Fiddling on the Brink of Hell
Maybe we had planned it
during our Thanksgiving break from college or perhaps during that magic summer, the one
that’s almost religiously devoted to partying at the beach. You remember the
one, the one which ignited an era of transition and independence as yet to be
experienced in your life as a high school student. It’s the summer that kisses
thirteen years of public school education goodbye. Was it at a keg party during
that magic summer, or while we sat on the trunk of someone's car listening Rock
‘n Roll, drinking beer, and watching Frisbees slice through the humid night air of the semi
illuminated parking lot at Weed Beach?
The three of us
differed greatly in character, personality, intelligence, interests and
background but we all had a few things besides graduating from the same high school
in common, and that was the love of the wilderness — especially backpacking. All
of us had varying levels of backpacking experience as well. As far as personalities go among them, I
guess you could say they ran the gamut. Karl was somber and quite serious at
times, clever, and often quite witty. I was somewhat the opposite, spontaneous
and impulsive, forever joking and clowning around at someone else's expense. Tom
was the glue that held us together. He was the nucleus and had a different kind
of bond with both of these two friends of his. He had spent four seasons
running track with me and enjoyed my spontaneity and endless attempts at humor.
We doubled dated, partied, enjoyed the same music, and did some backpacking
together. We were pretty tight. Tom and Karl were no less solid. They ran a
small house painting business over the summer between graduation and college.
Although their relationship had to be more serious at times, Tom appreciated
Karl and his seriousness about things. The summer before his graduating, Tom
had done a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership Training School) course out in
Wyoming up in the Rockies. It was rather
intense and prepared him well. No East Coast challenge could compare. Tom, in
his senior year of High School was captain of the cross-country, winter and
spring track teams. He graduated with 9 letters in track and only 9 because our
High School started at 10th grade instead of 9th grade, like some other high schools.
He also had a 4.0 GPA to boot. He was
quick witted, friendly, humorous and rather good natured.
It was truly a
magic summer, and we were all, to some degree in love with the feeling of being
in love with this brief, but special chapter of our lives. While under the influence of this strong
chemical cocktail of dating pretty girls, adrenaline, infatuation, electricity,
excitement, and a big transition in life, we planned a week long winter
backpacking trip to High Peak region of the Adirondack Mountains in Up-State
New York near the Canadian border. We would hit the trail on January 1st,
1977.
While I had gone
the whole ten yards to get my Eagle Badge, Karl lost interest in scouts soon
after he entered high school, but he pursued his interest in backpacking, and
meanwhile, he gained some advanced skills in Winter/Wilderness Backpacking.
Comparatively, I had neither the experience nor skills that Tom and Karl had. I
was more used to the semi-rugged Appalachians and Berkshires mountains. So was
it fate, a random convergence, or a combination of both that brought the three
of us together to embark on a seven day trek into the High Peak region of the
Adirondack Mountains that would include climbing to the summit of New York
State’s highest peak in the middle of winter. We left Southern Connecticut on
the last day of December, 1976, after each having experienced a semester of
college in different parts of the country. Tom and Karl cajoled me into using
my old beat-up but undying 1966 white Convertible Volkswagen Bug for means of transportation. Tom and Karl chipped in and bought me a case
of oil (24 quarts took us up and back) for the 6 hour ride. We would pull into
a gas station and ask the attendant to check the gas and fill up the oil.
So we set out with
me driving, Tom riding shotgun and Woody in the back seat, wedged between back
packs, snowshoes, sleeping bags, etc.
The trunk in front was almost bursting at the seams with gear as
well. It began to snow near Albany,
which meant it began to snow inside the car, too. No one I know can ever remember any
Volkswagen having a functioning heater and this one was no exception. The two passengers got in their sleeping bags
and put on their down jackets. It was about 18º F, not counting the wind chill
factor in the VW. Sheets of snow began
to pelt the tiny bug as it meandered pitifully up the Northway, blown side to
side by the blustery winds. The driver’s side wiper would pitifully rise an
inch or two and then droop down with a whimper to back from whence it came. It
was useless and was just there to taunt me as I fought to see the snow pelted
road through the fogged and frozen windows. Needless to say, the defroster
didn’t work either. After a while, I had
to open my window to manually scrape with one hand and drive with the other. It was a shame visibility was zero because
someone should have witnessed this comedy of errors and reported it to the
proper authorities. The ship of fools was being tossed and pounded by each gust
of wind and wave of snow, breaking through the drifts as she went, putting
Albany behind her.
