Rainforest

If you have ever been to a rain forest, a real tropical rain forest, untouched and undisturbed, you can more easily relate to this piece. For those who haven’t or those who have and want to check my facts look at the picture on my blog to see a typical view. The forest is green, green, green in every shade and texture of green imaginable. Every piece of ground has plants, algae or moss growing on it and every plant has plants growing on them. Almost every plant in a field of view (10 to 30 meters distance in any direction) is a different species. All these green thing take a different forms from tiny sprouting plant to small flowering plant to bush, vine, understory tree, emergent tree, saprophyte, algae, moss, or green insect crawling or flying around. Every plant has a different size and shape leaf, a different stem size, a different shape and texture, a different branching system, various heights, and silhouette. It’s green and leafy in all directions but it is all different. The forest is a living light catching machine with every conceivable kind of organic light trapping organ on display and vying for that uncaught ray of light. Needless to say the forest floor is rather dim, not dark in the daytime, just dim like wearing dark sunglasses on an overcast day and very, very green.

Many plants grow from the ground up like we are use to. Little trees, some decades old sit on the forest floor inches tall waiting for a light gap so they can shoot up and replace the emergent tree that fell in a violent and sudden wind which produced the light gap by crushing all the vegetation in a swath of 20m wide and 120m long. The little trees that don’t get crushed themselves and grow quickly enough will win the race to reach the canopy before the gap fills in. Small forest floor plants that will never rise above the leaves and sticks that surround them, the annuals, perennials, mosses, and algae that gather any filtered light, never seeing the sun directly, growing slowly, content with just having a space to collect nutrients directly from the soil, the rotting leaves, sticks and debris using the low diffuse light found at the floor, take up what available space they can find. Other plant spring up to head high or higher, fan out and snap up stray rays of direct sunlight that come once or twice a day for a few minutes and content themselves with the filtered light for the rest of the day. These bushes, ferns, palms and other undergrowth rip at a persons arms and legs as they try to push through the rainforest off the trail. These small ferns, palms, bushes, and other minor underbrush obscure the tree trunks of the forest giants, and blend into the vines descending from the top of the trees and the lower plants and debris on the forest floor forming an almost solid curtain of green. Understory trees grow up to plug any hole between the canopy trees catching the best of the light that escapes the giants who control the forest sun. These smaller trees grow fast and straight often aided by insect guards that help protect them from vines and predators thus giving them a real edge in rapid growth. The canopy trees, and even taller emergent trees stand with huge trunks attached to the Earth supported by giant buttress that fan out in all directions like the enormous elephant ears, oversized supports, propping up the 130m tree. Vines grow from the top branches of the tall trees hanging down until they find the ground and sometimes link with roots that fuel their growth up and down the tree. Many kinds of vines, lianas, and other plants crawl up the trunk of the large trees covering the green algae covered trunk with strange leaves laying flat or sticking out, the twisted stems clinging tightly to the trunk looking like the green veins in a weight lifter’s arm. Covering any exposed bark green algae or moss takes advantage of the space and chance to steal some nutrients from the space it gets to live on. In the trees a whole other forest of saprophytes, plants that do not grow on the ground, but in the crotches or on the branches of another tree, takes root and accepts the nutrients, water and light this prime location offers. Bromeliads sprout from every crook, crouch, and cranny on the trees.

With all this growing life, there is death too. Plants live and die. Trees blow over in the wind because of shallow roots and despite the huge buttresses that try to support the height that exceeds the limits of support. Trees or parts of trees die because of insects, fungus, or disease. Branches break off trees because of the weight of vines and bromeliads. When huge branches fall they crush the plants below them sending more litter to the forest floor. Leaves fall all year long because there is only one season, grow season. Leaves live out their life cycle, die fall to the forest floor at random times leaving the tree fully green and the floor always with leaf litter. Insects gain an upper hand on some smaller plants and the plants dies, and crumbles to the forest floor, to be replaced by the seedlings waiting on the ground for the light and nutrients given up by the mother plant. Most of the seedlings lose the battle of light collecting and succumb to the lack of light, nutrients, disease, or insect infestation depositing their bodies with the litter on the forest floor to rot releasing their nutrients which are taken up by the winners of the competition for light and life.

This is what the rainforest looks like on first blush before entering and really examining the ecosystem closely. Once into the forest it is clear there are insects of all sizes, shapes, colors, and kinds crawling, slithering, hopping, dangling, or flying on, in, and around every living thing. Ants on the ground, in the leaf litter, on the dead trees and sticks, on the trunks of the live trees, on the leaves of the bushes, on your boot, up your pant leg, scurrying randomly looking for food or marching in lines to and fro retrieving what they have claimed as their food. Caterpillars of all sizes, shapes and colors crawl on the green leaves munching, waiting to turn into one of the many butterflies or moths that are flitting around looking for a flower of the right kind and a member of the opposite sex of the same species. Flies, big black ones that bite, little annoying ones that get behind your glasses, mosquitoes and their kin buzz around the fresh meat entering their kitchen begin to form clouds around you. Crickets, cicada, locus and other insects of unknown species cry out with clicks, riffs, screeches, and shrill chirps hidden from view, but their polyphonic racket fill the soundscape with a philharmonic cacophony. Lilliputian frogs, some brightly colored, some debris colored, camouflaged and indistinct, hop about on the ground, on the bromeliads, on the huge buttresses, on the trunks of the large trees, or on the large leaves chirping, croaking, squeaking, singing, adding to the cacophonous din. Occasionally a small lizard or gecko darts from leaf to leaf or scurries up a trunk of a tree out of reach and sight of some unseen predator. Spiders crawl, dangle and sit in wait on the webs they weave that seem to be everywhere. Predatory wasps from microscopic to the size of a small bird buzz around in search of prey be it animal or vegetable. Birds chirp, twitter, trill, screech and call to each other from all levels of the forest through the understory while they rest hidden from sight or flit about like their world was a giant play ground. Monkeys, squirrels, mice, rats, agouti, anteaters, and other strange mammals in the trees and on the ground make appearances to see what alien has invaded their world. Of course one doesn’t see them often, but snakes lurk about on the forest floor lying next to the fallen logs, curled up in the protection of the buttress, sliding under the leaves and sticks, blending in slithering silently on their way to find a meal.

With this picture of the forest in mind imagine your task is to walk one hundred meters off the trail into the forest, find a pink ribbon tied to a tree and survey a ten square meter plot of forest floor. The first challenge is to walk into the forest, pushing the knee high to head high plants away with the feet, legs, and arms, pulling the vines and hanging branches away from the face with hands when they intrude on your progress. It is not too long before there is either a large tree in the line of travel off the trail to the objective or there is a fallen tree or other impediment to straight line traverse. Going around obstacles changes orientation, moves the line of travel and confuses the direction of travel. Looking back to sight on where the trail was gives little usable data since the forest looks pretty much the same in all directions. With no sun to be seen through many layers of thick foliage from the trees and tall bushes that stand between you and the sun. Often the sun is further obscured by clouds and/or falling rain. Gauging the direction of travel by dead reckoning is difficult to impossible. A compass is needed to keep the direction steady, but the zigs and zags around obstacles mean the line of travel is very much distorted. Fifty meters into the forest is “lost”, every direction the same, no easy way out, nothing recognizable in any direction so just keep following the compass and press on.

What about the snakes lurking on the other sides of the logs, and fallen trees that require crawling over? Better have a stick to poke around before stepping down and pissing off a fer-de-lance or bushmaster and getting bit back here in the bush

And then comes the problem of how to judge 100m into the forest. Pacing off the distance is not possible with all the flips and trips of stepping over and around the forest litter. Looking back to judge the distance is impossible because only about 10m can be seen at any time. Time stands still around 50m off the trail. There is a sense of maybe being lost: check the compass to make sure it works. There is the sense that the creatures of the forest have you in their sights and they are now closing in for the kill. The next 50m is slow and tentative and how is the next 50m measured anyway? Start looking for the pink ribbon on the tree. Right! Wander randomly getting hopelessly lost and confused knowing that if the ribbon is found there is at least a starting point for getting back to the trail is a tense way to spend a couple of hours or so in the forest. At least the snakes on the ground are not foremost in my mind while feeling this lost.

Finally finding the ribbon my heart slows and my breath calms from a pant to a relaxed rhythm. The fear of snakes on the ground comes back to my mind as I more gingerly step around. Eventually I found that the plots I needed to survey, eleven in all, some of them were in a place where there has been a recent tree fall so the vegetation is different. Here in the light gap there are Heliconia, large plants with beautiful large red, and yellow flowers that humming birds love to get a drink from. This is also the home of the eyelash viper that hangs from the vines or the twelve foot high Heliconia themselves waiting for the humming bird to flit by so it can strike it injecting it with deadly poison to stop its violent fight to escape the snake’s grip. Great! More things to worry about: Hanging poisonous vipers ready to bite me in the face. And Bullet ants too, lot of them, an inch or longer insect ready to inject painful poison from a stinger while biting and injecting digestive juices. Oh, Joy!

The fastest I found one of the plots was an hour of searching. One plot I spent four hours out in the weeds before I stopped looking and went back to the trail which took another two hours. I thought I would be stuck in the forest at night. I had to go back to that place and search again for a couple more hours the next day before finding the pink ribbon. Looking for these ribbons was not a cake walk.

