The Yosemite Journals, Chapter Eleven

(NOTE:  There will be one more Yosemite chapter after this one, so enjoy them while they last.)

Those folks I went camping with in Yosemite last month are big on birthdays.  This trip coincided, intentionally, with two momentous birthdays.  Both Julia and Norman turned 70 while we were there.

Norman

Julia

Kathy

Sally

Missy

Katy

Kristy

Kathy also would celebrate a birthday later in June.  Her 29^th she says, but I know for a fact that’s she older than I am, and I’m 34.

Anyway, birthdays are celebrated in this group, as I said.  Earlier in these journals I mentioned that the lack of underbrush in the campgrounds allowed us to see what our neighbors were having for dinner.  One night we noticed a group of healthy young studmuffins men ate only hot dogs and granola bars.  Katy offered them the rest of our chili and they came over and accepted with gratitude and grace, which gave us an ever closer view of their attributes.. 

So, with all that openness, you can imagine what other campers thought when late one afternoon we all donned silly hats and played even sillier birthday games, acting like a bunch of six-year-olds.  And this was all done BEFORE the almond champagne.

Kathy demonstrates the wrist-flick.

Norman improves on the wrist flick.

That one hit Smokey the Bear, says Kristy.

Norman and Kathy in the semi-finals.

First came a game of seeing who could pitch a plastic dart the farthest, using a launcher powered by a rubber band.  Kathy was the one who discovered the wrist flicking technique and soon the Lower Pines campground was in danger of being bombarded with UFOs from the Upper Pines grounds.

Then it was on to table croquet, a particularly annoyingly simple-looking game of knocking a wee ball through wickets with a plastic mallet.  On a wrinkled plastic table cloth.

Norman playing croquet.

We attempted to pitch balls into holes in a moving plastic sheet.  Soon we were knocking down foam cups with a paddle ball.  I forget the rest—the games were endless.  My friends do not lack for imagination.

The two sisters battle against each other to see who can knock down the cups with paddle balls.

But the best was saved for last, and I’m not yet talking about the almond champagne.

Julia and Missy in the peanut gallery were especially raucous and we had to admonish them several times to "keep it down."

The very best game was racing cars on the asphalt lane through the campground with balloon-powered cars.  I could have played that one all day.

The balloon-powered racing car.

Kristy and her racecar. The greatest distance was accomplished by the person who inflated the balloon with the greatest amount of hot air.  Uh, imagine my surprise when that turned out to be me. My race car is so far ahead, it's out of sight.

Then the pink cake boxes were retrieved from the steel bear boxes where they had been fermenting baking for several days.

Kathy’s cake for her 29^th (!!!) birthday looked a bit the worse for its time in the bear oven.  We decided that its proper place would be in the bear-proof dumpster because it contained ingredients known in California to be harmful to your health when subjected to days of high temperatures.

 

That left the big sheet cake for Norman and Julia’s birthday.  It was in fine shape, and apparently made of indestructible ingredients not known in California to be harmful to your health after being subjected to days of high temperatures.

So, we ate as much as we wanted, then toasted Julia, Norman, and Kathy with almond champagne.

Because turning 70 is a big high-falutin' deal, Julia got out new cups for the almond champagne, rather than using the ones we had heretofore been battering about with rubber balls attached to paddles.

Then Julia and Kristy gathered up the leftover cake, a knife, and paper plates.  Off they went, offering birthday cake to everyone in the campground until they ran out.

Such a birthday party I’ve never before seen.  Totally awesome, except for the almond champagne.

The Yosemite Journals, Chapter Ten

Down at the Devil's Elbow in Yosemite Park one afternoon, the Mallard Family and the Swallowtail Butterfly were doing their best to keep us entertained, but the real drama was a bit higher than this bend in the Merced River, in which and over which ducks and butterflies were competing for our attention.

    

Actually, quite a bit higher, because across the river and through the trees people with death wishes were climbing like geckos up a massive three thousand foot high chunk of granite called El Capitan.  In the photo below, there is a group of climbers slightly above and to the left of the middle tree (the largest pine) in the group of three tall trees at the left of the photo.

While my brain-baked California friends were freezing their tootsies and other body parts in the clear water, I was in the shade, comfortably ensconced in a folding chair with binoculars and cameras with 30X optical zooms glued to the almost vertical face of that well-known climber's paradise.

