Shattered Air: A True Account of Catastrophe and Courage on Yosemite's Half Dome

by Bob Madgic

  2

  THE DOME

  Was there ever so venerable, majestic, and eloquent a minister of natural religion as the grand old Half Dome?—-Joseph LeConte, A Journal of Ramblings Through the High Sierras of California, 1875

  ESTEBAN AND RICE RETURNED to Yosemite later that summer, and again over Labor Day. Their agenda was literally carved in stone: Hike to the top of Half Dome.

  For both men, treks to the Dome were far from routine events. It was as if some mystic force kept luring them back time and time again. Each year, they returned faithfully on the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends—and whenever the urge struck. Sometimes Rice phoned Esteban out of the blue and said, “Let’s go do the Dome.” Esteban would drop everything, no questions asked, to join his buddy for yet another odyssey to that granite monolith.

  Yosemite’s natural wonders and the invigoration that came from immersing themselves in the wild made these outings a rebirth of sorts for Esteban and Rice. They always returned from Half Dome with their “karma batteries” recharged, their spirits rejuvenated, their ties with each other and the natural world more securely fastened.

  However, a complication arose in Esteban’s budding love affair with the granite mistress: marriage. In the spring of 1981 at age twenty-one, he had met a nineteen-year-old waitress and immediately fallen in love. Within a month, they had eloped to Reno. Unfortunately, she lacked any interest in the outdoors, preferring to stay at home. She also wanted to start a family. Neither of these priorities squared with those of Esteban, who wanted to do what he pleased, mainly with Rice.

  As the months passed, it seemed to her that Esteban valued Rice and their forays together more than he valued her and their marriage. She was right. Esteban ultimately concluded that marriage had been a mistake—he just wasn’t ready to commit. After a mere eighteen months together, he and his wife separated and, a year later, divorced.

  A FAILED MARRIAGE was only one of Esteban’s woes. He had been attending San Jose Community College on and off since graduation from high school in 1977, taking a class or two each semester with the goal of earning an AA degree. After he and his wife split, Esteban dropped out of college in order to “get my stuff together mentally.” He also considered quitting his job as a laser tech—mainly because he felt he didn’t measure up—and launching a new career. The marriage fiasco made him wary about diving into another intimate relationship.

  The one solid entity in his drifting life was Half Dome.

  Each time Esteban arrived in Yosemite and peered up, his life took on meaning and direction. Half Dome rendered no judgments about who was worthy to scale its flanks. It asked nothing of anyone but gave everything—the universe on a platter. Deep down, Esteban knew this was something he could fully commit to. He also knew the Dome would always be there, beckoning. There were few guarantees in his erratic, stale world, but Half Dome was one of them.

  On the trail in Yosemite, Esteban absorbed the air’s crispness, which cleared his mind. The everyday demands and entanglements weighing down his life seemed less burdensome. He lost himself in the natural surroundings as physical pain from the unrelenting push upward stirred an inner dialogue. Initially, the mundane problems—work, college tests, and the like—roiled his brain. But with each passing mile, they melted away. His thoughts became more dream-like, and fantasies bubbled up. He imagined himself a bear, an eagle, a deer. What, he wondered, do these creatures sense? Or he imagined himself a Navy SEAL assaulting a great fortress. It was all part of the mental cleansing, the flushing out of trivial stuff, that freed his mind to ponder bigger issues: What’s life? What does it all mean? How do I fit in?

  Marveling at the beauty and power of waterfalls he passed, Esteban pictured himself crawling to the edge of one of these tumbling chutes and peering over the edge. One small slip and he’d be fatally swept down. Such intense, frightful images of death had a hypnotic effect on him.

  He felt a bond with strangers on the trail, most of whom radiated a spirit of engagement and humanity. When he looked into their eyes, a mutual understanding flowered. Out here, masks weren’t necessary; rank vanished. Everyone was on equal footing as they pressed toward the summit.