At one of the ribbons I gathered my samples and fended off the insects bent on having my blood. When I got the compass out to line up the course back to the trail, I saw that the compass was spinning around and around in the broken case. No direction to the trail. A bag of leaf litter in hand and no way to get back to the trail. Great. After spending an hour or more traipsing about looking for the ribbon on the tree and then a half an hour gathering my samples and documenting the sight, I was so turned around I had no idea which direction was back to the trail. After a period of panic, no screaming that attracts snakes, I was able to figure out a direction to walk. I had gone perpendicular to the course off the trail to look for the ribbon when I walked in. I walked in one direction for a bit, then advanced ten meters and came back in the opposite direction sweeping about a ten meters in a traverse each turn. By taking note of the crushed vegetation I was able to figure out a perpendicular to that line. Flip a coin and I had a 50/50 chance of heading in the right direction. To keep a straight and steady course, I tied streamer of toilet paper to trees and bushes so I could look back and see where I had been. (I figured that the first rain would wash the T.P. into the soil and it would decompose rapidly.) Eventually I emerged from the forest onto the trail and then set about finding the bicycle I rode on the trail and stashed in the bushes. I walked ten minutes in one direction and didn’t find it so I walked 20 minutes in the other direction and didn’t recognize anything nor did I find my bike. So, I walked 30 minutes back in the original direction thinking I recognized things (duhhh I had just walked this part of the trail, some of it twice) and then found the bike where I left it.

A bike in the rainforest? The bike was just a fast way to get ten kilometers out the trail so it didn’t take all day to get there and back. The bikes were rented to researchers by the lab for fifty cents a day. Some of the mountain bikes were in decent shape, but most of them were real junkers. Imagine a bike in a rainforest where it rains basically every day a good part of the year and the bike is out in the rain and humidity all the time either sitting outside or being ridden on dirty muddy trails. My bike shifted the front sprocket ok, but only had three gears on the rear out of the six or seven available because the cables were so rusted and the derailleur was so bent up. The brakes had very rusty cables, levers, and calipers and were not adjusted because everything rusted in place day to day. These brakes would slow me down but not stop me so much. It didn’t much matter because on the trail the speed was not too fast and except for going down a couple of little hills the bike never got going fast enough that I couldn’t just leap off. On the bike I could zip way out into the forest, ten of fifteen k in a half hour and then go on foot on smaller trails or into the forest to find my study plots.

One day coming back on the bike after some harrowing experience trying to keep from getting lost looking for the pink ribbons, I was cruisin’ along at a good clip hoping to get back by lunch time. I crested a small hill shifted the front sprocket into high and cranked on the pedals to get some speed on the down hill. When my speed was at its maximum I saw a pack of peccary on the trail spread out eating stuff on the ground. A peccary is a wild pig that weighs about 30 to 60 lbs stand about two feet at the top of the head and are about three feet long. Usually a person can smell a pack of peccary long before they see them, but they had been at the bottom of a hill. This pack had about 7 or 8 adults and about 10 little piglets. Here I was speeding along at break neck speed (12mph) with useless brakes so I started screaming to get them out of the way. Mama pig was not about to be moved out of her feeding area and was not going to just let this thing swoop down on her babies so she squared off on the path facing me, tipping her head up and down and snorting loudly. Now packs of peccary have been known to kill people then eat them. I did not want to end my life in such a disgusting manner, killed and eaten by pigs, but I had no choice in my speed so I just plowed onward hoping mama pig was bluffing. I braced myself for the impact with this beast, but just at the last minute mama squealed loudly and ran into the bushes beside the trail. The rest of the pack that had frozen on the path to watch the confrontation also squealed and scattered this way and that, narrowly missing my front wheel.

A week or so later on a different trail there was a herd of coati. Coati are like a raccoon where you have grabbed the coon’s nose and tail and stretched it out to a longer, leaner, somewhat lower animal. Coati are related to raccoons, they are cleaver and pesky. These animals go around in groups of four or five female adults and all the babies. When they prowl around the forest their long tail stands straight up so they can see each other at a distance and know it is safe. The adults mostly stay on the ground, but the babies go up trees and bushes looking for insects and fruit. This group of coati saw me coming after I round a curve again coming down a hill. I was on them before they knew I was even in the area. Since I couldn’t stop, I again braced for the thump, thump of hitting one or two of the adults or the slide from slipping on one or more of the babies. The adults let out a little screech, tails went down and the adults dove for cover. At the same time the babies started leaping out of the trees and bushes and running after the adults in blind panic not even noticing the bike baring down trail, not slowing or stopping. There must have been twenty of those little guys, tails up, screeching for help, running hither, thither and yon. That I didn’t hit one or have one jump on me from a tree was something I wondered about for a long time. It seemed like there was fur flying in all directions and somehow the path opened up and my bike slipped through to safety.

On another trek on the bike I encountered a large snake crossing the trail. The snake hadn’t seen me and was in no hurry to get across. It stretched out from side to side on the trail and of course I could not stop. I was afraid that if I slowed too much I would hit the snake and it would turn and fang me a good one in the leg before I could get away, so I sped up. Just as I got to the snake I pulled up on the bike and bunny hopped over hoping mostly to get the front wheel over so if the snake did turn back and bite I would be down the road. I must have made it over the beast with both wheels because the snake was still across the road when I looked back.

Riding the bike had its draw backs, but it got me to parts of the rainforest I could not have walked to and back before dark. Being out after dark, especially without a working light, was a sentence to staying out all night because it is so dark there is no seeing in this kind of dark. Even trying to follow a trail in the dark was a mistake. And the forest I was in had a strange tree, a member of the peanut family, Pentaclethra, which grows 75 to 100 meters tall and was a predominate tree in the forest. As night approached the forest got darker and darker and if you were out you sped up to get back to the light in the lab clearing before the sun set. There was very little twilight, when the sun went down it was dark. These trees had tiny little leaves on them which folded up about 15 minutes before the sun went down. As you speeded up to get back to the lab clearing in the encroaching dark, suddenly it got noticeably lighters as the leaves of 50% of the huge trees folded up and allowed the evening light to flood in. Some people slowed down thinking they still had lots of time before it got dark, but seasoned researchers started to run because they knew they had about 15 minutes until dark.

Some of the trails that left the lab clearing were concrete for a kilometer or so before turning to dirt/mud. The main trails were well maintained so riding was easy and fast, sometimes too fast. By maintained I mean that big limbs and trees that fell on the trails were quickly cleared and the trail was pack hard enough so water tended to drain off to the sides creating mud puddles and streams to the sides of the path. Not all the trails were bikable and so either extra time had to be made or the ride was done to the smaller trail and then I went on foot from there. On the bike I could sometimes go out in the morning and get back by lunch and then go to a different place in the afternoon and get back before dark. The bike allowed me to double up on sample collections so I could take some days off occasionally. The jungle bike really expanded my knowledge, enjoyment and understanding of the forest.

Being way out in the forest on the trails one might think it would be lonely and while that was often the case there were always surprises. Sometimes there were researchers busting through the brush onto the trail with their bags of samples or equipment. Occasionally there might be a bike heading the other way, or a bike in the bushes and the researcher somewhere in the thick of things. What was really mind blowing was when I was back in the bush, and another researcher would walk through and say, “Hi.” What are the chances of finding another human being off the trail pretty much randomly in the forest? There were courageous souls who would take a line through the forest off the beaten track either looking for ants, or frogs, or violets, and the traverse the forest to survey what is going on. I couldn’t believe that some of these people would walk for many kilometers through the forest following a line, or an easier trek, following animal trails and end up where I got on a bike and a short bushwhack randomly off the main trail. I don’t know how many of these researchers actually made it back to the lab clearing before being bit by snakes and eaten by ants, but I saw more than just a couple of these intrepid researchers.

Being in the forest is an excellent experience. Being lost in the forest is terrifying. A person can not really appreciate the beauty of the rainforest unless they leave the trail and enter the world of green. Back in the weeds is where a human is just another organism, nothing special. That feeling is worth having on the edge of being lost, and wondering just what organisms there are to compete with for your own life.

Soda Cracker Pizzas

Lord help me I have become my father! I find myself making lunch “pizzas” al father Frank who once invited me to lunch to enjoy the same. When I arrived at the appointed hour he was so proud that he could “cook” that he wanted it to be part of the visit. So I showed up at whatever hour and dad was happy to see me with his usual “um” greeting. He proudly laid out about eight soda crackers on the plate and smeared some tomato sauce on them. Then he deftly cut a slice of cheddar cheese from the brick purchased at the buy-it-by-the pallet discount grocery store hack it with a cleaver. The slab of cheese was then cut into quarters with each quarter fitting right on each of the salty squares of cheap saltine cracker with generic tomato sauce on it. This plate of delicious food was then put in the marvelous invention of the 1970’s which was the microwave. My dad actually had one and was not the cutting edge, but the second wave of microwave owners.

This microwave was the size of a mini refrigerator and proudly sat on the counter taking up most of the space next to the regular frig. Food went in and a timer was turned to the seconds or minutes that were wanted and it ticked ticked ticked away until it “dinged”. The dish had to be rotated a quarter of a turn partway through the cooking a couple of times to even out the heating. My dad had taken to this device and had come declare this was the way, the truth, and the light of the stomach, he that believeth in this shall not perish but shall gain weight undenied. This new machine seemed to consume little energy, take very little time, and made amazing food that even my dad could master. Yes, father Frank had been experimenting with his nutrition, gourmet delights and this new notion of high food service. He had developed a whole set of “dishes” that he now made himself as a retired person puttering around the house all day and in charge of making his own lunch.

After the “ding” of the microwave the plate was rotated the quarter turn, and the machine reset for a few more seconds. After the next “ding” I was server my lunch. My dad fixed his lunch and talked about how he had gone through about six different combinations of time, and ingredients in the microwave and had finally perfected the microwave soda cracker pizza. Well I am here to say that perfection is not exactly what he had done. I am sorry dad, god rest your soul, but that was some sorry shit that I ate and I don’t know what food source you were working from, but cheese, tomato sauce on a soda cracker heated in a microwave is not yet perfected as a servable meal. There is an idea there, but I’m thinking that anyone with taste buds and a nose that works would not ask for seconds or even finish the firsts unless they were really hungry and I think I was at that time in my life.

