Blehm - The Last Season

ONE
MISSING

TWO
THE GRANITE WOMB

THREE
INTO THE HIGH COUNTRY

FOUR
THE SEARCH

FIVE
AFTER THE RIOTS

SIX
PAID IN SUNSETS

SEVEN
CENTER STAGE FOR THE HERMIT

EIGHT
POLEMONIUM BLUES

NINE
GRANITE AND DESIRE

TEN
BRING IN THE DOGS

ELEVEN
THE WILDERNESS WITHIN

TWELVE
THE RANGE OF DARKNESS

THIRTEEN
SERMON ON THE MOUNT

FOURTEEN
THE DEVILS ADVOCATES

FIFTEEN
A MISSED CLUE

IF CHINA HAD BEEN ENDOWED with a well-placed mountain range like that of the southern Sierra Nevada, its Great Wall would not have been necessary.

The Sierras formidable granite spires, snowy white most of the year, parallel the Pacific Ocean, north to south for more than 400 inland miles. In the southern part of the range, the ramparts are highest and steepest, and a double crestlike a castles inner and outer wallsis at once daunting and seemingly impassable. Between these walls of jagged peaks runs the mighty Kern River, an icy torrent twisting and cascading southward through a maze of lesser peaks and forbidding canyons to eventually irrigate the crops and orchards of Californias San Joaquin Valley.

Though a few hardy souls cross these mountains in winter, most wait until the snow melts, when access to the high country can be attained via a network of routes that evolved over the centuries from threadlike, barely perceptible game trails. These ancient animal paths were widened slightly by the native populations, who used them as trade routes between the coast and inland valleys and deserts. They were later trampled by herds of domesticated sheep, and eventually blasted by dynamite, graded, and manicured with pick and shovel for recreational purposes by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

There are few blacktop passageways running east to west in the entire Sierra range, and none running north to south for any distance. South of Yosemite National Park is a conspicuous absence of blacktop for over 200 miles. This wilderness area is concentrated within the boundaries of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parkstwo adjacent parks managed as one 860,000-acre unit. According to government records, Sequoia was founded on September 25, 1890, and is the second-oldest national park, after Yellowstone. Kings Canyon was originally founded on October 1, 1890, as General Grant National Parkthe countrys third national park. It was renamed Kings Canyon on March 4, 1940. Some 70 percent of Sequoias 402,510 acres is designated wilderness and nearly 98 percent of Kings Canyons 461,901 acres is wilderness. The combined wilderness areasessentially road-less backcountrycovers roughly 1,350 square miles.

Here the most traveled human thoroughfare is the John Muir Trail. Jokingly referred to as a freeway, it is rarely wide enough for two backpackers to walk shoulder to shoulder. The trail was conceived of by Theodore Solomons, who in 1884 dreamed of a remote trail atop the crest of the High Sierra. Construction began in 1892, and in 1938 the completed trail started at an elevation of 4,000 feet in Yosemite Valley and traveled 211 miles south over ten mountain passes before ending at the 14,495-foot-high summit of Mount Whitney. Overlapping the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, which runs between the Canadian border and Mexico, the John Muir Trail is the highest, remotest, and most grueling segment of the Pacific Crest Trail.

More than 800 miles of trails wind their way up into the high country and are accessed by more than thirty trailheads on the east and west sides of the range. The western approaches, in contrast to the eastern ones, are gentler in slopeescalators versus elevators. Almost all trails lead eventually to the John Muir Trail. It is estimated that 99 percent of the visitors to the parks backcountry stay on these designated tracks, which represent less than 1 percent of the parks wilderness acreage. True to the idea of wilderness, 99 percent of the parks backcountry is raw and wild. A craggy, high-altitude desert of granite and metamorphic rock dominates the country. But dotting the arid landscape of serrated ridgelines and glacial sculpted domes are remnants of the last Ice Age, or at least the last winter: striking sapphire blue lakes, ribboned inlets and outlets become creeks snaking across arctic-like tundra, giving drink to vibrant brushstrokes of meadows and forests, while swatches of green erupt like oases from the volcanic and glacially formed grayness. The contrast softens the hard, rocky vistas and coaxes ecosystems to take up residence amid the harshness of it all.

There are no year-round residents, at least of the two-legged variety. The only structures are summer ranger stations, many of which double as snow survey cabins in winter, and a handful of historical trapper cabins and mines that are slowly being reclaimed by the wilderness. The stations are located every 20 miles or so along the major trails and are inhabited from June to October by seasonal backcountry rangers, men and women who have served for decades as quiet guardians of this national treasure and the travelers who pass through it. They are a special breed, these elite fewdedicated, fearless, and determinedand their reasons for seeking the splendor and isolation of wilderness are as varied as the geography they protect.

In the wilderness, life is reduced to its essentials: food, shelter, water. A person can lose himself here, both figuratively and literally. With very little effort, one can escape almost everything and everyone associated with civilization.

But the reflection in a clear mountain lake of one highly trained ranger serves as a reminder: What one cannot escape is ones self.

THE BENCH LAKE RANGER STATION in Kings Canyon National Park was still in shadow when Randy Morgenson awoke on July 21, 1996. As the sun painted the craggy granite ridgelines surrounding this High Sierra basin, a hermit thrush broke the alpine silence, bringing to life the nearby creek that had muted into white noise over the course of the night.