The Better Part of Valor

It is a hallmark of good leadership to be able to re-evaluate ones plans when conditions change or new information becomes available. The leader who plunges on as the weather worsens (for example) is a poor one, and deserves to be disobeyed as sketched in the Caine Mutiny.

Many of my adventures have been completed successfully by force of will. But I may commend myself that on a few occasions, I have abandoned the goal to get myself and others back safely.

Middle St. Vrain, Avalanches? 

In high school, I had planned a snow camping adventure with Tony Shepherd. We gathered together our gear, and Tony's mother drove us up to the Middle St. Vrain valley and dropped us off. It was mid-March and the weather was unusually warm. As we started hiking, it began to rain. Up the valley, I heard noises that sounded like thunder. 

I couldn't tell whether it was truly thunder or the sound of avalanches roaring down the steep walls of the canyon, but I was unwilling to find out. After expressing my concern to Tony, we turned around and hiked out through the slushy snow. Even if we had continued, camping in that stuff would have been pretty miserable.

Back at the dude ranch, we called Tony's mom, who dutifully came and picked us up. So ended one misadventure: No injuries; no fatalities.

Mount Richthofen 

An aborted attempt to summit Mt. Richthofen has been published in the Sierra Club Magazine. I was arguably the leader, since I had planned the route of the week-long hike that was my Explorer Scout Troop's High Adventure trip in 1977. But with the exception of Phil Smith's nephew, I was the youngest participant.

On the final day of the adventure, it started to rain as we reached the top of the ridge between Mt. Mahler and Mt. Richthofen. It was a light rain, but because of the constant wind across the ridge from the north, it was raining horizontally -- or even upward at a slight angle at the very edge of the ridge.

I suggested that we give up the idea of climbing the peak. But Kiyoshi wanted very strongly to claim bragging rights for climbing "the Red Baron" and Charlie Hart was persuaded by his enthusiasm. They started up the ridge and I trailed along. About halfway up the ridge, I was thoroughly soaked just needed to get out of the wind to warm up. I dropped down behind a large rock, and right away felt warmer. Not 5 minutes later, I heard yelling above me, so I summoned my energy reserves and continued up the ridge. In a few minutes more, I dropped into a ring of stones surrounding a small cairn and found Kiyoshi and Charlie celebrating our success.

But not quite. Since I had been looking at the mountain all week as we hiked toward it, I knew that Mt. Richthofen has a false summit, and that's where we were. The bad weather obscured the fact that the true object of the ascent was 1/4 of a mile distant and 200 feet higher than where we were. I still wanted to get off that ridge as quickly as possible, so I decided to keep the navigation error to myself. "Hooray, we did it! Now, let's get out of this rain," or something like that.

The weather got steadily warmer and more pleasant as we descended toward Agnes Lake, and we made it back to Kiyoshi's Mustang with much of the afternoon left.

No Joe, a Bear Escape

Sometime around 2000, I planned an overnight camping trip to Joe Lake with Brian. We loaded up our gear and Cadence, and drove up to the trailhead at Gold Creek. I had chosen to use my Garmin GPS receiver for navigation, and turned on the tracking feature before we left the parking lot.

The trail as far as the turnoff for Alaska Lake was easy to follow. But beyond that, there were thickets of scrub oak that obscured the trail. Pretty soon, we were bushwhacking. At one point, we had to drop down into the creek bed and pick our way up a low falls. It was pretty tough going for Cadence.

Further up, we came into typical northwest forest. I kept checking our location relative to the trail shown on the GPS. But even though we criss-crossed that dotted line many times, we saw no trace of a trail at ground level.

About 1/4 mile from where the creek from Joe Lake cascaded down to meet Gold Creek, we came upon a tree that had been used by a bear to sharpen its claws. I was not particularly concerned about bear encounters, since our food was packed in a bear container and I had bear spray holstered on my belt. I wanted to continue, but Brian took the shredded bark as a sign we should turn around.

As usual, Cadence was off-leash, and was following us at a distance. She kept up well enough to keep us in sight, but was evidently hanging back. This was consistent with her normal behavior when I walked with her off-leash around town. However, she kept looking over her shoulder as if to say, "The car's back this way." Brian took this as a sign that Cadence was advancing with trepidation and had sensed the presence of a bear.

Whether or not this was true, we had already burned the better part of the afternoon getting to that spot, and it was very unpromising that we would find any kind of a trail leading up to Joe Lake. It was a good time to re-evaluate the situation.

One consideration is that it takes a measure of positive attitude to persevere when the going is difficult. Brian had clearly lost his resolve. In that case, continuing to Joe Lake would mean losing unity of purpose -- which made that plan untenable. Instead, I proposed that we could return to the easily discernible trail up to Alaska Lake and camp at Alaska Lake instead.

I had in mind that if that trail also petered out, we would cancel the expedition and return to Mercer Island that evening. Turning back by 5 would reserve enough daylight to get us back to the car.

As it happened, we were able to scale the steep slope up to Alaska Lake, and established our campsite early in the evening. There was one other pair of campers at the lake, and no bears.

Snow No Show

In February of 2015, Adair and I took the two boys up to Kettle Falls for a little getaway. While there, we drove up to the pass on Highway 20 and started to hike up Snow Peak.

It was possible to walk on the surface of the crusty snow, so we left our snowshoes back in the car. After an easy hike of a mile or so, we gained the ridge and started walking up toward the peak. However, the slope was just steep enough that I was close to losing traction. That by itself would not have been a problem, but the slope angled off to the north where there was a steep dropoff back toward the roadway. If one of us lost traction, things would go from bad to worse after sliding over the precipice.

There was also a strong wind from the northwest that was blowing loose snow onto the surface of the ice. I didn't like the conditions in general. So after we had walked about 100 yards toward the peak, I said we should turn around. We angled away from the ridge as we walked down, so we immediately lessened the chance that one of us would go over the edge. 

Mailbox Peak in April

In 2017, Lise came out to Seattle to visit in early April. We decided to scale Mailbox Peak as a nice day hike. We went out with some optimism, since we did not carry along microspikes, and this turned out to be an error. The last 1/2 mile or so of trail is out in the open, and once we were out of the trees, we were hiking on packed snow and ice.

I was concerned about losing my footing on the steep slope. And on that day, the top of the mountain was shrouded in fog: there would be no view. On that basis, I decided to call off trying to reach the summit.