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I arrived in Heber City yesterday afternoon from Minnesota. It was a clear day, so out the windows of the airplane I could see the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City. Driving out of the city into the mountains, I was impressed by their size and greatness. The temperature was a little hot, but because it is so arid here, it actually felt pleasant. None of that Midwestern humidity!
This morning, I went shooting at Soldier Hollow, which was the venue that hosted the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. The athletes and glamour of the games have certainly faded by now, but the facility still remains as world-class as any other venue. Our coach sent our ammunition to the wrong place, so I had to be a bit frugal in my shooting. We should get the ammunition by next week, so then I will be able to shoot as often as I please – perhaps twice per day.
On the way back from the range, I looked out the window and saw some white-faced cliffs on the northwest section of the Wasatch Range, towards Park City. They looked so unique from the other mountains that I decided they might make for a good first climb. Not too high. Not too far away.
I am staying with Heber City Mayor Lynn Adams and his family. They were gracious enough to allow me to live in their home for the next three weeks. Lanny and Tracy Barnes, who are the two other athletes that make up this informal training camp, are staying with another family a few blocks away. Though it is an informal camp, with only the three of us, it will be a very successful one.
Lynn told me that the white-faced cliffs could be accessed via a road that goes up Snake Creek. He has allowed me to use an old beat-up truck of his while I am here, so I drove this 1986 Toyota up the dirt road. It might be almost older than me, but it is a great truck. Fun to drive since it is a standard transmission.
Hiking mountains here in Utah is very different than in the East. There are few big parking lots overflowing with people at the trailheads. What I parked at was actually just a clearing at the side of a one-and-a-half lane dirt road. There was another truck there, but it was probably owned by someone out hunting. I thought that it would take maybe two or three hours to get to the summit of the highest of the white-faced mountains, so I packed water and a little food, my cell phone and camera, and grabbed my classic ski poles, setting off down a smaller ATV trail that seemed to head in the direction I was interested in traveling.
Me, after successfully surviving the day's challenges.
The trail narrowed for a while to a single-track path. What I could see of the creek bed seemed dry, so I thought that after the trail ended, I could follow that to the base of the mountain, find a notch or pass, climb it, and reach the top.
Well, the trail ended at the entrance to an abandoned mine shaft. Below me was the dry creek bed, leading up to the base of the mountain, just as I had expected. Seeing that I was so close to the mountain, and had what seemed like ample time to reach its summit, I decided to push for it. The only thing in my way was the fact that the creek bed had a number of cliffs on it, over which in wetter times waterfalls existed. They were too steep for me to climb, so I thought that, when I reached one, I would just hike around it by going up the side of the canyon.
I never got very far. The first dry waterfall that I had to bypass almost proved to be my last downfall. What seemed like a good idea, quickly turned into a regrettable nightmare. I started walking up the side of the canyon, which was probably a 40 degree angle at the base. As I climbed higher and higher, the rocks became smaller and smaller, the angle grew steeper and steeper, and the ground began slipping away from beneath my feet.
Having climbed for about fifteen minutes, I looked behind and below me for the first time. It would have been impossible to climb down what I had climbed up because many of the rocks that I had used as footholds had fallen into the creek bed three hundred feet below. There was some bedrock exposed amongst the quicksand-like dirt and pebbles, but when I grabbed onto them, they would crumble easier than sandstone.
What I had been climbing was a slide zone, and looking further up the canyon, it seemed steeper and steeper. Thankfully, at the top of the slide, the trees began again, and the ground looked firmer and more level. If I could reach that zone, then I could traverse the mountainside, and climb down the other side. The only problem was that with every step I took, the ground became less and less stable.
I had no plan. My hope of reaching the top of the white-faced mountain was replaced by the simple hope of just getting to the pine trees, and not falling down the canyon into the sharp boulders in the creek bed that were now five hundred feet below. I took each move one at a time, moving from rock to rock, hoping that they would not break apart below my weight. Certainly it did not help that my legs were shaking from a combination of the isometric stress and the shear nervousness I was plagued by. They started shaking so badly that I thought they would jackhammer even the boulders apart.
