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Mount Tyndall 14,018’

May 25, 2003        It had been twelve years since I had last made the "Death March" and I wasn’t about to make it again. During my first attempt on Williamson several years before that, I heard a girl in another group call the long arduous hike from Shepherds Pass trailhead to Anvil Camp the "Death March". At the ranger station in Lone Pine while getting the permit for Tyndall I heard the ranger call it the "Death March" also. I don’t know for sure who named it but they named it correctly. It’s a long one day hike so like I did in 1992 (while summitting Mount Williamson) I made it a two day hike. Good thing I did because I never would have made it in one day. I don’t know if the 20 beers, 5 cigars and 10 cigarettes I had consumed the day before had anything to do with it but I was unusually slow, even for me. It took me 7 ½ hours to reach the saddle, three plus miles and 2800 feet above the trailhead. It took Mike my climbing buddy only 4 hours but then again he works out to stay in shape for skiing. The trail crosses Symmes Creek four times before switch backing up to the saddle at about 9100’. I arrived in the saddle around 3:30 PM set up the tent, had dinner and enjoyed the view of Williamson and the Owens Valley for about 5 hours until it got dark.         The next morning camp was packed up and we were on the trail to Anvil Camp by 8 AM. It took Mike about 3 ½ hours, me about 6 ½. The first mile was down 500 feet and the last three were up 1800 feet. I almost do a rest step uphill with my 65 pound pack on. A couple months ago I had a physical where they noted reduced air flow in my lungs, that’s what I get for starting smoking again a couple years ago after a 8 year hiatus. Water was a concern for the early morning because I had none and the first chances were dry. I had left Symmes Creek with three quarts and even got an extra pint from Mike at camp for hot cocoa and brandy and a cup of tea in the morning. There were a couple of snow banks on the north side below the saddle but I didn’t want to deal with melting old dirty snow. The second chance for water at the 8500’ low point was running good with snowmelt from Mount Keith. There is a small water falls above which the trail latter switchbacks up near on it’s way to Anvil Camp. After Mahogany Flats (which is mostly manzanita and not very flat) the trail takes some large switchbacks up into the Anvil Camp area. I always cut out the last large switchback which seems to take you out and back half a mile to gain a hundred feet. It took me 14 hours over two days to reach Anvil Camp which is about what I spent in one day twelve years ago when I was a little more frisky. In my defense I decided to take a short cut that time by bypassing the final long switchbacks and climbing a briar choked cliff up into Anvil Camp in the dark. My short cuts are never shorter. Ten hours or so should be the normal time for the "Death March".           When I got to Anvil Camp about 2:30 in the afternoon I was disappointed to see people camped there. A group of seven from Bakersfield were supposed to move up above Shepherds Pass that day but a teenage girl had pulled her groin and they left their camp at Anvil and tried to do Tyndall from there. Two teenage boys turned back above the pass because of headaches and deep soft snow and were back at their camp about an hour after I got there. The other three people who had tried wandered back in about five or six. They had turned back half way up Tyndall because a small front was moving in and they were running out of time. They all had left Anvil camp at 7:30 that morning. Mike and I had formulated our plan after hearing at Lone Pine that the temperatures at night were barely dropping below freezing even at the higher elevations. We were starting in the dark to try and take advantage of firmer snow at least until we could get over Shepherds Pass.         When we got up at 4 AM two people were leaving the other camp on snowshoes. We hadn’t brought any snowshoes because Mike didn’t want to carry his Alaskan’s. I have a smaller aluminum pair as well as my long rawhide and wood Alaskan’s but decided to do without. I hadn’t even gotten to freezing at 10,000’ that night but the higher we climbed away from camp the firmer the snow got. Much of the open rocky trail had melted free of snow. By the time we reached the base of Shepherd pass the sun was up but the snow conditions required crampons for the last 300 feet of elevation gain. Mike’s crampons kept coming off but he was front pointing. Mine never came off but I only front point if I have to since I have hinged crampons. The four of us were together at the base of the pass but by the time I reached the top the two from the other camp had pushed on. The top of the pass was two miles from camp, about 1800 feet higher and about three hours out. I told Mike I was going to do the ridge up the middle of the north face and he pushed on also. After losing the long underwear and taking a break I moved off towards the looming Mount Tyndall. As I was making my way out through the snowfields scattered between rock strewn open areas Mike was making his way back. Turns out the other two climbers had opted for the northwest ridgeline. I convinced Mike our route was better and he pushed on again.         