Ok, 30 years after my introduction to Father Frank’s Pizza, I find myself here in the kitchen slamming soda crackers on a plate with cheese and tomato sauce getting ready to put them in the microwave and thinking back on that first lunch with my dad and his new microwave. I must add that I have now added three cheeses, Romano, parmesan, and cheddar cheeses, and incorporated tomato sauce that has sun dried tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and extra virgin olive oil, plus all the “other ingredients” that make a good pizza. I smeared this sauce on the soda crackers with a pasty brush and layered the cheese on the crackers and spaced them on a plate before I put them it in the microwave. Isn’t that basically what my dad did? I think that was it. He was so proud and so happy that he could make lunch for his son who said he had made food for the stars. Back then I ate that shit in my house, or I mean partook of the really poor lunch repast. My dad was so happy he could make me a good lunch. I think he did a piece of Velveeta on white bread before I was done that day. Forty seconds in the microwave. He called it a “toasted cheese sandwich”. I think I reminded him that the bread was not really toasted, but he said if he toasted it then it would cost more money to heat up the bread and cook it and what good would that do it was going to be eaten anyway. Can’t argue with logic like that. And I found my daughters refusing to eat my “toasted cheese sandwiches” that consisted to two pieces of toast with butter on the outside, and cheese on the inside placed in the microwave to melt. The girls say that is not a toasted cheese sandwich, but there was toast and cheese, much closer than my dad’s version of white bread and Velveeta.

Well, too bad. I thinking toasted: got it covered, I toasted the bread. Cheese, there is plenty of that on my toasted cheese microwave sandwich. I don’t have to clean a pan or really make a big mess. This was an easy way do a toasted cheese sandwich. Eat it and love it or shut up and make yourself something else and be sure to clean up the mess when you get done.

Now the soda cracker pizza has become part of my food staple. Well, that one is a under construction. I have got a pizza sauce that I have made from sun dried tomatoes, garlic, tomato paste, tomato sauce, onions, oregano, and Romano cheese (plus salt, pepper and such), that has worked well so far on the crackers. The new version has a piecesof salami layered on top of the sauce with three kinds of cheese and then the last piece of salami on top with some sprinkles of parmesan. This is pretty good and I think will become the standard bear of the quick lunch fare. The salami is cut into quarters and fits right on top of the piece of soda cracker. The way, the truth and the light. This is the great treat for sitting in front of the tube and watching Law and Order or some talking heads. I think this is way beyond my dad.

Modesto: Home Town Memories

Modesto is just an average place located in the geographic center of California sixty miles east of San Francisco and 90 miles south of the capital Sacramento. People who come there for a stay or a long visit seem to get sucked in for the long haul unable to leave. Not that it is a bad place; it is just sort of a non-place. The motto of the city is “On the way to everywhere.” That is because it is on the way to Yosemite, the mountains to ski, north or south in the valley, to the bay area… on the way to everywhere. So where does that put the town? Not quite there, but on the way with a lot of people whose cars broke down or who ran out of money, or just got sick of traveling.

Back in the day, Modesto was an excellent farming town with actual farmers, and the people who support the farmers and that was about all. The city grew to about 20,000 in 1920 and stayed about that sized until about the 1950’s. Modesto had the same families and farmers and church goers for decades and decades. Everyone knew everyone in the town. This was the center of the live in the whole county. Everything a farmer could need was found in the town of Modesto. Its motto back then was different and was written on an illuminated archway that spanned the two lanes of the main street: “Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health.” The pure water from the mountains in the cannels, the river and the ground water pumped up in wells provided the source of the wealth of the farmers, which gave the city the contentment of life at a farmer’s pace and the health of good living in a beautiful setting. The water was so pure in the canals that everyone swam in them like they were mountain streams brought to hot the valley for our cooling off in the summer. The well water was so pure that it was some of the finest in the world and eventually brought wet industry to the area. Kids swam and played in the rivers and old men fished. It’s not that way now. Canals are a swill of fertilizer and farm runoff. The ground water is polluted with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals from decades of abuse of the land trying to make more money off an acre to avoid having to sell out to the developers. The rivers have been dammed and used as wasted disposal conduits so people don’t go near the water now and there aren’t many fish left to catch anymore. Time changes things. It happened in my life time.

Modesto is far better than Turlock the competition in the valley just south about 12 miles down highway 99. Turlock has no river or water except that which is pumped up from deep wells or the water that flows through canals that come from the reservoirs in the hills and are used to irrigate the farmland that surrounds the town. Actually the water in the canals comes from the Modesto Reservoir so Turlock gets most of its agricultural water from its nemesis and has to pay for it in taxes to the larger town. Modesto does have water (the canals and well water as does Turlock) and two “rivers” that cross the town: the Tuolumne River and “Dry Creek” a small river that isn’t really dry and in fact floods the town occasionally. Places with water have power and what is needed to keep things alive like ground water close to the surface so the trees don’t die and the people can access water easily and cheaply. Turlock only has dirt (rich prime agricultural farm land dirt) and canals. Deep down surrounding Turlock one can find ground water which has to be poured on any trees the town has to keep them alive since the roots of the trees can’t reach the ground water and it is just too hot and dry for trees to grow there.

Turlock does have a train track and it does have turkeys. It is the turkey capital of the world where more turkeys are processed than any place in the world. The state university located there is nick named, “Turkey Tech” because of the turkey connection of the town. Turlock is full of red necks, turkey ranchers, and people who like to beat their wives or children for sport; well, maybe that is a bit strong, there are only a few red necks there. Modesto got it all and Turlock got what was left over after all the good stuff was taken. And so the fight would go between the two towns of roughly equal size until the 1950’s when cheap water made Modesto more attractive to “wet” industry and allowed for the beginning of growth, lots of growth.

“Wet” industry is industry that requires a lot of water such as canneries and other food processing. These facilities use millions of gallons of water a day. Cheap water in the center of the food raising area allowed the country to enjoy cheap canned and processed food even today. With the expansion of the canneries came the workers who were not farmers, but sort of seasonal agriculturally related workers. These people had a connection with the land. Along with these people came grocery people, car salesmen, movie theater workers, and all the infrastructure of a bigger town. This made the Modesto more attractive to other businesses which brought more people which brought more people to service the people. Land was cheap, houses were cheap, water and taxes were cheap and suddenly that was noticed by people a long way a way in the Bay Area who could not afford to live there because of the cost of housing, taxes, and food. The people spilled over the hills and flooded Modesto in a quest to get a larger home, a better quality of life (along with a 4 hour round trip commute to work), better schools and all the things that the valley and Modesto offered. Modesto exploded with farmers selling out and orchards being pushed down to make room for more houses for people working someplace else. Suddenly Modesto was a bedroom community of the Bay Area and growth was unstoppable. The community did not have to support all the people moving in with the jobs in the area. Farming was not important anymore. People resented the stench of cows or the noise of the sprayers in the orchards.

Modesto has sprawled into something it can't be because there are not the resources there to support it. Modesto can not and should not have as many people there as it does now. The land in and around Modesto is prime agricultural farm land. There is only about 3% of the land on the whole planet that is prime agricultural farm land. This land should be used to raise food. People should live where the food is not able to be raised. Most of Modesto was not there when I grew up. There were farms, orchards, crops, farmers and workers. In high school I could ride my bicycle around the whole town easily in a short afternoon. I swam in the canals and ate peaches, apricots, oranges, grapefruit, walnuts, almonds, nectarines, plums, off the trees in the orchards (and undoubtedly got poisoned from the pesticides and stuff, but didn’t care). I foraged in the vineyards eating grapes, picking cherries, eating boysenberries, strawberries, and other fruit without worrying if I would get caught or if it was stealing because I knew most of the people that owned the farms and they knew me and my family. A lot of the farmers sold out to make a quick profit selling their land to speculators. It is cheaper to raise a house and sell it for a profit than to raise peaches year after year. You get more per acre for a subdivision than for tomatoes in the short term. What is going to happen when the sprawl reaches from one end of the central valley to the other? At one point the California Central Valley raised half or more of all the food eaten in the US. Where will that food be raised? Excellent land, excellent water, excellent weather. Get rid of the people, they are ruining the place which could feed the world because the people who lived there loved to raise the food the world needed.

I guess that when we as a country or planet get to that point, the point where people need to think about where to raise food, when it becomes important to protect the agricultural land, the land will still be there under the streets, malls and houses of Modesto and now Turlock and the other sprawling towns of the Central Valley. I fought long and hard with Ecology Action and other groups to help make Modesto a sustainable community. It didn't work. It didn't even delay the importation of so many people to settle on the land that use to feed them, that food had to be imported to feed the people now living on prime agricultural farm land in a four bedroom house with a three car garage, a lawn and a fenced in back yard for Shep the dog. What do those people do that live in Modesto? They wash the pants of the people who own the stores, who sell things to the people who wash the pants. Some of them go off to other places to make money so they can afford to have their pants washed and buy the stuff in the stores. What do these people who live in Modesto eat? Food imported from Mexico, Chile, or other parts of the US. Does that seem dumb? It does to me.

A town that is supported by people who depend on the land for their life and survival is a place that people feel invested in. People who are so invested in a place think about the land as if it is the source of their life because it brings in their food, their income, and their livelihood. These are the people who will usually fight to keep the land as it is and allow it to be used in the way they understand and have been doing for a long time. The kind of a place where people feel a connection to the land is one that people take pride in and take care of because they see that it takes care of them. The land and the people sustain themselves if they work together. Everyone has a stake in it. The land around Modesto sustained not only the people who lived there, but also most of the rest of the country. This city was important to the rest of the world because it fed so many people and yet it was not even known by anyone 50 miles outside of the area. This town was a joke to most people from cities larger than this “hick town”. Modesto was not even on the radar of the rest of the country. We (the people of Modesto who lived her forever) raised so much of the food of the world that it was shocking to us to hear that the people who moved in and built houses on the farm land were shocked that the amount of food was reduced and had to be imported. Well, duhaaaaa. Think about it! People complaining about the cows making a stink because of a milking barn near them; people complaining about the noise of the machinery in the middle of the night. All of these people living in the middle of the agricultural area where cows that are milked and crops are sprayed in the night happen so that food can be grown and raised so they can eat.

