Click to read at Backpacking Light Magazine

Independence

It all started with Bob Burd. 

How I first stumbled on his trip reports is a mystery to me, though this holds true for most of my online browsing. I may have been researching used car tires for all I know, but I soon found myself pouring over Bob Burd’s website. 

You see, Bob is among the Sierra’s premiere mountain scramblers—a very specific subset for whom avoiding lethal plunges is a central hallmark of each weekend. Within this cohort, Bob Burd stands peerless, having reached the mythical status of, say, a mountain Gilgamesh. Stories of his exploits are legion, largely because Bob himself broadcasts them in the form of copious, if understated, trip reports. With little more concern than most pay for summiting an escalator, he writes of jaunts up Class 4 chimneys and malicious jags of granite, tackling more altitude in a day than do most commercial airlines.

This nonchalance hardly surprised me. Having no background in climbing myself, I had long regarded mountaineers as having, let’s say, a unique psychological makeup. After all, while my love of long-distance hiking was far from what polite society might call a sensible endeavor, it was still many shades more acceptable than this outlandish form of self-dismemberment.

Perhaps the basic irrationality of thru-hiking is concealed by its length—a woman boxes up her apartment, shelves her career, shutters her home-life, and straps a nylon pack atop her shoulders to trudge from Mexico to Canada—the sheer enormity of it defies all comprehension. But watch a man rise in the morning, take leave of his spouse and children, drive several hours to a trailhead, make for the region’s most glaringly unclimbable feature only to scrabble directly up it, and then be home in time for dinner, and one could reasonably assume his neurochemical balance to be that of a late-stage game of Jenga.

All that to say, my fascination with Bob Burd was entirely unexpected. As was the notion I soon developed that I might wander off and scale a peak myself. Or “bag” it, as they say in the parlance, as though it were as simply done as packaging a round of groceries.

So, without any undue research, or much forethought for that matter, I motored out to Onion Valley and made a run on Independence Peak. Despite my best intentions, I found myself stymied midway up the mountain by the sudden realization that I very much valued survival. Whatever Bob Burd had confronted during his climbs in the Sierra, it was nothing like the murderous ramps of scree that I encountered.

“Yeah, there’s a Burd-factor, I call it. When you read his trip reports, you’ve gotta check your expectations.” 

This from Jason, whom I met in the parking lot of Onion Valley. We were both recuperating from long days in the mountains—though Jason’s far more successful—on our car’s respective bumpers while eating bland meals of Ramen. I told him of my trials on Independence Peak. Oh yeah, sure. Independence. Jason knew it well. In fact, he seemed intimately familiar with every rock in the Sierra. He dragged a cuff across his lips to sponge the excess broth and then fashioned a mountain of his open hand, indicating across a knuckle precisely where I had blundered. 

It was a bad route I had taken. “See, just here you should have made a beeline up the sandslope. You’d have topped out on the ridge, then it’s a clear shot to the peak.”

That he did this all from memory, and with impeccable accuracy, was shocking. I had before me a true peak-bagger. Could be a Bob Burd in the making.

Perched on the bumper of his 4Runner, slurping discreetly at his noodles, Jason appeared trim, well-groomed, dependable. Hardly the mountain madman I had expected. No, here was a gentleman of perfectly stable career, honorable social standing, and respectable homelife, who seemed hellbent on putting the lot of it at hazard. Why, just that morning he had stood atop University Peak, a prominent and notoriously bloodthirsty summit, which he had climbed in order to inspect the summit register. Jason had run across a man whose close friend had died there the day before and who felt it monumentally important to discover whether he had fallen while on the way up or the way down. That is to say, whether he had summited.

Jason had photographed the register but, understandably eager to return, had not taken the time to study it. He enlarged the picture on his phone and we leaned in close to look. And there, in shaky ballpoint, the victim’s signature. 

He had made it.

We whooped and beamed at each other a moment before realizing what an empty victory it was, that this man had touched the apex of some rock whose meaning was entirely subjective before crashing into an eternity that was painfully unambiguous.

We ate in silence a time, and the night began to darken. The wind laid down. The pines grew quiet. Jason glanced at the horizon, and there it was—the madness in him. He flashed a smile, a manic gleam. 

He said, “Tomorrow, you should do Bago.”

Bago

I set out before dawn the next morning on the trail to Kearsarge Pass to spend a number of days alone in the Sierra. By “alone” I mean simply that I had brought along no hiking companion for whom I might adjust my schedule, reduce my miles, and divvy up my M&Ms. That’s not to say I preferred no social interaction. Quite the contrary. When trekking solo, I find that human contact becomes a vital resource. Not only that, it is a thrill. In a simple matter of minutes one can achieve a deep affinity with strangers that cuts through all the blandishments and blather. 