The journey had
begun and the first signs that it was not going to be a walk in a sunny copse
was that it was extremely uncomfortable and cold in the bug, and not only for
the passengers. The driver was baring the brunt of the difficulties. Just the
eight hour drive to the John’s Brook parking lot in Keene Valley was fraught
with challenges. Although we made light
and fun of all the above mentioned problems, the romance and chemistry was
quickly wearing off. Reality was beginning to set in, especially as the
temperature plummeted the closer we got to the High Peak region.
Things
Usually Get Worse Before They Get Better
What should have
been a six hour trip was closing in on ten.
Frozen and stiff, the VW bug, which was now literally caked with snow,
slush and ice, pulled into John’s Brook Parking area in Keene Valley at about
6:30 p.m. It had already been dark since
four O’ clock. There were a scant few cars in the parking lot, all 4-wheel
drive late models. We spied a garbage
barrel where I urged Tom to deposit the 8 empty cans of motor oil. I then
secured the car which wasn’t a big task because it couldn’t be locked. Tom
suggested that I hide the screwdriver that I ordinarily used as a key, under
the seat.
Extremely
stiff and very chilly, we set out down the trail to John’s Brook lean-to which
was somewhere from 2-3 miles away. The snow had stopped and was spitting down a
flake or two. The sky was now, for the most part clear and cold, glistening with
a countless number of stars. The trail had a couple of inches of fresh snow but
was quite well packed underneath. All in
all, the snow had to be about 4 feet deep. The moon was beginning to make its
way over the peaks and gave us enough illumination to move comfortably along
the trail. Occasionally a clump of snow
would fall from a spruce or fir unexpectedly down the back of someone’s neck.
The cold night air was, indeed, quite brisk but after a few minutes, we were
warmer than we had been any time in that last ten hours. Having arrived at
John’s Brook lean-to a little after 8 p.m. we thanked our lucky stars when we
found the lean-to quite empty. The thermometer that hung off Woody’s jacket
zipper was dropping to just below 18º F, while the three of us were figuring
out how to get comfortable in our goose-down sleeping bags on the hard wooden
floor of the Adirondack style lean-to.
Boots and canteens
were placed in the bottom of our sleeping bags. Frozen Gorp, pieces cut from an
equally frozen stick of pepperoni with a couple of slices from a brick of
cheese were washed down with a cup of hot chocolate. Anything close to a prayer
before bed time resembled the plea; “I hope I don’t have to get up to take a
leak!”
Nights spent
outdoors in low temperatures are not always so conducive getting some good
sleep. For those of you who know the
experience, one night like that can literally seem like a week. You say to yourself, ‘oh man, it must be
almost time to get up, what a long night’- and then you check your watch and it
is 11:30 p.m. This happens about every 5 minutes throughout the night.
Then maybe an hour
before first light, you find you have a great urge to see a man about a
dog. Subconsciously you’ve been
suppressing the nagging urge for hours already. Granted, it’s cold in your
sleeping bag, but much more so outside. You wait until it’s almost too late and
then after a flurry of rustling in your bag trying to get out, you take the
plunge into frigid winter air. You
waited too long, so you weren’t able to throw on a coat or even a pair of wool
pants - just a pair of long underwear and down booties. Hello! Your wool pants
have a buttons instead of a zipper and your trembling fingers just seem to
fumble at each button. Finally, with great relief, you manage to drill a deep
yellow tunnel into the snow, wondering if you made it all the way to the duff
layer. Then a mad dash back into your bag which still has trace elements of
warmth left to it.
A gray dawn ushered
itself in gradually, cold and overcast but the temperatures later warmed up to
around 20-25º F. The first mile found
Tom, Woody and Brian re-adjusting straps, stripping off coats or mittens as
they broke into a sweat. Icicles hung
from beards and hair. All had ice axes
strapped to the back of their packs but Tom and Woody each had strapped on a
borrowed pair of snowshoes. To me they looked like they were taking this a
little too serious. They had suggested to me earlier that I ought to rustle up
a pair for myself but didn’t get around to it. I did price them at a local
sports store but to him the prices seemed prohibitive. The heck with it, ‘I
won’t really need them,’ I remember thinking to myself.
The first half of
the day was a leisurely stroll up a gradual incline that brought the trio to
the base of Mt. Marcy, New York State’s highest mountain. Conversation was light and pleasant. This is what a backpacking trip should be, so
I thought. It was still overcast and
getting a little darker about noon time.