We use to have these debates and discussions about land use as I remember when I was young. The people talking were the people who actually had a stake in the situation, not a commuter who worked in San Francisco or some other community. The situations were worked out to the satisfaction of the people who were discussing the problem and the problem was solved so the land could be maintained in the best use condition and provide for the most people without damaging the long term needs of a farming community. When there were only a few people who had a stake in the problem, they solved the problem. I remember my parents who were not farmers but a carpenter and a house wife, discussing these problems with the other peoples and coming up with solutions to the problems of land use in the town and those solutions were implemented. We were involved in all the politics of the community and it was just at the family table with my grandparents and relatives and my parents friends because they were the people who ran the city and the county. Then the sprawl started to happen and it started to move all over the valley and control of the land moved to the hands of people who cared about money now, not the long range vision.

Now Sacramento is merging into Stockton which is 50 miles south, and Stockton is merging into Modesto and so on down the valley until there is one big city from Bakersfield to Redding. Too many people living on the best land and no one respecting this land. Too many people living a frantic life to sustain a way of life that can not be sustained more than a few generations without someplace to raise food to feed them. What happens when energy becomes in short supply? Food from Mexico and South America will not be affordable because it will cost too much to ship. What happens when people in the US can not afford the food grown in California because there is so little land left to raise it? That is not a good scenario to think about. The valley can grow so much food because the land is so good.

The valley is a very special place, but not a special place for the numbers of people who live there now. Most of them do not even understand where they live. When I was young we use to go visit my uncle in San Jose. We would stop along the way and buy fruit at the fruit stands. The bay area, San Jose area, now Silicon Valley, was mostly orchards, farms, fields, fruit, farmers... By the time I was in high school there were no more farms in San Jose just houses and people and factories and businesses of people washing the pants of the people who owned the stores who sold things to the people who washed the pants. Smog, crime, strangers, frantic life. People are not invested in the land or the environment except for their own little piece of turf. A bigger picture needs to happen in the minds of the ones who have power to change the future.

When I was seven years old Disneyland opened up. My dad did not want to go there the first year because he thought it would be too full and too crowed so he did not consider going there that first year 1956. We went there the second year. The park was surrounded by orange groves and patches of farms here and there and lots of new motels my dad was happy to see because they were competing with each other and keeping the price down. The only orange trees you see now are painted on cartons of orange juice imported from god knows where. A tree could not grow in that urban area that was taken over by the Disney corporation and eaten up by asphalt not food crops the world need.

Sprawl is greed: Immediate gratification with no vision of the future. One Native American leader once said that decisions should be made with the seventh generation in mind: How will this decision effect the seventh generation from now? We do not have that kind of vision now. We don’t seem to look five years down the road.

It hurts me to see Modesto now. The glaring sun off the rooftops, the asphalt, and off the cars that pass. Modesto once had a law that every lot had to have trees in them, big trees, and lots of trees. Modesto had more trees than people. I could cross the town in the summer in the shade, from Davis high school to the airport almost ten miles on a bike. Outside the town the land was covered with orchards of peach trees, further out walnuts, almonds and berry vines. Grapes were farther out. Only towards the foot hills of the coast range and up towards Oakdale were there fields of alfalfa and dairy farms with no trees because trees can't grow in the hardpan near the surface. In February the whole valley would smell of blossoms from the peaches and the almonds. When the almond blossoms fell the whole valley was white like a snowfall with mists of pink from the peach blossoms. As the spring time heat started to become the hot of summer, the leaves on the trees would come out providing shade wherever you were in town, providing the cooling that trees do from evaporating water. In heat of the summer the smell the ripening peaches in the orchards spread into the town and could be smelled when walking down the street in the evening, maybe even walking out to an orchard to pick a couple of the ripe freestone peaches. In the fall the leaves in the street would be so deep because there were so many big trees; kids could burrow through them like mice under a snowfall. When the city crews came around to pick up the leaves they would make piles as big a warehouse and the kids would go crazy playing in these much to the distress of the workers who had to make sure they got all the kids out before they scooped up the foliage and put it in trucks. In the fog of the fall and winter trees were there to keep the dense fog from taking over everything. The fog formed a canopy over the tops of the protective trees reaching down with fingers here and there all the way to the ground, but not able to push down and smother everything as it did outside the town. This was a time to play in the fog and live a life of imagination because anything could come out of the fog so dense the street was hidden from the front of the house.

Now people in the Modesto community are not invested in the land surrounding the town. Modesto has become a place to live not a way of life. It is sustainable like it is now only with extreme energy consumption at the expense of the whole environment. The easy energy is about to run out and then things will change. A lot of people will need to look at what they are doing and where they live. Most of the world is starving. They live on nothing. Here we are, fat cats, abusing what we have, flaunting it in their face by sitting on agricultural land and importing food from poor countries. We are saying that we will sustain our way of life at what ever it costs, even if it cost the poor people of the world their lives and the lives of their hungry children. It can’t go on like that. People in these poor countries will get pissed about this attitude. There are solutions and it is in sustainable living. We should be practicing sustainable living and learning how to sustain a way of life not use up ours and everyone else’s resources.

It is not venom that I am spouting. I am frustrated that I have not been able to direct a change towards a sustainable life in the place I lived for 45 years. The place my grandfather moved to in 1922 a young father working for the postal service. The place my mother was born and raised. My lifelong home has changed. I saw the agriculture leave what is now Silicon Valley and that only took about five years. It started to happen in Modesto and I tried to stop it and then tried to direct it. Nothing seemed to help stem the cycle of greed and immediate gratification. If you buy a house in Modesto at least plant a fruit tree and raise some tomatoes. If not you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Better yet, tear down your house and move out.

Aconcagua

Summary of Aconcagua

A few days ago I was waking up to a sunrise on the beach in Con Con, Chile. We actually should have been up a couple of hours before since the sun doesn't rise in this part of Chile until about 7:30 or 8:00am in their summer. We should have been on the road a long time before this late morning rouse which quickly turned to a rout. Our group hurriedly stuffed our sleeping bags in our rented car, which was already loaded with three bikes, three backpacks and all our stuff we had used for the last 17 days of climbing and adventure. The three of us found spots among the gear, levered the doors shut and then drove 60 miles to the Santiago airport. On the way we were stopped by the army for something (speeding like bats out of hell in a rented car full of too much stuff most likely). They yelled at us for in Spanish while pointing guns at us, but we could not quiet get out of the car and our passports were so screwed up and we pretended to not understand them that they let us go because of the problems of dealing with citizens from two countries who did not look like they were doing anything really bad. We got to the airport very early having factored in time to be arrested. After one last three hour ride on our bike around the countryside of Santiago we packed up the bikes, boarded the plane and flew back to the real world. Been there, done it. What's to say? I am trying to figure out what went on myself. For seventeen days this was the twilight zone and the best adventure of my life. Now I have to come back to the flat earth.

People have asked me about the trip, but the only thing that came out was, "it was cold." These question were asked within hours of returning to the flat earth. "Was it fun?" is usually the next most people asked about the trip to the other side of the planet. Realize, I didn't go on an adventure to have fun, so it was as much fun as I expected and it fulfilled the thousands of other perfectly valid emotions that in no way can be described as fun. No answer comes out usually because it takes too long to explain. Most people ask, "Well would you do it again?" If a person was riding on a train and the train slammed into a large truck and the train derailed, overturned, caught fire, slid down the side of a mountain and you managed to pull yourself free with minor injuries and no one you knew was hurt, it would be an experience that would live forever in your mind and shape your vision of the world? Would you repeat the incident? Probably not, but that doesn't make that train wreck an invalid incident not worth having happened. This was an adventure: an extreme vacation. I was not in search of pleasure. I wanted an experience that I could not get from the world where I live day-to-day which is the flat earth. I wanted to find out where the real world was because the day-to-day world is not the real world; it is only a reflection of something that looks like the world. The world is beyond where most people are willing to go, but is not really that scary or “bad” and should be experienced because it is the place where life can take place minute by minute.

Summary: We landed in Chile… who are “we”? “We” started out as four: Adrian, leader of the pack, professional adventurer, British citizen, permanent resident of the United States living in Modesto; Brian, PhD doctor of something, director of curriculum for Modesto City Schools, super guy, funny, positive and all around good fellow; Miles, me, middle school science teacher, runner and bicycle expert brought along to keep the bikes running; Joanna who did not make it because she was getting married, what a lame excuse. All of us over 40. “Better do this before those long haired 20 year olds figure this out and do it first!” said Adrian when we started planning. “Once a bunch of old guys tackle it those young lads won’t have any part of it.” We had trained for about a year and a half to make sure we could do most of what we wanted to do and were pretty sure we had it in us to follow through with our plan, although we had never done this kind of a thing this high, this hard, or done it in a foreign language this far from home with no support. Our group was fused together from being hung out on every peak in California over 14,000 feet in the most ungodly conditions we could train in. The three of us were all tuned in to each other and were ready to go the distance for one another. Our project was one that could only happen in one place on the planet and we were here to do it. Old guys can read maps and figure out these cool things to do before those long haired 20 year olds could ever come up with it. The stupidity of youth.

We landed in Chile on a Sunday and got a ride to the downtown Santiago in the back of a pickup truck from someone I met at the airport. No, “Hablo espanol”, but I got the ride I'm proud to say. We were dropped off at the bus station and hoped to make it to Porta Del Inca or Penetencia at the top of the Andes in Argentina by nightfall via bus by that day or maybe early the next day. Alas, no bus travels over the hill after 2:00pm and we moved on and fate, a tip from a strange, a stray dog, some graffiti, and a walk down random streets led us to a very strange doorway in the wall, but it turned out to be an excellent place to stay in Santiago. It was a "kind-of-hotel" or Hostel-wantabe with lots of eclectic people from worldly places. After knocking on the door and being accepted we took a room for the night with all the strangeness of a place in the middle of the earth. The next day we set out to the country of Argentina. It turned out we had to take a bus and there were 20 different companies competing for our business. How could they compete when they all charged same price to travel to anywhere in Chile or Argentina? We booked a bus to Mendoza, Argentina where the government offices issued official climbing permits and we could get reliable information about the mountain and government rules. Santiago, Chile was a great experience, but we left it only a few hours after arriving. We did fill the day and night we were there with as much of the city as we could absorb sleeping little because of lots to do and see because we would not be here again most likely.