Try doing that in line at Starbucks.

Possibly the greatest example of this occurred two days later, atop the summit of Mount Bago. I rose from camp at Charlotte Lake—a calm freshwater pool tucked deep in the Sierra—with a funny thought in mind: that I might wander toward Mount Bago and see what might try to kill me. I had it on questionable authority that it was the perfect starter peak. Of course, when speaking of scaling a thousand-foot heap of rock without the benefit of trails, this is much like calling Guantanamo a perfect starter prison. 

Still, Mount Bago seemed everything a cross-country mountain should be: visually stunning, physically taxing, only marginally life-threatening, and requiring no technical abilities besides that of forgoing all common sense.

I woke at some ungodly hour and bumbled about in darkness, sweeping the foothills, entirely unable to locate my destination. There was a dense cover of lodgepoles through which I meandered vaguely, which would have been dispiriting were it not for the surrounding beauty. Blades of sun scattered the clearing to make a perfect bluebird day. That is, a day in which my failures could be viewed by every bluebird.

At last, if only by chance, I broke through the treeline and came to the mountain proper. I puttered about, idly removing layers and eating snacks and generally putting off the heavy lifting. The thing about climbing a mountain is that some point you have to actually, well, climb up it. 

After catching my breath and consuming an inordinate amount of sugar, I started upwards,  attempting what in the jargon is called an ascending traverse. In layman’s terms, a slantwise shuffle toward a broad and gentle ridgeline which connects the mountain’s northern spur to its southern summit. Sadly, in trying to circumvent a snowfield, I topped out forty feet too high. Which meant I now how to downclimb a particularly unfriendly stretch of talus. 

Ah, the dreaded downclimb, which is to climbing what a unicycle is to biking. That is, if one were to ride it blindfolded. While drunk. And into oncoming traffic. Coupled with this was the brittle rock, the steep grade of the terrain, and the unreasonable amount of gravel which made each foothold an act of faith. Not good—not good at all. I had a wife and daughter at home, along with a lifestyle that generally required the use of all my limbs.

I prodded gingerly with a heel and sent a microwave-sized chunk of talus flying. Next came an oven. Then a series of various household appliances. I have since come to the conclusion that “Class 1” is a rank misnomer; you take a good, solid fall down any mountain, and that’s the end of it.

Still, I managed to reach the connecting ridgeline where the land gentled considerably, and soon the whole endeavor did not seem all that incautious. After all, I had defied no taboo so great as that of the evolutionary imperative for survival. But teenage boys do this regularly, every Saturday night. Certainly I had. So why now the feeling of transcendence? Why the buoyant tinge of rapture? The spiritual overtones in what was really no more than the geological precursor to the stair-stepper?

Well, to begin with, climbing makes life playful. You simply can’t scale a slant of granite and claim it as a passing hobby if survival is the imperative. But if experience becomes the purpose… a certain vividness of feeling… well then, it’s all perfectly reasonable, isn’t it?

It certainly seemed so at the time. I had not flouted risk-management so much as pursued with unwavering commitment that essence singular to mountains. I was in a realm of incoherence. 

I reached the summit laughing.

Rixford

We sat at the hem of an unnamed lake, the five hikers and I, pulling water through our filters. It was a paradise of sedge and cordgrass situated at the base of a high angle slope that we had just miraculously descended. 

I’d come across the group on the summit of Mount Bago, which was about the last place I expected to find a welcoming committee. They were an entirely affable bunch and, having determined that my route up the mountain would not be front runner for Most Reliable Ascent of the Year, I asked whether I could joint them for the way down. They agreed unanimously, which came as something of surprise, considering that having spent three full days in the backcountry already my bodily aroma bore a striking resemblance to the disposable compartment of a vacuum cleaner. 

The hikers, I soon learned, had an alternate route in mind, preferring to leap directly from the summit and let gravity work its magic. So, after admiring the sheer drop to Bubb’s Creek and the entire rumpled carpet of King’s Canyon, we plummeted down ourselves, covering a thousand feet of descent in roughly a quarter mile on what one of our group called “a character-building scree slope.” 

Here we found ourselves at an anonymous yet cheerful lake where we sprawled in pools of sunlight and replenished our water stores at leisure. Tina, who presided over the expedition, drank from the lake directly. She carried no filter, nor had she ever in all her years of mountain scrambling. “Never saw the sense in it,” she muttered, as though nothing could be more sensible than a hefty dose of Giardia. 

