Yorkshire Ramblings In California
by S. A. Goulden
It would be difficult to make a story out of my exploits in the climbing arena since I came out here. What with the weather (too hot in summer and too much wet snow in winter) and the distance (300 miles to Yosemite) the urge to climb seemed finally dead. We family-toured Yosemite Valley and the few roads that cross the High Sierra, taking the well engineered tourist trails to suitable vantage spots. But these were usually hot and dusty. Crowded Yosemite is a myth that any veteran of recent years in the Lake District will put into perspective. Thousands visit, but the place is so massive and intimidating that the vast majority daredn’t leave their cars, let alone the camp-sites. The scale literally swallows them. The recent attempt by an entertainments conglomerate to take over the park service agency puts the mental approach in context : it is like some massive film set. The cliffs are too high to appreciate, the moods too varied to assimilate and the whole thing very smooth. You will correctly infer that for all its fame, it doesn’t appeal to this alien. So we take visitors there and that’s been about it.
But the Sierra Nevada is not Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada is not the whole of mountaineering in California. When the family returned to England last year for a transfusion of European heritage, time seemed to hand, and my boots looked as though they needed some exercise. Yearning for something I could recognise, an assault on the Matterhorn was planned. As with all good European things, America has to have one of its own, and the Matterhorn is no exception. Just for once, the New World has the smaller of the two, and it makes a hard weekend trip, with 600 ft. of steep snow and rock. Situated on the north east end of the Sierra, it involved a long drive but once planned there was no stopping.
We arrived at the foot of the trail at 1 a.m. The trail starts at 7,000 ft. and the temperature was 30 °F. sometime in July at the same latitude as Sicily! We slept in the car and started out bright and early with our heavy packs, heavy because we didn’t know what to expect.
After several well-graded alpine-type hairpins we got off trail into ten foot high bushes. That’s what happens when you try to be clever. We eventually found the trail again where it entered a gradually sloping hanging valley that rose from 7,800 ft. to about 8,000 ft. in two to three miles. At 8,000 ft. the snow started, soft and slippery. Remember that the sun is hot in California, and we had had a short fitful night. Remember I hadn’t climbed for well-nigh twelve months. Remember that we’re carrying climbing gear (for the rocks), ice gear (for the glacier) and winter camping gear (‘cos we didn’t know better). Forgive me for packing in at 9,000 ft. in a beckoning little coppice of pine trees and going to sleep for about two hours. Nature has its ways.
After a brief meal it was 2.30 and we both felt we ought to move upwards, although we lacked conviction. A ridge of loose glacier moraine looked more inviting than the snow, and more in the desired direction, so we struggled on. At about 9,500 ft., round a corner in some dwarf juniper, we found a beautiful little glacier melt pool. It was too pleasant to leave so we made an early camp, and played in the snow and on the small cliffs around. For the first time we could see the Matterhorn Peak, right at the head of the glacier. As the sun set, the peak was lit with an orange glow that made it stand out from the surrounding jagged peaks. We were committed to getting up, even if it took all day.
We started out at 6.00, travelling light. The snow had frozen to be ideally kickable and the first thousand feet up the glacier were ideal, even if they did take two hours. The sun came up into a cloudless sky but we kept in the shadow until the final snowfield below the peak, where we had no choice. By the time we were halfway across, the snow was so soft as to offer no support until we were almost sitting on it. It took a long time to reach the north-east couloir, our chosen route. The snow there was soft also, but one learns to swim up hill in wet snow, and it was easier than on the more horizontal snowfield below. We didn’t rope up until about half-way up the three to four hundred ft. glacier, when my partner lost about a hundred feet in a minor slab avalanche. After that we moved one at a time on the rope, not for protection but to give an excuse for a rest and to ensure our hard-earned gains against gravity.
Finally we gained the ridge, and good rock led to the top and lunch. It was twelve noon.
The view from the top was typical of the Sierra Nevada. Rolling hills out to the west, jagged cliffs and edges to the east. The rock changes colour every few miles, first red, then white, later black. It is easy to walk the Sierra Crest by keeping west of the hard stuff. The eastern aretes offer some very hairy prospects.
At one o’clock we started down, taking the tourist couloir. After 200 ft. of rock we were on the snow again, and had that delightful experience of tobogganing virtually the whole of the 2,500 ft. to the campsite on our backsides. We were back in camp at two, cooked a rapid meal and shouldered our packs for the descent at three. Authentic glissades down to 8,000 ft. made short work of the snow at the price of a few tumbles, and we were back at the car by 4.30. Twelve hours to get up and two and a half to get down! Such is the power of gravity.
That trip was nearly a year ago, and the family leave for England in June, so I’m thinking again.
Of course there have been other happenings. The San Francisco Bay area has many rock outcrops for playing on, but nothing like Almscliff or Ilkley. Since my son joined his school climbing club most of these have been visited but only the Pinnacles is worth talking about. Half of an ancient volcano on the famed San Andreas Fault and about 150 miles south of San Francisco, the Pinnacles National Monument is moving north at about two inches per year. The pinnacles are the old volcanic plugs left where the softer lava has been worn away and vary from twenty to five hundred feet of exposed rock. The rock is mostly very granular, like Cairngorm or Arran granite, and it weathers in a most peculiar way. In the gullies, the rain leaches out all the solubles, leaving a very crumbly rock that offers no protection and little pleasure. On the faces the sun is the major force, vitrifying the rock so that it becomes incredibly tough. As most of the routes start in the gullies and then move onto these steep granular faces where most of the holds are pebbles or friction, the mental transition is frightening—as they say out here, it blows your mind. After two days we had the measure of the place and we were beginning to enjoy ourselves. Not so the others from the school club, who went to explore some igneous caves.
Here, as in many things, the Americans seem to specialise. They are either smooth-rock climbers, or friction climbers, or crack climbers. If it doesn’t suit, they pack up and go home. The general mountaineer doesn’t seem to exist out here. Hopefully, we can alter things somewhat, at least in the school district.
The snow in the Sierra improves for climbing as its quantity declines, and after the summer we are planning a number of trips. Come the winter, we intend to join the cross-country ski bandwagon. It could be fun. Feels like something is waking up again.