Mendoza is the most beautiful city I have seen in any part of the world. Our hotel was the choice of the Lonely Planet Guide and was full of travelers and adventurers, lonely planet traveler and adventurers, from all over the world who had gathered there to share adventures and seek information about adventures to come and spend a few days very cheaply. We spent 3 days at the hotel mostly out in the city riding in the back of pickup trucks, riding our bicycles, and seeing every government official who would see us to seek permission for our project. The week before we arrived the government passed a new law, which stated that there could be no bicycles in the Parque Aconcagua the national park where the mountain of Aconcagua was. Bicycles it seemed had terrorized mules on the trails, caused erosion, killed and maimed hikers, and were wanted out of the park by the climbers who were in fear of a cyclist coming round the corner on a bike at 40 miles per hours. Officials were unmoved by our project and we got sick of spending time in offices talking to smiling people who claimed no authority to change the law or grant us any kind of disposition despite our previous pile of communication with the government and year of planning based on their assurance of being able to do this project.

So we regrouped and traveled back up the hill (the Andes) to the town of Inca (9,000ft) still in Argentina, a place above the timberline looking like an outpost in Antarctic without snow since it was summer. The first day in this remote town, we rode our bicycles up an additional 3000ft on the main road over the Andes. In the process we went through Argentina customs, and Chilean customs and then came back again to Argentina to see what the problems might be when we did this trip for real with the clock watching our progress. This was a very savage ride that turned into a big hassle with the officials and the elevation, and the 6k tunnels through the very top of the Andes at the boarder that we had to hitch hike through because bicycles are not allowed to ride the tunnel. Timing would be critical because the tunnel and the border are closed at night and there is a no-mans land between Argentina and Chile of about 15k where a person has left one country and not enter the other country and they could get trapped here on a slow moving bicycle if boarders or tunnels closed.

I blew it on the ride and did not put on sunscreen wearing only shorts. My reward for this act of thoughtlessness was fried skin: arms, legs, and face. Even the skin under the thin shirt and shorts at this altitude was sun burnt. That was the last time my arms, legs and hands saw the sun for the next 16 days. In Inca, the town of Inca, we stayed in a very inexpensive place with no windows, no lock on the door, no door handle on the doors, seven beds in one room the size of a closet, but it did have a rest room down the hall with a partial roll of toilet paper the first day. In Inca we arranged mules to haul some stuff to the “lower camp”, Plaza De Mule, and we talked with the rangers who had a house in the town. Their reaction to our project was “No bikes in the Park!” The rangers were great people, very dedicated to the park and to conservation. We became very good friends with them and ended up staying with them at their house later on. The rangers were conservation inspired and wanted the park and the country to become much more conscious of what causes problems and do something about it. We listened and really thought they had the best interest of the planet in mind when they talked, so we decided to change our project.

Our trip had to take a huge change from our original plan. We changed our original plan of riding to the sea and simply descend by human power to the sea from the top of the mountain. We would now try to descend 24,000 feet in 24 hour using just human power with all of the descent in the park being just running. We would pick up our bikes at the entrance and ride from there to the ocean. A Triathlon was taking shape: climb 24,000 feet (7,000m), run 50k and bike 200k. Theoretically possible, but there was a problems with time constraint on the trip because the borders were only opened from 7:00am to 10:00pm. Arrangements with Oscar (Scoobie, his handle on the radio) were made for mules to take out stuff up the mountain and to have the bikes to be at the ready at the entrance when we arrived after our run down the hill. We went up the hill with confidence and a promise for the project from Scoobie to have our bikes ready.

Horconis at about 9,000ft is the Aconcagua Park entrance and is a few kilometers down the main road from Inca, a few k along a dirt road towards the ridge of the Andes. The central mountain in the cleft of the valley, Aconcagua (The Stone Sentry), filled the end of the canyon about 50k away, full of snow, lots of wind and beyond the scale of any mountains I had ever experienced. In fact when we entered the canyon of the Horconis River, I realized the mountains were also off the scale of reality when I remembered that every mountain in sight was far higher than any mountain in the continental United States. From our perch at 9,000 feet the mountains rose, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 ft and much more above us in every color and geologic origin imaginable. After a few hours of hiking and crossing the raging brown river of the Horconis glacier we reach Confluenecia where two rivers join together and is the best place to camp. This first camp was unbelievably beautiful, but held the last plants (no trees, or bushes only small grasses and a few flowers here) we were to see for the next 12 days. We had gained about 2,000 feet elevation in the day’s climb following the river and trekking into the maw of the mountain valley, but had hiked for many miles and were at a place where there seemed to be only up.

The next day was a long one through a braided river valley about 500m wide that seemed flat because of the vastness of the valley between the two giant mastiffs that marked the edges of this valley, but this river crossed alpine plain was definitely up hill. We had to cross the river several times through this endless flat rock strewn valley with no grass, plants of any kind, or animals except the climber going up or coming down. The “trail” was across a landscape that looked like the moon with rocks about the size of baseballs to bowling balls. The valley ended with a set of switchbacks that went up the side of the mountain of scree, gravely rocks broken from the mountain above, that caused ones foot to slip down as much as it did when trying to walk up. At the top of the switch backs we got to go most of the way back down to the river and back up to the side of the mountain several times as we crossed the side narrowing canyons with raging streams at the focus of the canyon. This roller coaster trail ended with a set of switchbacks up the side of the hard rock mountain one last time to the glacier where the stream had it headwaters. We came over the top of the glacier and saw the flatness and the place where we would have our home for a few days.

The top of the trail was Plaza de Mulas or just Mulas, “the place of the mules” where all the mules from Horconis transported backpacks and gear to the climbers. The mules would die if they went much higher or so the muleskinner told people. Besides the mules could not go higher because the mountain was straight up from here. Here was the base camp at the West face of Aconcagua, and at the base of the Horconis Glacier. Mulas is like the bar scene from Star Wars. 80 to 100 multi-colored high-tech tents with strange people speaking 20 different languages, wearing bizarre state-of-the-art and not so state-of –the-art climbing gear from every part of the world. A happening place. Wheeling and dealing, buy and sell, supply and demand the commerce system happening at a feverish pace before the winter shut them down. Beer 3.00 American, Burger, 7.00 American; dinner 15.00 or more depending. People buying, selling, trading ...crampons, boots, tents, food... We spent three days in Mulas hiking, exploring the glacier, the culture and the mountain, and acclimatizing to the altitude of 14,500 ft. Watched rocks the size of cars roll off the mountain and through the camp and watched an ice dam break above on the mountain sending down tsunami of water and mud that washed a gully 20 feet wide, 10 feet deep from the top of the mountain, through the camp and down the mountain out of sight. Unbelievable sights and sounds of the glacier moving under us and the mountain warning us it was a dangerous place to play.

We did a carry of gear to Nido de Condor (Nest of the Condor) at 17,5000ft straight up the mountain in infinite switchbacks a never-ending task that took forever. We dropped our stuff, put many rocks on it to keep the winds from hell from blowing it away and we went back down to Mules for our last night at the low altitude. We met the residents on our stop at Nido, about 12 tents at this spot. People who had been there two days were the old residents who had all the urban legend and the information needed by the newcomers. There was a dog up there that licked my climbing goggles and received the end of my ski pole in its side for its goodness. Paul one of the old guys at Nido, asked that we take the scruffy beast down to Mulas when we went so it wouldn't die by his tent where it had taken to sleeping the last few days. We took the beast down, but it ran back up the next day and was there to greet us when we arrive at our Nido camp. The next day our group loaded up all the stuff we needed and again and hiked back up to Nido de Condor knowing what was ahead of us having just done it twelve hours before. It was no easier the second day. Up at Nido we found a spot, set up our camp in the thin air and began our domestic chores. This is too high to live, to high to be. But here we are and it is ok, because our neighbors say it is ok until about 2pm when the wind comes in the temperature drops for about three hours. Then it will let up a bit.

We spent three days staying at 17,500ft at Nido. There is no sleep at this altitude because sleeping slows the respiration and the amount of air into the body makes the person wakes up as if he or she were being strangled. Falling back to sleep repeats the process of slowing the breathing and waking up the sleeper. Not too good for sleeping. The third day we did a carry to Refugio Berlin at 19,5000ft. Straight up the side of the mountain through the ice and snow. Here at Berlin there were three broken down huts that stunk like an outhouse. We pitched our tent way away from these nasty wooden huts. On the way down the biggest and most deadly of the storms hit us. It was a sneaker that came up from behind the mountain. Nine people were trapped near the summit and one died. Many were frost bitten and most were quick-frozen. Every day there were storms that blew in and got cold, but this was a real surprise. I thought we were going to die on our hike down. Twenty below zero and gusts of sixty miles per hour while hanging on the face of the mountain in an ice field that was quickly becoming like the dance floor in the gym tilted at 50 degrees. Nido lost a few tents that evening. A guy got out of his tent to go to the bathroom and the tent blew away with everything in it. In these conditions if you lost an outer glove (we wore three pair at least) you could die. A guy stopped to put on his wind pants which zippered up the outsides and inside. A gust hit the pants, they ripped off before he secured them and the pants blew over the cliff 3,000ft down onto the Polish Glacier and were gone. Death sentence in minutes if he didn't wrap his tent around himself and crawl down the hill and get into someone else’s tent. There is no forgiveness for losing anything up here. There isn’t any help, no rescuer, no helicopters can fly this high, no rescue parties could get here in less than a week, and every climber is on their own.

The mountain is not forgiving and not predictable. We thought we had the storms pegged. Hide between 3:00 and 6:00pm and you were ok. If there wasn't much snow then that was a blessing. When the snow fell the snow blew off in the winds that followed and was called "White Wind". Exposed skin and white wind are incompatible. 20,30 below zero with winds of 30 to 60 mph are extreme combinations at 17,500 ft. Heat and water wick away so fast you are unable to do anything when you realize you are cold or thirsty. Get cold and you don't get warm until you go down to a much lower altitude if you can make it. Get thirsty and it's too late, you get sick and can't eat, which means you can't stay warm no matter what you are wearing, so you either stagger down to a lower altitude or die. We ate and drank constantly.

The next move was to Refugio Berlin. Not too happy of a place. One of the residents did not make it down the hill from the top. There were cases of frostbite and people scared nearly to death who did not come out of their tents very often. The last resident who did not make it had just been removed from the tent area a few days before and there were still people who had been packing the Frenchman in snow every morning because it would all blow off in the night. The mountain had not been kind this year. It was a very bad year for climbers. Many had not made it off the hill. Nearly all who came off the summit had frost bite or most cold or altitude problems. Not exactly the happy KOA with a pool and a rec room. An American was in the fresh snow waiting removal to the lowlands. Dead guy, keep the snow on him until someone came and took him. No one knew about the dead Frenchman, keep him on ice.

Berlin was a very bitterly cold, windy, brutal, but a very beautiful place. All the Andes could be seen from the 19,500ft perch on the side of the mountain. 2,000ft straight down to the plain where Nido was. We could see the tents come and go through the clouds below. After three days and three attempts at the summit we were the old timer on the hill at Berlin: Yankee Loco. We had run up the hill in the daytime to stay in shape and see where the trail leads and what was ahead everyday. We all been up to about 23,000 feet a time or two, and I sometimes wonder if Adrian had not been all the way in some of his excursions alone.

Here at Berlin If you want it, tie it down, put it away or put a very big rock on it. Unfortunately to bend over and pick up a rock was about all the lungs could handle. For the first day or so we used a lot of little rocks to secure things since picking up a big rock was out of the question. Sitting up in bed required minutes to catch the breath. Gathering snow in a plastic bag to melt for water on the stove was a task that would require a nap to recover from (if a person could sleep). Now just sitting and resting could reduce the respiration to a point that I felt strangled. There was no sleep.

When the sun went down the temperature went so low that when we got out of the tent with all our clothes on, there was no staying warm. We decided to summit and the timing required doing it at night. We suited up and all left the tent with the moon high the temperature low. Within 10 feet of the tent my feet were numb and my face was frozen under all the layers I had to stay warm. About 15minutes later Brian and I said this was stupid and came back to the tent and spent the next 5 hours trying to warm back up to normal body temperature. Adrian and Peter (a guy we met) came back an hour after we gave up saying it was definitely very cold out and they might need an additional layer of something.

The next attempt was in the daylight, but we couldn't summit because a storm might come up. We did get to about 23,000 feet. The last attempt I knew I did not have the gear to stay warm, so I gave my boots to Adrian, my thin gloves to Brian and agreed to pack up the camp. Adrian and Brian left at 2:00am and summited at 9:00 am. Adrian lost his toenails on one foot and had severe frost bite on the other toes. Brian had lost the feeling in his fingers and it didn't return while we were in Chile. I packed up the camp and went up to about 21,000feet and then started my trip to the sea. With Adrian’s boots and poor crampons I ended up slipping down part of the slope to Nido separating my shoulder a bit, but made it to the flat on the hill so I could take a breath.

We all ran down to Mulas at 14,500ft, got our day packs and ran to the park entrance about 44k away (the distance of a marathon). Main packs were to go out on mules that day or the next. At the entrance we got on our bikes, rode through customs, up the 3.000ft to the pass and down to the ocean a total distance of about 200k. Adrian made it in less than 24 hours, which was his goal. Brian and I made it alive which was our basic goal. Brian and I stopped in Los Andes where there was a festival of summer and we thought we should experience this cultural happening. Excellent food, and happening all night. We woke up and rode our bikes the rest of the way to the ocean where Adrian was waiting for us.

Once we recovered on the coast Adrian rented a car and we drove back to Inca to get our gear which was to be brought by mule down the hill. At the border the people would not allow the Chilean car into Argentina. Adrian said we would park it and hitch hike into Argentina. We lined up at the border and were arrested for trying to get into the country for false purposes. In the bowels of the customs office somehow we talked our way around the requirements that people can not walk across the 13,500ft border and were granted a pass of sorts. We were put on a truck and given a ride down the hill into Argentina. The truck did not stop at the Argentina border so we checked out of Chile but did not check into Argentina. The truck driver dropped us off at Inca and we went to find our stuff. Of course it wasn’t there. Scoobie had not done his thing. We found that idiot and threatened him with bodily harm and he got on the walkie talkies and said our stuff would come down in the next could of days. We found a place to stay at the ranger’s station the first night. Late the second night the mules came in with our stuff and we decided not to remove Scoobie’s testicles. All of our stuff was there, but we still had to get out of the country before the border closed. A pickup took us to the tunnel just as it was closing. We talked to the border guard and he just stood in the street with his rifle pointed at the next car and ordered it to take one of us and the gear. The next car was ordered to take the next two and our gear since it was bigger. At the border the guards were not going to let us through since we had “walked” in. There was no way we could leave this 13,500foot station without freezing to death. Somehow Adrian slipped away, got the rental car and drove it to the bar that blocked the boundary of the countries. Brian and I just said good bye picked up our stuff, took our passport, unstamped and ran to the car. The guys at the gate just wanted to go home so they just waved good bye.

It seems like if we spend 16 days of intense climbing at extreme altitude we really didn't feel much like immediately running a marathon at an average elevation of 14,000ft. After we ran the marathon we certainly didn't feel real positive about riding up a 3000ft hill in 15k from 10,000 ft to 13,000ft into a brutal wind and then riding into that same wind another 180k (110 miles) to the ocean. But, I guess that is what we did.

This summary is like taking a 12 gourmet course meal and grinding it in a blender and sucking it through a straw. Every paragraph is a story in itself with so many unbelievable things that occurred. I am a different person because of this trip.

Shasta New Year

Adrian Crane, leader of our merry band of middle aged adventurers, said to form our thoughts as well as we could and write them down right away, so we could capture the moments for our book: Aconcagua: Bicycles Not Recommended . The title of our book comes from a fax from the Argentine embassy in response to our inquiry about any restrictions on the use of bicycles on their mountain, Aconcagua. The embasy replied to the inquiry about bicycling from the summit to the Ocean with the short sentence, “While bicycles are not specifically prohibited, bicycles are not recommended.” Actually we had surmised that for ourselves, since only one other person had taken a bicycle to the 24,000 ft summit, and then he carried it down.

Here is what I remember about the Mt. Shasta shake down training climb to check gear and endurance in the most absolutely miserable conditions we could come up with to help us simulate what we thought we might encounter on our primary adventure [It turns out that a law was passed a week before we arrived in Argentina specifically prohibited bicycled in the Aconcagua park. We did not know about it until we applied for our climbing permit days before our climb so we had to change our project when we arrived half a world away from our starting point.]

After taking most of Thursday morning to pack and then finishing all those activities that go along with leaving on a three day near death experience, I left the house with what I thought I needed or at least a quixotic vision of what I needed. My van was filled with my “stuff” even before I picked up Joann and Tom. Tom was Joann's current love of her life and was willing to attempt this climb even though he had never climbed higher than the roof of his house to put up the Xmas lights. Joann was a 38 year old 5th grade teacher who runs ultra marathons. Tom had just turned 43 and was just starting to move from marathons to ultra marathons. He is considering accompany us to Chile and take photos for the first 5 days or so while we get permits and figure out how to climb to the highest point in the Western Hemisphere carrying bicycles then ride them to the ocean in less than 24 hours. Some people doubt our sanity, but then adventure defies sanity. Tom and Joann somehow crammed their stuff into the van and wedged themselves into the remaining space for the drive back across town to Adrian’s house.

Our fearless leader, Adrian, was next to be picked up. Mr. Adrian Crane, a 39 year old, red haired British citizen, lives permanently in, California with his wife and two children. This god of adventure has a business resume, which says he is a “system analysis” and teaches computer classes at the Junior College from time to time. No one is quiet sure what a “system analysis” is nor, has anyone ever seen him teach a course in computers. Come to think of it I don’t think anyone has seen him go to work. Adrian is amazing. He runs ultra ultra marathons (like 2,000 miles through the Himalayan Mountains in 100 days, climbed all the highest points in the US in record time 60 days, ran over 500 miles in a six day race, holds the world two day run record of 248 miles...). He is also an adventurer, a guide for climbs on Mt. McKinley, has bicycled UP Mt. Kilimanjaro, and held the world altitude cycling record for cycling down Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador some 21,000 feet. His altitude cycling record stood until someone else carried a bicycle to our mountain Aconcagua, sat on it on the summit and stole the record away. Adrian at least rode his bicycle down Chimborazo while the other guy packed his up and carried it down the hill.

Adrian, of course, had not only had backpacks, but also had boxes and bags of gear all of which were yet unpacked. He tends to do things on the fly, which usually means getting all the gear he can out of town and just doing it with what he has when he gets there. Apparently earlier in the day a bank of lights and the corresponding electricity went out at his house and he checked the circuit breakers and found one tripped. About five minutes before we arrived two more banks of lights in the house went out and it wasn’t just the circuit breakers that failed. Tom and Adrian scurried around trying to figure out what was wrong with the electricity at the Crane household. The final solution, I think, was to string an extension cord from an outlet that worked directly to the television and then to give a reminder to his wife of where the flashlights were located if anyone needed to go into that parts of the house without electricity. A kiss for luck from his stranded wife and the first four adventurers were on the road to Brian's house 30 miles toward Mt. Shasta. Joann and I had thrown all the stuff that Adrian had set out into my van, an easy task since none of it was packed and we could just stuff it anywhere we wanted and fit it in here and there and we all packed in for the ride.