It was obvious that it would snow shortly. As we stopped for lunch, we immediately
stripped off our sweat soaked undershirts, exposing our bare chests to icy
Adirondack winds in order to put on something dry. Some Gorp and granola bars
were passed around as Woody heated up some water for some Hot Chocolate. Jack knives full of lint were pulled out of
pockets, shaken and wiped clean on a pant leg. We carved slices off still
frozen sticks of pepperoni and petrified blocks of cheese. As we prepared to saddle up, each took a deep
breath and put on a stoic face. Bare
chests were exposed once again and on went the half frozen, half sweat soaked
t-shirts. Tom loved it but it paled in the light of bathing in an ice cold
stream at 14,000 ft. A light wool shirt
was thrown over top. We stood at the
base of the summit looking up. It was all uphill for at least another 3000 some
odd feet. This is what Tom lived
for. He began to lead us up the trail to
the summit, a piece of cake for someone who could run the mile in less than 4
minutes and 27 seconds. In one of our
casual planning discussions, Woody had suggested bringing powdered Jello®
in small plastic containers. Every now and then one of us would take a hit of
some artificially flavored Jello® for an
instant boost of energy.
Since the trail was
fairly well packed, it was fairly easy going for the first third of the way. As
the climb got tougher, and the temperature dropped, our labored breathing
escaped in the form of clouds as soon as it came in contact with the cold
mountain air. Cheeks that weren’t covered by ice-coated beards displayed
various hues of pink. There was a bit of noticeable transition as we ascended
above the tree line. The side of Mt. Marcy was littered with the tiny tops of
wispy flag formed spruce and fir. The wind began to pick up noticeably and the
trail soon became wind-packed, hard as concrete. It was decided that I should take the lead
now because I was the only fool that that wore leather Reichle® climbing boots
with Vibram soles. Tom and Woody sported Sorrels® with toasty wool liners. I
didn’t mind. This was my chance to at least remain some what competitive, being
the low man on the totem pole in light of wilderness skills. It was slow going but not too difficult until
we came to steep icy sections which took a little more care to negotiate. Although on a clear day at this elevation,
one could usually see the dark outlines of the famous Green Mountains of
Vermont but from where we stood the cloud cover robbed us of the fruit of our
labor on this particular day.
Three and half
hours later we found ourselves two thirds the way up Mt. Marcy. We had planned
to make the lean-to at Lake Tear of the Clouds which was down off the North
side of Marcy. We had been coming up
from the south. It was also getting dark
and it was only a bit after 4 p.m., and the wind and snow began to pick up.
After a short discussion, Tom and Woody decided it best to pull off the trail
on the side of the mountain, at 4000 ft. and set up camp. I didn’t like the
idea but knew we didn’t have much of a choice. I also knew enough to trust
Woody and Tom although in my mind’s eye I could easily see the three of us and
our tent being blown clear off the Mountain. With a little bit of luck we were
able to find a semi flat place to pitch the tent. After ditching our packs, I
walked over to examine a little tiny Balsam fir poking its head through the
snow behind where Karl and Tom were pitching the tent. I then suddenly
disappeared completely in a puff of white snow. The tiny Balsam fir I was
inspecting was really a five-foot tall Balsam fir surrounded by unpacked snow. When
I approached the little wisp of a thing, the snow gave way and I found myself
twisted in some strange configuration, on my back, in the bottom of a five-foot
deep hole in the snow, wrapped around a little green tree. As I pondered my new
dilemma, all I could see through the opening of the hole was gray sky. The more I struggled, the more stuck I
became. My shouts for help were almost completely muffled by the walls of snow
that surrounded me. Panic began to hit me and I began to imagine freezing to
death alone, only 10 yards away from safety.
Woody, looking for a ‘dead man’ (something heavy to anchor down the
corner of tent), stumbled over what could have been a real live ‘dead
man.’ He called Tom to give him some
help rescuing me. Woody shook his head thinking to himself; ‘Should I be
surprised’? Tom, being the George Carlin
type that he was, played the situation for all it was it was worth.
That night on the side of the
mountain was intense. The three of us squeezed into the two man tent like three
hot dogs in a single bun. The wind was whipping and the sides of the tent were
snapping like sails. Temperatures plummeted into the single digits. No clue as
to the wind-chill factor but one thing for sure was that it was cold enough to
freeze the ears off a brass jug. It was
so cold, we each drew up the draw strings on our mummy bags up as tight as we
could, leaving a breathing hole the size of a quarter. Conversation was light
and what there was of it, was very strained. I remember taking a bandana and
stuffing it in the quarter sized hole of which I drew the opening to mummy bag
as tight as humanly possible to keep cold air from coming in. After a while,
the part of the bandana on the inside was soaking wet from condensation, and
the part outside of the hole was completely frozen. I reversed it a few times
in order to get some air flowing.
