Split Mountain

Split Mountain: The Hard Mountain
21 July 2014

The following is the account of how I became a positively charged streamer while standing atop Split Mountain.

After my solo trips up Mt Langley, Middle Palisade, and Mt Muir and Mt Whitney earlier this year, I decided it was time to try going into the mountains with a group. After all I sometimes felt more alone than awe-struck amidst the silent wilderness. Wait one minute, that is complete bullshit! I love being alone on the mountain. It’s transcendent, man! The real reason I determined to find a group of people for accompaniment on the mountain was to help my mom worry less about me. She almost started crying the other day when she told me she dreamed I died alone in the wilderness. I joked I would not mind leaving this world by falling off a mountain, but not until I’m at least 50 or so. Then she got really angry and I told her I would find a group already. Anyway maybe it would be cool to meet a few like-minded people, I admitted to myself. I did my damndest to convince my roommate, neighbors, coworkers, strangers at bars, etc to go with me, but alas, I was unsuccessful to the last. So I joined the meetup ‘Southern California Adventure Hikers’, and shazaam, not long after, someone posted ‘Last minute Split Mtn (14,064ft) this wkend’. ‘Killer,’ I thought to myself, as I sat in my cubicle and hastily typed a response requesting to join the group.

A few days later I found myself driving up to Big Pine to meet Patrick, Daphne, and John for a hike up the Split. I got a nasty migraine on the drive up, and it was already dark when I arrived in Lone Pine on Friday night. I could drive around the desert trying to find a suitable campsite among the campgrounds I had researched earlier, or I could check in to the finest hotel in town, the Comfort Inn. The Comfort Inn it was; I watched cable TV, slept like a king, and enjoyed a most adequate continental breakfast in the morning. The group met up at a gas station in Big Pine, and my new hiking partners seemed like a good bunch right from the start. Patrick and Daphne were both from the Bay Area and had recently completed their MBA degree programs at UCLA. I never did find out how John made his living, but he was an outgoing, radical dude. He was close to completing all 279 peaks of the Sierra Club’s Hundred Peaks Section (HPS). Why there are 279 peaks in the HPS I cannot tell.

We packed into John’s Suzuki Sidekick and headed for the rightly well-feared MacMurray Meadows Road. John knew how to get every last ounce of power out of his surprisingly capable Sidekick as he drove over the boulders like a madman. Suffice it to say I was glad I wore my seatbelt with John behind the wheel. We made one wrong turn at the start, but my old-fashioned print out directions came in handy, and I am confident we made record time to the trailhead. It only took us about twenty to thirty minutes to get from the turnoff onto the dirt road to the trailhead. The time range is to account for relativity at the high speeds we attained. Our first major team win of the trip.

The start of the trail up the Red Lake drainage is unmaintained, consisting of loose sand and eroded switchbacks from all the hikers giving up trying to follow the trail. For this reason it is steep, but it does afford hikers the opportunity to choose their own grade. We all kept our heads down and our pace steady as we gained elevation, eventually leaving the high heat and desert scrub plants behind. We were pleasantly surprised to come across a couple jungle patches after the desert section. The shrubberies were overgrown, giving Daphne a distinct advantage in negotiating the terrain. Keep your eyes peeled for at least one pink ribbon marking a critical turn and the one true path through this tropical forest.

After approximately five hours of hiking and 4000 feet of elevation gain, we found ourselves at Red Lake. There are three or four pristinely cleared and graded campsites on the east side of this lake. The clouds that had kept us cool lower on the trail abated, the sun came out, and group morale was high. As I later learned, John engaged in his typical overnight backpack practice of setting up his tent, climbing in, and avoiding all human contact, himself preferring to sleep at least some twelve hours before breaking camp the following morning. Meanwhile I jumped in the lake and swam around until certain precious parts of my body began to go a little cold for comfort, at which time I lounged on a rock in the sun. Thusly I proved my Wisconsin-bred hardiness in cold conditions. Daphne lent me some matches, and Patrick helped me operate my MSR Whisperlite stove properly, such that I could get my dinner cooking. This was a new experience for me as I reneged just this once on my strict adherence to the DIY ethic governing wilderness travels. I learned a thing or two as Patrick and Daphne explained to me their preferred foods and methods of filtering water, the intricacies of inflating sleeping pads, and other such concerns. I could tell they were seasoned California backpackers. It certainly was nice being in a group after all. We made plans to be on trail by 5 am and headed off to bed when the sun went down over the Split. Patrick knew that afternoon rains were in the forecast, and had figured in advance that we should be on the summit early and back to camp by no later than 10 am.

