by Scott Graham
Dale’s teeth shone white with a grin in the dim light filtering to the campsite from the central bathroom. “We figured you’d try to talk us out of it.”
“Where is it you’re going?” Chuck asked, his voice also low.
“You mean, ‘Where are we going?’”
22
“Where?” Chuck insisted.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Dale said.
Chuck groaned. “If I come with you.”
Clearly, Jimmy, Dale, and the others hadn’t tired of their mischief-making ways—which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps a little mischief was what they all needed to move beyond, or at least come to grips with, Thorpe’s death. Besides, the times Chuck had allowed himself to be talked into participating in one or another of the group’s high jinks in the past, he’d enjoyed the escapades as much as the rest of them—midnight skinny dips in the Majestic Yosemite Hotel pool; loading one another’s climbing packs with hidden, heavy cans of beer, then revealing and drinking the golden nectar upon topping out on climbs; singing love songs as a group chorus, drunk and a cappella, in the wee hours outside the tents of the few female climbers who had made Camp 4 their temporary home twenty years ago.
“What’s going on?” Janelle asked from inside their family tent, her voice husky with sleep.
“The guys are up to something,” Chuck whispered to her through the tent wall. “I have to keep them from doing anything too stupid.”
Janelle muttered to herself. Then she warned Chuck, “Promise me you won’t get yourself arrested. We didn’t bring enough cash to bail you out.”
He smiled. “I don’t think we’ll be gone for long. Are you and the girls okay here, with Clarence next to you?”
“I guess,” she said grudgingly. Then, after a pause, “We’ll be fine, Chuck.”
She pressed her hand to the tent wall. He pressed his hand to hers in response.
The reunion attendees gathered in the middle of their campsite in the dark with extinguished headlamps strapped to their foreheads. Chuck made out Jimmy on his crutches, exchanging quiet banter with the other members of the group.
Next to Chuck, Bernard tapped his legs with his hands in a quick, steady beat. “Glad to see you’re coming,” he said in Chuck’s ear.
“I’d like to know what we’re doing.”
“You and me both. Jimmy said I should come along, that it would be fun, fun, fun. He said there’s nothing to be worried about.”
“That was all he told you?”
Bernard continued to drum his legs with his hands. “I couldn’t get anything more out of him. He said I was too much of a chicken, chicken, chicken-shit, and that you were too sensible for your own good.”
Chuck’s reply was thick with sarcasm. “Nothing to be worried about, huh?”
“You’re coming?”
Chuck grunted. “To start with, I guess.”
Dale distributed provisions of a sort impossible to determine in the darkness. He finished by handing Chuck a pair of one-pound tin cans, their labels invisible in the shadowy light.
“These are crucial,” Dale said as he placed the cans in Chuck’s palms. “You’ll have to come all the way with us.”
“I can always give them back,” Chuck said, dropping the cans in his pack.
“If you manage to keep up with us.”
Dale led Chuck and the others across the road and onto a trail to the head of the valley, leaving Jimmy in the campground. They walked single file along the deserted trail in the moonlight, Dale setting a brisk pace at the front of the line. From his position at the rear of the group, Chuck counted five shadowy figures ahead of him in addition to Dale—Caleb, Mark, Ponch, Bernard, and one unknown other.
Dale raised a hand when they reached the head of the valley, bringing the group to a halt where the flat pedestrian trail ended and the renowned John Muir Trail began its tortuous, 276-mile route south through the High Sierra to the 14,505-foot summit of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the Lower 48.
Catching his breath, Chuck checked his watch. Not yet one o’clock. They’d covered the two miles across the flat valley floor to the trailhead in forty minutes. Three miles per hour. Not bad for a bunch of old guys.
Dale clicked on his headlamp. The others, standing in a circle, followed suit. Their bright LED beams shone on one another. In the sudden light, Chuck identified the grinning faces of his old friends and that of Alden, the climbing tower attendant.
“What are you doing here?” Chuck asked him.
