The Storm Chased

Pt. 3 in the Northwest bike series

Clouds move in north of Mountain View 

Whenever I get that feeling that I am forgetting something, I am correct 99 percent of the time.

If only that feeling could help me remember what that I am forgetting. Instead there’s just a vague nag in the back of my mind that serves to aggravate me later when I finally recall the crucial item I was somehow dumb enough to leave behind.

Come on, tell me! What is it? I pleaded with my subconscious.

Oh don’t worry; you’ll find out later, it sniggered.

I got back to organizing my tent and the rest of my scattered supplies in the cow shit scrubland where I’d been camped.

I’d been slow to get moving that morn, though I didn’t regret the warm bowl of oatmeal I’d cooked for myself over the stove. The fact that it was no longer raining and that the sun looked like it might come out lifted my spirits. Yes, it might have taken a  little longer than it should have to get everything packed, but it was only the second night out and I was still getting used to the weird system I’d made for myself.

The part I didn’t like was hauling my bike and all the gear back over the fence. At least one car passed by while I left my illicit campsite, but I just acted cool like I was supposed to be wrestling a bike and a bunch of random gear over the barbed wire.

Soon, I was peddling northwest along the wet asphalt and feeling pretty good.

The wide open rangeland gave way to stands of cottonwoods and other deciduous trees with smaller farmsteads that reminded me a bit of Vermont. The Uinta Mountains loomed up from Utah in the south, including Kings Peak, the highest point in the state. I was rueful at the sight because I’d wanted to climb the mountain that summer, but plans never solidified.

Now, at summer’s end, Kings wore a formidable white crown of snow, perhaps the top 2,000 feet of the 13,000-foot mountain.

It was a reminder that winter was behind me at every step. In the weeks ahead, no doubt the snow would march lower and lower down the mountains until it finally seized the roads and blocked me from going any further.

Nothing says rural American like a fading flag mural by the tracks

The same precipitation that lent the Uinta Mountains their dazzling patina had also completely soaked the land that I was biking over. Every mile or so, I would go by some minor stream, frothing brown with runoff.

The convenience store clerk in Manila had warned me that the road was closed the day before due to flooding. I was lucky enough to get through unobstructed, though I saw road damage in a couple of places.

After the farmland, I enjoyed a long downhill into a vast basin. The landscape was almost Martian. Miles of empty wastes lead up to the foothills of the mountains, populated by the tall buttes of bentonite clay and orange sandstone. An occasional county road or lonely oil derrick were all that would evince a human presence.

I was grateful that it wasn’t actually raining right then, even if the air was still heavy with cold moisture. Only a couple of days before I had finished my rafting season with a rainy four-day trip that left fond memories of numb hands and clutching myself for warmth each night. The same soggy weather patterns were responsible for the major flooding in Northern Colorado that had made national headlines.

Why were the Rockies so drenched right now? I blame it all on Global Weirding: unpredictable climate patterns linked directly to the cowboys driving past me in their jacked up pickups, belching greenhouse gasses into the Wyoming sky.

The town of Mountain View was pretty quiet on a Sunday. I showed up a little before noon and took a quick jaunt down Main Street just to see if there was anything worth seeing. Most of the businesses were closed up. Nearby however, there was a Maverik gas station and convenience store, which provided me with a bathroom and a convenient faucet for filling bottles. I splurged on a box of greasy potato wedges that I ate outside, shivering by a picnic table.

Coming back into civilization is one thing when you have a place to stay, shower off and get into dry clothes. When you are just pushing through, there are fewer comforts. It is easy to become self-conscious when you see people looking at your tattered appearance, the fact that you carry a bag into the store with you or are filling up water bottles. The feeling is that you don’t belong.

 I dug my atlas out from the recesses of the pack and plotted my course to the northwest. It looked like the most direct route took me toward Kemmerer, Wyoming and on to Fossil Butte National Monument. In the little research that I’d done before the trip, I’d learned that while the monument itself is off limits to camping, a lot of the land surrounding it belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, and is fair game. How exciting to think that I might actually camp legally that night.

Back on the bike, I rolled north out of town toward the rolling plains. I went under Interstate 80 with the semis and other vehicles cutting across the country on their east-west trajectory. The artery of United States commerce was soon just a thin gray line in the distance, a filament of asphalt winding over the expanse of sage and cheat grass.

The only thing as vast as the miles of emptiness around me was the sky above it. In the northeast corner of that firmament, I saw tall ominous clouds bearing down on me like Star Destroyers. The dark bands of rain I saw beneath those clouds and the groans of thunder meant that I would soon be in for a cold, miserable time. There was one wild hope, however.  If I peddled my ass off, maybe, just maybe I would get to the north of the system before it rolled across my path.

I started cranking.

The clouds continued their inexorable march in my direction. No way I can beat them, I thought. Might as well just accept fate. I kept peddling anyway, flying over miles of plains and taking advantage of a long downward slope. Then I barreled through a tiny town by the railroad tracks and puffed my way to the top of a steep uphill.

I looked back at the storm. The hard work had put me far enough so that that it would miss me.

