Melissa Hassler

English 380

20 February 2008

An Inyo Face Adventure

            This weekend I went on the adventure of a lifetime… so far. I took a little road trip with four other people to explore some the offerings of Inyo and Mono Counties, California. On the way to Bishop, the small town we would be camping near, we stopped for gas in The Middle of Nowhere, California, somewhere along Highway 395. As I stretched out my cramped legs, the brisk desert air and starry night invoked in my mind Mary Austin’s assertion that “for all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensation, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.” (8) Now I know what she meant.

            Friday morning we awoke to the sunrise in a small basin campground known locally as “The Pit.” The Pit is nestled in among the Sierra Nevada Range and has a 360 degree view of snow covered mountains, painted pink by the morning sun. An hour’s drive north brought us to Lee Vining, a small town at the eastern entrance of Yosemite National Park. The frozen waterfalls of Lee Vining Canyon are what brought us here, to ice climb. Parking at the canyon, I saw my first Bristlecone Pine of the trip up close. It was a majestic sight, but the climb called and after a few hasty pictures, we set out on the hike to the waterfall. The landscape was beautiful; nothing but snow, trees, and mountains all around us. We passed through a grove of slender whitewashed trees. Their branches had shaken off their summer coat of leaves and stretched naked toward the sky unimpeded, drinking in the crisp air. The bright white branches interwove in a complicated dance, performing against the brilliant blue of the winter sky for nobody in particular.

            We hiked up the canyon, steadily ascending between two towering rock faces. It was a clear day, and the sun in its exuberance warmed us up early in our venture. Layer after layer came off and was added to my pack as we marched on. The snow was smooth all around us. Water or wind had carved out ripples along the edges, so that the snow looked like a river frozen in its tracks. The canyon walls were tall cliffs with a myriad of rock formations bursting out into the center of the pass. Over and over again I was stopped in my tracks not only because I was exhausted, but because I was enraptured by the view. Majestic Bristlecone Pines stand firmly on the mountainside, silent guardians of the wilderness. Their colossal proportions look like they belong in prehistoric forests. And indeed, these trees are some of the oldest living specimens on the earth today. The rock walls themselves are covered with red, yellow, and green mosses, as if colored by God with a giant crayon. The canyon got steeper and steeper as we ventured on, and soon I was forced to stop every twenty feet or so to catch my breath. When I stopped, I could hear the echoes of my friends’ footsteps, muffled by the snow. I could see the waterfall ahead, and from this distance, the climbers looked like little spiders scaling the face.

Near the top, where the frozen waterfall is, the canyon is permanently shaded by a tall cliff. The change in temperature was drastic. The layers went back on, and I longed for the sun as for an old friend. We set up camp on the flattest part of the slope we could find, digging out shelves in the snow for our gear and our bodies to rest on. On a backpacking stove, we boiled water and made oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts mixed in. It was the best oatmeal I’ve ever had. All of our meals this trip were seasoned with fresh air, that magical ingredient that makes any meal delicious.

            After breakfast, we were freezing from sitting around in the snow. It was time to get warm… it was time to climb. I strapped my crampons to my shoes, put on my harness, and tied in to my belayer, the person who would keep me suspended should I lose my grip on the icy surface. I grasped the ice picks in my hand and took my first swing at the face of the waterfall. The slope wasn’t completely vertical at the bottom, and I rose quickly up the face. My feet and hands moved in a steady rhythm, the clack of metal on ice interrupted only a shout of “ice!” whenever another climber or I sent a piece ricocheting down.

About halfway up the run, my rhythm began to slow as my muscles began to feel the strain of my body weight. My world shrank to the 70 foot strip of ice below and above me- all that mattered was how far I had made it and how far I had to go. My hands were cramping and my muscles screaming, but my pride and the shouts of encouragement from below kept me moving. Towards the top it sometimes took three swings of my arm to get a solid hold with my pick. I was sweating profusely in the same air that moments ago had me shivering. Through it all, I couldn’t stop marveling at the fact that I was climbing up a frozen waterfall! Finally, I made it to the top- I had climbed as far as I could, reached the extent of the ice. Victory was mine. As I belayed down, arms hanging limp at my sides, a feeling of domination flooded my veins. I had battled nature and won.

            And yet as soon as the climb was over, nature and I were friends again, and I could enjoy its beauty. The waterfall was not only a challenge, but a work of art. The ice had preserved the shape of water rushing over the edge of the cliff, as if the river had frozen instantaneously as it was falling. In the thickest parts, the ice was a beautiful shade of blue. In the thinner parts it was pure white. In the thinnest parts, where only a few inches of ice covered the face of the mountain, the ice formed a translucent layer over the reddish-brown speckled rock underneath. Someone had hit this layer with an ice pick and white lines radiated out from the point of impact like an arctic flower blooming on the surface.

            The cold began to creep back into my bones after I was finished climbing, and no amount of hot chocolate could fully warm me up. We headed back down the pass after everyone had their fill of climbing, tired but too excited to really feel it. The sun dipped behind the western ridge, its golden light warming up the peaks of the mountains across the pass. I still wished for its friendly warmth on my own back, but apparently it was too impatient to wait around for our descent from the pass. We decided that we needed a little help from civilization before returning to camp, and drove into Bishop. After a nice long soak in a hot tub, our frozen digits were thawed out and we were ready to brave the near-zero degree weather back at The Pit. We set up tents at the camp site and immediately went to bed, bundled up in several layers and two sleeping bags each. I certainly felt tired now and it did not take long for sleep to overcome me.