This photo will help you locate the climbers on the face of El Capitan.  The portion of tree is of the largest pine.  Just a bit higher and to the left is a curved shadow.  Two of the climbers and their gear are there, while the third climber begins making his way higher, slightly to the left of the two waiting climbers.

 

I think there were three climbers in this group.  In the photo below, one climber begins working his way higher while the other two wait with their gear.  The rectangular shape is, I believe, a platform that the climbers suspend and sleep on.

 

Now the second climber begins his ascent.  The first climber is tied off and waits, and the third climber remains with the gear.

Sorry about the fuzziness.  Everything's in the shade right now.

The second climber nears the first.  

While Mrs. Mallard paraded past with her ducklings, other climbers were working their way up farther to the right.

In the photo below, this group of climbers is almost directly above the middle tree in the group of three tallest pines.  The first climber is making his way to the curved shadow almost at the top of El Capitan.

 

The highest climber has reached the crescent-shaped formation and is attaching ropes to haul up the gear.

 Then, he rappells down.  Not me.  Once I got that high, that's where I'd stay.    Follow his rope from the projecting rock in the top center, and you'll find him to the left and slightly higher than his waiting buddies.

Farther down, back in those three tall pines, a climber from another group heads up.

 

The next night, we drove back to a meadow near where these photos were taken.  Using flashlights, we made our way out into the meadow on well-worn paths, where we joined other folks with flashlights. 

The below photo was taken at night, in the dark, but with exposure allowing El Capitan to be visible.  Note the center "spine" of the buttress.

 We pointed our flashlights at El Capitan, and pinpoint lights appeared in two places.  The climbers, tied in for the night, were signaling back.  We lingered for a while, shining our lights and thinking about those climbers so high on an almost vertical face, and searching for other climbers' lights.

As a group we yelled, "Thank you!" and "Good night."

Then we turned off our flashlights and headed back to our camp site, where our sleeping bags were on cots close enough to the ground that we wouldn't get hurt if we fell out of bed.

You know that old expression about "friends in high places?"  Well, it's also true that when you're in a high place, you'd better have a friend with you.



PS:  Little did we know that while we were enjoying the sumptuous buffet at the Ahwahnee Lodge on Father's Day, Hans Florine of Lafayette, Calif., along with his climbing buddy Walex Honnold of Sacramento, were setting a new speed climbing record up The Nose of El Capitan.


Florine summited in 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 46 seconds, exceeding a 2010 record by almost 13 minutes. The next day he turned 48 years old.

The Yosemite Journals, Chapter Nine

My camping pals spent the first couple days in Yosemite looking at their "backyard" through my eyes.  They were showing me a place they love, a place they have visited every year since they were small children, and seeing it anew.

Yosemite Falls  can be seen from most places in the park, so we went for a close up view.

A walk through the tall Ponderosa pines, red fir, and cedars brought us to a viewing point.   A scramble over some rocks took me closer.

Norman and Kristy close enough to feel spray from the falls.

The next day, I finally got oriented as to the geography of this place.  It took a bird's eye view to accomplish that, and that view was at Glacier Point, directly up from where we were camped, but a thirty mile drive to get there.

Half Dome in your face.

That's Half Dome as seen from Glacier Point.  See the person standing on the rock in front of the face?  See the next photo.

I'm standing on the rock mentioned in the above cut line.

Kathy on the rock.

There's the rock we were on, at left..

Oops.  Got my photos mixed up.  This is the rock we were on, a side view.

Now that I got that out of the way...

Here are three photos showing the floor of Yosemite Valley, beginning at my left side and working towards the right.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls is in the center with Yosemite village to its right.  We are camped, I think, directly below the point where the rock ridge exits the photos, lower right.

Ahwahnee Lodge is at the bottom of the picture, right of center.

And Half Dome.

Farther right, beyond Half Dome, are Vernal and Nevada Falls.

At  last, I had the lay of the land.  I could leave the campground without fear of search teams coming after me, so long as I didn't wander up the Half Dome valley or over towards Vernal Falls.

We stopped a mile up the road for a picnic lunch.  Unfortunately, the bread for sandwiches hadn't made the trip.  Didn't matter.  We had plenty and we were getting used to the idea of the bread being missing.  With three bear boxes jammed full, finding anything was mostly luck.

Close to where we had lunch is where I saw this all-too-friendly coyote.

The Yosemite Journals, Chapter Eight

My friend Beth at Memoir on the Fly titled one of her recent posts:  Sit Still Long Enough and Maybe Something Wondrous Will Find You.