The effort was worth it, but for the next miles I was whipped. There was always another damn hill to climb. Soon, I just leaned my bike against a road post and ate a bunch of food to replenish my stores. The long break helped some, but I didn’t have nearly the get-up-and-go that I’d had earlier. The quiet country road I’d been peddling led to a busier state highway leading into Kemmerer. The fact that the road was going slightly uphill was something that I’d probably never notice from behind the wheel of an auto. On a bicycle, it was all I thought about.

I could have biked into Kemmerer and paid tribute to the birthplace of J.C. Penney, but opted to follow a highway that took a more direct route to Fossil Butte. The decision shaved two miles off my course, but it also mean that I wouldn’t get to refill my water bottles at a gas station and would have to wait until I got to the national monument the next day.

I knew I was going to drain my water cooking dinner that night, but decided that it was worth it to save the extra distance — not only for the sake of my legs, but also because I wanted some extra time to find a good campsite before it got dark.

I peddled down an onramp to a divided highway, peddling in the brake down lane as the trucks flew by. The land was similar to what I had camped in the night before with tall barbed-wire fences and wide open expanses where it would be difficult to pitch a tent without attracting attention. Angry signs warned that the land beyond the fence was state property. Violators would be prosecuted.

Moon and clouds above my tentsite

At last, I found a small Bureau of Land Management interpretive area with a tunnel that lead to land on the other side of the train tracks. Here was the legal camping I'd been looking for.

I wheeled my bike through some thick muck beneath the bridge and hid it in some brush. Legal or not, I prefer a discrete campsite so I trudged my gear up a steep hill where I would be out of sight from any passerby. With more ominous clouds on the horizon, I quickly began to set up my tent.

Tent poles! Where the hell were the tent poles?

 I desperately began to search through my gear, though in my heart I already knew where they were. They were some 75 miles back in a rancher’s field just north of the Utah border. At last, I remembered.

Eastbound Union Pacific train coming out of westbound sunset

The Big Climb: Out From Utah, Into Wyoming.

Capt. Jackass and the Flaming Gorge Reservoir

The cold, gray morning hours were exactly what I needed to wake up feeling uninspired.

The night’s rains had slipped past my cheap rain fly, successfully dampening about a third of my sleeping bag. The tent was a claustrophobic, dripping place, but right then I preferred it to whatever lay outside. Finally, I wriggled my way outside and flopped onto wet clay. 

There was my bike, flopped on its side in the mud. There was the desolated plain of ATV tracks and scrubby juniper that I'd camped in. The low clouds overhead looked like they would be happy to dump some more water on me if they felt like it.

I packed up my gear slowly and with little enthusiasm. I lashed my backpack onto the backboard under a waterproof nylon then hoisted the dry bag behind it.

“Don’t fall.” I told the bike.

The handlebars bucked left and right as I wheeled my bad idea over the dirt ruts toward the pavement. I felt some resistance coming from the back wheel. It was the brake pad. Sonofabitch.

I eased the bike down on its side and used my Allen wrench to let out a little more slack in the mechanism. It took time because the bolt was already pretty stripped. For a while, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to loosen it at all. Besides, this was usually the kind of thing where I just made things worse. Maybe I would just have to peddle back to the bike shop with my tail between my legs. Maybe I would just go back to the car and call off the trip, which had been half-baked from the start.

 But no! After the appropriate amount of turning and threatening the bike, I got the bolt loose enough to pull the cable and guestimate the right distance between the bike pads and the tire. I righted the beast and wheeled it again. It seemed to go OK now, and when I squeezed the brake I found it clenched the tire acceptably.

I put grundle to the seat and started for the pass.

The first quarter-mile was on a downhill. Enjoy it now, I thought. I tried to keep as much momentum up as possible before I took the 90-degree turn onto Highway 191. Within a minute, I was barely managing five miles an hour against the steep grade. I shifted to low gear, forcing my legs to turn the peddles over as my lungs burned for oxygen and my heart pounded in my head.

Each of the many switchbacks in the road took me approximately one lifetime to climb. Every decade or so, I rolled by another dash in the passing lane. A steady drizzle froze my hands to the bars, while I roasted underneath my rain jacket.

Sounds pretty crappy, right?

I didn’t mention that this must have been RV Clusterfuck Day in Utah. Every minute several of these mcmansions on wheels roared up from behind me and flew by in a wash of fumes and destabilizing wind. Also, I was lucky if I had more than 18-inches of breakdown lane at the edge of the road. Not much of a margin for error. It was worse considering that many of the drivers weren’t very interested in moving over.

All the weight on the back of the bike meant that it had a strong tendency to swerve, a tendency that was especially strong on the uphill. Then some retirees in their Wilderness Advantage RV would barrel past, bringing me within inches of a speeding wall of deadly metal. I would clutch the handlebars in desperation, praying that my wheels wouldn’t swerve left. Each vehicle left a vacuum behind it that yanked at my bike toward the center of the road and oblivion.

Finally, the vehicle would pass and I would puff out the breath I’d been holding in. An instant later, Death would get a second swipe at me when the inevitable pickup truck or motorboat pulling behind the first unit flew by.

The road got steeper I was strained to the utmost keeping my bike upright and moving in a straight line. The sound of another engine coming up from behind was like the wasp buzzing in your ear while you’re trying to haul a filing cabinet up a flight of stairs.

Something told me that the driver wasn’t about to make room. The engine grew louder. It sounded like it was headed right for me.

