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

by Bob Madgic

  To conquer personal fear, Rice liked to say, you had to believe in yourself. As if to prove it, he assumed a diver’s stance, arms at his side, toes curled over the edge. He took a leisurely breath, raised his arms, and sprang. He wrapped himself into a tight ball in midair, spun one and a half times as he descended, uncoiled just above the water, and neatly broke the surface in a headfirst finish.

  Rice paddled to the pool’s edge and looked up questioningly.

  Esteban’s feet remained anchored to the rock. Jump or fail. As the minutes passed, his right leg started to tremble uncontrollably. Rock climbers call this sewing-machine leg. It’s caused by fear.

  Jump or fail. He would not—could not—back down.

  Rice yelled up, You can do it. Trust me!

  Esteban made a move to jump. Then stopped. He peered down at the water. More minutes passed.

  Rice shouted, Just do it!

  Esteban realized that was the key, the only solution. Just do it! With a gulping inhalation, he jackknifed his legs, then thrust himself outward. Bellowing as he plunged (good for releasing air and thus reducing pressure on the lungs), arms overhead to prevent them from smacking the surface, he felt the soles of his feet slam, stinging, into the water. Gravity drove him to the bottom, the water slowing and cushioning the impact. The late-spring, fifty-degree water seemed to clutch at his chest and squeeze his lungs. He pushed hard off the bottom and shot to the surface, emerging in a watery explosion. Looking straight at Rice, he raised his arm in triumph.

  Rice nodded and smiled. Esteban had passed his qualifying test and proved himself worthy.

  From this point on, Esteban knew what it took to make the leap: Just do it!

  Now they could tackle Half Dome together.

  As they gathered their gear, Esteban hesitated. He pointed to the mountaintop overlooking Paradise and said he wanted to go up there before they left this place; he felt this mountain calling to him.

  Rice gave him a questioning glance, wondering what was going on with his buddy. Then he nodded again, pleased with the words and seeming to attune himself to Esteban’s exhilaration after making the jump.

  Rice told him to lead the way.

  As they neared the crest, Esteban spotted something white on the ground.

  Stop! he called out.

  Rice froze, thinking he was about to step on a rattlesnake. Then, looking where Esteban pointed, he composed himself with a sheepish look—Rice tried never to show fright—and bent down to pull a partial set of antlers from the thick grass.

  After a quick examination, Rice handed over the antlers, the left side of a young bucks rack. He told Esteban to keep the trophy; after all, he'd spotted it first.

  They were the first antlers Esteban had seen in the wild. He studied them appreciatively, then tied the prized find to his pack. Moments later, when they reached the summit, Rice discovered the other half of the rack—the carbon-copy right side—at the mountain’s very highest point. To the two young men, these finds held great meaning. The buck had needed to shed his old antlers before he could grow new ones. He'd visited the hill’s apex to make a symbolic passage into a new phase—adulthood—and it struck Esteban and Rice that, with this initial trip to Half Dome together, they, too, were entering a new phase in their lives. The antlers seemed to signify their deepening bonds of friendship.

  There on the crest, they made a pact: Each would keep his half of the antlers, thus linking them forever.

  After they descended and were driving toward Half Dome, Esteban told Rice with quiet intensity that he felt the mountain had been beckoning him the whole time; he'd needed to go to its summit to answer the call.

  Rice offered a one-word explanation: Karma.

  ADRIAN ESTEBAN AND TOM RICE HAD met five years before, when Rice was a senior and Esteban a sophomore at Peterson High School in Santa Clara, about forty miles south of San Francisco. On the surface, the two teens hardly could have been more different.

  Rice was the youngest of four children in a well-to-do, supportive family. His father was a Chevron Corporation executive. Two of Rice’s siblings were considerably older, which may have accounted for the lack of parental supervision he'd received while growing up. Although intelligent, Rice was hardly a dedicated student. Nor was he a dedicated athlete. Very much his own man, he mostly avoided team sports, preferring instead to concentrate on his diving abilities, which he pursued on the school swim squad. At five foot nine and 160 pounds, with a diver’s lithe and well-honed body, dirty-blond hair, and striking blue eyes, he looked like the quintessential California surfer. Slightly prominent teeth gave the appearance of a constant smile. Rice was amiable, outgoing, and charismatic—traits that gave him a wide circle of friends.

