a Yosemite forum. I've been covering the park for the last 15 years. A lot has happened.

Look for more photos from Kenny. I've also got a few shots of the Lyell Glacier in Yosemite. This is not exactly the stuff of Glacial Mystery, but it's pretty cool.

At last, snow

I finally have a huge dump of snow in the Sierra, several feet of it above the 10,000-foot elevation.

Before I go snowshoeing, I have to change out the baskets on my trekking poles. A few years ago, I figured out that I needed the wider snow baskets to keep from making a post hole every time I dug the pole into the snow for balance.

I also have to find my snow boots in the garage. I usually have to clean out a few spiders.

Which reminds me, I carried a daddy long-legs spider all the way to Darwin Canyon in September. He was living in my rolled-up tent. I left him near a boulder above Lake No. 5 at 11,500 feet. He's probably pretty cold about now.

The photo above is Yosemite Valley in the snow. It wasn't taken during the current snowstorm, but I like the photo. It was taken by Kenny Karst, the PR manager of the concessionaire in Yosemite National Park.

Kenny, as you can see, knows how to take a photo.

Oh, that satellite phone call

This one is hilarious when you consider I was trying to call my editor at sundown and wound up calling my own phone at work.

I immediately hung up after the recording, called my wife and asked her to tell the editors about the call. Which she did. That's the last I heard of the recording.

Never saw it on the blog. Maybe it's there. I'm tired of searching. These things are supposed to be easier to find. Anyway, I kept the recording on my phone.

The photo above is actually my last shot of the day from below Lamarck Col, looking east into the Owens Valley.

Here's the call:

6:50 p.m. Sept. 7


Hello, I accidentally called my own voice mail. This is Mark Grossi.

I'm at 12,600 feet (wind blasting and voice quivering in the cold.) We're camped below Lamarck Col (which is the crest of the Sierra where the wind is howling and the world is primitive. Boulders everywhere. Dirty ice that has been sitting there for decades, perhaps centuries.)

(I've been hiking all day, climbing several miles straight up with the weight of a 4-year-old on my back. I'm basically comatose. But I'm determined to have a good time with this.)

It's Sunday night. Mark and I went a lot farther than we thought we would. It was a good idea. While the trail system is easily passable, it is hard to understand. (The last sentence makes positively no sense. Here's the explanation: We would have been lost the minute we left Upper Lamarck Lake. We were going to stop for the night at the lake. Instead, we met author Peter Stekel and his hiking partner, Michele, who guided us up to the crest.)

Went about 3300 3400 feet vertical over 5.5 miles. It was a long haul.

The sun is going down, so we're going to eat our dinner, go to sleep and tomorrow climb over the top and go see Mount Mendel.

(At this point, I remember wanting to say something clever. The only line that came to me was a moronic "there's no Starbucks up here. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" I double clutched and punched out of the phone call. Pathetic.)

Aha, the Sept. 8 blog!

Yo, I found the Sept. 8 blogs. Guess where? On the site of the newspaper where I work.

It has taken me weeks to find them. I feel like a corporate lawyer who has found a little-known codicil (is that how you spell codicil?) referring to double-secret internet site stuff.

Yeehaw.

Remember, the first items are later in the day. The lower items were written earlier in the day. Actually, I didn't write any of them. I called on the satellite phone and dictated off the top of my head. And it reads like that.

The photo above is from Upper Lamarck Lake. We got there in 90 minutes from North Lake. Piece of Cake. That's the last time we had a mellow stroll on this trek. The rest was straight up. Slippery rocks. Boulders that were in motion. Absolutely terrifying rockfall while we were on the glacier. This was one tough, scary trip.

Without further whimpering and complaining, I give you Sept. 8:

3:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8: I heard a whoop and a splash. Bee photographer Mark Crosse had dived into Darwin Lake No. 5. Icy-cold water made him surface and climb out quickly. But he's a polar bear.


The jagged peaks of Mendel and Darwin are directly above us now. It is ominous out here. The wind howls, clouds go overhead, and smoke comes up the canyon from some fire in the national park.
We'll be on the glacier in the morning. If all goes well, I will call and blog from there.

