my sweetie and I left onion valley intending to through-mountaineer clear to twin lakes in northern yosemite. during our first week we hoped to set up a base camp in sixty lake basin, climb clarence king and mt cotter head over to gardiner basin and climb gardiner before heading out bubb’s creek to pick up a resupply at road’s end. we knew the first day would be a hump so set to it and found ourselves cruising over kearsarge pass around 10 or 11 AM, cursing our fierce loads, which included a climbing rope, an alpine rack, fishing gear and a baby banjo.
grumbling about the baby banjo turned audible and a fellow we met along the trail informed us there was a man with a full-sized banjo picking away on top of glen pass. we intercepted him about a mile below the pass and sat down to teach each other some tunes.
imagine our surprise when another man strolled along 5 minutes later with a baby taylor guitar! thus ensued an impromptu trail side jam session that lasted almost 2 hours. Passersby gathered to watch in stunned silence as we pulled out tune after tune.
This delay cost us a little in terms of ground gained so we didn’t make it to 60 lake basin that evening and had to content ourselves with some random tarn over glen pass and in the direction of 60 lake basin. the most glorious sun set over endless colorful peaks had us swearing to return next summer to do more climbing.
cruising into 60 lake basin the next day was not very strenuous but we figured we probably would not make it up clarence king that day, and fin dome beckoned across the valley. so we dropped our packs, shoved some energy bars in our pockets, got out our gear and rambled over to the base.
4th class meant about a pitch of roped climbing for me, the junior member of our team. david brower, who put up the FA of the route we did in big leather boots, is a badass. the rock was clean and solid, the climbing interesting and fun. the summit register revealed maybe three parties in the past two years. we brought along our penguin penny, and added a game to our sierra peak backgammon tournament (i won, taking a 3-2 lead for 2011). the downclimb was burly, with true 4th class exposed moves. we straggled back to our packs, and moved to a better set-up for clarence king the next day.
up early and starting to feel crappy, but the allure of mt clarence king was overwhelming.
we missed our chance to get up on the east ridge and decided to do bolton brown’s FA instead. that guy is a badass as well! cool ledge system across an improbable face and then a sandy slog up to the last 100-200 ft of climbing. by the time we got to the summit register (empty) i was too worked to even consider the final summit block which adamame scrambled up mumbling to himself.
two raps down, a couple of hours of wandering back to camp. i put on all my clothes- a wool layer, capilene, down jacket, puff jacket- got into my 5 degree sleeping bag and proceeded to shiver the night away, complaining about feeling sick. adamame told me i was just tired, made dinner and turned in without too much sympathy.
the next day i was unable to eat and alternated between shivering and pouring sweat. adamame continued to believe i was only exhausted, took good care of me all day and caught us some tasty invasive species for dinner. the next day i felt no better but managed to pack up my gear and stumble about half a mile down before collapsing in a meadow, shivering in the full noon sun, in my puff jacket and capilene. adamame checked my vitals and they sucked. so he set up the tarp for shade, tucked me in and ran off to find a ranger. three hours later, adamame returned, with our savior dario, ranger extraordinaire. i was running a 102 fever, my blood pressure was 90 over 50, pulse rate 120 and respiration 24. dario called for a helicopter.
lucky for us adamame knew one of the chopper crew and they agreed to take him along instaed of making him hike out and leaving me to die alone in bishop. they flew us 40 miles along the crest at sunset, gorgeous ride, and 20 minutes later we were at the bishop airport, where we were greeted by an ambulance.
i wish this story had a happy ending, but i was roadkill for a week. all i could do was lie in a pool of my own sweat, moaning in agony and only dimly ware of a world beyond my suffering. i had a 102 fever for a week, lost 11 pounds (8% of my body weight), and continue to be weak. there go our plans for the summer. doctors think viral meningitis or west nile virus. there’s still ski season, i guess.....