I veered off the road just before the monstrous trailer flew past at top speed. The bike bucked like it was going to veer left, but I fell over instead. I got up shaking with adrenaline. The driver barreled on oblivious, disappearing into the mists above.

This wasn’t working at all.

I looked at my set up, trying to think of something I could change to make things safer.

Finally, I unstrapped my drybag from the backboard and put my arms through the shoulder straps to wear it like a backpack. I didn’t relish the extra weight on my shoulders, but figured that taking some of the weight off the back of the bike would help with stability and steering.

When I got going again, I found the weight put an uncomfortable strain on my back, but I also felt more in control of the bike than I had before.

My heart went like a jackhammer as the wheels slowly carried me up the switchbacks. The fog got soupier; ghostly stands of aspen appeared as shadows in the mist.

I heard a series of moans and bellows from somewhere up above: a cattle herd. The river of bovines clomped along a soggy ridge while cowboys on horses shouted them along. So there was something out there that felt worse than I did.

The long climb topped out at a small rest area. I wheeled over to the outhouse and leaned my bike against it, taking shelter from the drizzle beneath a tiny overhang. The bellowing and clomping of the cattle stayed my ears like a weary dirge. The cowboys guided the sorry lot of them right up to the edge of the rest area and then started herding them across the road. One calf had other ideas and broke out of line, stumbling for the fields. A couple of cowboys spurred their horses and rounded him up.

It must have taken about 15 minutes for the herd to make it across the highway with traffic stopped on either side. Finally, an ATV at the rear ushered the last of the animals across the road. It was time I got going as well.

I peddled slowly out of the parking lot and back onto the road. The bike began to accelerate. I was going downhill! How sweet it was to move without doing work! Soon I was whipping at over 20 miles an hour and freezing cold with the sweat from the last hours evaporating in the wind. The sensation didn’t last. In less than a mile, the road went up again and I was back to working my weary legs against the mountains.

The top of the pass was at 8,422 feet in the midst of a lodgepole pine forest. I had climbed just about 4,000 feet from where I’d started that morning. Now, I could enjoy a long downhill on the way to Flaming Gorge — or would have enjoyed it if not for the icy rain. I flew down the wet pavement, squinting against drops of water and trying hard not to wipe out on the turns.

I turned left just before the Flaming Gorge Dam so that I could follow the west shore of the reservoir on the way to Manila, Utah. The town, which sits just south of the Wyoming border, was another 28 miles ahead. My downhill lasted for a couple more miles and then I was going up again. The road never seemed to flatten. First, I would be sweating as I pumped the bike against gravity, immediately after I would be shivering in the wind on the next downhill. 

I took a quick break at Moose Pond to eat lunch and took what warmth I could from a feeble sun breaking through the clouds.

And we go down again

Not long after I got on my bike there was blue sky and the mercury was climbing. Soon it was like any other hot, sunny, summer day. The landscape became dry again as well. The lodgepole forest gave way to fields of sage and desiccated mesas. I forced my way up a series of massive hills, until I finally came to an overlook. The Flaming Gorge Reservoir lay below, with its dark blue water framed by desert cliffs.

The bike and I flew down a series of switchbacks, losing at least a 1,000 feet in just a couple minutes. It was funny to think that it would have taken me a good chunk of an hour to cover the same distance had I been going in the other direction.

Of course, right after my break, I started into another massive climb. The veins bulged out of my neck as I struggled to keep my momentum. A pack of motorcycles came thundering down the other way. One of them gave me a thumb’s up. I was glad I was doing something crazy enough to be worth noticing.

At the top of the hill, the desert landscape gave way to green, irrigated farm plots. The town of Manilla lay just a few miles ahead, but it took a monumental amount of energy just to drag myself that far.

The sight of a puny gas station convenience store on Main Street was like oasis in the Sahara. I filled my canteens up at a faucet outside and shoved my face with Oreos and Fig Newtons that I bought within.

“Are you ill in the head?” the woman behind the register asked when I told her I was biking from Utah to the Pacific Northwest.

I peddled out of town with rubber legs on an uphill grade. There was a KOA campground nearby. Tempting. If I just paid out the $25, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a tent site on the rangeland up ahead, most of which was bound to be private property, with few places to hide from well-armed ranch owners.

Still, I was only another four miles to the Wyoming border and I was determined to wake up in the next state, if only to prove to myself that I was making progress. I peddled on.

Dark clouds had gathered in the northeast by the time I crossed the state line. I watched the dark bands of rain with trepidation. Normally, I would expect bad weather to come from the west of me, but this was marching right for me. I needed to get the tent up, pronto.

The problem was that all the land that I could see was wide-open ranch land, within view of the road and the ranch houses up above. Wyomingites are not famous for their love of trespassers.

Tall barbed wire fences cut the land off from the road. It was a super fence with sturdy wire mesh on the bottom and strands of barbs at chest-height. Usually, I see fences that are just three parallel wires and are pretty easy to duck through. This stuff was going to be a challenge.

I peddled furiously for a couple miles, looking for a break somewhere. All I saw were empty plains and the unbroken fenceline. The clouds marched closer. Finally, I saw a small gulley behind a clump of trees: 10 square feet of land where no one would be able to see me. It looked like I’d have to hop the fence after all.

