Lamb's Slide
It was July, 1965, and I had just moved to mountainous Colorado from flat Illinois. Just about everything I owned was in my car, and I was camping my way though the mountains, postponing the day when I’d join the CU graduate school in Boulder. This particular day I had my eye set on Mt Ida, a “12-er†on the high ridge in Rocky Mtn National Park. It was an easy walk up to the 11,000’ plateau behind Ida, and a short “walk in the park†to the summit.
Someplace along the trail, I met a retired guy, Bob, who was walking back to his car. Bob asked me where I was planning to hike next, and not having any plan, I asked for suggestions. He said that he and a younger friend, Jack, were going to climb Longs Peak the next day, and I was welcome to come along. He invited me to his trailer in the neighboring town of Estes Park, where, since his retirement a few years ago, he and his wife moved up to from Phoenix every spring. They made dinner and shared it with me, while we all raved about the beauty of the Park. Afterwards, I left for the campground, with an agreement to meet Bob & Jack at dawn at the eastern trail head to Longs Peak.
The sun was rising behind Twin Peaks just east of the Longs Peak trail when I drove into the shadowy parking lot. There was Bob, and a younger guy about my age (24) with a rope over his shoulder. Bob introduced me, and we checked the contents of our packs (cheese, bread, candy bars and water, mostly) and hit the trail. It was a 3,000’ gain up to the plateau known as the Boulder Field, just north of Long’s summit. There was some snow in the shaded areas, but not enough to slow us down, though the north face of the peak seemed to be a plastered with rime. By then the sun was up high, and it compensated for the coolness of the altitude (12,700’). Above us, to the right of the summit, we could see the “Keyhole” formation through which the summit trail wound.
After a lot of boulder hopping and scrambling along the semi-circling trail, we found ourselves on the ramps approaching the south side of the summit—“The Trough†and “The Narrowsâ€. This was the first place we experienced serious exposure, and it is often the bane of the flat-landers. I had climbed few mountains before, but for some reason the exposure didn’t affect me. Maybe the air’s lower oxygen content had reduced the number of my functioning brain cells to 3 or 4— as evidenced by later insane decisions. The slope drops off below the trail in long pinkish-grey slabs that disappear into Wild Basin. Apparently the exposure didn’t faze Bob or Jack, who scrambled up “The Home Stretch†to the summit, with me in their wake.
The top of Longs is flat, and about as big as a baseball field. If you batted a baseball from that 14,256’-high field, it would drop 3 or 4 thousand feet in most any direction. From the pitcher’s mound you can see all of the National Park, Colorado’s Front Range all the way down to Pike’s Peak, and the mountains of the Continental Divide to the west. It was a marvelous view, and we sat down and ate lunch while we tried to identify those peaks around us.
Other climbers who had just summited were also enjoying the scenery and their lunches, or were snoozing, but Jack walked over to the east side of the summit and looked down over Long’s East Face. We trundled over to look with him, and so did some other hiker/climbers. He pointed down towards a cleft through which we could see Chasm Lake, a tarn in the canyon some 3,000’ below us.
He casually said, “You know, I think we could descend this way to Chasm Lake. And I’ve got a rope.â€
(to be continued)
• rakkity
I don’t have inside knowledge of what happens next, but I do have rakkity’s latest burroed book – “Deep Survival,†by Laurence Gonzales. Therefore, I’m wondering if any these nuggets contained in the book might apply:
“So, piece by piece, unaware that their model of the world was no longer valid, they assembled the accident.â€
or
“To rope up is a serious decision … . But there is a subculture among mountaineers, and for most, the rope is more than a safety device. It’s both a real and a symbolic commitment to a partner.â€
or
To rope together is the same as drawing up a suicide pact.
Comment by michael — March 17, 2006 @ 1:35 pm
“To rope together is the same as drawing up a suicide pact.”
I recall something that actually happened to me that Gonzales describes in that book. My old friend Bill Glinkman, erstwhile president of the CU hiking club) and I were up on a precipitous 1-foot-wide ridge approaching the summit of Mt Blanc. As normal, we were roped together, and I said to him, “If one of us falls off, the other jumps off the other side”, and he nodded in agreement. To this day, I wonder if he or I would have done it. Nevertheless, I feel a special bond to him for having agreed on that “mutual suicide pact”.
Comment by rakkity — March 17, 2006 @ 7:29 pm
“And I’ve got a rope.” The stuff of which great serial novels are made … It helps (in some ways — hurts in others) to know the author survives the sequel. But the setup’s sweet, regardless.
Comment by adam — March 17, 2006 @ 9:57 pm
Last night I read more “Deep Survival” and found this:
From below, Lambs Slide, on the the east side of Longs Peak in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, doesn’t appear that treacherous and it’s not, until you’re fully committed about one-third of the way up. Even in mid-July, when it’s at its worst, the initial ascent is a deceptively easy hike. But it gets steeper and steeper. As on Mount Hood, people go up roped together because it feel safer. (A team leader from Portland Mountain Rescue told me, “All that rope means is that you don’t die alone .â€) The accident that results is so common that it would have an acronym only it’s not pronounceable: LFCSAFTD. The official phrasing in the reports is usually “Lost footing. Couldn’t self arrest. Fell to death.â€
Williamson wrote: Since the epic 1871 uncontrolled descent a Lambs Slide by the irreverent Elkannah Lamb, the accident has been repeated continually with results varying greatly from no injury to death. On July 14, 1996, Nathan Dick slid 1000 feet and stuck his ice axe through his neck. Despite the existence of four other much easier descent roots, 75 people have died at Lambs Slide since Elkannah gave it its name. The death rate isn’t that high, but it nevertheless means that a lot of people have been unpleasantly surprised in a pretty place that has a reputation as a beginner’s peak. And the frequency of fatalities probably follows a power law.
We are human. Our attention is fragmentary. We get excited. We get tired. We get stupid. Of course, you can make adventure safe, for then it’s not adventure. In an almost comic treatment of the paradox, the Mount Hood recreation officer told me, “If you make it so safe for everybody to get up there, you’d have a lot more fatalities because people wouldn’t recognize the risk.†More likely, people wouldn’t bother to go up. But we want to go up. We want to conquer. I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to do it today. I’d hate like hell to have my gravestone read, “Here lies a moron.â€
Comment by michael — March 18, 2006 @ 9:24 am
That would be Mike saying that, Adam agreeing, Q shrugging his shoulders and saying “sounds good”, and Dan digging in his heels and digging up excuses, like:
Sun will go down before we get out of there
We did not plan on this and don;t have enough gear/food/energy
Rakkity, am on the edge of my monitor awaiting the next chapter!
Comment by smiling Dan — March 18, 2006 @ 10:49 am
lambs Slide II is in Michael’s mailbox.
Comment by rakkity — March 20, 2006 @ 10:52 am
Hello-Just read this here with my father Bill Glinkman who was mentioned in this blog, we are wondering if you know a way to get a hold of rakkitty aka Ed Schmahl who commented on here. He would love to get in touch with him.
Comment by Juliana — April 13, 2010 @ 3:09 pm