  Esteban’s confidence grew with each journey to and from Half Dome. He saw these outings as a blueprint for life: Identify a goal, lay plans to achieve it, then execute the plan. The treks required both physical and mental preparedness. That meant no late partying the night before; rising at dawn; apportioning his time, food, and water on the trail; avoiding cramped or pulled muscles by taking breaks in proper sequence and of appropriate length; and overcoming bodily pain. The payoff: million-dollar views at the top, the camaraderie of fellow hikers and rapt discussion of life’s many unanswered questions, a storehouse of adventures to share with others, and that sweet sense of success.

  Accomplishing this agenda energized Esteban. It made him feel good about the world and was a powerful antidote for his low self-esteem. It also helped him conquer the demons within, to get past his travails.

  On return hikes to Yosemite Valley and gazing back up from the Valley floor at that majestic rock face as it held the day’s last rays of sun, Esteban felt that he belonged here. He was both exhilarated and let down about leaving. But the brief respite from nagging reality stoked his enthusiasm. He was recharged and ready for life back home again. The image of Half Dome remained fixed in his mind long afterward. When difficulties arose, he could simply recall the Dome and find peace.

  Esteban knew Rice harbored similar feelings. If anything, Rice revered the Dome more than anyone, though, unlike Esteban, he chose not to verbalize his sentiments. Rice let his actions do the talking.

  Over the years, traveling to Yosemite evolved into pilgrimages for these best of friends. The Dome became their mecca, a sacred place. They called it “our mountain.”

  ESTEBAN AND RICE COMPETED fiercely to see who could go the farthest and fastest. But they took even more pride in their accomplishments together. Leaping off the ledge at Paradise, scaling the staircase up Nevada Fall, driving their legs up Sub Dome and the cables . . . each of these achievements testified to their personal well-being but also cemented the bond between them. Rivalry melded into deep loyalty and trust once they arrived on Half Dome’s summit.

  Up there, camaraderie is magnified and spreads widely. For many climbers and hikers, something intangible happens on a mountaintop—what John Muir described as the “mysterious enjoyment felt there, the strange calm, the divine frenzy.” Human frailties—prejudice, envy, selfishness, egotism—tend to dissipate in the thinner air, and all human emotions boil down to the joy of the moment. Many people feel infused by a spirit of kinship and kindness. They are more apt to touch someone else, provide assistance, share. Much of this fellowship flows from the energy everyone had mustered to reach the summit. In collective consciousness, they savor this special place.

  That feeling of connectedness may also stretch into Yosemite’s past. You can almost sense the many American giants—Chief Teneiya, John Muir, Joseph LeConte, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams, among others—as well as countless foreign dignitaries and notables from all walks of life and nations who have visited its hallowed grounds. Place-names, plaques, photos, exhibits, and the captivating scenery call attention to individuals who helped preserve Yosemite and contributed to what it is today. Esteban often remarked that he felt the presence of the original Native dwellers. He envisioned them making one last stand in Yosemite Valley, where their souls elected to stay. That, in his view, explained the sacredness permeating the site.

  At least initially, Rice was much more attuned than Esteban to the outdoors. He knew about poisonous snakes, bears, and poison oak, and how to filter water, tie knots, and navigate by the stars. He was familiar with campground etiquette, fishing techniques, survival strategies, and a host of other things related to the natural world. He taught Esteban many outdoor crafts and skills. And he respected the environment. His family had taken him camping and read books abo
ut John Muir, Ansel Adams, and other conservationists. As an adult, Rice practiced good environmental ethics in the wild, picking up trash left by others, leaving each campsite cleaner than he’d found it, and urging his companions to do the same. He railed against stinky horsepack trains in the high country and ugly pizza stands, hamburger joints, and housing units on the Valley floor, “one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