I woke up during the night at
least four times and when I woke up, I found myself in utter darkness, unable
to move my arms and legs. Wearing wool pants and a down jacket inside a
sleeping bag doesn’t afford much movement.
Not knowing whether I was in a coffin or in Limbo, I panicked. I wanted
out. I shouted; “Tom, Woody, HELP-HELP!” After awakening them, I sheepishly
explained my predicament to them, and we all went back to a fitful sleep, of
course not without a couple of deep down guffaws by Tom. After about the fourth
time I woke up in a panic, neither Tom nor Woody were too amused, but at least
it gave them something to snicker about for the next few days and even the
following year to come. Woody continued
to have doubts about my ability to survive this trip and rightly so! Woody was more off a no nonsense type of guy
and hadn’t planned to do any baby sitting on this trip. After all, the High Peaks at winter’s apex
are no place for the inexperienced.
The next morning found us
embracing, once again, four degree weather with high winds. It was a short
climb to the top of Mt. Marcy, which to our surprise already had a least 15
people milling about on top. Some had
obviously spent the night on top but didn't appear to be too worse for wear.
The view was rewarding but not as clear as it could have been. High winds were
assaulting the summit furiously. Faces,
toes and finger tips were quickly becoming numb. Plans to stay on the summit for an hour were
cancelled and cut back to a scant twenty minutes. Before we knew it, we were
cautiously making our way down the steep icy backside of Marcy. We ditched our
packs and made a quick jaunt up Mt. Skylight and arrived at the Lake Tear of
Clouds lean-to (at 3,800 ft.) at about noon. Lake Tear of the Clouds is known
as one of main sources of the Hudson River.
It was a small frozen over lake, covered by many layers of snow in most
areas. Carl, Tom, and I took turns racing each other on snow shoes, and
tracking snowshoe hares.
By night fall, temperatures
dropped to around zero and nothing is colder than sleeping on a lean-to floor
in the winter. Most lean-tos are set up not for practicalities sake but more
for aesthetics as was this one. The wind just whipped off the lake directly
into our lean-to all night long. I was less prepared for the severity of the
weather, and therefore suffered to the largest degree through another one of
those painfully long nights.
Tom, chipper as ever, took it all
in stride. Four degree weather the next
morning didn’t faze him and it was business as usual for Woody. As for me, I was struggling from lack of
intense wilderness experience was hanging in there for the time being,
anyway.
The fourth day found us making a
decision at the fork of a trail which was about 1500 ft. below where we had
just spent the night. Should we go down to lake Colden and make our way across
Colden and Avalanche lakes through Avalanche pass or climb up to Mt. Colden and
spend the night at the Indian Falls lean-to, and then make our way down to the
Adirondack Loj via Phelps Mountain? We decided on the latter, which, little did
we know, would drastically alter the course of our events
The decision made was to choose the more difficult of the choices before us. We knew it was a risk, and it proved to be a near fatal experience. I guess the word risk has different level of meaning in different situations.
Starting off in our particular direction, the trail was
not at all packed like it had been the from John’s Brook to our present
location. I immediately began breaking through the 3’ deep snow at
every step, all the way for 5 miles while Tom and Karl effortlessly glided over
the top of the snow with their snowshoes. I was becoming more exhausted as the
miles piled up, and Tom and Karl were getting frustrated with my slow progress.
Why didn’t I listen to them when urged me to bring a pair of snowshoes along??
Four hours later,
with temperature still around 4º degrees, and night settling in, I stumbled
into Indian Falls Campsite -elevation 3,500 feet above sea level. Tom and Karl
were a little cold. As long as we were walking, we were fine. The minute we
stopped, our sweat soaked undergarments became extremely cold. They were cold
and tired but their snowshoes had saved them a great deal of energy. I had used
all my energy up breaking through the snow at every step hours ago and was
literally plodding along on pure adrenaline. It seemed like forever before I
staggered into the campsite at Indian Falls. Where was the lean-to? Both Tom
and Woody swore it was here last year. A sign mostly concealed by months of
snow and ice told us that all lean-tos above 2,800 ft. in elevation were in the
process of being removed to lighten the high impact camping that the
Adirondacks were experiencing during the 70’s.
So, in the dark, wind whipping off the exposed falls, in four degree
weather, three exhausted nineteen year-olds began to set up their small North
Face™ tent. As soon as the tent left the confines of Tom’s stuff bag, a sudden
gust did it’s best to rip it out of Tom’s hand and whisk it away to the four
winds. It rippled and snapped like a sail while Karl and I tried to catch the
flapping corners. Tom held fast. When the steely, biting wind took a momentary
break, the tent settled and rippled gently on the surface of the snow. Tom was
now shouting to me over the whipping wind to grab the right corner of the tent.