I dismounted and lay my bike behind some sage. Then I tossed my drysack over the fence. Getting myself over was a little more challenging. I climbed the mesh and then grabbed hold of one of the posts for support when I swung my leg over the top. The operation brought my crotch within an inch of the wire skewers. Finally, I landed gracelessly on the other side and went down into the gulley.

Cow shit everywhere. I pitched my tent away from the center of the gulley in the hopes that it would be out of the path of any run off from the storm. If I moved five feet to the left or right, I would be in clear view of the ranch house nearby. I still worried that someone might find my bike near the road so I went back and heaved it onto my side of the fence.

I ran back to the tent and zipped myself into my sleeping bag. Two minutes later it started raining like all hell.

Is there a place anywhere in this view where I won't get shot?

Saturday, September 14, 2013 — about 69 miles

Wobbly Wheels Through Utah (first installment in the bike adventure series)

Bike+ gear pose for a picture in Idaho

Wobbly Wheels Through Utah:

I guess this is how the adventure began.

I was peddling my bike down Highway 40 toward Vernal, UT, concentrating on staying upright with the 100 pounds of weight atop the rack behind me. It would have been a costly fall considering the various cars, trucks and oil drilling machinery flying by my left side.

I was planning to ride for a couple thousand miles from the boathouse where I had been a raft guide for the past summer into the Pacific Northwest. Within the first mile, I was discovering that my loaded bike was prone to wobble and veer unpredictably. Nor did the narrow breakdown lane leave much margin for error. If my tires drifted even a fraction of an inch, I would hit the rumble strip, and the whole bike would shake.

The moment I let my guard down and crossed the white line, I got a horn blat from a passing haul truck. My heart leapt into my throat. Then there was the inevitable wash of air as the high-speed diesel monstrosity hurtled by, jolting my bike even further into the highway.

It feels like that’s the problem right there. More people would want to hit the road on bikes, if there weren’t so many crazy bastards already on the road in gas-fueled death machines.

When large, speeding vehicle and puny two-wheeled bicycle run afoul of one another, the laws of physics generally give victory to the former of the two. Thus, the idea of driving 10 miles into town becomes more appealing then peddling the same distance in the exhaust of speeding vehicles, always wondering if the engine noise coming from behind is the harbinger of an E.R. visit.

One more car goes on the road. Things get a little more crowded for the remaining bikes.

More cars flying down the asphalt to the coffee shops and shopping centers downtown can only be a boon to the drilling business, which there is plenty of around Vernal. Consumers share the road with the producers in ugly symbiosis. Neither the oil machinery or the vehicles they support are particularly friendly to bicycles or pedestrians. The drivers sit sedentary in their cabs, spewing pollution into the air sipping their Big Gulps, accumulating health problems that might have been prevented through better diet and exercise — exercise like riding a bike. Thus, the American love affair with the automobile wages war on the environment on one front and on American health on the other.

I shouldn’t let self-righteousness get the best of me. Those oil trucks passing my trembling bicycle had plenty to do with me and the choices I’ve made over the years. I own and drive a car for instance. I eat food that grows in petrochemical fertilizer and moves across the country courtesy of diesel semi-trucks. Worse, I have a fiendish compulsion for travel. It’s meant driving across country to start a job in Wyoming two years ago. Family members burned even more fuel on airplane trips when they went out to visit. When the job ended some months ago, I went on a fun, fossil fuel drenched jaunt through Utah, Nevada and California, driving up and down mountain passes, and into National Parks, with thousands of miles and thousands of pounds of CO2 in my wake.

I could go on confessing my sins, but it’s just the standard liberal guilt drill. You’d hear the same from any angsty environmentalist who makes compromises to live in the “real” world. This type of confession often feels like a rote exercise, not meant to inspire action or personal change but to foster helplessness. I could come to terms with the fact that I undermine my values through my actions and reassure myself that this made me no more of a hypocrite than most other First World citizens. Then I would have to think about something else before I got really depressed.

So let’s say that I was sick of rationalizing all of my concerns away, if I wanted to take a break from the sinning? Where would that leave me if I were in Northeast Utah already, my summer job as a raft guide had just ended and I had no other prospects lined up? Well, I wanted an adventure, damn it, even if I cringed at the thought of putting gas in my tank to go on some selfish quest.

That’s why I was glad to have my bike with me. It meant that I could get places under my own power, that I wouldn’t have to drive to an adventure; the adventure would begin as soon as I pushed off from the boathouse doorstep.

 Of course, I’d never done a multi-day bike trip before, much less try to go thousands of miles. The plan was to go northwest toward Washington and Oregon where I had friends. I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest before, so I figured I had a great opportunity to see new places under my own power.

 Would my crotch have the mettle for it? My bike repair skills were next to nothing. Neither had I tried rigging a bike up with gear, and I wasn’t about to shell out for a pull-behind unit (they run for about $400) or the somewhat less expensive panniers.

I’m sure I amused the staff at the local bike shop with my ignorance of about just about everything related to cycling. The fact that I spent a good wad of cash there getting my bike tuned and buying up miscellaneous gear probably made me a welcome sight when I came in through the door

The last thing I needed to pick up for the journey was a bike pump. I managed to wobble the 13 miles down the road to Vernal without getting smashed by traffic, and then swerved into the bike shop parking lot. I didn’t so much dismount my bike as I thrashed away from it as the weight crashed hopelessly to the pavement.