As she sat still, a black bear came into view just off the porch of the cabin  where they were vacationing in North Carolina.

Nothing so spectacular here, but wondrous things come in all sizes.

One hot afternoon in Yosemite Park, the group drove to Devil's Elbow, a beautiful bend in the Merced River that they favor.  Kathy and Sally waded out neck deep in the clear snow melt water.

Suddenly Kathy said, "There's a butterfly on my nose."  There was indeed but by the time I got the camera turned on, it had moved to her eyebrow.

I'm absolutely sure that Kathy had been holding very still because that water is so cold it paralyzes your muscles and you are unable to move.  Well, actually, it paralyzed this Alaskan.  The Californians thought it a delightful temperature, but I think they've lived with the sun baking their brains for far too long.

Soon the Swallowtail butterfly moved to Sally.  This time the camera was ready.

She walked ashore and the butterfly stayed with her.

As I said, nothing as flamboyant as a black bear at your knees, but when one is receiving wonders, one cannot be choosy.

A race incomplete

“The mountain always has the final say,” said a Junior Mt. Marathon runner in an interview with a reporter after he finished the boys’ race on July 4.  He should know.  He’s climbed many of them, summer and winter, and studied their dangers.

At the time, he was referring to the awful trail conditions the racers had faced, not about events later in the day that reminded us about the dangers inherent in Alaskan mountains.  Days of rain, compounded with last-minute training runs, had turned parts of the trail into mud.

Mt. Marathon on a much nicer day.  The racers go through the trees on the left side then up the center to the top.

No, the young man couldn’t have known how prescient his remark would become later in the day.  After all, it was still morning when he spoke those words.  The women’s race would start soon, then the Fourth of July parade, and at 3 o'clock 350 men would charge up the main street of Seward, 30 feet above sea level, scramble their way through alders and mud to the halfway point and then loose gravel and scree and rock to the peak at 3200 feet.

They still have to get off the mountain, the most injury-prone part of the race, and run those last few blocks into town, down the gauntlet of cheers and applause to the finish line.  Some would accomplish all that in less than an hour.  For most, their time would be around an hour and a half.

Racers ascending past the half way point in last year's race.  Spectators line the course.

Once the racers break out of the lower vegetation on the way up, they’re visible to everyone in town until they once again plunge into the alders and rock and cliffs and waterfalls on the downhill trail.  What could go wrong, other than a few injuries, none of them life-threatening?

This year, something has gone horribly wrong.  There’s one racer still out there.  He went up the mountain and was seen 200 feet from the top by a descending race official.  It was already three hours into the race.  It was the man's first race and he was determined to reach the top, said the official.

That was the last time anyone saw him.  Searches were launched that evening.

Making matters worse, a stubborn low pressure system in the Gulf of Alaska has temperatures ten degrees below normal with winds and rain.  New snow fell on higher elevations, though not on Mt. Marathon, the point being it's darned cold out there for someone dressed to run up a mountain. The missing man is 66 years old, wearing only a tee shirt, shorts, and running shoes.  He wasn’t even wearing his glasses, and his family says he has poor vision.

Low clouds and mist have hampered searches.

Search dogs, trained mountain rescue teams, a Pave Hawk helicopter from the Alaska Air National Guard, and volunteers searchers have found no trace of the missing man.  They combed the face of the mountain, then started searching more distant areas, guessing he’d gotten himself turned around in the clouds and mist.  They’ve found poor visibility, mud, rockfalls, and bears.

Had the weather been decent these past few days, even someone with poor vision could have seen Resurrection Bay from the mountain and known to head in that direction.

He’s now been missing three days.  Miracles have happened before in Alaska.  People have walked out of the brush after searchers had given up.  Others still haven’t been found.  Right now, all hopes are for a good resolution, and thoughts and prayers are with the family as the search continues.

And the mountain will have the final say, as a wise young man said.  One way or the other.

Sign at base of mountain.

This link is to a photo gallery of race photos which will show the conditions of the mountain race on July 4, showing it isn't a stroll in the park.

http://www.adn.com/2012/07/04/2531253/mount-marathon-2012.html#id=2531427&view=large_view

(Update, Sunday July 8:  Alaska State Troopers have cancelled the exhaustive search for the missing man, citing four days of searching using various teams and methods, including high-tech gear, have turned up no sign of the man.  The Seward Fire Department and volunteers say they will continue to look.)