  But at heart, Tom Rice marched to his own beat. He resisted any hint of constraint placed on him by 'the system' or anyone else. Much of his free time was spent hanging out, both with the athletes or 'jocks,' and with the drug users or 'stoners.' (Such stereotyped groupings were of course typical of high school campuses.) Rice was one of those rare kids who could comfortably mix with either group. It was at parties that he and Esteban first got together, with drugs and alcohol a standard connector. As uncontested holder of the 'killer stash,' Rice was a fixture at all the so-called best ones, which prompted some of his friends to call him The Legend and led his classmates to designate him 'most likely to party' in their yearbook. Often the first thing Esteban asked him—even before 'Howya doin'?'—was 'What’s going down this weekend?' To Esteban, Rice was indeed the man to know, his 'in' to the social world that mattered most to him.

  Unlike Rice, who enjoyed all the upper-middle-class advantages and could fit in wherever he chose, Adrian Esteban was a disadvantaged minority in the mainly white schools around Silicon Valley. His grandparents had left the Philippines in the 1920s for Hawaii, where they worked in the pineapple fields and where Esteban’s mother and father met and married. Believing the mainland offered more opportunity, the couple moved to San Francisco in 1957. The first of their five children, Adrian, was born in 1959. Mr. Esteban worked as a materials handler at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in South San Francisco. When it closed, he moved his family south to Sunnyvale and took a job at the Mare Island Shipyard across the Bay. His modest income, coupled with a gambling addiction, often left the family financially strapped.

  To Adrian, his peers always seemed to have more money, better clothes, and, long before he had one, their own cars. His parents never saw college as a worthy goal, so they didn't push their children academically. Mr. Esteban seldom showed love or emotional support; nor did he provide much in the way of positive guidance or discipline. Mainly he pressured his son to be an outstanding athlete, to adopt a win-at-all-costs mentality. Adrian also could not connect with his mother on a very deep level because in their culture it was considered less manly for a son to be too close to his mom; he didn't want to have an image of being a momma’s boy.

  As the eldest son, Adrian felt particularly harassed. He rebelled against his father’s badgering early on. At age thirteen, he drank some beer. And he liked it—a lot.

  Despite little parental encouragement, Esteban managed to earn outstanding grades. He also demonstrated impressive physical gifts. At five foot six, he was small for an athlete, but he packed 160 solid pounds on his frame and had powerful legs. He worked out religiously, pumping weights and using resistance machines to build leg strength. In his junior year, he led the football team in rushing and was a standout in baseball, with strong potential to play at the next level.

  But by then, Esteban had added marijuana to his growing alcohol intake—a combination that, increasingly and inevitably, muddled his judgment. Entering his senior year, thinking he had it made as an athlete, he didn't bother to train or work out over the summer in preparation for football. He partied most of the night before the first practice. Then, in a mile run with others to test their fitness, he could barely finish. The coach chastised him for his poor physical condition and lack of
dedication, a rebuke that only fueled Esteban’s rebelliousness. Although he'd been heralded at the start of the season as one of the league’s best running backs, he consistently failed to produce.

  Outside football, things weren't any better. Esteban’s parents were divorcing, which heightened his anger and sense of isolation. He cut classes excessively, causing his academic performance to plummet. He found solace—and escape—in beer and pot. His main objective in life was to go to the best parties.

  With the approach of spring, the baseball coach lectured Este-ban on his lack of discipline and bad attitude. Seeing Esteban goofing around in the batting cage at one of the first practices, he warned him to shape up or risk being a flop on the diamond.

  Esteban, stung and resentful, waved contemptuously at the field and told the coach this was all a crock of shit.

  The coach replied that if he kept up that attitude, he may as well not stick it out.

  Fine, snapped Esteban. I quit.

  So much for baseball.

  Joining the U.S. Marines after graduation seemed like a promising option. Military images had long fascinated Esteban. His favorite entertainments involved war movies, books, and games, and he fantasized about being in combat himself. But Esteban was not yet eighteen. His father refused to give the necessary consent and instead threatened to disown him if he tried to enlist. With Korea and Vietnam in mind, Mr. Esteban didn't want his son killed. But somehow that concern got lost in the fray. A shouting match erupted. Enraged at being denied, Esteban stormed out of the house.

  In following months, apart from working at a gas station, he mainly hung out. He had moved his bed and belongings to a room in his parents' garage and spent much of his time partying with buddies who congregated there. His life became increasingly aimless.

  At age nineteen, Esteban bought a 'crotch rocket'—a gleaming new Yamaha 350 racing motorcycle engineered for top speed. The very next week, a car pulled in front of him on a sharp turn. Esteban hit the brakes hard, causing them to lock, and slid under the car, his head banging the pavement. Had he not been wearing a helmet due to cold weather, he would have been totaled like his mangled Yamaha. Nonetheless, undaunted and seemingly uncaring, he seldom bothered with a helmet thereafter.

