One Last Adventure: A Mountain Goat and Draft Horse Bedtime Story

 Mountain Goat was sad.

“Oh Draft Horse,” she sighed, sounding very much like Eeyore, “I have to leave the Great Snowy Mountains. On Monday ”.

“Where you going?” enquired Draft Horse, who was also feeling sad at losing a friend.

”Far, far away to the land of Tenny-see, to a lake in the woods where there are hummocky hills but no pointy peaks and no snowy summits”, she replied. “How I will miss the mountains!”

Draft Horse thought for a moment. How could she cheer up her friend?

“I know, how about a final adventure?”

“Oooh, how exciting!” Mountain Goat perked up immediately. “But where could we go?”

The winter has been deep and dark, and a thick mantle of snow still smothered the slopes, even though it was summer. Draft Horse HATED walking on the snow. It did not suit her hooves at all.

“Never fear, my friend, for I have a cunning plan,” Draft Horse assured her. “I know of a wriggly ridge leading to a super summit called Pyramid Peak,  and the best thing is that it faces the sunny south and so is SNOW FREE!!”

“I do so love cunning plans! Can I bring my canine companions, Aging Ace and Silly Tilly?” asked Mountain Goat.

Draft Horse considered this. She preferred feline friends to canine companions, and besides, Silly Tilly liked to lick, especially earlobes (even when Draft going squatty potty; that had not ended well). But she agreed because that’s what friends do.

Silly Tilly coming in for some earlobe licking

And so it was that the four of them set off one Sunday morning in late June, teeny tiny Mountain Goat tripping merrily along beside the plodding and ponderous Draft Horse. Aging Ace trotted along doggedly, and Silly Tilly cavorted in any patch of snow she could find for her great-great-grandparents hailed from the far northern Land of the Huskies. Draft Horse led them up a rocky ridge, below a black bluff and up a gravelly gully. 

Below the Black Bluff

Up the Gravelly Gully

Silly Tilly has found a patch of snow

Few ventured up this route while far below in the basin of lakes, which was mostly still frozen, they could see ant-like figures teeming along the ribbon of cleared road. How grand it was to be gallivanting again!

Still very snowy far below in the Lakes Basin with most lakes frozen or just thawing. Ansel Adams Wilderness behind

The Mountain Goat with her canine companions, Silly Tilly and Aging Ace 

At the top of the gully, they gained the broad top of the wriggly ridge and the way became easier. They sauntered along happily for a while, admiring the wildflowers and the vast vistas. Aging Ace and Silly Tilly romped and roamed while Draft Horse and Mountain Goat discussed the ways of the world. Silly Tilly tried to hide in some bushes but she wasn’t too experienced with camouflage. Mountain Goat had a couple of costume changes for a cool wind blew fitfully, coming and going.

The broad top of the Wriggly (aka Sherwin) Ridge

Penstemon

Some type of lupin-related wildflower

Silly Tilly is not too experienced in camouflage

But soon enough, a lofty obstacle loomed large. It was the Mammoth Nipple and it was right smack dab the in the middle of their route.

“Oh bother," exclaimed Mountain Goat, "Shall we go over it or shall we go around it?” 

The aptly named Mammoth Nipple, steeper than it looks! Luckily, we could avoid the snow by going to the right.

“Let’s go around it”, suggested Draft Horse, whose sturdy legs were starting to ache. So they teetered and tottered around the side on steep scree. Or rather, Draft Horse did. Mountain Goat danced and pranced gracefully in her usual way. Eventually, they rounded a corner and saw the great gulch of Solitude Canyon dropping away below them, and beyond, their first glimpse of Pyramid Peak.

Pyramid Peak, 11,500ft,  along the ridge to the left

Crossing the saddle above the canyon, Mountain Goat and Draft Horse spied cameras angled to capture the passage of wildlife. Surely they too were wildlife? They struck a pose (Draft Horse proposed a rude pose but Mountain Goat insisted on a silly one). They continued climbing along the wriggly ridge which at this point became a rocky wriggly ridge. The rambling became scrambling. Aging Ace was struggling to keep pace, and Draft Horse sympathized with him as she lumbered along over the bulging boulders. Their legs were not getting any younger!

The Mountain Goat and her canine companions skipping gracefully across the rocks with the Draft Horse lumbers along behind!

Yes, they are ahead once again. Approaching our lunch spot

Finally, enough was enough. The game group had not yet reached the tippy-top of Pyramid Peak, but they found a perfect perch on a point only a short distance below and sat down to savor some sustenance.