A lone, but thick and strong pine tree became my goal. From there, I could rest and survey my options. The closer I got to it, the more nervous I became, however, because I was climbing higher from the canyon floor. In one position, I stood shaking for nearly twenty minutes trying to calm myself and find sturdy footholds. Eventually, I reached the pine tree and literally became a tree hugger.
It was a safe location. One that I could have stayed safely for a long time. The only problem was that I was losing sunlight with every minute I waited there. It would set in an hour, but I still could not see an obvious route out of my situation. Above me, there was a thirty-foot high cliff, which might be possible to climb, except for the fact that it was the same fracture-happy rock type as what I had just climbed. To my left and right were the steepest parts of the rock slide, made up at this height of scree, loose dirt, and precariously settled rocks. Below the pine tree and the foot wide ledge of rock, dirt, and brush on which I was standing, the two slides converged all the way to the floor of the canyon.
My situation seemed grim. But I remember that I had my cell phone with me. It did not even cross my mind to call search-and-rescue. They would have probably laughed at the situation I had gotten myself into. Plus, I thought that I was just being a heights-scared, Midwestern wimp, and that I would be perfectly safe sliding down the mountainside, or climbing up higher.
I decided to call a friend of mine, one who has completed a good deal of mountaineering and outdoor leadership courses. At that moment, I really wished I had a camera phone. Then, I could have sent her pictures of my different options. What I really called her for was moral support. My mind was too overwhelmed by fear to come to a logical solution, so I thought that talking to someone else would help me sort out my options and plot a safe exit. She could do very little for me, but it certainly helped talking about my options. My confidence increased, and I could see that I might have some options.
After getting off of the phone with her, though, I realized that I was again alone in the canyon. Birds would fly into the branches of the trees and I would wish that I could fly. Chances are that if I were a bird, I would be a chicken, too afraid to fly.
It seemed that I had better make a decision; otherwise, I would be left trying to navigate out of the situation in the dark, which would have been far worse. I looked below me and saw that I could climb down a few feet to the tree, and move a few feet toward the slide on my left. It seemed like a safer option because there were a few trees on the other wide of the slide that perhaps, if I feel, I could grab. Probably not, but that is what I told myself.
When I reached the side of the slide, I realized that it was steeper than the one on the right. Immediately after thinking that I would have to go up and over the slide to the right, I looked up and saw that there were two cantilevers of rock hanging out of the cliff. There was a small cave in it, barely large enough for me to fit myself. For some reason, I was attracted to it, and simply began climbing into it, without regard for how I would get out of it.
Once I got into the cave, I realized that the cantilevers which were supporting most of my weight had a good chance of breaking off just like the rest of the rock below me. I looked below me to get out of the cave, but I could not reach the footholds that I had used to get into it. I must have jumped a little bit to reach some of the handholds. Now my options were limited to one, which was in some ways easier, because there was no more doubt and decision-making.
There I was, hanging onto this cantilever on a cliff, ten feet above the top of 65 degree angle slide zone, that ended six hundred feet below in sharp boulders in a dry creek bed. My biggest fear was that the cantilever would break off, that I would roll down to the canyon floor, and the rocks that the cantilever supported would pile up on top of me. With all of this in mind, I started to reach for handholds. Because there were so few, I would have to jump a little to get to them. Thus, I had to trust that they would not break off. If they did, I would fall, since all of my body weight would be on them. Having studied geology, I tried to examine the rocks for fractures to determine their stability. I chose well, and began to literally climb up the cliff with the palms of my hands dripping with sweat and the soles on my running shoes beginning to ply off.
Looking down into the canyon of Snake Creek from the tree zone at the top.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, I reached the tree zone. After throwing off my backpack, I screamed out loud because I had just overcome the hardest thing I had ever faced in my life. That was my first near-death experience of the training camp. But not the last…
Peace,
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