Our destination has shrunk
2 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8: I'm in front of Lake Five in Darwin Canyon, almost directly in front of Mendel glacier. The glacier is smaller now than last year, and you can hear the rush of melting ice in the background.

This morning we went over Lamarck Col at 12,880 feet, and we had to boulder-scramble class 3 boulders, which is fairly difficult. We didn't go across the ice. It was frozen solid and too slippery. The canyon headwall is an intense downward descent of about 1,000 feet. We're looking for camp sites.

Good morning, wind
8 a.m. Monday, Sept. 8: The wind is an alarm clock here at 12,500 feet just below Lamarck Col. I'm remembering that last night, Peter Stekel told me he had scoured all the military records he could find.

There is little to tell us how the AT-7 crashed on Mendel. He said Mortenson, Munn and Mustonen were picked to fly that day as part of an alphabetical rotation. The trio may have even bunked together. Today we will climb the col and work our way down the Darwin Canyon headwall. It should take two or three hours on the other side. Mendel Glacier awaits.

The missing blog items continued

OK, more stuff from the disjointed presentation in September.

This probably seems a little disjointed as well. OK, it is. But I will pull all of these items together in a single posting a few days from now. Then you can read them together.

For now, this was the beginning of our Mendel trek. It was a travel day from Fresno to North Lake on the Eastern Sierra. Read this item first, then read the next item, and you'll have pretty good flavor of our trip.

There is one other missing blog item, which I will have to reconstruct from memory and notes. It is for Sept. 8. For now, this is Sept. 6 and part of Sept. 7.




6:07 p.m., Sept. 6, 2008: We just passed over the edge of Long Valley Caldera. It's a massive hole -- we're talking nearly 20 miles wide -- where the Earth opened up and spewed magma all over the place.
The eastern Sierra is a vast volcanic panorama, one of my favorite places. The caldera is a great example. The explosive eruption took place 700,000 years ago. Volcanic ash from the blast has been found as far away as Nebraska.

There are bubbling hot tubs hidden in the vast countryside. I've been here when it was 29 degrees outside and snow on the ground, yet there is still steam coming out of the rocks.

We're in Bishop now. And we're here for the granite and ice. Mount Mendel couldn't be more than 15 miles west of here. So our thoughts are turning to the plane crash and the missing victims.

But for a while, it has been a real pleasure to think about the volcanic past of the eastern Sierra.

6:05 a.m., Sept. 7, 2008, 42 degrees, at 9,300 feet at North Lake campground -- I skipped the tent, slept out under the stars. So did Mark Crosse. It was a beautiful glittering show overhead all night long. The temperature was still 50 degrees at 3:45 a.m. It didn't feel very cold to me. I imagine it will be a lot colder farther up. We'll make Lamarck Lake today, in a few hours, maybe less. That's good news. But you can't have a fire above 10,400 feet: No firewood.

2 p.m., Sept. 7, 2008: It's about 2 p.m, and we are at about 11,600 feet.

We decided to change directions and follow Peter Stekel and his climbing partner Michele Hinatsu up to Lamarck Col. We were scheduled to stop at Upper Lamarck Lake -- we've continued on.

The lost blogs from September

I've found some of the lost Lost Flights blogs.

People who don't think we told enough about the hike. Well, take a hike. We did.

Check it out. These are the last two days. I have no idea why they didn't actually get onto the Web site. I could never find them. They were printed in the newspaper, which obviously folks didn't read.

I'm still pretty disappointed in the way our blogs were handled. For those who criticized us and our presentation, I'm glad I finally got these out. These two days were pretty dramatic.

I took the photograph above. It was our camp site just below Lamarck Col. This is about 12,500 feet. Cold. Windy. Boulders everywhere. We slept between boulders. That's Peter Stekel to the left and Mark Crosse closer to the camera. There was a huge ice field about 50 meters from us and a tarn where we got water. And we were still on the east side of the crest, not even within view of the glacier.

