Scribbles of the Sierra

6/12 Recently I've been too cold to write. Motor coordination is one of the simple functions we sophisticated mammals cherish. But like a true primate, I have forsaken feeling in my fingers and toes for the sacrifice of being uncivilized places. Ancient bowls and cirques of blue water lie below sheer treeless cliffs, and wide wide mountain passes stretch for miles like a giant's vertebrate. Deep canyons are dug between domineering shoulders of cliff. And still all is quiet. Even in the landscape of heaven all is quiet, because it is veiled in four feet of snow. How could I have predicted my June in California would be on the fringe of the Arctic circle? Everyday we navigate slopes with steel spikes on our shoes and ice axes in hand. Below the snow chutes, deep below in the canyon is death, and that is really what we are conquering here.

6/13 All this snow can be very defeating. Imagine running a race on a road where a truckful of pushpins was spilled. The sheets of white are deceptively beautiful but are ready to pull down my feet. Suddenly, hiking is very complicated. Sunscreen is necessary to prevent the underside of a nose from being burned. Sunglasses are necessary to keep retinas from being burned. An ice axe is necessary to arrest a body plummeting frictionlessly across a chute of ice. Spikes and chains are necessary for traction on the bottom of shoes. And many extra pair of socks are needed for cold wet feet. But what is most necessary is control of the secret to satisfaction- that the universe is what we make it.

6/14 First we woke in snow. What we saw was fields of ice and bright blue lakes, stilled in time. Then we walked through snow. For nine hours we dug our feet into the still holds in walls of ice and rock, and slid across fields of white. We forded streams of snowmelt, and navigated by compass, because for fourteen miles we saw only 100 feet of dirt trail. Everything else was bright and luminous, cutting into our our eyes like flakes of glass. We climbed Pinchot pass and then Mather pass, for which I should of taped a suicide note to the ice axe in my right hand that explained how glorious it would be to fall 1500 feet down an ice chute into a frozen lake to a death in John Muir's backyard. Needless to say, it scared me shitless. To kick steps into snow soft as vanilla pudding on a cliff face. On and on we walked through the white stuff, until we rounded the western wall of a canyon. The sun was shining proud and gloriously on the high rocky switchbacks, and the water of a million pounds of snow poured down through the shining rocks. We followed the trail inches of water, and I splashed and splashed and almost cried at the bliss of having ground beneath my feet. I drank water- cascading down the ridge- like it was lemonade. And we descended below 10,000 feet and I could hear the chimes of victory in my head.

6/15 A potato bomb is the process in which a hiker pours dehydrated mashed potatoes into a pot of food, often sodium-laced chinese noodles, to thicken the consistency from soup to porridge. Glissading is the process in which a hiker slides feet first down a slope of snow or ice, often forty-five degrees or steeper, grappling the terrain with an ice axe and hoping not to lose the delicate bond to Earth. Both will tear up your ass.