Conness

Conness

11:30 PM (Camping at Saddlebag in the Summer of  2007): Joshua is sick with a fever and can’t get to sleep.

1:00 AM: Joshua’s crying…I feel around for the pacifier then feel around for Joshua’s mouth…then silence but for the soft metronomic sucking of a pacifier.

1:30 AM: Sarah’s turn.

3:30 AM: I extinguish the beeping of my watch alarm and go out into the darkness of the moonless morning. The headlamp was illuminating white clouds of breath making it almost easier to feel my way around than to try to look through it. I kissed Sarah and snuck quietly out of the tent. Being mostly packed I collected the last few items that the sleepless night reminded me that I’d forgotten.

4:00 AM: Guiltily I walked away from camp leaving pregnant Sarah and the three little ones behind as we begin our climb. Joshua’s cry pierced the quiet as we walked down the hill toward the dam. We crossed and left the trail that circumvented the lake to start the arduous shale assent. The world painted itself gray in our rings of lamp light and fell again into darkness as it tumbled and shattered down the mountain behind us.


Sunrise: I wiped sweat from my forehead and began to shiver as pink spilled over from the east. With each step my energy slipped and skidded away behind me and came to a quiet rest in a cloud of dust.

Flashback to 1988 (my first time climbing Conness): As I packed some trail food into a backpack early one morning I received a reminder that I was not to climb Conness. Conness is a deadly looking mountain of jagged peeks and ominous cliffs near Tioga pass. I’m sure I’d mentioned something about wanting to climb it, and it was obvious that if any mountain was to be my destination that day Conness was it. To my fourteen year old self it was the only mountain around worth climbing, I wasn’t climbing for the exercise but for adventure. Anyway I was armed with semantic justification that one could not really call a mountain “climbed” unless he stood on the summit. It would be easy enough not to do that, so I started toward the glacier crusted peek of Conness. I remember the solitude that I felt on that hike. I was alone for as far as I could see in any direction. I wondered if it was possible that no one had ever set foot where I was walking. Though logically it didn’t seem likely it sure felt possible being up there. I’d brought a little Gideon New Testament with me and read as I walked. Shortly, or so it seemed, I found myself within easy reach of the summit. I turned around and started back for camp. I arrived late that afternoon and began to organize an expedition for the next day. Returning alive from the near summit was probably the most persuasive of my arguments that convinced Dad and a few others to join me. On the way up we stumbled upon an old wrecked plane in the bottom of a crystal clear glacial lake from which we filled our canteens. The last leg to the summit took us up a narrow path with thousand foot cliffs on either side. It’s always looked to me like we were walking up an elephants trunk towards it’s head. We sat there on the peak for a long time. The clear and beautiful view of white granite mountains, little blue lakes, and scatterings of trees fell away in the distance with the curve of the earth.

6:00 AM: The cold air pressed painfully against my throbbing head. I laid down on the rocky ground to rest or die. There on the ground the gray of the wilderness focused into a beautiful rainbow of tiny plants and flowers. The freezing burn in my throat subsided as my breath slowed down. I stood, the flora blurring back into grayness, swallowed some aspirin and numbly set off toward the summit.

8:00 AM: How old was I now? I never keep track and was having a hard time doing the math…thirty something. I was hiking with my little brother Michael and couldn’t admit that I just wanted to give up and turn around. The “I can’t make it” was on the tip of my tongue but just wouldn’t spill out. I kept on hiking, knowing that every miserable step towards the top would mean an increasing miserable step on the way down. I told my self it was the lack of sleep or even wondered if I was sick. But that little voice in my head would reply “No, you’re just being a wimp”, so I kept on moving.

10:00 AM: I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the morning above the tree line, the sound of wind and water flowing across the rocks. I wanted to, but it was so much to just keep moving while trying to act like I wasn’t a complete wimp. We climbed up over the last ridge and were blasted with a bitter cold wind. I couldn’t stop shivering. We paused for a few pictures and climbed to the summit, signed the log book, ate some lunch, and started for camp.

  
The Decent: On the way down I found a strangely human looking bone, put it in my pocket and some time later noticed it was gone. We told Sarah and Heidi to expect us back at camp by 3:00. We slipped and slid off of the shale and onto the last leg of trail around 2:55 (I was at least able to take some pride in my timing) but that slight hill up to our campsite now loomed larger than the mountain itself. We’d be late because of me. I stepped onto the road, dreading the climb, then out of nowhere Sarah and the car came around the corner.  In my mind, lacking the actual energy, I ran up gave Sarah a big hug and a kiss as I spun her around. She’d come to save me. Thank you Sara! We waved them down and with difficulty I pulled myself up into the passengers seat.

Not Going Home: We let the kids splash around a little in a stream near Tioga pass. Then headed off to soak in some hot springs on the way home. It didn’t help, but the kids had fun. I told Sarah I wouldn’t be able to help drive that night as planned so we got a Motel room, which was also a blast for the kids. Perhaps the best part of my day, or what made it better, was when we checked my temperature and it was 104º.   103º latter in the motel.  Thank goodness for an excuse.

~Aaron 2008