June 24

Waking to see a dim light saturating the sky. Eyes refuse to open. The frigid air sharpeningitself against the tip of my nose peaking out of my sleeping bag. Immediately, with trepidation, I acknowledged that today was the day we will cross Forrester Pass the first of nine major passes and it will reveal to us the general condition of the High Sierra. How much snow will there really be? Will we be able to get up and over? With the trail deep under many feet of snow, will we be able to navigate our way across with only a map and compass? How bad will it really be? These thoughts made it particularly hard to get out of the sleeping bag today.

We began our day at 10,000. We would eventually reach Forrester Pass and top off at over 13,000. We then would have to work our way down off the pass, into the below valley, ending our day somewhere near 10,000 again. It all sounds so simple.

These are details of the day: the first mile held three river crossings. We stayed dry on the first river, hopping over ice-coated boulders. However, we had to get wet in the next rivers. A fraction of a degree away from freezing, the water transformed my feet into solid frozen chunks, totally numb. Hit them with a hammer and they shatter. It took five minutes of walking, after getting out of the water, for sensation to return, the blood stubbornly flowing back to the feet. We climbed up from the rivers, through aisles of misshaped pines. After pushing upwards, the topography leveled off and we hit a wide plateau. Our view opened up to an expanse of continuous snowfields walled in by high geologic fortresses of rock and ice. Lots of snow, I thought, and still more than 2,000 of vertical gain remained to be climbed. This began the long and slow approach upwards to the pass across the snowfields. Now, in early summer, this snow is pretty old. The first big storms last winter came in September and by early May most of the seasons snow had fallen. Ever since, it has been melting and refreezing into what are called "sun cups". Walking across this kind of terrain is exhausting and tedious. You are constantly stepping in and out of frozen potholes, often losing your balance or falling completely. The miles come slowly and your energy drains quickly.

By the time we approached the base of Forrester Pass, we stationed ourselves onto an island of exposed rock emerging from the snow and, armed with map and compass, we tried to identify the pass. It took a few minutes to get our bearings: shifting the map flat on the rock, aligning the compass on the map, and finding key landforms. We all agreed that Forrester Pass was straight ahead a narrow avalanche track, a vertical swath of ice cutting down along the wall our agreement was confirmed when we saw three figures, dotted tiny against the snow, slowly crossing the very top of the chute. I was taken aback at the sight of these three indistinguishable people hanging out over that amount of space. This image stabbed me with a primitive and instinctual fear, to retreat from the situation, to go back out the way we came, to turn around and hike away. Somehow, my fear of death, which was very real at this point, was over-ridden by something: possibly a surge of adrenalin, possibly a desire to prove this to myself, possibly a fear of embarrasment that exceeded my fear of injury/death. Something, I dont know what.
We decided to aim ourselves to the right of the chute and traverse up the sidewall until we reached the top of the ridge, where we would then have to work across the chute. Upon reaching the vertical ascent up to the pass, we all unsheathed our axes and began switchbacking up the slope. I led the group for several traverses and then, still nervous and fatigued, handed the job over. Almost all the way up, the snow broke out into dry rock, giving me an opportunity to rest and gain a view of the basin. We were only a short climb away from reaching the avalanche chute. I walked there slowly, methodically placing each foott, gathering enough energy to push myself out onto a series of steps perched along a slant of ice, hanging over a thousand feet above the floor. Looking down at my feet, the crunch of gravel under each step and the feel of solid ground beneath my heels, I tried to imagine that crossing the avalanche chute would be just as simple. Thirty easy steps. Like walking down the driveway to get the mail.