AVALANCHE PASS

This feels like part of a series…here is the first chapter….

 Avalanche Pass is not one of the highest passes in the Sierras, nor even one of the most spectacular. Once attaining the top, one has to drop his pack and walk about 50 yards for the spectacle: a hundred mile view out over Kings Canyon from a slab of rock that sits atop a scree field of impressive proportions, a fall of talus that stretches from your feet over the nearest horizon into the canyon below. But that is not the why of why I have come to be there. For over twenty years, I led backpack trips of 8-12 teenagers on a 40 mile excursion…sometimes out of Lodgepole, Sequoia, but most often out of Horse Corral meadows, as part of the fall ritual of what was once The Happy Valley School, in Ojai California.

Part right-of-passage, part school-bonding, and part personal challenge, this was the way that we began our school year. The value incumbent in such excursions are too many to list, both for the individuals and the group, and especially for the culture of the school, which drew diverse students from every possible background and culture and began an annual journey together that seemed best initiated away from comfort zones, parents, and familiar distractions. On a week’s pack trip, the core of a person is soon revealed, always to the group and, with luck, to the individual. For a young person in search of identity, there is nothing like a wilderness trip to scratch away the patina of pop culture…well, at least that was our intent. I’d like to say that this always worked as planned, but some of the times it did not work remain as some of the more vivid memories from those years.

For a student, high school years are a linear experience; 9, 10, 11, 12…blast off. For a teacher, it is a more cyclical experience: each year a new crop of students…if this is the first week in October, this must be Kings Canyon. Thus, the walking of the same trail becomes our own rite of passage. I can, in my mind’s eye, recall each step of that familiar trail, each fallen tree, each rock outcrop. And with each step resides a memory, a weave of moments: gear that worked or didn’t, meals both epicurean and inedible, mishaps, friendships, triumphs, and magical unfoldings of weather, flora, fauna, and wonder.

Through most years, my pack partner and co-leader was Lane Toler, an English teacher out of San Francisco, a co-conspirator in education, and a friend. While other teachers seemed to crave new trails and camps each year, Lane and I saw the value in doing the same trip. We knew that the trip was not about us, but about the kids. Thus, while the Pass seemed wild and unpredictable to each crop of teenaged packers, it became ever more predictable, though never entirely, to us. It was my habit to go out in the lead, while Lane “rode drag”, taking up the rear to coax and cajole the packers at the end of the line to move a few more steps up the trail, to convince them that the camp was right around the next bend in the trail or the pass was just ahead. Together we developed trail psychology that brought some of the least likely backpackers over and down against all odds. The most difficult, of course, were the chronic complainers. Although we would forewarn the group that everyone’s feet would hurt and that all backpacks were heavier than we’d prefer, there were always those who felt that Mother Nature’s vengeance was being visited particularly on them, that if they protested loud enough and long enough, someone would carry their pack or let them turn back, though it rarely happened. Lane’s most effective strategy for this breed of hiker was to fall further behind them. He quickly realized that, if he walked with them, they would not cease to moan and groan, but if he kept a nice distance behind …close enough that they could see they were not alone, but beyond conversational distance, the average whiner would continue to make progress on the trail, not happy, but often driven by their determination to just get it over with. Each time they would flag, they could look behind to see Lane stopped to tie his boot or fiddling with his pack, never quite catching up to them, but driving them before him in the subtlest way. Invariably, these reluctant packers were among the first down the far side of the mountain, miraculously attaining strength and speed previously unknown to them. While it was for me to restrain the swiftest hikers to moderate their pace to the speed of the group, listening to a different sort of complaint, it was Lane who always took the more difficult job of comforting the afflicted and encouraging the disheartened. For this alone, there should be a special place in heaven for him. Fortunately, Lane was further equipped with a wonderful and nearly inexhaustible sense of humor and  a mental library of corny jokes, which not only came in handy on the trail, but added to the enjoyment of many evening campfires.

After many years, we pretty much lost the need to speak. We would arrive at camp and fall into our necessary routines: easing packs off shoulders, helping to set up tents, bandaging blisters, organizing wood parties, getting water boiling, and prodding collapsed hikers into action before the inevitable cold and dark made necessary tasks all the more difficult. He knew where I would pitch my tent and I knew the same of him. In the early years, we shared a tent, but as equipment became lighter and our packing became more efficient, we each preferred to bring our own light tents or just spread out on a ground cloth under the tree. After about 18 years of packing together, for some reason that I cannot recall (perhaps a bad back, to which Lane was prone), I packed with another friend, Tod Cossairt, an equally affable fellow, with tendencies toward geology and flora identification, bringing an added dimension to the trip. After I departed for happier valleys, I believe that Tod continued the annual trip until HVS, by then Besant Hill School, decided that it was not worthwhile to make the effort.

But from 1978 to 2004 the fall of the year did not pass without a week in the Sierras and, but for one or two exceptions, a trek over Avalanche Pass. One Year we got hit by a storm and had to retreat back to Horse Corral. Another year that we did not go, we looked with trepidation at the weather forecast and, to broad dismay and second guessing, cancelled the trip at the last minute. Of course the weather in Ojai that week was sunny and mild, so the many veterans of Kings Canyon, particularly the seniors, felt robbed by my decision to remain at home. Those who bothered to read the news (this was pre-internet, when weather information of every conceivable model was not readily available) saw reports of the worst fall storm to hit the Sierras in 50 years, but that did not assuage the seniors, who considered me suspect in my judgment for some weeks.

Avalanche was not the only pass attempted each year. The school would set up a base camp in Cedar Grove of Kings Canyon, which would be home for the certifiably infirm, who would have a daily curriculum of day hikes, art and photography experiences, and nearby showers. Hence base camp became nirvana for the would-be infirm, which required an annual weeding out process. All other groups would be distributed at trailheads across the Southern Sierras to storm Glenn Pass, Kearsarge Pass, Colby Pass, Forrester Pass, Granite Pass, Elizabeth Pass or simply to charge up Paradise Valley. Of the trips, Paradise was the most elementary, but it also had, over the years, the greatest number of mishaps and near-disasters. The trip was full of beginners, who, understandably, made beginner mistakes. Usually four leaders were sent with that group, but this never seemed to stem the regular mayhem that can occur when novice campers are sent into what became known to us as Bear-adise Valley, a place where a candy bar left in a rucksack, lip balm forgotten in a tent, or food that was hung just a foot too low would become the stuff of stories for years to come. The bear that sent her cub up the tree to hang from a sack till it dropped; the ill-fated attempt at hanging the food over a waterfall; the poor bear that devoured over 20 lbs of dried fruit…all were in the lore of Paradise Valley, along with broken bones, a near drowning, and more than one lost hiker. Needless to say, I much preferred to suffer the blisters of a longer hike. Though, in the looking back, I recall none of the suffering and all of the magic and I dearly hope that most of our young charges feel the same these years later.