“Would you like some ripe, sweet, delicious, juicy cherries from a towering tree in the valley below, dear Mountain Goat?” asked Draft Horse.

Mmmm, cherries

The two friends feasted on this fine treat and chased it with some of Mountain Goat’s chocolate-coated coffee beans. Yum! Aging Ace lounged like a lizard in the sun while Silly Tilly sought shade. They all admired the view. It was a lovely lunch.

Draft Horse and Mountain Goat enjoy the high point

On the return, Mountain Goat proposed traversing the opposite side of the Mammoth Nipple to avoid the steep scree slopes, and Draft Horse agreed that this was indeed a fine idea. But they had forgotten that the opposite side was also…… the SNOWY SIDE….. until it was too late!!!  Draft Horse was obliged to ascend the slippery snow slope, much to her dismay. However, Mountain Goat helped by kicking steps and providing encouragement and the pair made it across safely while Silly Tilly gamboled in delight. Aging Ace thought the snow somewhat soothed his sore paws.

Oh no, SNOW!!

Further along the windswept ridge, they came across a curious rectangular pile of rocks upon which two old and weathered pieces of wood sat at right angles to each other. A short distance away was a deep depression in the ground.

Miner's grave

“I do believe that is a grave of the departed Miner”, opined Draft Horse, “and there is their mine”.

“What is a Miner?” enquired Mountain Goat.

“They were a tribe from the olden days,” replied Draft Horse. “They were loud and they were proud, they were rough, and they were tough. They were digging for gold but there was never enough. It was a hard life.”

Draft Horse and Mountain Goat gazed at the grave for a moment while the wind whistled mournfully.

“Rest in peace”, said Mountain Goat.

Down the gravelly gully, below the black bluff and down the rocky ridge they trudged wearily. The imminent departure of Mountain Goat weighed heavily on the pair, and even Silly Tilly was subdued. It had been a grand last adventure together, but it had been bittersweet and neither of them want to say farewell as they approach the end

Down the gravelly gully....

Taking a break on the descent

 **********************************************************************************

The following Friday, Draft Horse’s phone rang. It was Mountain Goat.

“Hello Mountain Goat, are you on your way to the land of Tenny-see?”

“Well, Draft Horse, there has been an itsy bitsy, teeny weeny delay. I’m still here for another couple of days. Do you want to go on a FINAL, final adventure?”

“I have a cunning plan. Let’s go gallivanting!” said Draft Horse. 

Here's to more gallivanting in the Great Snowy Mountains with my partner in crime!

Valley Autumn Oddball Odyssey once again - Indian Canyon

With the rivers of flaming aspens snaking ever further down the mountainsides and icy mornings in the high country, it was the season to turn to Yosemite Valley, where T-shirt weather still reigned. What to do there? Some online digging revealed a few scant references to Indian Canyon, which leads from the back of Yosemite Village to the valley rim some 3000 feet above, to the east of Yosemite Falls. It had once been the route that the Native Americans used to get to Tuolumne Meadows from the Valley, and in the 1860s, sported a toll route for horses and mules that switchbacked to its way to the top. But recent reports were nonexistent. It sounded like a perfect challenge for a Valley Autumn Oddball Odyssey.

Aspens at Convict Lake

Indian Canyon

Al and I set off at the crack of nine after cooking breakfast at the Church Bowl picnic area where the entertainment had been a helicopter med-evac in the meadow behind Yosemite Village. We hoped it was not a bad omen! The lower reaches of the canyon were unremarkable, but after a time, we spotted a thick telecommunications cable and what appeared to be a hint of trail. This turned out to be the phone cable from Yosemite Valley to Tuolumne Meadows, and the trail was for accessing the cable. When the canyon deepened, a series of ladders and cables lead up the cliff faces. This turned out to be the easy part. 

First ladder with handy cable

Coming up the second ladder

Further up, the trail petered out. From time to time, it looked like someone had gone before us. Or perhaps it was something? Copious piles of bear scat and several very large pawprints with claw marks pointed to the latter possibility. 

Just one of the many piles of bear scat we saw.

As the angle steepened, we scrambled up talus along the stream. For a while, it was quite pleasant. 

Pleasant scrambling

Canyon walls narrowing in

But then we hit the willows. There was no option but to bushwhack up third class terrain which was definitely not white-collar hiking! There may or may not have been some decidedly blue-collar language....

