The Ides of May

On the Mountain Tuesday-Wednesday, May 14–15 2024

Caesar: The Ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.

Midnight on May 15, I couldn’t get that exchange out of my head. In the end, it turned out better for me than for Julius, but we were both disappointed.

As planned, on Tuesday I met with my private guide, Laura Rae Berger, for an equipment check and ice climbing training clinic. She was satisfied with the gear I had brought, and supplied an ice axe, mountaineering boots, crampons, helmet, climbing harness, and down parka. The clinic was just across the parking lot in a steep gully that let us practice crampon footwork, belaying, and self arrest. I’d been through it all before, but it had been six years, and I was grateful for the refresher. Laura turned out to be an excellent fit, ebullient, patient, completely aware of my situation, which I had laid out in my application form. She’s from a small town in New Hampshire I was familiar with, started out in journalism at Saint Lawrence University, but found her true calling guiding and ski instructing in the Northwest. I’ve been blessed with many terrific guides over the years, but she was perhaps the most delightful. We had so much to talk about, and chatted incessantly throughout the experience. It turns out that was her in the group of guides snickering at me as I began my uphill trudge the day before, but they were laughing at my snowshoes, not my appearance. Nobody brings snowshoes to this mountain.

Also delightful was Alex, a fellow client who had hired his own private guide. He was a geologist from Slovakia, currently working in Houston with his wife, who was employed by the Johnson Space Flight Center. We talked for hours about Europe, academics, highpoints, healthcare, science, and could’ve talked much longer, but it was time to go to bed early.

It was no good, all my efforts to “jet lag” my schedule around to wake up before midnight. This is always been a challenge for me with early departures. I avoid caffeine and alcohol, have had no luck with zolpidem (Ambien), just get too keyed up to get more than a couple of hours of sleep. I greeted the 15th with a caesarean sense of dread, but recalled his line about a coward dying a thousand deaths.

I realized I made a couple of errors. I left that down parka in the climbing office. The training venue was a parabola of snow on a sunny day, I was diligently applying sunscreen but forgot lip balm, and developed a second-degree burn with blistering on my lower lip. Subsequent applications of balm only helped for a few minutes.

The day’s sleepy contingent of climbers and guides, about a dozen of us, clambered into the behemoth at 1:30 AM and were ushered noisily to the top of the Palmer lift. On went the crampons but not the climbing rope yet. The first 2000 feet were just a steep climb to the technical part. Right away I felt the altitude, my 70 years, my sleep deprivation, my bilateral disc surgeries that left me with only 20% of my calf muscle strength, my anemia (never fully resolved despite a celiac diet and IV and oral iron supplementation), and my general lack of fitness. I’d hoped my weight loss and ambitious bike riding would help, and they undoubtedly did, but not enough. Within minutes, I was lagging far behind the others. I had hired the private guide to avoid slowing the others down, and Laura did a great job, staying with me, kicking out steps, offering encouragement, but she gently said “this pace was not ideal”.

It has always been thus. I’ve never been athletic, my resumé notwithstanding. I avoided team sports in school, choosing solitary activities like hiking and cycling where I could set my own pace. Each day on the Camino, I was happy to be the first to start and the last to finish. My endurance and determination are great, my stamina not so much. I was hopeful the early start and great recent weather would make up for all that, that other party had summited successfully at 9 AM. But Laura said the conditions had worsened since then, and she wanted us on top before 7.

Huh? How could that be? The weather was perfect, warmer than ever. It was bizarre, huffing and puffing in the dark, our headlamps creating little islands of light in the gloom, the lights of Portland shimmering far below, the headlamps of the others far above. The steepness of the slope was just this side of scary. I felt I could maintain this pace forever, but now was anxious that might not be good enough. My lips hurt, aggravated by the heavy breathing. The wind gusts weren’t strong enough to knock me over, but didn’t help my crappy balance. My harness kept slipping down to my knees. I was a little chilly in all my layers, anxious it only got colder and windier as you climbed, anxious I’d forgotten that parka.

As a doctor, I know how anxiety can sap your strength. I knew, but I couldn’t get past it. That caesarean line was ringing in my ears. I gasped out to Laura, “I don’t know if I can make it,” but she showed her true professionalism, offering just the right amount of encouragement, saying “we’re almost at the Devil’s Kitchen, let’s head up there and talk about it.”

