Skyline on Mt. San Jacinto (#2)

At 5:30 AM on March 31, Ellen, Liz, and I started up the Skyline trail, which follows an eastern ridge on Mt. San Jacinto for 8100 vertical feet (not including some ups and downs) to the upper tram station. Minutes later, friends Steve, Patti, and Mark headed up as well. Though it got a little warm for my tastes in the bottom half, temperatures in the upper half were perfect. And there was no snow/ice in the final traverse chutes to worry about. 

We're heading just right of that high point in the middle. 

Ellen and Liz with Mt. San Gorgonio in the background. 

Some tempting tuna (I think) at flat rock. 

 Yet another vegetation zone. 

We'll be traversing through the pines to the obvious crag (Coffman's Crag). There are a couple couloir crossings in there that can be very hazardous when filled with ice/snow.

Traversing to Coffman's Crag.

 At Coffman's Crag.

The top of the Skyline trail. Just ten more minutes to the upper tram station.

Bell Ridge on Pinos Peak (round 2)

This has become one of my favorite hikes in the Santa Anas. It took Patrick M., Dave G., and me a little over seven hours to cover the 13 miles and 4300 vertical feet. At least two of us brushed up against poison oak. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking while I scratch my leg.

 Patrick and Dave an hour or so after dawn.  I'm just a shadow of myself.

Looking back down Bell Ridge

Santiago Peak

 

Dave and Patrick on the summit of Pinos Peak.

The final dry and warm stretch into suburbia.

Register Ridge, Mt. Baldy (yet again)

It had been over five months since I'd hiked up a mountain, and boy did I need it. I went up Mt. Baldy via Register Ridge and the Ski Hut trail. The stretch from the summit down to the boulder field was mostly snow-covered, and I donned micro-spikes for the west side of the bowl. Twas a fine day in the hills.

 Early morning light on the surprisingly dry bowl

 First time I've ever seen a sign here

 Register Ridge

 Register Ridge

 Register Ridge

 Register Ridge

A hazardous snow crossing on the Devil's Backbone trail. 

 A young bighorn sheep

 Looking down the Devil's Backbone

 The summit

 Here's another view of that hazardous snow crossing. 

Where the Ski Hut trail intersects the South Ridge

 The icy west side of the bowl

"Enduring Patagonia" review

When I was living at the Grand Teton Climber's Ranch in summer 1996, I attended an extraordinary slideshow by Greg Crouch, who had recently climbed Cerro Torre.  Greg had spent an entire season trying and trying and trying again to scale the peak amid some of the world's worst weather.  He and his partners waited out the regularly ferocious and prolonged storms in a squalid, mice-infested shelter miles from the nearest town.  All climbing was done in weather windows that would open for a day or two before slamming shut for a week or three. The final successful ascent required an impromptu bivouac a few meters below the tippy top.

That particular Cerro Torre climb was one of several major ascents Crouch made in the region during the 1990s.  In 2001, he published an outstanding book about those excursions, entitled Enduring Patagonia.

The author enjoying typical conditions on Cerro Torre.

Crouch's trips to the Chalten Massif all seem to have a few things in common.  They each involve:
(1) multiple months;
(2) one horrible storm after another;
(3) waiting out storms in remote, dumpy camps for the majority of the time;
(4) extremely technical rock and ice climbing;
(5) constant uncertainty about the circumstances and the outcome;
(6) dangerous retreats through storms at night; and
(7) clothing that is rarely if ever washed and possibly never changed.

Crouch's determination in the midst of these mostly miserable conditions is astonishing.

The author in the notorious (noTORREous?) camp.  This is apparently how the majority of time is spent on a climbing trip in Patagonia. 

But Crouch is more than a determined alpinist.  He is also an excellent writer. Enduring Patagonia is a totally engaging read.  My only complaint is that there were not 200 more pages.  The story is compelling, the prose is solid, and Crouch writes with an honesty and lack of pretension that is starkly genuine.

It also helps that Crouch comes across as a very likeable fellow. In fact, he is a likeable fellow.  I know that, because a day or two after the previously mentioned slideshow, I encountered Crouch again -- on the summit of the Grand Teton.  Descending the mountain together, I was regaled with some of the backstory from his Cerro Torre odyssey.  One detail I remember was how he funded the trip -- by installing ball-washing machines in ball pools.  And I was delighted to find a sustained discussion of that decidedly odd job, and others, in Enduring Patagonia. 