Al headed for some jungle warfare

Alistair suddenly let out a yelp. "What's the matter?". He turned to me, and pulled a couple of inches of sharp stick out of his nose. There were a couple of drops of blood. Then he pulled out a second only slightly smaller piece. There was a torrent of blood. I quickly handed him my trusty bandanna to staunch the flow. It soon became obvious that whatever damage the stick has inflicted up his poor schnoz was not about to quickly clot, so we fastened on the bandanna under the injury using the strap of his sunhat and kept going. 

Improvised first aid with a bandanna and sunhat strap. Good thing Al's wearing a red shirt with all that blood!

At times, we managed to escape the brush by scrabbling up steep and loose dirt slopes. Also definitely not white-collar hiking. It was difficult to know which option was better. Progress through the forest was slowed by the many dead trees that had fallen down in recent times. The effects of drought and the bark beetle infestation were stark. 

A few years back, this sort of terrain would have been easy to get through but now it's a maze of downed trees.

Alistair was constantly consulting his phone to report on progress, which was often painfully slow. "20% of the way" was not hugely encouraging when I was already feeling tired. The climb took considerably longer than the 3 hours we anticipated, and by the time we reached the lip of the canyon, it was about 1:30 PM. We were covered in dirt (and Alistair's case, blood), scratched up, and had hair and even underwear full of debris. Fortunately, there was a delightful lunch spot next to the stream where we could clean up and refill water. 

Lunch spot

Somewhat refreshed, and looking slightly less frightful, we cut cross country to intercept the trail from North Dome which seemed like a veritable superhighway after the canyon. I kept asking Al if he would prefer to detour across the downed trees or through the manzanita scrub. Strangely, he wasn't keen. 

Made it to the superhighway!

The trail headed over another hill and wound down along the rim to Yosemite Point. It had been years since we'd been up there, and the view did not disappoint. A climber lounged at the top of Lost Arrow Spire in the sun. We wondered whether he was about to set up the classic Tyrolean traverse back to the rim. Far below lay Yosemite Village and our car. The route was the Yosemite Falls trail which wound in endless switchbacks between immense granite walls. 

Half Dome and Glacier Point on the opposite side of the Valley

Looking west down the Valley

Climber on Lost Arrow Spire with switchbacks of the Yosemite Falls trail behind.

I had stupidly neglected to pack my hiking poles, so I took the descent approach of knocking back a handful of ibuprofen and skipping down as fast as possible to minimize the pain. A few hours later, after slogging down relentless switchbacks of sand-covered rocks, an ill-advised detour in search of a misremembered climbing route descent trail, and an utterly malicious mid-descent climb, we were all of a couple of final zigzags from the valley floor in the late afternoon with trembling legs and aching knees, some serious take-no-shit expressions on our faces. As a group of young people passed us on the way up, perhaps 5 minutes into their hike, we heard a lass exclaim plaintively, "I didn't know there would be so much up!"

Nooooo - not more uphill!!

Al descends one of approximately 10,000 rocky switchbacks. Ouch.

Looking back up at where we had come from - Yosemite Point top right. Only a trickle of water in Yosemite Falls.

Al and I were still chortling over a most excellent post-adventure nosh-up of pizza and beer at the Deck in Curry Village. Was a poke in the nose with a sharp stick better or worse than one in the eye? we wondered. Yosemite had delivered yet again.

A view of our route from the walk back to the car. Indian Canyon is the gully on the right, Yosemite Point is centre, and Yosemite Falls trail goes down the big diagonal ledges on the left. According to Strava, the total distance was 12 miles with over 6000ft elevation gain (which seems high but my legs are in agreement!)

Yesss!!!!

If you're going to do something stupid, be smart about it.

With the sickening graunch of granite on gravel, the dishwasher-sized block on which I had gingerly stepped, gave way and went crashing down the slope towards the glacier. I scrambled to find a solid foothold, heart pounding, but the whole slope seemed to be moving. Alistair glanced down from above and casually remarked " You shouldn't have stood on that". I spat out a tart response and felt the prick of hot tears. 

That was it. We were traversing the moraine above Palisade Glacier for far too long. It was bad ground turning to worse. Our immediate objective, Glacier Notch, was still a fair distance off up even less appealing terrain. And the climb proper didn't even start until above there. This was no place for a person of draft horse inclination and ability who found moving over the endless crazy jumble of boulders, unstable rocks, and loose scree at well over 12,000ft to be a tad taxing, to put it mildly. I had rushed directly from taking a beating on a white water paddling trip to backpacking into our base camp the day before, thinking, foolishly, that I could have my cake and eat it too (paddle some rapids AND climb a peak!) My sore body was having other ideas. I glanced back across the cirque, thinking that reversing my steps down and across the gnarl would be even worse. My fun tickets were well and truly used up.