It was 5:45 AM. The sun had just risen. In all my anguish, I noticed the setting was beautiful. The mountain cast a massive triangular shadow past Portland, all the way to the Pacific.

Laura posed in front of the Kitchen, a hot rock surrounded by ice and snow, seething sulfurous fumes.

The group was gathered there, I thought they were far ahead. The guides had conferred and had an announcement: they were turning everybody around.

My first thought was OMG, was it because of me? But Laura reassured me, no, I had a private guide, I had nothing to do with it. The conditions, which looked so good, were deceiving. The usual route, the Pearly Gates, was closed by a bergschrund, a separation between mountain and glacier that I encountered on Denali and Gannett. There it was bypass-able, here it was not. The guides were using the less ideal Old Chute.

Those days of rain I suffered through last week fell here as wet snow, over 2 feet in Government Camp and much more up here. The last few days have been clear, but cold up here, in the single digits. The snow had frozen, and offered good footing for crampons and ice axes. But the warmer weather in the last 24 hours, so welcome below, was our undoing. The frozen snow had thawed and turned to slush. We noticed it less so far, the winds had kept things relatively cool. But the Chute was sheltered from the wind, and fully exposed to the sun. Treacherous under the best conditions, impassable now.

The other clients, who had made it to the Hogsback, had already been turned around. I felt a weird combination of disappointment, dismay, and profound relief. We were all going back. There is nothing we could’ve done. I had my “cover”. Even if I had been fully up to this, I still wouldn’t have made it. I felt bad for the other clients, who were clearly on a path to victory.

On the long trudge down, I felt incongruously elated. All the anxiety was gone, a massive weight off my shoulders. I had time to exult in the spectacular beauty of the scene. Laura and I chatted amiably. I reflected on our obsession with mountains. It’s about the journey, not the summit we’re always told, and we all enthusiastically agree. But in our achievement-oriented culture, we give the lie to that. When I came down off of Denali, the trip of a lifetime, where three people had died, the first question everybody asked was “did you summit?”. You could argue this disconnect is emblematic of what’s wrong with our society.

Through all these musings, I was rewarded with the ultimate Easter egg. Laura is also a certified ski instructor. Back at the top of the Palmer lift, where everybody else had to deal with the same interminable 2,500 foot slog to the base I had done two days ago, we had rented and stashed skis and boots. The slopes had been newly groomed to perfect corduroy, and the lifts wouldn’t open for an hour. We had it all to ourselves. I got a private lesson from the best in the business. It was the best skiing I’ve had all year. We could’ve been down in 15 minutes, but I kept stopping, not wanting to leave the glorious scene, wanting to get the full benefit of her lessons. Instead, it took almost an hour. We were still down by 9:30.

So now it’s over. I failed. Strike two. Spent thousands of dollars, months of planning, weeks of cycling, and came up with diddly. Locomoted my sorry ass from the sea to over 10,000 feet, and got squat. Did the other great peaks, but can’t get the smallest of them done. How am I ever going to complete those 50 highpoints?

At the base, I talked with Catherine, 75 years old, who was one of the clients who was way ahead of me. So I can’t really blame my age. I asked Laura to be brutally honest, you’ve seen my abilities, do I have any chance on this mountain? She outlined a way (I won’t go into the details) that it could be done, and she’d be happy to guide me again. But It would be another big expense, again with no guarantee of the caprices of the weather.

When I would give my slideshows about Denali, I would remark that ultimately, I failed. I succeeded in reaching the summit, but I failed to turn around when my guide told me to. On this mountain, I failed, but had a wonderful experience. Can I be satisfied with that? What happens now? Stay tuned.

A parenthetical note. Just as we were all leaving the Devil’s Kitchen, another group, a different guide service, came up and started towards the Old Chute. Laura couldn’t believe they would be so reckless, our guides had briefed them of the conditions. But Alex thinks he saw them go through the Chute, and on the summit ridge. I don’t have confirmation of that, hope they’re OK.

So I don’t know.

Ice climbed 4 miles, 654 total. The skiing doesn’t count. Time 8 hours. Elevation gain 2,150 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria