“The most crucial 150 feet of my life,” I thought as I stood
shivering in the snow. For the past six hours of that fateful November 10, 1973
day, I had waded through drifts up steep switchbacks below the peak. Now,
standing on a small bare patch of soil protected by a dozen large pines, I
scanned the outline of the snow-choked trail as it rose steeply over a crest.
Beyond the crest was Yosemite Valley, 20 downhill miles
to the south. For seven days I had back-packed over mountainous trails, many
like this one, always managing to stay one step ahead of the deep snow.
But now?
This was the most crucial distance. The final 50 yards. The
chilling wind, my snow-soaked clothes and numbed hands were forgotten. With all
my remaining strength, I began wading up the drifted trail. Twenty steps
brought knee-deep snow; each successive step was worse. Leaning forward, hands
pawing uselessly, I crawled through the snow as it drifted around my waist. But
it was no use. I could go no farther.
The long day’s bout with snow and wind had taken its toll.
Defeated, I waded back to the shelter of the pine grove. With hands that had no
sensation, I clumsily tied my nylon pup tent between two trees, staked down the
sides, threw my sleeping bag, food bag, mess kit, matches and note-books into
the tent, and myself with them. My body was deeply chilled; I shook
uncontrollably from head to foot as I slowly stripped off wet jeans and
long-johns. My mind was numb. There were no thoughts of the magnitude of my
predicament, or of home or death; only of the freezing cold and my savior—my
down sleeping bag. But as I reached in the stuff sack, my heart sank: the bag
was soaked! The night before, a steady drizzle had infiltrated my tent and
seeped into the bottom of the bag. My spare clothes also were soaked. I hadn’t
taken the time to dry anything. Now, lying cold and nude in the half-wet bag,
with darkness falling and the wind beginning to howl from the mountaintops I
started to cry. My fight to survive the snow and cold and find civilization in
the Sierra Nevada had begun.
FROM SATURDAY NIGHT to Monday’s dawn, as a blizzard raged, I
reflected on the past month. I had taken a fall vacation from my University of
Minnesota studies to try backpacking and see some of the country. The week I’d
spent in Yosemite National Park had been my first extensive backpacking. Now,
beginning my second week, totally unprepared for snow and freezing temperature,
I chided myself for being such a greenhorn.
By Monday morning three feet of fresh snow, blown by roaring
winds, had piled up against the tent, pressing in upon me like an icy iron
maiden. Initially I had tapped the inside of the tent to knock off the snow,
but my fist soon met with a heavy thud. Now the tent was almost buried.
I put on my wet clothes again, crawled out into the tempest and
waded a trench around the tent. The dim morning light made the scene eerie and
unreal. The blue tent sagged like a squeezed marshmallow under the snow’s
weight. The bare ground of two days before was covered with swirling, flowing
mounds of silvery snow. And there was no sound, save for the wind as it sifted
over snow and through pine boughs.
A few hours later on that morning of November 12, I began writing
a diary in one of my notebooks. “The wind howls and blows snow over my tent as
I write this. I can only hope and pray (I’ve done a lot of both in the last 48
hours) that the storm will soon blow itself out, and I can make it back to
civilization on my own two feet, not on a stretcher or over a horse. With the
help of God, I’ll do all within my power to get out of this hellhole. I don’t
want to die.”
When the wind quieted down an hour later, I put on my wet clothes
and stepped out into the white stillness. Common sense told me to stay where I
was: to wait for rescue, build a fire, get warm. Common sense warned of the
futility and danger of retracing the 30 miles I had come, especially in three
feet of fresh snow. But fear overpowered common sense. I stuffed everything
into my pack and started wading.
It was nearly my last living mistake. I was much weaker than on
Saturday. During the last two days I’d eaten only a raw trout left over from
Friday and a bowl of granola. My stomach muscles ached.
I went 50 yards before hitting a drift up to my waist. I tried
pulling myself out, but the snow held me fast.
In the deathly silence a tiring but peaceful calm settled over me.
“It would be so easy,” I thought, “just to lie here and sleep.”
Flashes of death crossed my mind, first with vivid scenes of my
mother’s heartbroken sorrow; scenes of grief, tears, the funeral. Then with a
face-to-f ace confrontation with death. I realized that the past 20 years were
all in vain. Only the unknown lay ahead. It was the most frightening, awesome
vision I have ever had, enough to give me the strength to roll out of the drift
and wade back to my campsite among the pines. There I determinedly secured the
tent to four trees and began another phase of my ordeal—waiting for rescue.
I HAD NO REASON to be optimistic
I about search planes ever finding me. Because of my inexperience
I had not checked in with Yosemite Park headquarters, had not obtained a
wilderness permit and had not told any ranger about my trip. No one except my
mother knew where I was.
Nevertheless, I hoped for rescue. “Let me say what I hope and pray
happens, and what is really my only chance for rescue,” I wrote in my journal.
“Mom gets worried after she doesn’t hear from me by Thanksgiving (two weeks
away). She calls up park headquarters and asks whether they have any
information. Perhaps they’ll have found the food and clothes that I left in
storage locker 41, and she’ll verify that they’re mine, which will indicate
that I’m still in Yosemite somewhere. Maybe they’ll check the past weather
records and recall the big storm of November 10, and they’ll assume that I’m
either dead or snowbound. Either way they’ll send out search parties, most
likely by small plane, and scour the area. With a signal fire or an SOS in the
snow, they should find me. So I’ve got to hang on for a long month.”
Underneath this, I added a post-script: “Of course, I doubt things
will go exactly like that. The rangers might not discover the
locker, in which case they won’t even be sure I’m in the park and might not
search at all.”
I did my best during the next week to prepare for search planes.
After a pair of denims and a shirt had dried on Tuesday, I broke off all the
dry dead wood I could reach from the trees and put it in my backpack on a rise
20 yards away, along with some white gas fuel. Beside this I piled some large
dead boughs wrapped in my tarp. If any search planes did come, I’d be ready
with a quick signal fire. I also kept a small mirror handy to signal planes.
Monday and Tuesday were both sunny with a slight breeze. By
Tuesday evening, after two days on a makeshift clothesline, all my clothes and,
more importantly, the sleeping bag, had dried. And I made the crucially
important discovery of a creek, about 75 yards away. I had crossed the
foot-wide stream flowing off Tuolumne Peak on Saturday. On Tuesday I waded
back through thigh-deep drifts to look for it. There was hardly a trace in the
deep smooth snow, merely a single hole about three feet across, but I could
hear the beautiful sound of gurgling water. After three days of eating snow,
the sweet, icy liquid couldn’t have tasted better. From then on
I had a full canteen.
Knowing any rescue would probably be at least a month away, I
began rationing my two-week food supply. The inventory, as I recorded it in my
journal, consisted of: one-half bag (pint size) brown sugar, one-half bag
Malt-O’Meal, one-half bag instant rice, one-half bag instant potatoes,
one-third bag granola, 12 servings pancake mix, one serving instant eggs, one
quart instant milk, two instant breakfasts, three one-cup cocoa mixes, three
packets Lipton Instant Soup, four packets Lipton Cup-a-Soup, three packets
chili seasoning mix, one-half packet Spanish rice seasoning mix, three ounces
cooking oil, one packet freeze-dried chicken and rice, one-half Gerry tube of
peanut butter and jelly and seven tea bags.
I began limiting myself to one two-course meal daily. For the main
course, I had half a bowl of mixed granola, rice, instant cereal, instant potatoes
pancake batter, cooking oil and dried soup mixed with water. Along with this
paste I ate “snow salad”—brown sugar and snow. I was constantly, ravenously,
hungry, but the prospect of running out of food before getting rescued
reinforced my will power.
The worst hardship I encountered the first week, though, was
loneliness. I reread Thoreau’s Walden, then finished Mark Twain’s Huckleberry
Finn in two days. Walden’s reverence for nature and
simplicity seemed to befit my predicament. I wrote daily accounts of my
thoughts and plight in my journal; I played my harmonica; I sang Christmas
carols. But most of all, I reflected on my past. I began to realize the value
of life and how much I had taken for granted. A Wednesday, November 15, entry
in my journal reads: “All I really want is to get back home, back to school, to
see my friends and loved ones again, to live out my life. If I could only see
everyone again; I’d be more aware and loving, more appreciative.”
For the first time ever, I began believing in Christ. Maybe it was
only “pocket Providence,” pulled out under the stress of silence and thoughts
of death. But at the time it was sincere. It grew into a faith that kept me
going when I thought I lacked the physical strength to continue.
As my mind cleared during the week, my hopes for rescue grew
dimmer. By Thursday evening I was in a mental dilemma. I wouldn’t admit that my
chance of rescue was almost nonexistent, for I needed that hope to keep my
spirits up. It had spurred me through the first four days, sustaining my will
to live. But on Thursday evening it received a deathblow. As I lay looking at a
park brochure and map, I read, “This is Yosemite National Park, a
1189-square-mile scenic wonderland of sculptured peaks and domes...” With that
much territory to cover and not knowing where to begin looking, the National
Park Service would never find me, even with a signal fire.
I PINPOINTED MY location on the I sketchy map, just
north of Tuolumne Peak, and then it occurred to me that I might be able to walk
out on my own. To the east and stretching north–south was a large valley with a
creek. Even though the creek flowed north into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne
River, I figured it had to cut a natural pass through the mountains to the
south and might even intercept May Lake and Tioga Road, which were seven miles
due south of Tuolumne Peak and my campsite.
I had seen the valley every day, a wide one with a dense pine
forest and small mountains sprinkled throughout. No longer content with
waiting, and with the snow more compact, I planned my escape for the first
weather-permitting day.
Friday and Saturday brought an-other storm, though nothing like
the blizzard a week earlier. Sunday held hurricane-like winds. When Monday
dawned clear, windless and warm, I packed my gear and started toward the
valley. I was exchanging security for the unknown. Although frightened, I felt
strength and pride for assuming the burden of my rescue. It was no longer up to
my family or the rangers; it was up to me and the Grace of God to make it back
alive.
During the week from Monday, November 19, to Sunday, November 25, I hiked
south, using a compass and common sense as guides. My hypothesis that the
valley creek world cut a natural pass through the mountains to the south proved
to be correct. Except for two days when I rested, I followed the creek south,
passing through dense conifer forest. The hiking was slow and treacherous. Not
only did my progressing weakness force me to take four or five breaths with
each step, but I had to avoid streams, rocks and trees obscured beneath the
snow. At first the streams were nearly impossible to spot ahead of time; I’d
suddenly sink up to my crotch and feel my boots fill with icy water. After this
had happened twice, I began to recognize warning signs—a barely perceptible
crease in the snow, a soft swish of flowing water. I also improved at detecting
boulders and young pines by the slight mounds they made in the snow. Sometimes,
however, they were unavoidable. I’d step gingerly on a half-inch mound only to
go crashing down on a buried tree that had formed an air pocket under the snow.
I learned a few other important tactics by experience, such as
erecting my tent in a position for the morning sun to warm it quickly and thaw
out, my boots early enough for me to get in a full day’s hiking. I learned to
wear wool socks on both hands and feet while hiking; only wool kept them warm,
even when wet, and saved them from frostbite. I learned to wrap my two-quart
aluminum canteen in spare clothes at night, preventing it from becoming a
two-quart ice cube by morning. And I learned how to withstand intense pain.
Both heels developed blisters the size of a quarter from the unnatural motion
of walking in deep snow. At night when I was drying and thawing my cold, clammy
feet, my heels would ache for 15 minutes, badly enough to bring tears. It
became a ritual to sing Christmas carols or play my harmonica at this time to
take my mind off the stabbing pain.
I HAD MY SHARE of frightening and frustrating
experiences. On the first day, just 150 yards below my campsite, I came to a
sheer 15-foot drop-off. The only way off the ridge was down the smooth, almost
90-degree face of a huge boulder. I sat down and gingerly pushed myself
feet-first toward the snow below. Not reckoning the influence my pack would
have, I belly-flopped, miring myself up to the waist. My glasses were gone, but
no bones were broken. I quickly scanned the snow, sighing in relief when I
spotted my wire-rimmed glasses lying a few feet away. With my 20-200 vision,
lost glasses would have been disastrous.
Weighed down by the pack, I discovered I could not walk through
the deep snow at the foot of the slope. So I slipped off the pack, unrolled my
Ensolite sleeping pad, cut four holes in it and lashed my pack onto it. The
makeshift sled pulled with ease, enabling me to wade through a half-mile of
snow before the drifts lessened and I could resume hiking normally.
The most frustrating experience occurred late Friday afternoon.
After spending all day hiking up a steep incline paralleling the creek, I was
able to look to the south and east, in the direction of Yosemite Valley. The
sight was discouraging—a solid wave of Sierra mountain range lay across the
horizon as far as I could see. As I stood on the ridge, weary and depressed, a
low droning sound gradually drifted nearer. I looked up eagerly and spotted a
speck in the distance. A small plane was heading directly for me, flying low. I
pulled out my mirror and frantically tried to flash to the plane in the dimming
light. I waved my arms and yelled, “Hey I’m here, I’m here! Stop, please stop!”
But the plane kept going.
By Sunday the creek had dwindled to almost nothing, an important
sign that I was nearing the summit of the gradual rise I’d been climbing for
three days. After one last knoll, I found myself on an expansive, open ridge
which offered a good view to both the southeast and southwest. Jagged peaks
were everywhere. To the southwest, however, a pine forest sliced between the
mountains. If there was any way through the mountains to Tioga Road and May
Lake, it was via that forest. But three days of steady drift-wading on my
starvation diet had drained me physically. I pitched camp and rested the
remainder of Sunday and all day Monday, trying to decide what to do.
“NOW IS THE BIG debate, and my life hinges on my
decision,” I wrote in the journal. “Do I push south and hope I hit Tioga Road
and not another mountain range; or do I pitch camp here, where it is open, and
pray I’m rescued before I starve? I’m tempted to push on, but I’m getting
weaker. I might last for two weeks if I stay put, keep warm and eat a bare
essential every day. If I push on into the valley, I might become even more
lost and exhausted, and they’d never spot me in that forest. I don’t know what’s
beyond it. Maybe May Lake and Tioga Road. Maybe not.”
Tuesday, acting on the impulse of clear, snow-melting weather; I
decided to push on. It was the toughest hiking I’d encountered in eight days.
Dense pines dropped clumps of melting snow on me; dead logs, boulders and my
arch-enemies, hidden streams, were constant obstacles. Yet despite them, I was
in good spirits. I repeated the Lord’s Prayer, saying one word with each step.
I’d had uncanny good fortune, both physically and with the weather. There had
been no severe storms for 17 days, and now the temperature was above freezing.
But I hardly expected the beautiful sight I beheld in a clearing that
afternoon. Jutting from the snow were two rusty punch-letter trail signs. I
knelt in silent thanks as I read, “May Lake—3.7 miles, Yosemite Valley—14.5
miles.” It seemed as if God had heard my prayers, and answered them.
I followed trail markers blazed on trees for two hours, then set
up camp as dusk approached. It was the happiest night in 17 days. Before I had
been only hopeful; now I began to gain a wary confidence. I had enough food for
10 more days; still, the 13 miles to Yosemite Valley would take a long time to
walk with the progress I had been making. Yet I knew that once I found May Lake
I would find Snow Creek, which would eventually take me to Yosemite Valley. “If
this good weather holds out, I’ll be in the valley in three to four days,” I
wrote in my journal Wednesday morning. “Thank God. I kept faith when there
didn’t seem to be much hope. I’ve got a lot of promises to keep to the Lord
now, and I plan on doing it.”
Some of my promises were concise, like not smoking, lying or
eating meat. Others were closer to convictions than promises. I vowed never to
take anyone or anything for granted again. During the previous two weeks I had
thought much about people I knew and loved, almost to the point of being
unrealistic, as we do when dear friends have died. We tend to over-praise their
good traits, forget the bad and wish to God we had another chance to meet
again, just to say, “I love you.” It seemed I would be getting that second
chance.
Although I lost the trail 10 minutes after I started out Wednesday
morning, I wasn’t worried or upset. The descending valley had to pass May Lake,
and I’d be sure to see it. Skirting the forest’s edge, I happily discovered a
hard crust on the snow along the perimeter of the valley. I stayed on it most
of the day, making what I thought was good time and expecting to see May Lake
around every corner. I even made up a song entitled “Just Around the Corner,”
which I sang while I walked and marveled at the pristine, snow-covered valley
and mountains.
But as the sun dipped behind the mountains, I still hadn’t come to
May Lake. I was positive I couldn’t have missed it; it had to lie close ahead.
I pitched camp, confident that I would find it early the next day.
Ominous gray clouds were filling the sky when I packed up and
started hiking Thursday morning. A storm was heading my way. Half an hour
later, my song came true. As I rounded one last corner, the most beautiful and
anticipated object of 10 days of sweat, tumbles, blisters and tears—May
Lake—stretched away to the south, a quarter-mile of ice and open water. From my
high vantage point, I could see several drainage streams merging at the end of
the lake into a wide pine forest that converged on Snow Creek. The creek wound
southward to Yosemite Valley. There lay my final haul. Ten more miles.
Feeling more drained than usual, with stops every 10 steps, I
found Snow Creek and alongside it a wide alpine meadow. Slowly, methodically, I
trudged through the meadow’s knee-deep snow, eyes downcast. Gray clouds were
moving swiftly toward me from the south. “They’re hurrying to make life a
little harder,” I thought. “Ten miles, another blizzard and a week of food.
Who’s going to win?”
A movement ahead snapped me out of my reflections. For one or two
seconds, nothing registered. Then, for the first time in 26 days, I recognized
a human being, gliding along a hundred yards ahead.
I didn’t scream crazily at the cross-country skier. I yelled
loudly yet calmly, and at my same pace slowly made it to where the man stood
watching me. A “Speed Limit, 40” sign just to his left told me I had finally
found the closed Tioga Road.
“I’ve been stuck in the mountains for three weeks,” I said. “I
need some help.”
“You’ve been out there, like that,” he asked, scrutinizing my
snow-shoeless feet and sock-covered hands, “for three weeks?” He couldn’t
believe his eyes. Nor could I. In an instant all had changed, and I was in
touch with humanity and civilization again. Chuck Cochran handed me a fresh
orange, and I realized my ordeal was ending.
A summer Search and Rescue employee of Yosemite, Chuck was skiing
to Tuolumne Meadows to visit two young ranger friends. With the aid of Tom and
Carolyn, two more friends who were skiing an hour behind him, we made it to a
bathroom at the east end of Tanaya Lake by mid-afternoon. While Chuck and Tom
went on to the ranger station to radio park headquarters in Yosemite Valley,
Carolyn heated freeze-dried food and hot jello for me on their white-gas stove.
Later that afternoon Tom and one ranger returned and checked my hands and feet
for frostbite, thinking I might be an emergency case.
The ranger whistled when he saw the blisters on my heels. I
couldn’t feel anything in my feet, but the blisters, black and the size of
half-dollars, were ugly enough to make me wince. Yet no sign of frostbite
showed on my toes, and there was only a touch of black on the tips of four
fingers.
The next morning a helicopter flew in to pick me up, and I waved
goodbye to my rescuers. Ten minutes later I stepped onto a grassy field in
Yosemite Valley. What a contrast! Twenty days of deep snow, then 10 minutes
later, bare ground all around!
A gruff, gray-haired ranger drove me to Lewis Memorial Hospital.
Looking angry, he said nothing until we arrived there. Then, as nurses started
fussing over my blisters and skinny body, he told me what I already knew, that
I was a very lucky young man.
“Every spring we haul three or four people just like you out of
the mountains.” He didn’t have to go much further. He could see I’d learned the
lesson the hard way.
My body temperature had dropped two degrees; and at 145 pounds, my
six-foot frame was 40 pounds lighter than a month before. Amazingly, there were
no lasting injuries. I was all right except for the painful blisters.
Nearly everybody—nurses, family, reporters—marveled at my story
and my strength. But I take credit for only part of the survival: keeping a
clear, level head that enabled me to make the right decisions. For the rest, I
credit some other Force, one which some call Fortune and others call God.