“Jimmy sent me in his place. He said I should carry the packs for anyone who got tired.”
“We’ll see about that,” Caleb said with a huff.
But Mark, gulping air, his hands clasping his bulging stomach, said to Alden, “I might just take you up on that.”
Dale reached across the circle and gave Mark’s round belly a solid whap. “That’s why I didn’t give you anything extra to carry when I was divvying things up.”
Dale led the group up the steep, rocky trail. Dappled by beams of moonlight breaking through the trees overhead, the group members climbed alongside the upper Merced River, which tumbled from the mountains to the valley floor in a series of roaring cataracts. They switchbacked out of the tight canyon alongside towering Vernal Falls as the moon settled in the west behind them.
At the back of the line, Chuck took deep breaths, perspiration building on his forehead despite the coolness of the night. So much for not being away from camp for long—though, he assured himself, Janelle and the girls and Clarence were safe together in the campground.
Where the canyon opened at the top of the falls, Dale, still in the lead, left the river and climbed alongside the rounded hump of Half Dome.
By now, Chuck knew where they were headed. During his summers in the valley twenty years ago, he’d participated several times in the annual, highly unofficial, full-moon climbers’ race to the summit of the massive granite dome. The informal race, hosted each summer by Jimmy and Thorpe, started at the head of the valley and followed the famed Cable Route up the south flank of the bare rock peak.
Participants left the valley in the middle of the night, competing to see who would reach the top of Half Dome first. The contest became interesting where the racers climbed the final four hundred feet up the south side of the dome, ascending the steeply sloped granite face between parallel lengths of wound steel attached to iron posts drilled into the stone every few feet.
The waist-high steel strands lining the last stretch to the summit should have made the last portion of the ascent to the top of Half Dome safe. Every year, however, a handful of the hundreds of unseasoned climbers who attempted the route during daylight hours managed to lose their grip on the cables and plummet off the peak, some to their deaths.
Though no one died during the years Jimmy and Thorpe hosted their under-the-radar nighttime race to the top of the dome, it wasn’t from lack of effort by the competitors. So coveted was the unofficial title of first full-moon Half Domer that those at the head of the pack elbowed and jostled one another up the cabled stretch to the summit. In several cases, scuffles broke out at the top of the Cable Route as Jimmy and Thorpe, waiting at the top, attempted to determine the year’s winner in the pre-dawn darkness.
As he had when he’d participated in the full-moon races up Half Dome twenty years ago, Chuck hung back while the others climbed through the night ahead of him. Soon, his position at the back of the line meant he fell farther and farther behind the rest of the group as Mark slowed a step ahead of him, then slowed still more.
The former climber turned overweight restaurateur gasped for air, placing one wobbly foot in front of the other. Finally, he collapsed to a sitting position where the trail angled out of the forest and onto the expanse of granite that rose steadily to the start of the Cable Route.
The gray rock gleamed in the light of the half moon sitting just above the horizon in the western sky. Three hundred yards ahead, the bare granite steepened
and the parallel steel strands of the Cable Route marked the way to the summit up the nearly vertical south face of the dome.
Mark sat forward, his hands hanging from his knees and his shoulders heaving. In the light of Chuck’s headlamp, his face was ashen. Sweat streamed down his cheeks and dripped from his blond beard and mustache.
“That’s all I got,” he said, wheezing.
He closed his eyes and keeled over on his side.
At Chuck’s cry for help, the others scrambled back down the sloped granite. Alden arrived first, with Dale on his heels, followed by Caleb, Ponch, and Bernard.
“I’m finished,” Mark moaned, struggling back to a sitting position.
“Jesus,” Alden muttered, his voice filled with disgust.
Bernard, breathing hard, drummed his own sizable girth with his fingers. “I’m feeling the climb, too,” he assured Mark.
Alden said to Bernard, “At least you’re still upright.”
Mark swallowed, corralling his wheezes. “Just because you’re still a kid,” he accused Alden, looking up from his seated position on the rock.