Many photos from Crouch's mountaineering adventures are posted on the Enduring Patagonia facebook page and his personal website.

The ebook and actual book are available in many places, including here.

Crouch recently published another book which took him a decade to write, entitled China's Wings.  Find out more about that here.

The author on the summit of Fitzroy.

 All images in this article are courtesy of Greg Crouch.   

Rock Song About Mammoth Lakes

The first song on my album Breach (2013) is "I Don't Want To Think About Her Anymore". The lyrics are based on an experience I had in Mammoth Lakes, California many moons ago when I was a climbing bum. The song can be streamed here or on Spotify:




Here are the lyrics:

I met her in the mountain town of Mammoth Lakes.
She had a smile that could make the earth quake.
Always surrounded by a half a dozen guys
with eyes fixed firmly on the prize.

Lucky me I became the chosen one,
for a few weeks at least in the sun.
In my mind she was wearing a tiara
and I was the king of the Sierra.

I don’t want to think about her anymore. (2x)

She could lead 5.9 follow 5.11.
Belaying her I was in heaven.
But then I slipped and took my fall from grace,
introduced her to the mountain ace.

She and I were heading out to the hot springs.
Saw him on the street and said, “Hey, get your things.”
One look at her he was immediately smitten.
Alarm bells rang when she purred like a kitten.

I don’t want to think about her anymore. (2x)

Meanwhile, back at the hot springs,
skinny-dipping we could see everything.
That really didn’t work out well in my favor,
because they were both players.

Game over for the tall, skinny, white guy.
I should have known when I saw the look in his eye.
They never thanked their match-making fairy,
even though they got married.

I don’t want to think about her anymore. (3x)

Game over


©℗ 2013 Sam Page

Seven Pines Trail, Mt. San Jacinto

On October 6, I made my maiden voyage up the Seven Pines Trail.  Though I've taken at least four other routes to San Jacinto Peak, I'd never gone this way.  Unusually, I found the bottom of the hike (the Seven Pines Trail stretch before the Deer Springs Trail intersection) to be the most scenic.

It took Patrick Moran and I about 9.5 hours at a conversational pace to complete the roughly 14-mile round trip.  With the two notable dips on the Seven Pines Trail (to cross the North Fork of the San Jacinto River), it's about 5000 vertical feet.  I left south Orange County at 4:30AM and was back unloading the car at 7:00PM. 

It's worth mentioning that the Seven Pines Trail is hard to follow in places. We found ourselves temporarily off-trail on several occasions and had to make an effort to re-find the trail at the first saddle.  It's also worth mentioning that the river was running, which surprised me considering how dry it has been.

San Gorgonio

View from the summit of San Jacinto Peak. Snow Creek is down to the left, Kristen Peak is in center, and Leatherneck Ridge is on the right. 

Patrick on top

This photo was taken moments before the landslide ... just kidding.

 Heading down

Beautiful scenery on the Seven Pines Trail

A lovely hike

"Buried in the Sky" review

Though I'm currently engrossed in producing my first full pop/rock album, I recently took some time to read Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day.  The book, published in 2012 and written by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan, revolves around the series of fatalities that occurred just below the summit of K2 in August 2008.  

I’ve read scores of books over the years that recount mountaineering epics, but this one is different.  Although it does what most readers of the genre will want it to do – it describes the accidents and their surrounding circumstances in the best detail the second-hand authors could muster – it also shines the spotlight on the people who have mostly labored in the shadowy fringes of the genre: the Sherpas. 

The first few chapters of the book trace the trajectories of the Sherpas involved in the disaster.  What these chapters do is firmly establish in the readers mind that the Sherpas are not second-class sidekicks, but fully-fledged actors on par with their (mostly) white counterparts.  And what the book as a whole does is show that, although many of the people involved are competent mountaineers, they are vulnerable human beings who willingly put themselves in harm’s way and suffered the consequences.    

If you are looking for a mountaineering book that portrays glorious heroes, this is probably not for you.  However, if what you are looking for is a very well-written, thoroughly researched and engaging account of a contemporary mountaineering disaster, then I recommend this book.