Could I have been more descriptive and make it more exciting? Sure. No excuses. I did my best. And I still have vivid memories of what happened. I can still write more. I might include some here.

Until then, this is what you didn't see.


On Sept. 9



Noon Sept. 9, 2008: The wind is really bad today. I'm standing on a dirty edge of the glacier, not far from one of the two engines of the AT-7 that crashed here. Huge slabs of granite are perched on top of the ice, making them look like they're on pedestals. Water runs everywhere. The glacier itself has melted out far more than last year. We're not even on the clean ice itself yet, we're on the boulder-strewn ice. My advice for anyone who wants to come up here? Get in shape, get a guide, and get life insurance. We're not quite on the ice yet, we will be later this afternoon. It's a harrowing climb to get up here.

5:30 p.m. Sept. 9, 2008: Author Peter Stekel today found part of an aluminum wing to the AT-7. It was a gully-wash of pure glacial melt. He photographed it, then continued his search in a brisk wind, with clouds racing overhead. We followed and saw some of the most incredible pieces of the Sierra.

Huge slabs of granite in columns 800 feet tall climbed the sheer cliffs at Mount Mendel. There were Hummer-sized blocks of granite standing on pedestals of ice.

The trip to get here is tough and dangerous. I can see why nobody is touching the wreckage.

What a beautiful, rare and terrifying place.


The next day ...


6:45 a.m. Sept. 10, 2008: We're going to pull out today. It's very cold: windy all night last night, in the 30s. Clouds are moving in over the crest. Hopefully we don't ... (and then the rest of Mark's message was lost in the wind).

4:25 p.m. Sept. 10, 2008: On the return from Darwin Canyon today, storm clouds gathered at the crest. As we boulder-scrambled 1,400 feet nearly straight up, it began to hail on us.

The hail was beginning to turn to snow and we realized that Lamarck Col, our destination, is one of the worst places you can be in lightning and a thunderstorm.

Photographer Mark Crosse found the proper route to get to the Col. Two days before, we had stopped for more than an hour to take pictures and make a satellite phone call.

This time, we passed without stopping.

We boulder-scrambled along the ice below the Col, and when we got down we just kept going. Thunder and lightning began about an hour later, and it hailed on us again near Lower Lamarck Lake.

It seemed like a fitting way to end this expedition -- lots of lightning and thunder but no real damage.

Am I asking too much? Let it snow in December

Notice in the photograph, there are big, knarly campons on my snowshoes. The one on the right is turned to the underside, so you can see them. I would like to put these aggressive crampons to use on a tilted mountainside filled with snow.

Note, also, that there are weeds growing in my flower beds to the right. I'm so not going to pick weeds three weeks before Christmas. This is not weed-picking time, people. I'm tired of warm-weather activities. Do you hear me?

But we're caught in this late fall purgatory. No storms. Just gray days. I'm sitting here drinking espresso at my kitchen table and fuming.

We haven't seen the sun in the San Joaquin Valley for a week now. The high temperature yesterday was 49. The low was 43. This is boring and drippy cold.

This blog, at the moment, is no longer about finding mummified remains in a glacier. That came and went in September.

This is about waiting for a storm in December.

I want to see the Sierra pasted with about three feet of snow. Oh, we have snow already at 9,000 or 10,000 feet. But it's not that much, and I'm really tired of waiting for my snow season. I ordered it in July. Where is it?

More later.

This blog is basically a secret

I'm going to be straight with you, folks. According to the sitemeter that logs every hit on this page, there have only been two of us visiting this spot since Nov. 2.

So, let's have a recap. There was one person in early November. There were two other visitors in October. Peter Stekel visited in September. But let's leave Peter out of the equation, because he's writing a book on this very subject and has good reason to look under every rock.

Of the three people from the outside world who hit this page in the last two months, none of them spent any time here. The duration of all three visits was zero seconds.

This page is virtually unknown, except to the other person and me. To that one person -- and I know you very well -- thanks for checking to see if I have a pulse. (If I knew how to make one of those sideways smiley faces, I'd put one right here ... wait, :)