  John Muir’s penchant for taking risks in the wilderness and his seeming invincibility probably resonated with Rice. Indeed, Muir had an insatiable lust for learning and a relentless desire to probe the inner depths of the natural world—in effect, to be part of it. In his quests, he had numerous brushes with death. To sense the immense power of whitewater rushing over Yosemite Falls, Muir crawled perilously close to its brink. He ventured behind a small waterfall between Upper and Lower Yosemite Fall at night to “see the glory of moonlight through the meshes of the denser portions of the fall”— and almost got trapped there. He clambered up a four-hundred-foot ice cone at the base of the falls, formed by plunging water, so he could look down inside. He was caught in a snow avalanche while trying to study it. Muir also provoked a bear into chasing him so he could see how it ran; took refuge in a hollow tree trunk to observe a forest fire; rushed outside when a “noble earthquake” shook Yosemite, hoping to learn something; climbed a hundred-foot ponderosa pine during a fierce thunderstorm and clung “like a bobolink on a reed” to the slender top, which swung wildly in the wind; was stranded for more than thirteen hours on the summit of Northern California’s Mount Shasta in a driving hailstorm, where temperatures plunged below zero; and, while exploring a bay in Alaska, fell into a glacial crevasse that immersed him in icy water.*

  Muir pursued most of his adventures alone.

  PART OF THE TOTAL EXPERIENCE for Esteban was reciting the wonders of the Dome and recounting his adventures to workmates and buddies. These included Bill Pippey, who was always up for a challenge. To his friends, “Bip,” who had brown hair and hazel eyes that were more blue than green, seemed bigger than his five feet, ten inches, and 155 pounds, probably because of his outgoing personality and high excitability. He often spoke loudly to compensate for deafness in one ear; that and his high, raspy voice got others’ attention. Everyone liked Bip.

  Born in 1958 and a single child, Pippey was only six years old when his mother died. From then on, his father neglected him, often disappearing for days. Pippey had spent weekends with his grandparents from the time he was nine until his grandmother died when he was twelve. His grandfather then moved into Pippey’s house and looked after him. He died two years later—so the young teenager had to learn to fend for himself. He reached out to others in his East Bay neighborhood, particularly the nearby Jordan family. The Jordans, who had three daughters and two small twin sons, watched over Pippey, took him on family vacations, and treated him as one of their own. Still, the young teen lived mainly alone. His father came and went at whim.

  About this time, while Pippey and his best friend were walking together on the way to a bowling alley, his companion was hit and killed by a car when he tried to cross the street. This tragedy—the death of another loved one, this time witnessed firsthand—almost destroyed him.

  Pippey worked odd jobs to support himself and to partly cover his share of house payments, as his father demanded. In high school, he succumbed to drugs—mainly pot—and often was truant. An insensitive school dean told him in his sophomore year that before he could return to school, a parent conference would be necessary. Pippey’s problems worsened. In the eleventh grade, the dean expelled him and sent him to a continuation program for problem students. There he enrolled in a technical course and found he had good skills. He earned straight A’s. But the program didn’t prevent him from dropping out of high school for good by the end of his junior year. To Pippey, it seemed the entire world was aligned against him. He didn’t have any close friends, was extremely shy, never went on a date, and had little hope of success.

  In 1976, Pippey read The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. It changed his life. “For the first time,” he recalled, “I felt as though I could succeed.” He worked diligently, paid his bills, saved money, and got a girlfriend. In 1976, he began working as an assembler at Quantra-Ray, a laser manufacturer across San Francisco Bay in Mountain View.

  But two days before Pippey’s twenty-second birthday, his father split for good, taking money he had been hoarding from his son’s contributions, including three months of back rent and cash for other bills. That same day his girlfriend also broke up with him. Pippey hit another low. He began drinking and abusing drugs even more heavily than before, abetted by co-workers and others. It wasn’t unusual for him to consume four shots of liquor at lunchtime and half a pint of bourbon in the evening—just enough, he said, “to still be able to function at work the next day.” Plus he regularly used pot, methamphetamine, acid, and coke. By this time, he had moved into an apartment with a Quantra-Ray co-worker in Sunnyvale, near Mountain View.

  Pippey took his first backpacking trip in the summer of 1982 and discovered the power of the mountains. He began backpacking frequently. It was an activity he quickly came to value and respect, and one that provided an energy outlet. Time in the outdoors reduced the stress in his personal life and the workplace. It helped heal wounds. To get in top shape for these outings, he initiated a physical conditioning regimen, which included jogging ten to twenty miles on most days.