It must be said there was something of the wistful drill sergeant to Tina. A certain plaintive remove, as though she had spent her life seeking out a fitting challenge and failed to find it. (I found out later this was not far off the mark: of the Sierra Peaks Section List, which tallies a modest 247 alpine summits, Tina had completed every one. Following this staggering achievement, she took a victory lap of sorts which consisted of climbing all 247 peaks once again. She then found it perfectly reasonable to diversify her interests with a third round of the section list. This too she successfully completed. So, 741 peaks in total. Not counting such trifling outings as today’s.)

I conferred with the others in suitably hushed tones and learned that Tina’s age was the subject of intense rumor and speculation. Tina was known to be above seventy, but precisely how far above no one was certain. What was certain was that she had surpassed all biological expectations and entered a realm of longevity previously reserved for only the Eastern Pacific tortoise. 

As I stood and adjusted my pack, intending to take my leave, I noticed Tina giving me a once-over from the facing shoreline. She squinted against the sun, or against my mistrust of mountain water, and told me her group was heading east to climb Mount Rixford. 

Then, with a thin smile, “Wanna join?”

Now, you needn’t have summited Everest, nor even the stairwell at your local Wendy’s, to see that my prospects as a peak-bagger were somewhat dead on arrival. I had bailed on Independence Peak. I’d hardly made it up Mount Bago. But, as the qualifications to joining Tina’s company appeared to be a working set of legs, I heartily agreed to. 

So it was that not half an hour after completing what I had fully expected to be my life’s lone Sierra peak, I found myself hiking jauntily towards an even larger, more menacing summit—one which boasted numerous approaches across its equally stern faces—without so much as having inquired as to its elevation. 

To say I was out of my element was a wild understatement. 

 “Tell me…” I ventured casually, “how’s Rixford?”

“Oh, it’s a grunt,” Tina replied. As though the sound was all, and not the scraped shins and bloodied ankles, the jarring shifts in altitude which put one’s head on a spindle. “A real grunt,” she chuckled with a sort of dry bemusement. Much as a sadist might recall a particularly fine whipping.

According to R.J. Secor, preeminent authority on the Sierra, Mount Rixford is easy climbing. He described it as follows in his book on the subject: “First ascent 1897 by Emmet Rixford and two others, via an unknown route. The peak is Class 1 from Bullfrog Lake.” That’s it. No disclaimer to revise your will and testament or invest in a robust life-insurance policy. Of course, this was a man who perished while sliding down Mount Baldy in rain slickers worn specifically for the purpose of increasing his downhill speed. So perhaps his concept of “Class 1” should not be relied on too heavily.

We set out cross-country, trailing behind Tina in roving single file, hiking the good dirt through rocky meadows until reaching the John Muir Trail. This we took above Bullfrog Lake to access Rixford’s southern aspect. Of course Rixford, being a colossal pile of rubble, was not so clearly defined. Its so-called southern aspect spilled across the high country as an open blanket, merging indistinctly with nearby peaks and passes. It was not a mountain that inspired bursts of song or gasps of speechless wonder, but was more a vague gray imposition which fortified the land beyond it from all but the most moronic of hikers.   

Being such, we turned off-trail and up a gentle tree-lined slope that soon gave way to ragged scarp. We trundled slowly, meticulously, with labored breathing, all the while marveling over the fact that at some later point we would have to do so in reverse. A ludicrous prospect, and one which could not possibly hold true. Obviously there would be a helicopter awaiting us at the summit. 

We twisted along for several hours and fell into a deep silence. We scrambled canted slabs and heaved our bodies up by foxtails. The climb became a world unto itself, timeless and perpetual. Any thoughts of there being an eventual end goal to the practice were suspended.

At this point our intrepid septuagenarian leader called for us to fan out. The risk of rockfall was too high; we mustn’t linger in each other’s fall zones. This meant that rather than plod along as an obedient row of ducklings we must each find our own way. Tina waved a gloved finger in a loose zig-zagging motion to indicate where viable lines ran up the mountain—which is to say all over the place. I jogged my eyes about but saw only clots of granite and buttressed pinnacles of talus. Each was bluntly insurmountable

I called to Tina, “Where should I…?” 

She made an inconclusive gesture—Up. 

So up we went, regrouping now and again to munch on children’s candy and stare at the vista, uncomprehending. It was pleasant enough work, if you overlooked the more immediate concern of being dashed across the cliff face. I was only now coming to understand the vast, unrivaled possibilities for complications in these mountains. The uninitiated imagines such routes are perfectly repeatable. That they are charted out and reviewed in triplicate by some governing body, and subject to regular reviews. That there are backstops set in place to correct for potential overshooting, landmarks taken note of, points on the map which lent themselves to field navigation. Guidelines such as that.

