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.