  Pippey’s life had turned the corner.

  AFTER HIS FIRST TRIPS WITH RICE, Esteban recruited Pippey for a trip to Half Dome the following summer. In addition to Rice, Esteban’s three younger brothers, Alan, Andrew, and Alex, and two of his young cousins, Sean and Eric, joined them. Esteban wanted as many of his family and closest friends as possible to “gain the magic of a Dome expedition.” To him, it was a rite of manhood and an initiation into the “Dome brotherhood.”

  When the party of eight arrived at a small camping area called Red Bud on Highway 140 near the town of El Portal just outside of Yosemite, at midnight on a Friday in midsummer, they consumed two six-packs of beer while relaxing after the long, tiring drive. Then, instead of bedding down in the campground, they loaded their gear and took off in pitch darkness for Paradise. Esteban and Rice, always quick to fantasize, likened this nighttime foray to a “midnight assault in ’Nam requiring total silence.”

  With only one flashlight among them, no one could see more than two feet ahead on the narrow, hillside pathway. At one point, Esteban lost his footing and went rolling down the slope, crashing through brush and almost landing in a stream. Although uninjured, he lay there motionless in the dark to see how his companions would react. Pippey started shouting in panic, until Rice punched him to hold him to the code of silence of their military fantasy. Satisfied with his charade, Esteban eventually made his way back up to the trail, and the group marched on.

  At Paradise, Sean, a scrawny young teenager who carried a sleeping bag under each arm, slipped on the polished rock and fell into the water. He reemerged without the bags, which rested at the pool’s bottom. Although they retrieved them, the bags were soaked. Esteban’s two cousins had to pass the night without them.

  The next morning, they all watched as Rice climbed up to the ledge resting forty-four feet above the pool.

  Esteban: “To see Tom on a rock, perched high like an eagle, waiting for the exact right moment to dive into the wind and execute perfection . . . that’s what Tom was all about. He would wait until all eyes were keyed on him, for this was what his ego demanded. Then he would delay, as though he were part of the stone itself, seeking the perfect vibration that resonated from his inner universe. Only then would he launch into his beautiful, flawless dive.”

  Rice spun his tightly compacted body two and a half times on the descent, straightening out just in time for his hands and head to break the water.

  It was Esteban’s turn. He knew what he had to do. He climbed to the ledge and le
aped off without hesitation. By this time, however, he had adopted a new approach when jumping: He kept his arms close to his sides to protect them from slapping the water, all the while cupping his groin area to thereby “protect the family jewels,” as he put it. No one else wanted any part of this exercise. However, Rice expected Pippey to jump. None of them knew that Pippey was terrified of heights.

  Pippey realized he couldn’t refuse Rice. He climbed up to the ledge but, paralyzed by acrophobia, couldn’t even go near the edge. For more than fifteen minutes, he dawdled up there, frozen with fear, while everyone waited. Pippey finally clambered down to a lower, twelve-foot ledge and jumped.

  Returning to the high perch, he told himself, Whatever it takes to throw myself off this ledge, I’m going to do it. Rice gave him a thumbs-up, Pippey sucked in a full chest of air, launched himself, and hurtled down into the pool.

  Pippey was ecstatic—he nearly came out of his skin with glee. It was a great personal victory.

  Rice was impressed. Pippey had gazed into those frightful depths and conquered his terror. He had passed Rice’s test. From that time on, Rice referred to Pippey as one of the bravest people he knew.

  After the sleeping bags had dried in the sun, the eight packed up, returned to their vehicle, and left for Yosemite.

  On the Mist Trail, Rice set his usual fierce pace up the granite stairs. Pippey was close behind and Esteban held his own, while the others lagged. The men were sweating profusely by the time they reached the top of Nevada Fall, where they performed another ritual that marked their Half Dome excursions: plunging into the Merced River to cool off. In mid-July, the river’s flow was not strong, but it was a very cold fifty-six degrees.