Looking at the moraine traverse to Glacier Notch, the low point in the ridge in the centre. Mount Gayley is on the left and Mount Sill in the centre.

Palisade glacier below Polemonium Peak, Middle Palisade and Thunderbolt peaks

 "Guys, this is far enough for me!" I called to Wendy and Alistair  - above, as always. It has been like that the whole way across the moraine – a futile struggle to keep up mixed with the nagging suspicion that I was weighing down their ambitions, slowing their momentum like the old kids’ bike trailer I used to tow, the one that would make literal mountains out of molehills.

Alistair in his natural environment - way ahead as usual!

 As we regrouped at a slightly more stable position, Alistair dropped the bombshell. We had started too late, underestimating the complexity of the approach, and we were taking too long. There was no way for him and Wendy to safely climb the Swiss Arrete on Mount Sill, the route that was intended to be Wendy’s coveted first technical route on a 14,000ft peak, and to complete the complex descent safely. Although I had suspected as much, Wendy was taken completely off guard. Plan B was my original objective, the non-technical unroped scramble up Mount Gayley, a left instead of a right turn from Glacier Notch. It was a wholly inadequate consolation prize. Disappointment was etched in Wendy's face in the harsh sun of the high alpine. She and Al were laden with heavy climbing gear. “Taking your rack and rope for a walk” was exactly no one’s idea of a fun day.  I felt terrible. 

The day before on the hike in, we had seen a helicopter buzzing around one of the Palisade peaks, making at least three trips, two of which returned with a litter suspended below. This alpine area, with the largest concentration of peaks over 14,000ft in the Sierra clustered around several glaciers, was no place for mistakes. “If you're going to do something stupid, then be smart about it", Wendy said, quoting from a film about crazy backcountry ski descents. In other words, sometimes it's OK to back off. And this was one of those times. 

Rescue helicopter with a litter suspended below.

"Be back in a couple of hours. Wait for us, though, it's not safe to go back alone". They dropped their climbing gear and were off.

It was a chilly wait in the shadows at nearly 13,000ft. I sat with helmet on behind the biggest boulder I could find in the hope that it might provide some shelter from rockfall - ominous rumbles reverberating around the cirque were a reminder of that danger. The unused rope provided insulation from the seeping chill of the granite. I stared intently at the icebergs in the glacial lake far below – were they moving or was it my imagination? Surprisingly, birds flitted about constantly. What species were they? What did they eat up here? I had no idea. The afternoon sun illuminated a rich palette of colours in the walls of the Palisades. Time passed.

Waiting

Many colours of rock

The others returned safely after a successful summit and we started down. The moraine was interminable, exhausting in the constant decision-making. One casual hop from boulder to boulder for the “mountain goats” was an excruciating sequence of workaround moves for me that added incrementally to a frustrating day. One butt slide resulted in the inevitable tearing of fabric as the seat of my pants gave out. My hiking poles clattered uselessly but I was loathe to abandon these physical and emotional crutches. I threw them down in a fit of pique and sat down to cry. Of course, wallowing in self-pity wasn’t the solution, so it was try again…and again …and again.

Endless bloody moraine!

I'll be needing a new pair of pants

It was a silent descent with none of the usual banter and tired exuberance that follows a successful climb. Emotions were palpable and we all wanted space and solitude. At camp finally, the mood was subdued.  Sam Mack Meadow, nestled snugly in a cradle of granite, provided ample opportunity for reflection as the sun set, the alpenglow burned and the stars came out. We slunk off to our sleeping bags wordlessly. Surely tomorrow would be a better day.

Mounts Gayley and Sill to the left with the Palisade crest from the descent.

The lovely Sam Mack Meadow

Last light on Mount Sill from the campsite

And it was. A fresh start. We talked over our mistakes, sipping our hot drinks as the sun inched towards the meadow. 

Morning reflections in Sam Mack Meadow

Not researching the route well enough. 

Starting too late. 

Relying on one member of the party to have all the pertinent information. 

Trying the approach late in the season on a low snow year without the easier passage up the glacier. 

I had learned not to be pressured to go into terrain where I don’t belong for the sake of fitting in with the group. But whatever our missteps, at least we had been smart about doing something stupid. As we retraced our steps to the trailhead far below, Alistair and Wendy plotted a rematch. I just smiled - they could have it, but without me. 

Temple Crag towering above the glacial Second Lake on the walk out down the North Fork of Big Pine Creek

Autumn colours

The crew - now wiser!