Brian Sarvis is 44, but a few weeks older than me (the old guy). He is a psychologist, with a doctorate in something. Currently Dr. Sarvis works for Modesto City Schools and is the Director of Curriculum and Testing, or something equally impressive and nondescript. Brian runs a little bit, but doesn’t really like to run, I think he has done a marathon, but he does some kind of jazzercise aerobic workout at a health club. He is the most positive and happy person I've ever met and the one I expect to keep up the spirits on the trip. Brian is along because he can keep us going when things get tough. The good doctor is the only administrator in the Modesto City Schools that has kept their job in the last couple of head slashing that have happened in the last couple of years. I think it is because no one can quite figure out what he does so they don’t quite know if he is doing a good job or not or if he can be replaced or not. Brian keeps it that way.

At Brian’s house he greeted us with "down boys, down!" as his rotwilers and a German Shepherd acknowledged our intrusion on their turf with sniffs and implied, if not gutturally uttered, snarls and growls. My mini van now full to beyond overflowing was unloaded into Brian's monster van and our stuff filled it nicely with Brian’s neatly packed labeled, inventoried, cataloged and indexed goods already loaded. By six thirty in the evening we were a merry band of five heading for the hill, Mt. Shasta, discussing everything except the climb and the challenge ahead. Five and a half hours of time to kill while we drove north along I-5.

It seemed like we rolled into the parking lot of Bunny Flat (a parking lot at the end of the plowed road on Mt. Shasta), about 12:00am. It was an incredibly clear night as I stepped out of the van. The stars absolutely filled the clear Northern California sky at this 6,500 foot snow filled parking lot with enough light to almost read by. Brian said “Wow, there it is!” and I looked to where he was staring. There was nothing there, only stars and nothing. Staring longer, I realized that the nothing blocking out the stars was the silhouetted mountain. No details were visible, only the mass of this giant rock standing alone right in front of me: Black nothing. Tomorrow we will be looking back at this parking lot from our base camp somewhere up there, and the next day we will look back from where the stars meet the black of the nothing in front of me, at the summit.

About then I realized that everything was covered with snow or ice and the temperature was about 15 degrees; far too cold to stand around with thin cotton socks, one layer of thin polypropylene and a gortex wind shell. I was freezing and I hoped it wasn’t a prediction of things to come. Within 30 minutes of arrival the four of us were snuggled down and sleeping inside the van. Adrian, in true adventurer’s spirit bivouacked outside to see if he brought the right stuff. I was pretty toasty inside my bag inside the van with four other people and so I slept pretty well, so I brought the right stuff for sleeping in a van.

By 6:30 a.m. after about 6 hours of sleep, we were all dressed and looking at the detail in the hill (mountain) in front of us. With little fresh food eaten from bags of prepackaged food stuff, we drove back down the hill to a bakery shop to get some real food and get some climbing equipment from a rental store to round out our bellies and our gear. At the rangers station we filled out the wilderness permit and noted that we would be alone on the mountain for the weekend: everyone else had cleared off for New Year’s Holiday. I guessed it would just be less crowed for the climb. With pastries in our stomachs, newly rented snowshoes, crampon, and climbing permits in hand, we cruised back up the hill back to Bunny Flat. On the way up the road we even picked up a hitchhiker who was riding his snow board from the Bunny Flat parking lot down the mountain to the road below, a distance of three miles or so. (That is a whole other story of close encounters between the longhaired 20-year-old hitchhiker and the gray haired 40+ year olds about to climb Mt. Shasta to watch the New Year arrive). The Bunny Flat parking lot was hopping now with the lot three quarters full of tubers (not potatoes) and cross-country skiers. The sun was high, the sky clear, and the temperature in the mid 30s. Ice was turning to slush.

Beside the van we spread out two tarps and dumped out all our stuff to see what we had arrived with from home with to see what we needed to leave behind in the van. By 11:30am, we had packs packed, hooked on crampons and ice axes secured in non-lethal reposes, and had snowshoes fastened to booted feet. Off we trekked with snowshoes.

The beginning was slow with all the strange snow gear, multiple layers of polypropylene and gortex, fifty+ pound packs and an almost complete lack of knowledge of how to use the snow shoes (at least by Tom, Joann, Brian and I). Most of the first hour was spent adjusting clothing and snowshoes, including stripping off or adding layers of clothes as we moved in or out of the sun, adjusting straps on the packs, and fixing the snow shoes which seemed to secure to each of the 10 feet in the group differently.

By 1:30 in the afternoon, we were at the limits of the x-country skier who venture up the hill along with us. Our group had also reached the tree line at about 7,500 feet. The tree line is where the avalanches stop. The day was still bright and sunny, absolutely clear and beautiful. The mountain was awesome in front of us. The names I had studied on the topo map were real and rising above me. Casaval Ridge: a dark rocky outcropping standing like towers on a castle, above the snow, too steep for snow to stick to, all pointing towards the summit. The Heart: a large red wedge of rock that marked the end of the Casaval Ridge. The Red Banks: the edge of the snow, which lead the way to the upper slopes, a vertical wall of red volcanic rock that we were going to climb over tomorrow. This feature defined the upper end of Avalanche Gulch. The Thumb: standing higher than Red Banks, with it’s a dark spire of rock at the end of the East Ridge that defined Avalanche Gulch. And here we were on snow shoes, about to enter the famous Avalanche Gulch, an inverted “U” a mile and a half wide and more than 6,500 vertical feet high from the tree line to the Red Banks. Snow builds up here and avalanches down to the trees below. Pretty cool. (What the maps don’t show, but climber’s guides describe, is a moraine in the gulch that shunt the avalanches to one side and this “safe side” is called Climber’s Gulch. We opted to move along this side, the one along Casaval Ridge, and the Western side of the gulch where the avalanches’ don’t usually come).

At the tree line the route up steepened like a parabolic curve: the farther we hiked, the steeper the hill became. The snowshoes that had large crampon embedded in them. The person breaking trail was sinking in six to eight inches through the crust and spilling more snow on the snowshoe which had to be picked up with each step. Each step required lifting a one and a half pound boot (now closer to two pounds with snow, ice and water soaked in), a two pound snow shoe, and about two pounds of snow on top of the snowshoe, all lifted up 6 to 8 inches out of the hole, swing it forward, then dropped back down again through the crust of snow. It wasn’t a cakewalk for the one breaking trail. Going up the slopes was kind of remarkable for me, the novice snow shoer. No matter how steep the route was the snowshoes didn’t slip back because of the crampons or ice spikes on the bottoms. The strangeness of this activity, traveling up a hill that seemed to too steep to walk up, brought muscles never before known into action. Killer pain began in places I didn’t know had pain sensors. No one complained so I stayed quiet about my personal misery. I knew that every one had gone to the point I was.

We crested the only “flat” spot on the mountain as the sun was setting behind the clouds that were bring the storm we had heard about in town. Our night’s resting place was called Helen Lake on the map. The “lake”, which wasn’t to be seen because of 20 feet of snow, couldn't have been much bigger than a swimming pool because that was about how big the “flat” spot was. Stuck directly in the middle of Avalanche Gulch, out of Climber Gulch, about a half a mile above the tree line, under god knows how much snow; Helen Lake really didn't fulfill my expectations of an idyllic lakes side campsite. A little slip from above and there was a literal mountain of snow to drop down and wash us two thousand feet into the trees beneath us in a tsunami of an avalanche. The only campsite was dead center in the path of the main avalanche chute. But the view was great.

As the temperature dropped from the balmy 40 degrees of midday to the 20's of the early evening, we excavated a camping pit. This camping pit is a hole as deep as can be dug in the waning light to be filled with the tents and a cooking area protected from the wind and incoming storm. When the hole in the snow was dug and tents were set up using ice axes, ski poles, and snow shovels as stakes, we fired up the stoves and had a hearty meal of broccoli and cheese sauce over Top Ramen with instant chicken soup. Yum! The sun was long gone by this time dinner was underway and the clouds had replaced the stars in the previously blue clear sky. The temperature was soon in the teens and dropping as the breeze was beginning to blow into a regular wind dropping the wind chill to something outrageously low. The stars also disappeared replaced by the clouds and snow that fell from them.

The time for bed was approaching with dinner out of the way. My self-inflating Thema- Rest sleeping pad had frozen and would not inflate: frozen spit inside the pad bummer! I put the pad inside my sleeping bag and laid on it for about an hour before it thawed enough to inflate somewhat. Inside the tent it was “warm” (no wind and in the mid twenties). When it started to snow right after getting the therma rest inflated, Brian and I discovered that the rain fly was being pushed against the tent and thus not allowing the moisture to escape from the tent. Moisture from our breath in the tiny tent condensed on the top of the tent and either froze or ran down the tent. Along the sides of the tent along the floor there were ice puddles. Icicles were hanging from the ceiling that had now pulled down to nearly touching my bag and my face. Because of my body heat, my sleeping bag was soaking wet on the outside from the moisture that could not escape because the wet tent was touching my bag. There was one place where there was not wetness but the wetness had frozen and that was around my feet. My feet did not produce enough heat so moisture formed a sheet of water around my feet and froze a solid sheet around them. I got up with frozen socks, got dressed and fixed the tent while Brian slept (or pretended to sleep, bastard, he was as wet as I was and had icicles hitting him in his face. I knocked the icicles down on him when I got back in making sure they got into his sleeping bag. ). With the snow falling, the temperature outside had kind of gone up to about 25 degrees or so, but the wind made it seems colder. After finishing the repairs on the tent, I gathered all my clothes I planned to wear to the summit and put them inside my sleeping bag to trap air, absorb moisture and provide more insulation since my bag was now frozen in a block of ice and not much of an insulator. I actually slept well, and warmly, the rest of the night.