When I reached the rock ridge that went up to intersect the northwest ridge I tried to do the snowfield along side it but the snow was still pretty firm and I didn’t want to put crampons back on. I ended up doing what Mike had done and turned it into a rock climb. I could see him hundreds of feet above me as I came back onto the rock. The rocks were slow going but surer than the snow, which at times was looking pretty thin. As I was reaching the upper part of the rock ridge I saw the other two climbers making their way along the northwest ridge above me. I was sure that even though they had started their approach first, Mike who was out of sight at that time would reach the summit first. Heck if I felt like hustling I might have even beat them. I left the rock, made my way across a steep thin snowfield, through a gap in the rock onto the top of the northwest ridge. I looked up and the other three climbers were standing next to me. They were on their way down but didn’t want to go down the way they came up because both routes involved about a 5.2 move. Mike had taken a slightly different route than I had from the top of the rock ridge and the northwest ridge was just too long. I told them my route was fine and they headed down. They asked if I wanted them to wait until I returned from the summit and I asked why "so they could wave at me as I fell by them?" It was less than an easy going half an hour from that point to the summit and by the time I reached it the time was 12:30. It had taken me eight hours to reach the top of my 9th 14,000 footer.         I spent half an hour on top signing the log and taking pictures. I don’t know why I sign logs, nobody reads them and they never get archived anywhere. They just sit on top of the mountain until they eventually succumb to the environment. There wasn’t really and space left anyway so I just put Lenzenhuber and the date. I did manage to find and read Mike's entry which included "I hope Lou makes it" Yee of little faith, the weather was good and there was plenty of daylight left. The face of towards Williamson was an awesome near vertical 2000’ drop, and the overall view was tremendous. I did a 360 panorama at wide angle and another at telephoto. There was still a lot of snow in the upper Kern River headwaters area to feed Lake Isabella yet this spring, the lake may even get to normal this year before Bakersfield tries to drain it. The view and the weather were beautiful and I only put on a lightweight polar fleece jacket while in a light wind on the summit. The 2nd highest mountain in California was right in front of me and the highest wasn’t far off. The highest Sierra was all around, dozens and dozens of twelve, thirteen and fourteen thousand foot snow capped peaks.         The decent down the side of Tyndall was the opposite of the accent except I went out on the snow off the rocks at a higher point to take advantage of the softened snow. I ended up sliding the last few hundred feet on my butt instead of stomping into the mostly soft snow. On the way back to the pass I tried to stay on boulders as much as possible because the lower you got the softer the snow got. I didn’t really want to slide a lot because I had ripped the rear of my light nylon pants along the way, but after I went waste deep on one leg while coming down the pass I slid instead. I took me several minutes to get my leg out of the hole I created. At least three more times on the way back to Anvil Camp I elected to slide. My ass was rather cold by the time I got back to camp at 5:30 PM. Turns out I was only an hour behind the others which meant I made up some time coming down.         The next morning I was the first to leave camp at 7:30 but by the time I had gone a few miles I was passed by two guys who had spent the night at Anvil Camp after returning from the edge of Williamson Bowl the afternoon before. The web had said all nine reserveable permits for Friday and Saturday had been issued. Mike and I had two of the six walk ins making eleven for Friday. We never saw anybody from Saturday’s quota. Of the eleven people up there that weekend, six had made the summit of Tyndall and none had tried Williamson. Of the six that made Tyndall I was the oldest at 52. It took me three hours to reach the saddle and by then everybody had passed me. It took me an additional 3 hours to get down from the saddle because my toes were hurting in my new boots. Where it took me 6 hours to get out it took Mike four. I’ve never been fast I just get there eventually, usually.

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