After I bought the pump, I invited the worker who rang me up to check out my rig. Whatever he was thinking, he hid it well.

I had taken the rack I had bought earlier in the week and fastened a huge piece of plywood to it using rafting cam straps. I’d used more straps to lash my hiking backpack to the wood. It was full of clothes, food, water, my camp stove, a cook pot, journal and Rand McNally atlas of the United States. Behind my pack, there was my gigantic green dry bag, that bulged from the volume of my tent and enormous -40 degree sleeping bag.

“Yeah, that could work,” the bike store guy said, none too convincingly.

I had actually pared down my supplies by about a third that morning. There had been an ice axe and crampons in the earlier gear pile, part of a misguided notion about climbing Mount Ranier or some other northwestern peak when I wanted a break from all the 100+ mile days I would be throwing down.

All the packing and unpacking had set me back to where I was leaving in the late afternoon and soon I would have to find a discrete place to camp nearby.

Since I couldn’t make it to the national forest, I’d probably end up camping on somebody’s private land, or in one of the state parks, though I knew that they charged fees. “Hey, do you know about any camp sites near here?” I asked.

The bike shop guy knew about some mountain bike trails about 10 miles north up Highway 191 near the Red Fleet Reservoir. It wasn’t an official camp area, but he told me it would be easy enough for someone to spend the night there unofficially. The place would be the last spot for a while because public land of the massive Simplot phosphorous mine, which owned all the public land along the road for the next few miles. To reach the public land in the Ashley National Forest, I would have to take on the 8,000-foot pass through the Uintas Mountains —  4,000 feet of climbing in my overloaded bike. I was happy to put that off until the next day.

I had my work cut out for me working my way up the foothills coming up toward the camp area. The bike didn’t want to follow a straight line. Fortunately there were fewer roads to deal with.

I climbed through the sagebrush landscape, underneath ancient desert walls of Morrison formation and Mancos shale. Gnarled juniper trees blended in with the other high desert flora as I climbed higher.

There was a final punishing hill before I reached the place I wanted to camp. Somehow, I puffed my way up without the bike falling over. A flooded dirt path went off the side of the road and into the scrub. I dismounted and went to see if there was anywhere I could pitch my tent.

I wheeled the topsy-turvy bicycle through deep mud ruts and puddles. Four-wheelers and dirt bikes had torn up every scrap of land that they could power over, leaving a ragged landscape where trees and scrub huddled together in tiny islands amidst a sea of broken soil. The light was getting lower and I felt the evening chill.

Finally, I chose one of these islands and put up my tiny shelter.

I thought about the day’s progress from within my sleeping bag, looking up at the low nylon ceiling overhead — only 23 miles. I’d barely made it out of town, fighting my bike the whole time. The Wyoming border was about 60 miles to the north of me and I found myself wondering if I would last for even that tiny step of the journey.

Finally, I shut my eyes and tried to satisfy myself that this night on the dirt-bike island was the beginning, that exciting adventure waited for me on the miles of road yet to come.

And then the rain began to fall.

Friday, September 13, 2013

My Summer On The River

Another day on the Green River

The roar of the water was in my ears well before I saw the carnage that was Moonshine Rapid in the early June snowmelt.

The steep walls of Split Mountain Canyon in Dinosaur National Monument framed the river beautifully with its warped layers of red-gray Morgan Formation and white Weber Sandstone climbing more than thousand feet overhead. The walls were majestic; they also meant that I wasn’t getting out — not until I’d charged through eight more miles of rapids in the inflatable 14-foot raft with the other whitewater noobs.

 As the guy guiding this section, Goal No. 1 was not to hit the canyon wall on the right, which the water wanted to push the boat into. Goal No. 2 was to avoid the big-ass waves on the left hand-side, which would flip the boat over. Goal No. 3 was to steer the boat through the windy channel in the middle where the waves were only seven-feet or so and get through the tumult unscathed.

I paddled furiously from the back-right corner of the raft, shouting commands to the others— “All Forward!” “Left Back!” “Holy Shit!”

At one point, I went to pitch my blade in the water at the crest of a wave and caught nothing but air. Then we went back down into the mouth of a huge bow wave, drenching everyone aboard.

Beginning of Jones Hole hike on Third Day of Gates of Lodore trip

Adrenaline-soaked moments like these were some of the best parts of my job as a raft guide this summer. I also had the chance to take in some of the incredible beauty around Dinosaur National Monument — an isolated area divided between Northwest Colorado and Northeast Utah.  I'd never even heard about the place until I applied for the job, but learned to love the majesty of Split Mountain Canyon, The Gates of Lodore and the millennia-old petroglyphs left by the Fremont and other ancient inhabitants of the canyon systems.

Since no roads and almost no trails go into the canyons, most of the scenery can only be seen from a boat. The natural beauty, added to the thrill of taking on big rapids and it made for an exhilarating time.

I was glad to have my parents and neighbors from back home come out so I could show them my workplace on the river.

Ancient Fremont pictographs along Jones Hole hike

Then there were the times when I just didn’t see that rock coming and had to climb out of a gear boat in swift-water to shove all 1,000+ pounds of it back into the current. Sometimes I saw the rock coming and couldn’t do a damn thing about it because the raft was coming at it sideways and I didn’t have time to move it out of the way.

