Part Forty Nine

     September 5th & 6th               Wind Rivers, WY                       (Go to Pt 1)
 
Holyshit was right, we were incredibly exposed at the top of the couloir, and with metal crampons strapped to our feet, metal ice axes in hand and metal climbing gear slung around our necks, we were nothing more than mobile lightning-rods.

Over the top and down to, hopefully, some sort of rock shelter on the other side was our best shot at finding ‘safety’, putting us in a race to the summit against a lightning storm.  
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The angle of the couloir was about to ease off so I saw no reason to stop and place protection gear as I started to practically run up the last 200 feet of snow on the front points of my crampons, with Craig climbing immediately after me.

 The angle was gentle enough that there was little chance of either one of us falling off, still, this was risky business, the two of us roped together, simul-climbing with no 

protection; if one of us did happen to slip and fall in the panic of the moment, being roped together with no protection meant we were both going to get plucked off the mountain.  But that didn’t seem to matter at the moment.

At the top of the snowfield the massive explosions of thunder came in rapid succession, ricocheting with powerful aftershocks off the nearby peaks and rock walls. As I reached the rock towers marking the top of the climb, my ice axe began to hum and I could literally hear the electricity snapping in the air.

​I threw my ice axe into the rocks, hurriedly unstrapped my crampons just as Craig reached me, chucking my crampons into the rocks along with the climbing hardware I’d been carrying and while Craig was pitching equipment off his body like a mad man, I ran for cover.  Just down from the top I found an outcrop of rock to dive under with Craig tearing around the corner right after me.

By now, lightning was striking the summit of Klondike, not even 300 yards from where we sat crouched under the rocks, and the noise from the thunder was deafening.  Seconds turned to minutes as I unknowingly clung to Craig’s arm, in a ‘take-cover’ kind of way, and wished with all my wishing power for the whole thing to just blow over, real quick-like.  

Each flash followed by an instantaneous crash was a huge jolt to the system, felt deep inside the body, and with the radio wave sound of electricity in the air the lightning seemed to be honing-in on the rock outcrop sheltering us.  

I looked at Craig who looked straight back at me with terror in his eyes, which had to be identical to mine since I thought for sure we were about to get fried.  It took about 10 minutes for the deadly part to pass and it was, by far, the longest 10 minutes of the day.  
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Of course, once everything was cool with the world again, it was back to black humor but also mixed with the terror-aftershock of what had just happened and knowing we were walking away from it by sheer luck of the draw.

After collecting our gear from where we’d dumped it, the sky was clearing, so we decided to carry on up the final snowfield to the corniced summit of Klondike Peak.  Interestingly, not a single drop of rain, or puffball of grapple, or flake of snow came out of those clouds, just a whole lot of angry lightning.

We made it back to camp right around dinnertime and settled back for a relaxing meal in the afterglow of our climb until clouds blotted out the sunset and a cold wind began to blow, putting a quick end to our slow-paced evening and forcing us back into the tent.

​September 6
Around dawn the next morning the wind picked-up to a ferocious speed, keeping Craig and I tent-bound for hours and eventually shouting back and forth about what to do.  The wind was too high to consider pushing further out on the Divide but the wind was also so sustained that I began to fear staying put would eventually end-up shredding the tent.

I finally had to venture out to see exactly what the wind was doing to my poor old, Gerry Year Rounder tent and sure as shit, a seam was starting to rip at one of the corner gromets on the rainfly; we were going to have to take the tent down or risk having the wind rip the whole thing apart. 

I ducked back inside where we loaded our packs and put on our wind gear; I don’t know what the temperature with the windchill was but it was bitter and there was no sun, blocked by thick, grey clouds.  We climbed out of the tent then wrestled the bucking, flapping nylon to the ground and rolled it up.  There was little question as to what to do next – find wind protection before we got blown into eastern Wyoming. 

Click on the map for a larger image

Our position at Iceberg Lake was horrendous, the lake sat just a few hundred vertical feet below a narrow pass formed by Yukon Peak, directly to the north, and Klondike Peak to the immediate south.  These two massive mountains served to funnel the jetstream winds through the narrow pass like a firehose and our closest escape from this mayhem was a small canyon just off the southwest end of Iceberg Lake. 

The gale was blowing out of the northwest, so pretty much right in our faces as we fought our way around the north side of Iceberg Lake then doubled back south between Iceberg Lake and Baker Lake to reach the steep, narrow gully below the lakes.  We descended into the gorge until we got low enough for the canyon walls to provide a substantial wind break and dropped our packs. Now what?
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We were in a vice; we could stay put and try to wait out the jetstream winds then go back up, or we could go down into the valley and resume our trek south on the Highline Trail. We dithered over the maps, we sat and stared out into space, time passed.  

If we descended from where we were at 12,000ft into the valley, nearly 4,000ft below, there would be no getting back up to these higher elevations and our traverse of the peaks along the Continental Divide would be over.  But if we were going to succeed on the ridgeline traverse above 12,000ft, one thing was clear, we needed weather conditions that wouldn’t hamstring our progress – or kill us.

​I was getting more despondent as the time passed; I didn’t want to give-up on the ridgeline traverse.  Shit, we were finally into it, our packs were light enough and we’d even done a practice climb on our rest day, godamit, we were ready for this!  But we didn’t have the supplies to wait around, either, and the jetstream winds could be scouring the peaks for days.  Who knew?

​So that was it, we turned and began our descent.  The sense of failure I felt at turning away from the peaks was crushing, this was the final blow to our notion of tracking the Continental Divide across its most difficult sections. “The strictest line possible” philosophy was dead.  We had overestimated what we could do and underestimated the many variable conditions we needed in our favor to climb through the high peaks.

As we descend the boulder choked gulley down to Pixley Creek, Craig fell behind. He hadn’t shown any problems yesterday on the Klondike climb, but then the descent had been down the gentle side of the glacier and we weren’t carrying any weight. At the bottom of the gulley I sat down on a rock to wait. 

Now that we were in the narrow Pixley Creek Valley, there was practically no wind at all, although I could still hear it roaring overhead, and the clouds had opened-up to let the sun through; in other words, less than one mile from Iceberg Lake it was turning into a beautiful day.  

Although logic had dictated, I hated the decision we’d just made, and now I sat watching Craig make his way down through the boulders on shaky legs.

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Go to Part 50

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The CDTC was founded in 2012 by volunteers and recreationists hoping to provide a unified voice for the CDT. Working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Forest Service and other federal land management agencies, the CDTC is a non-profit partner supporting stewardship of the CDT. The mission of the CDTC is to complete, promote and protect the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, a world-class national resource. For more information, please visit continentaldividetrail.org.

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