The Last Season

by Eric Blehm

  Most importantly, Randy would have told the audience why they were there in the first place: as a safety presence for the few wilderness travelers hardy enough to ski into the area, and to monitor the park and the wilderness overall, which meant maintaining the buildings and a near-constant battle of shovel versus snow.

  Too boring, Randy reasoned, for television and radio.

  One day during this media bombardment, they heard boots on the step and a knock. There in the doorway, like an arctic explorer with red hair and eyebrows frozen beneath a hood, was Randy’s good friend and fellow ranger, George Durkee, come to visit Yosemite’s “latest and greatest celebrities.”

  Durkee had begun his career with a U.S. Forest Service fire crew in 1970, but landed a position with the NPS in Yosemite in 1973 before being recruited to Sequoia and Kings Canyon in 1977. Shortly after his recruitment, he was hanging out in the valley in full hippie attire—including ripped-up denim jeans with matching jacket and bandana headband—long-haired and suspect outside the Curry Village grocery store. A high-level ranger from Sequoia and Kings Canyon named Paul Foder was walking by with one of the Yosemite Mafia. He pointed toward Durkee and said, “Now, that looks like probable cause if I’ve ever seen it.”

  The Mafia member said, “No, that’s the new ranger you just hired.”

  Durkee would never live that one down. He’d originally been hired as part of the effort to better relate to the youth population after the riots—which meant getting out and walking the paths and campgrounds of Yosemite at night, “getting the youth to fly right,” says Durkee. One night as he was walking in Stoneman Meadow—without a flashlight because he was “extra cool”—he came upon a dark form just off the path.

  “Hey, guy, sorry but you can’t camp here,” he said.

  No response, so a bit louder, with authority: “Park ranger. You can’t sleep here. You’ve got to move.”

  Nothing. Durkee cautiously kicked the guy lightly with his foot.

  “Klunk.”

  It was one of the cement forms used to separate the trail from the meadow.

  He slunk quietly away, only to be reminded of “the incident” by Randy—repeatedly—after Durkee made the mistake of telling him the story. This night, as he stood in the doorway of the Morgensons’ cabin in Tuolumne, was no exception.

  “Hey, Judi, it’s that ranger who tried to arrest a cement pylon,” said Randy before giving Durkee a hearty handshake and pulling him out of the cold.

  The two friends were sardonic, cynical, hypercritical, anti-establishment, irreverent lovers of wilderness who bantered back and forth incessantly. Randy would yawn when Durkee quoted his favorite authors—Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad—while Durkee would “tolerate amateurs” like Randy’s favorite, Thoreau.

  Durkee, Randy, and Judi ate dinner and spent the evening discussing the now-required Law Enforcement Commission for backcountry rangers, theorizing that during the classic police-academy “defensive driving” segment they would set up deer and backpackers to maneuver around. Since they didn’t drive squad cars in the backcountry, they’d just run “really, really fast” through the course while making driving sounds—screeching tires and the like.

  “Company like George was always a treat,” remembers Judi. “I’d just sit back and listen to them like they were Abbott and Costello. They were the entertainment.”

  Durkee and Randy’s friendship would be strengthened over the years by a dirty little secret—an addictive, mutually perpetuating hobby of bashing the National Park Service. They also had a propensity for looking out for their fellow backcountry rangers.

  One of their first victories against the NPS was getting rid of the rent rangers were charged for their backcountry stations for most of the 1970s. These rudimentary shelters, loosely termed “cabins,” generally had sparse furnishings, no running water, no electricity or plumbing, and were infested with mice, rats, and the occasional porcupine. Durkee and Randy felt that their canvas tents and drafty, leaky cabins weren’t in the same league as the “public housing” in the frontcountry, which was guarded by “private residence” signs.

  There was nothing private about a backcountry ranger’s station. In addition, they were used by the public as emergency shelters during storms and as trailside motels for administrators passing through. And there had to be some underlying reason for the free utilities. Perhaps it was a way around shelling out hazardous-duty pay for having to light combustible cooking stoves. The amount of rent charged was reasonable enough—$14 a month for the Little Five Lakes tent, $21 for the Rock Creek cabin, and $15.17 for the stone Tyndall Creek cabin. But Durkee and Randy felt it was their duty as Americans to point out the injustice. It was the 17 cents that pushed them over the edge.

  Visits from friends like Durkee to the Morgensons’ Yosemite duty station were the exception, not the norm. Their company was each other and the woodland creatures that weathered the winter. And then the winter that had been before them was melting in their wake. The rivers grew louder, the bears staggered groggily out of hibernation, and the wilderness yawned and slowly awakened. Throughout it all, the Morgensons had confirmed their compatibility: how their interests could sustain them and how life, in its simplest form, was entertainment enough. Every day they’d discovered something new, another example of nature at work. Skiing across the meadow after a fresh snow, they often came across a rodent’s tracks. If they followed these tracks, they would sometimes end at a burrow in the snow, with icicles formed over the opening from a mammal sleeping inside. But one day the tracks suddenly became erratic and disappeared.