As the river level went down throughout the summer I worried less about the big raft-flipping waves and more about the new little booby traps popping out of the shallow water. It was important to laugh and keep the customers relaxed even if I was pissed off at myself and couldn’t believe that I’d gotten stuck on S.O.B Rapid yet again.

I learned to work my ass off hauling boats on trailers, packing supplies, organizing gear so that it met Park Service standards, and preparing dinners on the multi-day trips.

None of the raft guides I met were slackers. They wouldn’t have survived.

I tried to glean all the wisdom that I could from the ones with more experience, not just about navigating rapids, but also getting a boat rigged up quickly, how to back up a trailer and how to put a succulent honey glaze on the tofu come dinner-time.

The other guides made for a solid crew to hang out with. I had my old friends like Andrew, but also enjoyed my time hanging out with the other guides, whether we were shooting the breeze down by the river bank or playing wiffle ball in the park near the boat house.

Best of all, I count myself lucky to have met my fellow guide Lana and to have shared all the wonderful times we had together.

We finished our last river-trip two days ago. The business is about to lock up and I’m taking a break from packing to write this down. I’ll be leaving a lot of fond memories from this place.

What’s next for Tom’s On The Move? My old bike from home is looking at me from across the garage. I still have to get all my travel gear rigged up on that puppy before we hit the roads going north.

Stay tuned.

Raft entering the Gates of Lodore

Another View of Half Dome

The sun had set behind the mountains and darkness crept through the sequoias at our campsite.

We already had the tent set up and I had turned my headlamp on so I could begin writing the tale of our ascent of Half Dome some hours earlier.

As I began scratching out the opening sentences, Andrew walked over to me with a funny expression on his face.

“I wonder what it’s like up there right now?”

I paused.

It would have been easy to shut down the idea with a laugh and then get back to writing.

Instead, I considered.

Half an hour later, we were going up the trail. Our headlamps were off to save battery. The dark gave a solemn feeling to the hike, less that it was an adventure, more that it was a pilgrimage. We spoke few words as we navigated the patches of moonlight and the shadows.

Occasionally, I’d glance up and see the starscape through the branches. Beyond them, the silhouetted form of Half Dome stabbed into the sky.

The orange sliver of the moon sank low over the mountains as we climbed the steps up the sub-dome. Soon that small source of light was gone and a mist of stars appeared in its place.

There was no stairway to those heavens, but there were the two steel cables climbing up the rock toward the summit.

We grabbed some bread and water at the base. A cold wind blew over our position on the exposed rock. I put my parka on.

Climbing up the rock in the dark was not so different from climbing in the daytime. One difference was that Andrew and I had given away the gloves we had used earlier to some Dome-bound hikers. I had my thinner cotton cloves on in lieu of the rubber padding I had earlier and so I had to grip the cable a bit harder. Andrew was barehanded.

Another difference I noticed hiking in the dark, was that I had to pay more attention for the ledges that would appear in front of me all of a sudden.

 At the top, our view of the stars was mirrored by the twinkling orange lights in Yosemite Valley a mile below our feet, and then the further lights of distant towns. It was strange and wonderful, but not a place we wanted to linger long.

Going down the cables proved to be far more worrisome than it had been in the daylight hours. We spent about 10 minutes just looking for them in the dark. Finally, we got our grips and started back down again. I was in front, watching Andrew's headlamp up above me. Looking down wasn’t optional here; I regularly swung my headlamp over the smooth rock below me so that I could look out for cable switches and ledges. My hands were beginning to tire from the effort of maintaining their grip. I would turn my headlamp around expecting to see the bottom only to see it fade away in the darkness.

The batteries were getting weaker too, shrinking the scope of the visible world around me.

As I began to feel my nerves creeping in, I thought of the Arioso by Bach. Letting the gentle melody loop through my head was a comfort and helped me keep a clinical view of the situation.

Come on. Let’s finish this. I thought. The cable seemed to have grown twice as long. It occurred to me that this could be some kind of elaborate afterlife punishment — descending forever in the darkness, always expecting a bottom that never comes.

It was a disturbing thought. But then, my foot came across a familiar ridge of stone and I knew I didn’t have far to go. The end of the cables appeared before my headlamp. I lowered myself the final dozen feet and let go of the cable. I turned around to look up into the stars.

A single headlamp beam moved against the other lights, descending toward solid ground.

The Fellowship of Half Dome

Andrew walking on the sub dome to the base of the cables. The band of lighter color on the rock marks the route to the Half Dome summit.

Psychology Experiment:

1.     Suspend two cables on a fearsome slope of rock, climbing hundreds of feet to an exposed vista —thousands of feet above the valley and completely at the mercy of the elements.

2.     Let it be known that climbing said route is unsafe and unadvised, at least not until the end of May when the cables go up on posts and the route opens for tourists with permits.

3.     See who shows up.

We showed up.

There was a good breeze blowing over the sub-dome when Andrew and I got to the top of the steps and threw our backpacks off in the shelter of a boulder.

