I woke up before my six am alarm, and dozed in the gathering light for a while, wiggling my toes and ankles, feeling the efforts of yesterday. Eventually I rose and meditated in my tent. The only way I can sit upright in my very small and utilitarian tent is to sit with my nose almost touching the single support pole in the center, and even then my head pushes against the fabric. The image of the sitting form of the meditator encapsulated in a small plastic bubble gave a quality of mirth to the practice this morning. At home I sustain my practice fairly well, but I’ve never tried to bring it along into the wilderness with me before. So much of a hike feels like a meditation anyway, but it’s the beginning and I feel hopeful about establishing habits.
After a short twenty minute sit, I crawled out the door into the morning. Behind me, from where I had just come yesterday, the sun was only barely a glow on the top of Gray Butte, a conic granite outcrop next to Soldier Lake. I packed as quickly as I could, given that I don’t have a rhythm established for this trip yet, so there was hemming and hawing about where everything should go. Compass in the shoulder strap pocket or the hip belt pocket? Snacks for eating while walking all together in one place or distributed among multiple pockets? How balanced is the bag? These first days are all about establishing habits, after all. Still, before too long, everything was strapped down and I was climbing up the south side of Virginia Canyon, through its lovely long green grasses and purple lupines.
My morning was spent on a laborious climb up a rocky tributary canyon, at whose head lay Sky Pilot Col (11650 ft). I had to get there, get over it, and drop down the other side. I had heard rumors of Sky Pilot Col, that it was hard or terrifying or tedious or no big deal, depending on the source. As I dropped from Soldier Lake down the steep, granite-clad wall of Virginia Canyon last night, I had ample time to study the long approach to the Col, including an alarming-looking steep wall of snow at the top. In all the murmuring about this pass, no one had mentioned ascending the last section on snow. Last night I debated whether I should simply take an alternate route and avoid climbing the 2400 feet up there, assuming that if the head wall were made of snow, I wouldn’t be able to ascend it. But in life, and in the wilderness, one shouldn’t make assumptions, or at least not sometimes, and I have the resources and the time to make long approaches and failed attempts. To waste time, in the most delicious way, of suspending disbelief and going onward to find out. To not let the mind decide but rather to let the truth emerge as stars at twilight, one bright pinprick of information at a time.
The approach was soft, willow-filled meadow for a while, gentle and graced by a lively stream cascading down. I walked among the trees, then between the willows, then climbed away from the stream where the willows became greedy and wanted all the spaces for themselves. I acquiesced, and continued above the stream on granite slabs. After a time I came to its source, a lake on a high bench in the canyon. Shepard Lake, where large icebergs were moiling about in the water, turquoise under the surface and white above. After the lake, the terrain jumped suddenly from meadow to rock and ice, and the rest of the ascent alternated between steep talus fields and steep snowfields. In turn, I was constantly shifting between my various tools: microspikes on for the snow, off for the talus. Trekking poles out for the snow and steep scree or sand, away for when I needed my hands to maneuver among larger talus blocks. There are many coexisting cadences: of the body in motion, and of the tools, both adapting to the matter-of-factness of the landscape.
Eventually I arrived near the top, at the steep snow wall I had thought was the headwall, but in fact the canyon sneakily turned there and rose another few hundred feet to the Col. I was able to pass the snow by scrambling up a steep outcropping of rock, and when I saw the actual headwall, Sky Pilot Col itself, my first thought was “eh”. As in, “looks like no big deal.” As in, “hooray”. Snow led almost to the top, and it was steep, but I slowly kicked steps, resting every tenth as I counted them under my labored breath, and made it to the top without trouble.
Take note, self: Don’t make assumptions.
On the south side, I expected to see a steep scree field I could slide down, but instead there was a blanket of snow that nearly hung free off the edge of the pass. I had my ice axe in hand, and began descending carefully, hoping I would be able to use the snow softened by the sun to control my descent. Turns out, NO.
I took a fall only a few feet from the top and quickly began accelerating down the slope, which ended fifty vertical feet below me in a jumble of rocks. Self-arrest! Self-arrest! That’s the term among climbers for stopping precisely such a slide using an ice axe, and I was able to stop myself after sliding about ten feet, though the snow was incredibly soft and slippery and I struggled to arrest the fall. Harder snow would have been easier. As long as it’s not a solid ice sheet, snow with a crust holds the pick of the ice axe. This sun-softened snow was treacherous stuff. Every place has its own rhyme: the quality of the snow, the places it tends to gather, the typical pitch of the slopes, the time of day the snow is more or less manageable. I’m learning, slipping into the rhyme of these mountains, and so far it seems the snow is easiest to traverse in the morning, when it’s icy and hard, with micro spikes on.
After the arrest I gingerly slid my way across the slope, sprawled out like a snow angel to gain as much contact against the snow as possible. Slipping a few times but managing to avoid repeating a proper fall, I made it to a steep talus field on the shoulder the slope, hemmed in by a granite wall, after a few tense minutes. The descent from there was slow, painstaking, a mix of rock and sliding on my butt in the snow between rocks like islands in a sea. Down down down steep down, feeling the work of gravity on the body. Feeling it by resisting. Resisting makes one tired.
I dropped into a beautiful, snowy basin of many lakes, climbed the curving spur arm off Mt Conness’ east ridge (the curve of this long spur was oddly touching, cradling a small lake at the bottom the way a mother curls her arm around a baby), descending into another beautiful snowy basin of many more lakes. And, in this second basin, many hungry hungry mosquitoes. I wished desperately to flee them, but by that late afternoon hour, I was so tired I couldn’t take but a single step uphill without having to stop and gasp for air. Downhill and flat terrain feel great: I’m energized and bouncy (unless I’m in a carefully controlled steep descent, in a heated discussion with gravity). But uphill is singularly difficult. Waiting for acclimation. Waiting for easy breathing.
Achingly slow, I climbed away from the lakes and their clouds of mosquitoes, and now I’m camped on the side of a mountain, a stalwart member of the ridge I’ll cross tomorrow morning heading southwest. One of many many mountains on whose sides I’ll be sleeping in the coming weeks. The sun has just descended behind this mountain and pulled its warm light behind it. The surrounding snowfields are starting to ooze a chill across the meadows. It’s just me and the mountain now. And the snow. And the determined mosquitoes who followed me.
