James Martin - Sierra. Notes & Images from the Range of Light

SIERRA

THE MOUNTAINEERS BOOKS is the nonprofit publishing arm of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

2002 and 2012 by James Martin.

All rights reserved

First edition, 2002. Mountaineers Books edition, 2012.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk

Manufactured in China

Copy Editor: Don Graydon

Book Design: Karen Schober

Cartographer: Jane Shasky

Cover photograph: Mount Whitney and Iceberg Lake at sunrise

Photo captions: : The setting sun highlights the Minarets south of Yosemite (top); to ascend Reeds District in Yosemite, a climber must place a hand in the crack and twist it (lower left); the sheer east face of Mount Whitney dwarfs the rocky Alabama Hills in Owens Valley (lower right).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martin, James, 1950

Sierra: notes and images from the Range of Light / James Martin.

p. cm.

Originally published: Seattle : Sasquatch Books, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-59485-723-2 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-59485-725-6 (ebook)

1. Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)Pictorial works. 2. Sierra Nevada
(Calif. and Nev.)Description and travel. 3. Martin, James,
1950TravelSierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.) 4.
MountaineeringSierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.) I. Title.

F868.S5M375 2012

979.44dc23

2012010413

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-723-2

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-725-6

For Greg Thompson, always in the mountains.

J. M.

Contents

Middle Palisade overlooks Palisade Creek as it begins its steep journey to the Middle Fork of the Kings River.

Introduction: My Sierra

The air seemed to push me softly backward.

Thunderheads often gather on summer afternoons.

Introduction: My Sierra

Clouds piled against the peaks. We both knew we were in a race against a storm but said nothing. I hoped we could scramble the last thousand feet in an hour and get off before it hit. We hopped up a long unstable boulder field, then fought through loose scree when the boulders gave out, each step gaining only a few inches. When we arrived at the summit, a gunmetal gray ceiling descending toward us had already obscured the summit of nearby North Palisade. We peered into the great cirque carved by the Palisade Glacier, where sheer walls topped by blades, turrets, and stepped pyramids of rock ringed the ice. The Evolution Group hulked to the north west. Mounts Whitney and Williamson, massive peaks reaching over 14,000 feet, hid under a blanket of cloud. Columns of rain swept the Black Divide, thunder grumbled and echoed in the distance, and the wind kicked up. The spires around us seemed to vibrate like tuning forks, and the wind whistled like a choir of piccolos. Time to go.

We slid down the scree and skipped atop the boulders to conserve momentum. The slope soon eased so we could walk easily with long strides. My partner Roger DeCamp, known as the Bear because of his physique, pulled fifty yards ahead. The air smelled alive, and I suddenly felt the hair on my arms rise and my scalp tingle. I shouted Lightning and started to crouch when the sky in front of me erupted with light and a roar. The air seemed to push me softly backward. I sat quietly for a moment, listening to the walls shudder.

Roger.

Yeah.

Close.

Yeah.

Lets haul ass.

Yeah.

We dashed downhill. I buzzed with adrenaline, exhilarated and a little frightened.

We skirted a boulder-bound lake and climbed over a low pass that returned us to the Palisades Lakes drainage. We passed by heather gardens, glowing bright green under the muted cloud-filtered light. By the time we returned to camp, sunlight punched through the clouds, scanning the Palisade crest like searchlights. After dusk we laid out our sleeping bags and watched isolated stars reveal themselves as the summer constellations, wheeling imperceptibly across the sky.

I was a seventeen-year-old kid when I raced the storm with the Bear, but I was already intoxicated by the range. It runs for 400 miles parallel to Californias Pacific coastline between the great Central Valley and the desert of Owens Valley. The range rises gently from the west, but the eastern escarpment soars out of the desert with as much as two vertical miles of relief. Three national parksYosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyonprotect the highest country, including Mount Whitney, the tallest point in the contiguous forty-eight states at 14,494 feet. Sun-drenched and glacier-scoured, the pale rock of the range shines, the lakes glitter, and the snowfields glare during the warm summer days, proving that this is indeed the Range of Light as John Muir wrote more than a century ago.

Winter hikers in Yosemites Mariposa Grove of ancient sequoias.

Fin Dome presides over 60 Lakes and Rae Lakes Basins.

Marmots forage for goodies in the high camp en route to Mount Whitney.

Im not sure what prepared me to respond so strongly to the Sierra. I had grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by my mid-teens I was skinny, bookish, poor at team sports, and suffering from a mixture of arrogance and insecurity. In 1966 I was sent to a church camp in Colorado where I discovered that I felt fine at altitude and could enjoy the view from a 14,000-foot summit while many of my fellow campers fell behind or lost their lunches. Surprised at any sign of physical competence in myself, I decided to try hiking when I got home. During my preparations I was introduced to the writings of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. Their message of finding salvation in wilderness struck a chord, impelling me to set out on my first wilderness adventures, first in the nearby Coast Range and later in the Sierra.