We had already hiked up three of trail from our campsite at Little Yosemite Valley that morning. The final, crucial step of our journey to the 8,800-foot summit of Half Dome dangled right in front of us: twin sets of cables bolted into the rock slope, extending for hundreds of feet above our heads until they disappeared over the lip of the slope.

The funny thing was that we weren’t really supposed to go up those cables. On that mid-May morning, the coiled steel lifelines were still in their winter position. When they went up on their posts later that month, they would form two convenient banisters for the tourists lucky enough to get permits to go up to the summit. The winter position meant that the cables were laid flat against the rock, lowering the risk that an avalanche would rip them out. If we went up now, we would have to lift the heavy steel ourselves and clamber up with only one cable in our hands.

The guidebooks had told us not to come at this time of year — at least if we didn’t have experience climbing “big walls” (no, we didn’t.) We had asked the park rangers about the cables, and they told us that they were down. This was technically correct since they were not up on their posts. No one had taken them off the mountain though, which was not the impression I got from talking to the rangers. It wasn’t until I talked to some climbers in our camp that I learned that the cables were still there, just less convenient to use.

On the hike up to the sub-dome, Andrew and I passed a family from North Carolina that was set on doing the climb. One gentleman, whose long hair was tied behind a red bandana had just been in a four-wheeler accident not too long before (typical redneck) and had just gotten out of his back brace.

We hiked ahead of them for a little while, then ran across a group of guys and girls, who looked to be in their twenties and were on their way down.

They recommended that we keep our feet perpendicular to the slope and grip the cable tug-of-war style. We would have to lift the cable off the mountain ourselves, but there would be a couple of places where we could put it down and rest. Also, did we have gloves?

They handed us their white cotton gardening gloves with rubber grips. Without them, the cables would rip up our hands, they said. Then North Carolinians came across our powwow.

“Hey, the girls could do it. Now you have to go up there!” one of them told us.

Andrew and I hiked ahead again, then stopped for lunch at the base of the cables. Two middle-aged men and an older guy were looking up the route. Would they do it?

I could catch snippets of their conversation through the wind. The two middle-aged guys sounded a little doubtful. After about 10 minutes of discussion, one of them started up the cable. The other one waited behind, and then followed on the way up behind his friend. They climbed with slow, deliberate movements, keeping the cable between their legs, as they pulled themselves up.

About 50-feet up, the two came to a stop. They were having a conversation again. I clearly made out the words “going down,” and then they began a cautious descent to the bottom. As soon as they got below the cables, one of the guys leaned back against a boulder and stared back up at the route above his head.

The oldest guy, who had waited at the bottom, grabbed hold of a cable and started climbing.

 Andrew and I finished our sandwiches and walked over. The guy who had just come down was still looking up the mountain. He told me that while he and his friend were going up, one of the two had pointed out that the higher they went, the longer they would have to climb down. Once that thought was planted, it had poisoned their courage. Now he was thinking about whether he should go up again.

As I talked with him, Andrew grabbed hold of a cable and started the climb. Well, that’s one way to do it. I put the gloves on and started scrambling after.

The rubber grips felt firm against the cable. I felt the weight in my forearms, heavy, but manageable. My boot soles had a decent purchase on the rock.

This wasn’t too bad, I told myself, simultaneously deciding that there was absolutely no way that I was looking down. I wasn’t going to think about how much further I would need to come down each time I steeped up.

I took a quick rest at about 30 feet up. If I just thought about keeping my hands on the cable and feet on the rock, there was no reason that I shouldn’t be able to do this. It was the sudden realization of fear that I had to watch out for. If I let myself lose my chill, I could seize up, and then it could get ugly. I needed to be dispassionate and not let my focus wander beyond five feet of me.

The climb included a couple of ledges for us to clamber over. I had to step up about knee-high, while going up the 45-degree pitch, taking care not to lose my grip on the cable.

The climb got a little steeper for a while, with new ledges. There were also places where the cable would end and a new one would begin, requiring me to switch hand-holds in order to grab the next one.

After climbing another hundred feet or so, I reached the point where the slope lessened and the cable ended. I walked upright for the last bit of the climb.

I could look out over miles of valley from the summit. There were the white waterfalls cascading from impossible heights. El Capitan stood to the west, aspiration for many steely-nerved rock climbers.

The older guy who had gone before us was already at the summit.

“Did you leave your pack down there?” he asked. “The squirrels have learned to open zippers.” Then again, he said, sometimes they just chewed right through the pack fabric.

I had in fact left my pack down there, because I didn’t want to make the climb with extra weight on my back. I made a mental note to get down soon.

Andrew and I at the summit

Larry, on his 35th ascent

Dave reached the summit, despite turning back the first time he went up the cables

His name was Larry. He’d spent his 67 years living near Yosemite climbing rock walls, taking on mountains and going backcountry skiing. He guessed that he’d been up Half Dome 35 times, including in the off-season, and up some of the traditional climbing routes. Looking out over the land, he was ale to point out the different features, and recount different adventures he’d had in those places.

Soon, I heard voices, and looked around to see the two guys who had turned back earlier. They looked flushed, but exultant.

It had only been three years since the guy named Dave had gone through a heart transplant. He said, he felt like he owed it to the 18-year-old whose heart now beat in Dave’s chest, to live well. He showed us the bracelet he wore with the young man’s name. It had been a heroin overdose that killed him. Dave admitted that he hadn’t exactly been comfortable with the climb, but it felt good to prove to himself that he was doing something with his new lease on life.