The truth, however, is far nearer a free jazz solo in which the player relies on instinct, feel, and a certain knack for spontaneous invention. Certainly we’d need all three in abundance, if not a length of rope and harness, to surmount the cusp of rock which now stood between us and the summit.

I balked at the sight of it—we had reached a final impasse. And about time. 

“Well, that’s it then,” I conceded cheerily, eager to get grass beneath me.

“Nah,” said Tina, shambling forward. “That gendarme there? We just downclimb, contour. Go around it.” 

I regarded at her a moment as if she had suggested we all strip down and enjoy a friendly bit of groping. The route proposed was better suited a Slinky than any human. 

Tina tottered at the precipice, turned to face us, dropped an exploratory foot below and gave a judicious little nod. She whispered, “Slow and steady…” which I have since learned is climbing code for “Good luck, suckers.” Then she promptly disappeared.  

I blinked at the hiker nearest me. We sidled over to the threshold. 

“After you,” he offered. And you know what? I was eager. 

Perched on the shoulder of Mount Rixford, battered by winds, contemplating a view that stretched clear across the Owens Valley and to the Inyo Mountains, a curious change was taking place. I found my terror easing first to vague disquiet and then a smooth, thoughtless acceptance. A gentle arc of sun poured from my ear down to my neckline. We stood above a yawning, hostile vastness and felt entirely immune.

The remaining hikers followed, and soon we all clung to the mountain with four points of contact and all too often the inadvertent fifth.

“First class, my ass,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” Tina called back from somewhere above me, “that’s an outdated rating.”

It was at this point we encountered a succession of fickle handholds, friable and abrasive, that sheared the fingerprints off those in our group lacking proper scrambling gloves. Of whom there numbered one. Namely, myself. It was a swath of uncommonly dark igneous rock which resembled an infamous type called roof pendant—far older than the ubiquitous Sierra granite, and far less reliable. Even when it did not crumble in snags beneath our fingers, it seemed to want nothing more than to wish us godspeed and send us flying.

Yet we persisted, if simply for a lack of other options, until at last we reached the summit.

Strangely, I don’t remember much about the view, other than it was all-encompassing and therefore impossible to process. I do however recall that rough collar of granite. And signing the summit registry with all the flourish of a presidential declaration. And how we sat in loose assemblage, boisterous in our defiance. Feeling, each of us, that we had touched down on a new planet completely.

One of our group set up a camera. “Let’s do a silly one,” she said. 

Apparently, it was not silly enough to have scaled a 12,887 foot mountain for no appreciable reason. 

I have looked long and hard at that photo since then. Not at our faces, of course, but at the background, and wondered at the bizarre amnesia the experience left behind. It could well be that I encountered some profound spiritual transcendence but, unable to integrate it into my sea-level existence, have forgotten it completely. Perhaps it was the simple truth that we are very small, and very precious. Or it may have been that the best you can do in such situations is to bridle your terror fractionally while taking steps directly toward it. Or that death is not so abhorrent when viewed as a clean transaction, for nowhere in the ledgers of a life can the value of a summit be offset. 

Whatever it was, it might have occupied a clearer mind for most of its remaining lifespan, but mine was singularly absorbed by the fact that the vast majority of climbing accidents occur during descent. It didn’t help any that Tina decamped the summit prematurely to, as she put it, “figure how in hell we’re getting down.” 

Or maybe she didn’t say that, but there was certainly some debate over prospective chutes and talus fields. Suffice to say, nothing is straightforward on a mountain. Or off a mountain. 

Or ever, really.

Return

I needn’t go into further detail about our return to trailed ground; clearly I have written this with my faculties and limbs intact. Nor need I recount the predictable talk of other peaks, the flurry of group-texts and emails and phone calls plotting out our next adventure. As it turned out, there would not be one. Not during that season at least, for weather and schedules and the burdensome mass of daily living interfered, as it does always. 

I still gaze at at the sentinel peaks which guard Onion Valley and Kearsarge Pass, visible from Route 395, with fondness each time I pass them. They will be forever associated in my mind with the satisfaction of hard camaraderie, the cold whip of scentless air, the warm work of muscles put to good use, and the shock of first exposure.

Oh, another thing. In writing this piece I happened on something Bob Burd may have alluded to but failed to mention in his reports. I was browsing the online encyclopedia—how I had gotten there was a mystery—looking up relevant terms. I tried “mountain,” “wilderness,” and “paraplegic,” but came across nothing of interest. Then I hit on it. 

“Transcendence.” It comes from the Latin scandere. “To climb.”