  Stumped, with no clue as to what had become of the rodent, they stopped. Then they noticed a perfect “snow angel” at the terminus of the tracks—indentations made by an owl’s wings as it pounced on the animal from above, pushing its small body into the snow. A few specks of blood were the only sign of the kill. The discovery made Judi sad, but Randy explained it as nature in its rawest form—a celebration, if not for the mouse, for the owl. This was a world Randy understood and the kind of life in which he felt most comfortable.

  “Back in civilization I begin the questioning,” wrote Randy. “What to do with life? What kind of life? In wilderness this ceases; the questions aren’t answered, they dissolve.”

  BEFORE LEAVING for the required ranger law enforcement academy in Santa Rosa, Randy went to Yosemite’s wilderness office to see his supervisor, a subdistrict ranger who had checked in on the Morgensons a few times that winter and brought some VIPs on one visit. Randy’s intent was to review his performance rating, then sign to confirm that he agreed with his supervisor’s comments. He was informed, however, that his supervisor hadn’t had time to complete the review, or even to start it, for that matter. Confident in his performance, Randy signed a blank document.

  While Randy was learning how to be a “wilderness cop,” things weren’t going so well back in Yosemite. Dana Morgenson had his annual physical, during which a suspicious lump on his prostate was diagnosed as cancer. On May 29, as Judi shuttled gear to Dana and Esther’s house in the valley, she developed a headache and nausea, which she at first attributed to “reverse altitude sickness.” On her second trip, the headache became so painful that “it was hard to see straight.”

  Judi ended up hospitalized for four days with aseptic meningitis, described to her as a less deadly form of viral meningitis. Doctors theorized that she had contracted it from the deer mice they’d lived with all winter, one of which had bitten her. The park refused to pay her hospital bills, stating that “illnesses” contracted while on duty weren’t covered. She was told that if she’d broken a leg, it would have been a different story altogether.

  Despite the distractions, Randy earned his law enforcement commission.

  Back home in Yosemite, the family celebrated with a steak dinner. Randy checked his dresser drawer for mail and found a letter from Yosemite National Park: his winter’s performance review.

  To his dismay, there were lo
w marks across the board and, toward the end of the letter, a seasonal ranger’s worst nightmare: “Do not recommend for rehire.” The main reason was something to the effect of “The ranger’s lack of motivation to patrol on skis the area assigned, failure to shovel snow-loaded roofs.” Worst of all, there was Randy’s signature confirming that he had read and agreed with the report.

  Randy and Judi surmised that they must have offended the supervisor when he’d showed up with the group of VIPs. It was a short-notice visit that came not long after a huge snowfall. The ranger had skied in without a broken trail, which was, perhaps, the first strike. Of course, before the storm had begun, there was a perfect track: not a week went by all winter when Randy didn’t circumnavigate the meadow once or twice. Then the supervisor had suggested that Randy come out for a ski “with the boys” and Judi stay behind to prepare them a meal. Randy had refused, offering in return Judi’s guiding skills or his cooking skills. They skied alone, and Randy greeted them at the end of the day wearing an apron.

  Randy and Judi compiled a list of duties from the winter: they’d encountered 202 people, all on skis; they’d documented hundreds of miles skied; for each day he hadn’t skied, they’d performed some “housekeeping” duty, including relentless snow removal from rooftops. In addition, the days he hadn’t skied, it had snowed—heavily. There appeared to be no grounds for a poor review that squelched any chance of rehire for the position in the future and, worse, permanently scarred his perfect performance record with the National Park Service. He was going to fight the NPS on this one.

  But attorneys were expensive—potentially more money than Randy and Judi made together in a year or more—and cases against the government weren’t popular with lawyers.

  Then Randy told the story to Durkee, who said, “Wait a minute, check this out.” He pulled from his wallet the business card of San Francisco attorney Richard Duane, whom Durkee had assisted in the backcountry the season before when Duane’s back had given out. As Duane lay on the shores of a lake in pain, Durkee had sat with him and chatted for hours, then took much of the weight from Duane’s pack so he could make it out of the mountains. In parting, Duane gave Durkee a card. “If you ever need an attorney, give me a call,” he said.

  Duane took Randy’s case pro bono.

  More than a year after Duane confronted the NPS about the questionable performance review, it was struck permanently from Randy’s record in an out-of-court settlement of sorts. Randy wasn’t looking for money; he just wanted the bogus review removed.

  Despite the victory, Randy was so embittered by the experience that he chose never to seek reemployment as a winter (or summer) ranger in Yosemite. Sequoia and Kings Canyon were his home parks, for good.

  RANDY HAD ALWAYS told Judi that he would be happy living his life in a tent, but she knew he wasn’t entirely serious. He’d learned to appreciate certain creature comforts: clean sheets, a cooked meal, a companion, and a lover.

  During the spring of 1980, they bought a 700-square-foot house in Susanville, California, in the foothills of the eastern Sierra. Susanville was home to Lassen Community College, which had one of the best photo darkrooms in the state and a reputable art department for Judi, who was interested in instructing.

  Randy berated himself repeatedly as they moved in, saying things like “So, does this make me a suburbanite?” But he soon got into the swing of things, setting up a photo darkroom, organizing the extra bedroom into an office, and cultivating his own private meadows, which other neighbors mistakenly called “yards.”