Andrew descending Half Dome by the cable

No sooner had Dave finished the story then we heard a rebel war whoop. It was the North Carolinians. The guy who had been in a back brace wanted us to get a picture of him up there, proof for what he could hardly believe himself. There were no hard feelings about The War of Northern Aggression today. It was high-fives all around. Everyone seemed delirious, maybe not quite believing that they were at the summit. It was hard not to feel a charge, being up here, a connection to everyone in the group. Everyone had shown a bit of chutzpa going up the cables. Even then, we were all knew we would have to lean back over the edge and go back the way we came.

Dave and his friend went down first, then the North Carolinians, then Larry. Andrew and I waited to give them all a head start, then clambered down to the cables, braced our feet against the stone and began the decent — hand over hand. 

The long view

Over the Top (A Short Story)

Let’s suppose that it’s late afternoon when you start up the John Muir Trail for Nevada Falls.

The sun in the west sets the cliffs of Yosemite Valley afire, shines through the sequoia leaves so that they shimmer like gold coins before the purple of the departing storm.

The water from that storm still drips off the branches and squelches beneath your trail shoes as you fly up the asphalt path. All the runoff has swelled the banks of the Merced down below. The River of Mercy thrashes like a white serpent through the boulders. When the river comes against a rock, thousands of pounds of water explode into the air. Then it all falls back and rejoins the writhing flow.

Trains of mist wander like lost spirits through the trees.

You hear the Merced thundering with its recklessness and unbridled energy and wonder if you are jealous.

You focus on turning your legs over as quickly as possible. Breath comes in ragged gulps. Fatigue begins to seep into your legs like syrup.

Only your exhilaration trumps the tiredness. It is exertion for the sake of it, the feeling of taking your body to the edge of self-destruction and savoring the moment where you no longer quite have control.

You sprint out to where the trail crosses a bridge and look straight down. Even in the maelstrom of pounding whitewater there are shapes — standing waves, sharp parallel columns whose molecules fly past at a hundred feet per second. The noise of it fills your skull.

What would it be like to feel that tremendous energy from within? The answer is beyond your ken. You swing your camera out from your knapsack, aim the lens at the churning foam, press the shutter and move on.

There are steps on the other side of the bridge. You start climbing, taking pleasure in the quick efficient strides. When you are in the flow, it hardly feels like work.

You keep pressing up the trail until you see the alabaster pillar of Nevada Falls plummeting over the cliff ahead of you. The sunlight on the falls makes it glow from within. Great clots of water break out of the main flow and disintegrate in the air, flung apart into component molecules. It looks like a vast chandelier, shattering forever.

When you get to the top of the falls, you find another bridge. You can watch the waves from the center of the span, the whole churning mess of the river race toward the edge and disappear into space.

You cross to the other side where you walk up down the up and down the stony riverbank in search of the perfect view. There is a place where you can see where the current  flies apart into white gouts, suspended in glorious trains before they hit bottom. To be a part of that!

It is a struggle to hold the whole picture in your mind. Every time you think you have it, the image gushes out again, exploding heedlessly toward the abyss. Once again, you wonder what it would be like to store even a fraction of that wildness inside your soul.

You press your eye against the camera viewfinder, trying to take the picture that tells the story. Maybe the shutter will catch something in the pattern of golden drops suspended in their fall. But stills are not enough; this waterfall is an animal in motion.

You switch to video.

Amazing, you think. Each splash is its own pattern, a perfect sculpture that can only last a fraction of a second. There are shapes in the water that no one has ever seen before, created and destroyed in the blink of an eye.

The same waterfall, changing always.

Zoom in.

Half-formed thoughts dance through your mind as you pan over the chaos. Perhaps, the meaning of this is beyond understanding, you think. Its spirit is formless; it has no nature but change, no loyalty except its will to push forward and fall. You can't even define the dimensions of the thing because there is no way to tell where the waterfall ends and the mist begins.

As you move the viewfinder over the waters, you feel like laughing. Is all this profound or meaningless? Maybe it’s both.

All the forms that anyone held sacred, they too will splat apart, reform, recreate themselves in new iterations of the same idea. Whose idea?

It feels close enough to grasp now.

The tug around your ankle is gentle but catches you completely off your guard.

You let the camera drop from your eye, and see that you are standing in the current. You weren’t zooming in with your lens; you were walking forward the whole time.

You totter on the slick rock and flail your arms. One knee sinks into the river, immediately launching a spray of water into your face. The knee slides back along the rock and you make a desperate grab for the slippery bank. A wave hits you and rips you away.

Two figures on the bridge are flailing their arms at you, pointing. You think you hear one of them scream.

The water shoves you through the final rapids and up against stones. Resisting won't help anything at this point.

Suddenly you are weightless. There is no up or down that you can sense. You are in the center of the chandelier. Globs of water wiggle before your eyes in slow mo, elongating and breaking apart in the air. The wind tells you that you are accelerating, but it feels so strange and delightful to be floating there in the golden light.

Sooner or later, you know that you will hit the bottom with everything else, dashed like so much foam upon the rocks. So really, you should enjoy the moment while you have it. And for a short time, you do.