“Wrong.” Alden, looming over Mark, put a hand to his own flat stomach. “Just because I know how to control my appetite.”
Mark’s eyes constricted to an angry pinch in the lights of the group members’ headlamps.
“Hey, now,” Ponch said, stepping forward. “Tonight’s supposed to be fun.”
Alden turned away, his hands on his hips.
“It’d be great to have somebody filming from down below, at the foot of the cables,” Dale suggested to Mark. “Can you make it that far?”
Mark looked at where the parallel cables rose to the starry night sky a few hundred yards away. “Yeah,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I can do that.”
He teetered on the smooth stone surface. Chuck grabbed his elbow, steadying him.
Alden slid Mark’s daypack off his back. “I thought Jimmy was joking.”
“Thanks,” Mark said, looking at his feet.
Alden slung Mark’s backpack over his own pack and headed up the granite slope. The others followed. Chuck made his way slowly toward the start of the Cable Route beside Mark, maintaining his grip on Mark’s elbow, until the two of them reached the others at the foot of the steel strands.
Ponch rubbed his hands together. “Almost time for the fun to begin,” he exclaimed in an obvious attempt to recapture some of the night’s lost energy.
“We’re getting close,” Dale joined in. He pulled a handheld video camera from his pack and handed it to Mark. “I’ll use my phone for the close-in shots on top. Start filming from down here after we get up there, would you? I want to catch the first flames—plus the explosion.”
23
Chuck took a quick breath. “Explosion?”
Dale punched him on the arm. “It’s all under control.”
Chuck stumbled a step sideways. If ever he was going to turn back, now was the time.
He swung his headlamp from face to face around the group. The others smiled back at him, their eyes bright with anticipation. Only Bernard’s eyes displayed the uncertainty Chuck knew showed in his.
He cursed beneath his breath. It was pointless to ask questions; no one would confess to what they were up to. Still, none of those in the know appeared the least bit concerned.
“You jerks,” he groused, triggering a round of laughter in response.
Dale said to Mark, “We can splice the footage together to eliminate the time lag in between. I made sure the battery is topped off, so that won’t be a problem.”
“Close up or wide angle?” Mark asked as his breathing calmed.
“Go in tight on the fires, then pull back and wait while the flames die out. I’ll holler when it’s getting close to time.”
“Flames?” Chuck asked.
Rather than respond, Dale said to the group, “Let’s head on up.”
He took a cable in each hand and tugged himself up the pitched granite face, his headlamp painting a circle of light on the rock in front of him.
Alden dropped Mark’s pack and scurried to the bottom of the Cable Route. Rather than trail after Dale between the cables, he pulled himself upward along the right side of the route, outside the confines of the steel strands. Caleb sprang to the opposite side of the route and hauled himself upward using the left-hand cable.
Quickly hand-over-handing up the right-side cable, Alden drew even with Dale. Caleb maintained a third-place position below and to the left of Dale and Alden as the three sped up the face, their headlamp beams flickering on the rock, their breaths harsh in the still night air.
Watching them, Ponch shook his head. “Boys will always be boys,” he muttered.
Bernard chuckled. “You got that right, right, right.”
Ponch set out, hauling himself upward between the cables at a more leisurely cadence behind the lead trio.
Bernard turned to Chuck. “Ready?”
Chuck said to Mark, “You good down here?”
“Golden.”
Chuck followed Ponch and Bernard up the Cable Route, sliding his right hand, then his left, up the waist-high steel strands, his booted feet finding plenty of traction on the rough granite surface between the strands.
He reprimanded himself for his acquiescence to peer pressure even as he continued to ascend rather than head back to Camp 4.
As Ponch, Bernard, and Chuck neared the summit, Dale yelled down to them, “I won! I beat Alden!”
“By one measly step!” Alden hollered.
Chuck reached the top of the granite dome behind Ponch and Bernard, leaving the confines of the parallel cables for the compact, rounded summit. Quartz crystals trapped in the surface of the rock flashed like diamonds in the light of his headlamp.