  Randy had an ethical problem with cutting grass. Judi tried to explain the difference between domestic grass and wild grass, but Randy resisted tooth and nail. One day when the grass was blowing in the wind, a neighbor leaned over the fence, pointed at the knee-high “lawn,” and said, “You know, you’re supposed to mow it.” That was the front yard.

  The neighbor off the backyard had a problem with dandelions, which blew in like sorties from Randy’s meadow. He would comment loudly, “I wonder where all these weeds are coming from?!” For Randy, there was no such thing as a weed. He’d hear the neighbor and grin at Judi as if his master plan was working.

  When it came time for Randy to return to the backcountry, Judi reminded him of the promise he’d made to her. With a wink, he drove off and a couple of hours later returned and unloaded the “promise” onto the driveway. Judi eyed the lawnmower suspiciously, and even circled it a couple of times for effect, before asking, “Where’s the engine?”

  “But that was Randy,” says Judi. “He refused to buy anything but a push mower.” Randy headed off for the mountains, and Judi bought a pair of leather gloves and began the ritual of maintaining peace with the neighbors by keeping the yard well manicured—for five months of the year.

  On June 18, 1980, after “ten nonstop, world-class marathon days of training,” Randy was flown into his duty station at Tyndall Creek.

  THREE WEEKS LATER, 27-YEAR-OLD Nariaki Kose entered the Cedar Grove ranger station seeking a wilderness permit. Kose was a Japanese citizen who had been in the United States studying as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. He had come to the parks to climb a series of peaks on a difficult, predominantly cross-country route that crossed the Sierra from west to east, from the Cedar Grove area to Mount Whitney. His intent was to make the trek solo.

  An experienced mountaineer, Kose was described as “almost militaristic” in his lightweight techniques; for instance, he carried only one pint of fuel for the fifteen-day trip, which allowed for a single cup of hot tea per day. Anticipating snow, he did bring all the standard equipment—crampons, ice ax—necessary to negotiate steep, potentially icy terrain. But he likely hadn’t expected the snowpack to be 180 percent above normal. The ranger who issued Kose’s permit had recently hiked into the backcountry, and he warned Kose that all camping above 9,000 feet would be done on snow that, on north-facing slopes, was still 10 to 14 feet deep. Kose seemed receptive to the ranger’s suggestion to change his chosen route through the Sphinx Basin to Bubbs Creek, then East Lake. At Reflection Lake, the ranger recommended Kose take a good look at the mountains he would be traveling in and decide then and there if he shouldn’t come back and try it in August.

  Kose had told a friend he’d be out of the mountains by July 24; when he didn’t show, the friend contacted park headquarters. Backcountry rangers near his proposed route, including Randy, were alerted. No backpackers in the area had seen anybody matching Kose’s description, but on July 27 a ranger at Mount Whitney, where Kose was supposed to exit the mountains, spoke with a person believed to have been the missing mountaineer. The rangers assumed that Kose was fine.

  On July 28, Kose’s friend called again. Kose was now four days overdue. A helicopter and ground teams led by Subdistrict Ranger Alden Nash were dispatched to search the proposed route. Meanwhile, hundreds of wilderness permits issued during the month of July were pulled. One group, whose route might have intersected Kose’s, confirmed having talked with him on July 9 and 10. Kose had told the group that he intended to climb North Guard Peak on July 11. This information was radioed to Nash, who had joined Randy at his station.

  As he usually did with mysteries like this, Nash turned to Randy and said, “Well, Randy, what do you think? Is he on North Guard?”

  Randy consulted what Nash described as his “topographic-photographic memory” of the Sierra: the 13,327-foot North Guard is a couple of hundred feet lower in elevation than Mount Brewer to the south—a less-traveled peak that Randy had climbed himself more than once. Like so many Sierra peaks, from a distance it appears an impossible climb without a rope. But up close, the pockmarked tan-and-gray southern face presents some elongated scars—avalanche chutes—that are outlined in guidebooks as the most plausible route to its impressive, pointed summit.

  Randy sensed that these chutes were likely what Kose had taken and, if he’d had an accident, the best place to begin the search.

  The next morning,
rangers in the parks’ helicopter spotted a backpack a fair distance below the steepening face of North Guard. About a half mile above the backpack, Randy rendezvoused with rangers Ed Cummins and Ralph Kumano, and the three worked their way upward. “About 1030 or 1100,” wrote Randy in his logbook, “I found his body in a gully 400 to 500 feet below the summit.”

  Some nineteen days earlier, Kose apparently had climbed to the top of this avalanche chute, to the point where a cliff section had to be contoured briefly before he gained the summit just 200 feet higher. While negotiating a number of boulders near the top of the chute, he had slipped and fallen more than 300 feet down the steep gully.

  It was “particularly unpleasant getting Kose into a litter and out of there,” says Kumano, who twenty-five years later still remembers what the Japanese climber was wearing: a red-checkered flannel shirt, tan gaiters, red-laced leather hiking boots. “I don’t remember Randy saying a word through the entire process.”