I heard his voice but it seemed so, so far, far away. I could hear him well
enough but I was just so tired, and he wasn’t making sense anyway.
Drenched with sweat
from breaking through snow up to my waist since late morning, I began to feel
extremely cold. The wind whipping up over the falls was going right through me.
I stood there with Tom’s last words ringing in my head; “Grab the right corner
of the tent….”
“I remember
thinking, “right, what is right? Which hand is right, and how can I know? I
think I used to know that —I’m just too tired. I’m so tired….”
Tom and Karl looked
knowingly at each other. While I was trying to figure out which was my right
hand, Tom and Karl knew that what they were witnessing was more than merely
another prank or practical joke. They now had a serious situation on their
hands, a life or death situation.
My body temperature
had dropped dangerously low because of being wet, exhausted and pushed to my
limit through most of the day. My body had used up every calorie and there was
nothing left to keep me warm. I was long past shivering and my own bodily
functions were not able to get my temperature up where it belonged. And the
effects were not unlike that which alcohol has on the human mind. I was greatly
puzzled at the concept of right and left.
I thought to myself, ‘yes, I once knew what that meant. Why should it be important now?’ I heard Tom's voice echoing in my head, “Take
off your wet clothes and get your sleeping bag out, sleeping bag out, sleeping
bag out.” All I could do was to manage to change my shirt while Tom and Karl
worked at breakneck speed to set up the tent. My futile attempts to get my
sleeping bag out of his pack didn’t escape the notice of Karl or Tom. As soon as the tent was barely up, Tom helped
me to pull out my bag and lay down my Ensolite™ pad inside the tent. Without urgency or excitement, he told me to
get into my bag and remove all my wet garments. While I went about this
seemingly enormous task, Tom shored up the tent while Karl began to heat up
warm liquids for me. No discussion ensued; Tom and Karl worked like a team,
knowing what each had to do without consulting each other. They used their own
body warmth to bring mine up to where it should be, something my body was way
past doing on it’s own. Only after monitoring the effects of the warm liquids,
the effect of their own body warmth, and a dry sleeping bag could they know if
they were out of the woods. Hypothermia in severe weather conditions is
extremely difficult to reverse.
The night itself
for Brian was unremarkable and the only thing that really stands out in his
mind is that it seemed to take forever for his sweat-soaked hair to dry.
The early morning
silence was broken by Brian screaming for Tom to hand over the roll T.P. Tom
had stashed in his bag. Tom was laughing so hard that the roll got stuck in the
hole where his draw stings closed the opening of the mummy bag. Between Tom’s hysterical laughing and Brian’s
urgent screams the serenity of the wilderness morning was completely shattered.
As Brian dashed off into the woods in a red union-suit with the bottom flap
hanging down, strips of toilet paper streaming behind him, Tom and Karl knew
they were out of the woods, so to speak.
Traveling that day
was down hill all the way to Heart lake and the Adirondack Lodge where they
rented a cabin with a honest to goodness wood stove, soft mattresses,
electricity and bunk beds. They basked
in heat as temperatures rose to almost 40 F in their cabin. This and the fact that they were a bit
dehydrated made them feel as if they had had a few beers under their belts.
They had to jump
start the VW Bug but other than that the trip home was uneventful. Manfred Man's Earth Band's 'Blinded by the
Light', was irritating everyone to death.
Every station they turned to was playing it every half hour, on the half
hour. They tried to catch the Super bowl
but that was fading in and out.
What was strange
was that the three of us never discussed the hypothermia situation together. I
caught wind from Tom’s sister that Woody was disappointed in me. In his mind he
had thought I was more experienced than I turned out to be. I downplayed the
whole event and was embarrassed to discuss it, and for many years tried to bury
it.
Thirty-eight years
have passed since Tom and Karl saved my life on a frigid, wind-swept High Peak
in the middle of winter in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. Yet, I never got around to thanking them. Things
in life change so abruptly, time passes so quickly. I would never get the
chance to thank Karl. Less than a year
later he was struck by lightning and killed while hitchhiking in Virginia. As for Tom… a few years later he was
diagnosed with a disorder that has left him rather incapacitated.
I haven’t seen Tom
since the early 90’s but I keep abreast of him through his sister, Meg. To this day, I am grateful to both Tom and
Karl for having saved my life.