Late, after the sun should have come up, Saturday, we got up, ate oatmeal and other caloric snacks, and, of course, repacked for the assent (everyday needs a repack for something). The snow had stopped, but the clouds were still drifting at all levels over, under, and around the mountain. With full bellies and light packs we trekked off about mid morning, on snowshoes, up the hill headed for the summit at a leisurely pace. It soon became obvious that what we had thought was steep yesterday was normal now and what was steep now, was REALLY steep. Now the snow shoes would slip or churn up the snow without making progress. By 12:00 noon the snow started to fall lightly. Eventually we were making so little progress with the snowshoes that we left them by one of the few exposed rocks on the face so we could find them on the way down. Our group continued on, “post-holing” up the hill. “Post holing” is stomping into the snow and making a hole big enough to put a leg down to firm footing, the next person lifts up their foot and breaks down the sides of the hole a bit and steps in the hole compressing it a bit. Each step went in up to the mid calf or deeper and it seemed to toke forever to pull the foot out swing it forward and punch it down to solid footing. The top of the Red Banks didn’t seem to get any closer despite the huge expenditure of effort. By about 3:00 in the afternoon, we were not so much stepping as kicking steps on the snow wall heading to the Red Banks cliffs. A constant rhythm was set up: breath in, kick, kick, kick, step up and breath out, rest a breath, then start over again with the routine. Machine like movements with no regard to the energy or the top of the mountain. This was the routine for hours, kick, kick, kick, step up breath out and rest a breath, … Nothing got closer or further away it just was there in front of us and we did what we did for hour after hour.

Adrian kept saying that we would just “go through” the Red Banks and reach the upper ridge. From the bottom, the base camp, the place where we left the snow shoes, and most of the afternoon, the Red Banks looked like a solid continuous vertical wall of red volcanic rock with no way through, just up and over requiring some good rock climbing abilities. Finally, there it was, an ice shoot through the cliffs. The shoot was about 10 feet wide, with cliffs about 30 feet high on each side and sloping up about 100 yards at an angle I couldn’t believe a human could stick to. I thought we were going to put on crampon, but again Adrian said we could just kick steps and scramble up the shoot . He was right. At the top of the shoot was another few hundred feet of climb to reach the next ridge. The Thumb ridge fell off from the Red Banks cliffs and on down the mountain forming the side of Avalanche Gulch and our camp site 2000 feet below. Higher up behind Red Banks the ridge ran up to the next objective on the mountain. On the Thumb ridge there was a steep slope we had just ascended, but on the other side it fell vertically into the clouds a few thousand feet straight and vertical below. It was now about 4:30pm and getting dark, the was wind rising, the snow was falling faster, and the bottoms of the clouds were kissing the mountain where we were making it foggy and here we were, exhausted with a slippery slope on one side and a sheer death vertical cliff on the other.

Joann and Tom were at their limit (so was I, but I didn’t want to bring it up). We decided that they would go back and the whole group would descend to the bottom of the Red Banks shoot where we could see camp almost 5000 feet beyond us. At that point we would see if we felt like climbing back up and making the summit by midnight on the East Coast (The original plan was to sit on the summit as the New Year came in, but we were constantly modifying the plan as conditions dictated). When we descended the Red Banks shoot with Joann and Tom, Brian, Adrian and I decided we would give it a shot and we scrambled back down to the base of the ice shoot then back up the shoot to the thumb’s ridge again. Shit climbing back up that shoot was not easy after all those people had scrubbed all the snow off the ice on the rocks. It was very tough to get up to the top the second time. The combination of snow, fog, and dark made looking down the cliff on the other side of the mountain impossible which was all right by me, since I really don’t care for heights. It also made finding that cliff a bit difficult so falling off the cliff a bit easy. Adrian stressed the importance of moving in straight compass lines along ridge lines and memorizing approximate distances between changes of direction. Right!!! I was so wasted of energy and fogged by altitude I couldn’t tie my shoe. Memorize shit in the fog and dark and snow and so tired and when did I eat last? Who brought a compass? What are you talking about Adrian? How can anyone remember their name? Where are you leading us in this fog, dark, and snow?

About 6:00pm, three quarters of the way up the last push called Misery

Hill, Brian discovered the NiCad batteries he tried to charge with his solar charger, wouldn’t fit in his light and we stopped to conference. Misery Hill leads to the crater, which is just a 3/4-mile from the flat plain. On the other side of the plain are two piles of rock. One is about 250 feet high and the other is about 300 feet high and is the summit. All navigation would have to be done with compass, straight line walking and Adrian's memory (he’s been up this thing 5 times). Clouds had moved in making it a complete “white out”, “fogged out” except it was totally dark because the clouds above the fog were dumping snow and blocking out any starlight making it totally dark too. The wind was now blowing about 15 miles per hour in the dark fog and our tracks we had just made were nearly invisible just seconds after we had just made them. There was no way we would find our way back by following our footprints in the snow: they were long since blown clean. The temperature was in the low teens and seemed to be dropping. Besides that, I was tired and wanted to go home (but I didn’t tell anyone that). I didn’t know if I could keep going for another hour and a half it might take to cross the plain and make the summit, AND THEN turn around and try to go back down. Most deaths in mountain climbing happen coming down. We voted: three for going back and none to go on. About 400 vertical feet from the summit, 13,900 feet up, in the dark, fog, snow, dark and wind with two barely working head lights, we turned around and started to find our way down. Wrong turns are vertical drops of thousands of feet or trails to nowhere. We have to find a ten foot gap in a piece of red volcanic rock or we have to do some fancy rock climbing.

The trail we made in the snow along the Thumb's ridge on our way up became harder and harder to detect and there was no other visible land marks in the nighttime “white-out” conditions. Adrian kept checking the compass and leading and I kept thinking about the precipitousness of the north face of the thumb’s ridge. We had been standing near the edge of the face looking into the clouds below, so our track went right next to edge. About all we could see now were a few traces of tracks ahead filling with blowing snow. If Adrian screwed up a bit in his navigation or tracking it would be unforgiving. Fortunately going down got us out of the worst of the fog so visibility in the dark was only limited by the snow and the light put out by the two waning head lamps. We avoided the cliff and eventually located the ice shoot in the Red Banks. The shoot looked differently from above in the dark with more new snow.

The shoot had now been used twice going up and once going down so most of the “good” snow was gone and the base of ice was what was left. Adrian got down no problem. I started out ok, but was so physically exhausted I slipped and slid down the shoot. (Earlier in the day Adrian dropped a Hostess Fruit pie he was about to open and eat. I thought it wouldn't stop until it hit the tree line 2000 ft beyond, but it slid for a ways and did “just stop”. Adrian said, "Now look, that pie fell and slid down the hill and stopped. You are certainly smarter than a fruit pie, so if you slip and fall remember you'll probably just stop too even if I don’t do anything. You are at least as smart as a fruit pie.") I had just turned over to stop myself with my ice ax as I had practiced when I just stopped. I remembered that fruit pie and thought, “Yea, I am at least as smart as a fruit pie.” Brian followed me down with a much more controlled slide, but he found one of my crampons in the snow which had been tied to the bottom of my backpack. The other one seemed to be missing. I didn’t really care. I looked up the shoot, didn’t see it and said, “Oh well, too bad about the crampon.” Adrian, however, wouldn’t have a lost piece of equipment and he dropped his pack and climbed back up the shoot, now glistening with polished ice. He went all along the thumb’s ridge to look for the wayward crampon, but didn’t find it because it was still tied to my pack and Brian hadn’t noticed it. Oh, well. Sorry about that Adrian.

Most of the rest of the trip down to the base camp was a combination of post holing to the snow shoes, then slipping and falling through the constant falling snow in the absolute dark towards the tents tucked in a hole somewhere on this side of the mountain. The tracks of the snow shoes were gone as far as I could tell and the head lamps didn't illuminate any significant landmarks. If we missed the tents on our walk down, it would be a tired walk back up to find them or an all night walk down to the van parked in the parking lot and the keys were in the tent.

We arrived at the tents, thank God, to find Joann and Tom in one of the tents and the other tent, my tent, flattened from the snow that fell throughout the day. While I rebuilt the tent, Adrian cooked some Top Ramen and made tea. Brian helped with both activities and by 10:00 P.M., I was crawling into my still frozen sleeping bag (I mean frozen, like hard and cold frozen, not just frozen like a little cold). The tent also had four inches of ice in it built up along each edge. It snowed all night. The condensation inside the tent just added itself to last night’s layer of ice on the inside of the tent. I slept well because I was so tired and the cold of the bag was lessened by all my clothes inside the bag, so they wouldn't freeze. (I was also dehydrated which was actually a blessing: getting up in the middle of the night when it is snowing, windy, and cold outside to go to the bathroom is a very major thing to do if you do not want to die. You need several layers of polypropylene, wind pants and top wind shell, hat, boots that are frozen, mittens, wind shells over mittens AND this all has to be put on in a tent that is barely big enough to sit up in just to go outside and pee. The first night I seriously debated but just addi to the ice puddles along the inside tent wall. People get up to dust the dew from their lily and end up hypothermic and die before they get back to the tent.)

Sunday morning about 7:00am with the snow still coming down, Adrian said lets get out of here! We all agreed. How deep can the snow in Avalanche Gulch get before it lets lose. No breakfast except cookies, and trail snacks. My frozen sleeping bag went into the bag. The tent with ice pools along the walls and the icicles hanging from the ceiling was stuffed into the bag as is. Clean clothes, dirty clothes, pots, and pans everything was thrown in like we were packing to escape with the Barbarians banging on the door. Every time something went into the back pack, so did snow that was still falling. By 8:45am we said good bye to our lake side campsite and we set off down the hill. Even though it snowed a lot, the snow was like little pellets not like flakes, it did not seem to be build up much. These pellets blew around and filled in holes or drifted up on ridges. The depth was about the same going out as it was coming in. By 12:30 we were in Jerry’s restaurant in the town of Shasta, ordering real food and drinking real coffee. I know that we were there but what went on? That is the real question. It was a savage trip. There was an avalanche after we left. Three weeks later we were in Chile ready to