The top of the dome rolled away on three sides, the rock steepening to near vertical as it plunged into darkness. On its fourth side, the cleaved granite dome ended in an abrupt stone cornice beneath which Half Dome’s vertical north face, lined with climbing routes, plummeted two thousand feet straight down to the waters of Tenaya Creek. With the moon having set, the night sky sat close overhead, the stars distinct and shining.
In a few hours, hordes of daytime climbers would crowd the summit. For now, however, Chuck and the five others had the peak to themselves.
“He had both cables to pull himself up with,” Alden complained of Dale. “I only used one.”
“You got ahead of me for a while, I’ll give you that,” Dale said. “But I came back even though I’ve got twenty years on you.” He clapped Alden’s beefy shoulder. “You’ve got a few too many pounds on you, big boy.”
“Not as many as the dude we left down below.”
“A helluva lot more than Chuck’s daughter, though. Amazing what she pulled off yesterday, all fifty pounds of her—without even resorting to the out move you snuck onto the route.”
Alden shoved his chest into Dale. “What do you mean, ‘snuck’?”
Dale grinned in the light of Alden’s headlamp. “I don’t mean anything,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
Alden stepped back. “I got no problem with being strong,” he declared. He returned Dale’s shoulder clap, with emphasis.
“Watch it!” Dale cried out, catching himself on the curved stone surface.
“Besides,” Alden said, turning away, “the ladies like me just the way I am.”
Chuck swung his headlamp between Dale and Alden. It appeared Dale, too, had spotted Alden speaking to Tara Rogan, the climber from Berkeley, at the start of the Slam.
Caleb broke in. “Let’s do it.”
“Do what?” Chuck asked.
“You’re about to find out,” Dale said. He turned to Alden. “Hand me your pack, would you, you big oaf?”
“I’ll ‘oaf’ you, old man,” Alden shot back. But he handed over his pack.
Dale opened the pack’s top flap and pulled out a fifteen-pound bag of charcoal. He held it up in the light of his headlamp.
“That’s why I lost,” Alden complained. “I had to carry that up here.”
“I carried the bottle of lighter fluid,” Dale countered, his tone lighthearted.
“Whoa,” Alden scoffed. “That must’ve weighed a whole pound. Aren’t you the strong man?”
Dale set the sack of charcoal on the ground and swept his headlamp around the summit. “Jimmy and I talked about where to set it up.”
Caleb’s headlamp beam dipped and rose as he nodded. “He and I talked, too. He told you about the shelf, right?”
“Yep.” Dale aimed his headlamp to the west. “This way.”
He hoisted the sack of charcoal and crossed the bare top of the dome. Beyond the pair of iron stanchions at the top of the Cable Route, the dome rounded gently to a shallow, concave rock shelf, two feet wide by ten feet long. On the far side of the shallow depression, the rock face fell steeply downward. Far beyond, the lights of Yosemite Village twinkled on the valley floor.
Dale set the bag of charcoal next to the shelf. “This must be it,” he told the others as they gathered around him. “Looks perfect, just like Jimmy said.” He pointed at the base of the Cable Route, in full view below and to the south. “Mark can see it from his position, and we’ll be able to film it from up here, too.”
“If anybody’s looking from the valley, they’ll get the full show,” said Caleb. He held out a hand. “Charcoal first.”
Dale slid the bag to Caleb, who ripped it open and poured half its contents into one end of the shallow depression in the rock and half into the other end.
“They need to be in two neat piles,” Caleb said.
“Like volcanoes?” Dale asked with a mischievous grin. He knelt and set to work with his hands, forming the scattered briquettes at one end of the depression into a conical pile.
“Exactly like volcanoes,” Caleb concurred, crouching at the other end of the rock shelf and assembling the second mound of charcoal pieces into a briquette cone like the one formed by Dale.
“Excellent,” Dale declared, sitting back. He proffered a hand to Chuck. “Next.”