I had some trouble getting to sleep in my bivy sack, and after much tossing and turning, I realized it was because I was too hot! I unzipped my sleeping bag and bivy sack and reached a comfortable rate of heat transfer to the pleasant, yet humid night air. Early in the night I also noticed my heart rate was quite high at about 90 bpm just sitting in my sack. I imagine it took my body some time to calm down after all the hiking, with less oxygen at altitude, and of course because of the stray thought entering my head that a bear was nearby, plotting my imminent dismemberment. The bear turned out to be fishes splashing in the water all along.

We made good on our avowal to be on trail at 5 am. The clouds that had formed in the night had cleared by this time, and the stars were so beautiful. You simply cannot see a sky like that in the city. As we made our way up the rockfall to the false saddle, the group began to get strung out for the first time. John and I went ahead as Patrick stayed behind with Daphne. She was beginning to slow down from the intense exertion. Patrick made it clear to her that the three of us would go ahead, and that she should turn around if she became too fatigued. It is not an ideal situation to leave a group member behind, but it was important for us to make good time to the summit. I felt confident that Daphne, an experienced hiker, would make smart decisions on her own.

After following a dogleg left path around the right side of a sizable glacial moraine beyond the false saddle, we came to the best part of the hike. The route bent left up the ridge, became steep, and then turned into a short class three chute before gaining the north slope. I went first and took care not to send rocks down the chute, which was difficult, because there are a lot of loose rocks in the chute. I relished in testing the holds and making the appropriate moves through this brief section.

Immediately after cresting onto the north slope, I turned around and looked down the chute. I took a ‘picture’ in my head so that I would descend the correct path on the way down. This proved to be of critical importance. Now the three of us noted a growing fog moving across the north slope. What once was a solitary white cloud against blue sky was now an ominous and expansive gray haze. Patrick related his feeling to John and I, ‘The conservative part of me is saying we should turn around.’ We convinced each other that it was only fog, nothing more, and that we could continue onward, cautiously, whatever that means. Allow me to be clear: to continue onward at this point was the wrong decision. At the very least we could have waited to see how the weather pattern developed as the day wore on.

We ignored the signs and trudged up the north slope. There was a mystical calm about this fog. It surrounded me and tricked me into a stupor. I felt as though I was walking across the surface of the moon. I could not see more than a few paces ahead. Some kind of bright, strange plant was growing between the rocks. A beautiful outer space plant. The silence was breached by the crack of thunder in the distance. The mountain had revealed itself to us. Very near to the top, it boomed closer. On the very last steps, which I took so joyously onto the exposed summit point of Split, my hair stood on end. I thought, ‘My hair has some electric potential because I took my hat off.’ The only time in my life I had this feeling of static electricity was from rubbing a carpet, or for example, taking a hat off my head during the cold, dry winter. In a moment of absolute crushing terror, I realized, ‘I am not wearing a hat.’ Charged particles were literally coursing through my body up to my head, desperately trying to connect with those in the sky, which would cause a discharge of energy so great it could melt my skin and literally blow me off the mountain. This was the first time in my life that I felt close to death. The crushing terror passed, and what was left I can only try to describe now as utter numbness. I could not get one thought into my head but, ‘Go down the mountain. Go down the mountain as fast as you can.’ Patrick, John, and I hurtled down the north slope. John’s hiking poles were hissing! Miraculously, none of us turned an ankle on the slippery rocks, or walked off the east face, as a hellish mixture of rain, snow, and hail began pelting us. Visibility was extremely poor. Patrick guided us toward the chute with his GPS log, and with confidence overbrimming from my mental picture, I jumped off the north slope. I had chosen the correct chute and yelled back, ‘The route is good! Come on down!’ I finally felt safe.

The slog down the numerous rockfalls and talus heaps back to camp was miserable and long. My hiking boots were overflowing with rocks from the aggressive sliding down the mountain. Patrick, John, and I each traveled on our own through these sections. I did not want to talk about what just happened, because doing so would almost acknowledge how treacherous it had become up there on the north slope. It would be easy to be macho about it, and to pass the whole thing off as no big deal, just another mountaineering adventure. But I have to admit I was pretty shaken after becoming charged on the summit. I gained a higher level of respect for the mountains after experiencing a shock of their fury.

The weather finally cleared up when we all came together at camp. I was relieved to see that Daphne was okay. She had turned around early before the worst of the storm hit. After drying our gear in the sun, we packed up and began to make our way down the drainage. The mountain was not done with us yet, though, as hard winds blasted our backs, and large, heavy rain soaked our battered bodies. Split Mountain, The Hard Mountain. I felt like Odysseus, so close to home, yet still paying the mountain through suffering for my youthful hubris.

Finally I found myself almost laughing about it all as I told Daphne about my hair standing on end on top of the mountain. She said, ‘That’s scary.’ There ought to be a word for laughing about something to try to reduce the sheer weight of it. We were all cheery again on the drive back through the meadows. I was glad to have met some new friends on this trip. Patrick and John discussed going up Mt Brewer later this summer, and I asked them, ‘That’s an emblem peak, isn’t it?’