  Two more bike spills followed, which he again survived with no major injuries. Then, driving a car home late one night from a party while drunk, he foolishly dared himself to cover the intervening two miles without disturbing the cruise control. On a curve where he should have braked, the vehicle sped straight ahead, slammed through a fence, and crashed into a house under construction. Mrs. Esteban reported herself as the driver to protect her son’s insurance and driving record.

  Deep down, recognizing the fatal course his life was taking, Esteban longed to change. At age twenty, he saw an ad for a free personality assessment and mailed in a questionnaire. The Church of Scientology invited him weeks later to come to a meeting and discuss his personal needs. Esteban enlisted in the program soon after. He liked Scientology’s emphasis on uncovering the roots of behavior patterns and its technique-oriented strategies for dealing with his problems: a dysfunctional family, self-destructive actions, reliance on drugs and alcohol. What he didn't like was the escalating cost of this help and oddities such as using a meter to gauge his reactions to stress.

  Esteban eventually dropped Scientology. He still found meaning in religion and the concept of a supreme being. Esteban often looked to such an outside force—'the gods'—to account for happenings in his life. Moreover, he had long believed he possessed paranormal powers, a sixth sense. Once, on deck in a ball game, Esteban suddenly just 'knew' he would hit a home run. At the plate, on the second pitch to him, he blasted the ball over the cen-terfield fence, the longest drive he'd ever hit. During that experience, he felt an unusual clarity, as if he were looking down on it all from an astral plane. On another occasion, after he suspected an object had been stolen from him, he somehow sensed that it was still in his house—and 'saw' it in the attic hidden beneath a pile of boxes. That’s precisely where it proved to be, to the astonishment of his housemates. Esteban was also convinced he'd had more than one brief, out-of-body experience.

  AS HE MATURED, Esteban’s interest in psychic phenomena and metaphysics grew. Movement in that direction was catalyzed by Tom Rice, who bluntly questioned Esteban’s attachment to Scientology and encouraged him to look inward to deal with problems. Trust yourself, trust your own instincts, he argued incessantly. Rice himself embraced a Buddhism-tempered philosophy, which held that the real god is within the self; every individual controls his own destiny.

  'I'm my own church,' Rice was fond of saying. He espoused a strict moral code from which he seldom strayed. He openly shared his judgments with those around him and didn't mince words or try to shade the truth—Esteban and others knew they would always get the 'full Tommy.' In purely practical matters, Rice could be equally inflexible. For example, he insisted on driving only Volvo sedans because they were the safest cars around—a concern that must have amused some of his companions, given Rice’s extreme risk taking in other respects.

  Esteban and Rice shared a passion for pondering these and numerous other topics, generally under the influence of marijuana. Characteristically, Rice used only 'natural' drugs such as pot or mushrooms. If it didn't come from the ground, he proclaimed, he couldn't be sure what was in it; even in a drunken state, he shunned LSD and other synthetic concoctions. 'Sez Buds' (sen-similla) from Humboldt County frequently were their drug of choice. Also popular was the cheaper, generic, more readily available 'skunk weed' from Mexico. Anything especially effective was respectfully dubbed Buddha Bud.

  Rice had access to it all.

  Their minds thus frequently in altered states, Esteban and Rice spent long hours together musing about the nature of humankind. Central to Rice’s beliefs—his close friends referred to these as 'Tommy’s philosophies'—was the idea that fear prevented people from achieving their potential. In order to live life to the fullest and gain bountiful rewards, you had to overcome inhibitions and mental blocks. Only by taking risks and regarding all obstacles as tests of character could you conquer personal fear. Rice summarily rejected negativity, excuses, and rationalizations. If a companion struggled, if he faltered and grew discouraged, Rice tried to buoy him by saying, 'Conquer it—it’s all in your mind.' Face your fears was his constant litany. Only by so doing can you achieve your full potential. In his view, because fear was created by the mind, it could also be discarded by the mind. That was life’s challenge.

  A tall order for most—but one that carried tremendous appeal for Esteban. Such discipline and self-reliance seemed to address a void he had long sensed in his own world. From his older friend, Esteban received the sort of guidance he had never gotten—or been able to swallow—from his father or coaches. Rice saw life as akin to a military mission, too—an element extremely potent for Esteban.

  The men engaged in long discussions, usually with Esteban sharing his innermost thoughts and feelings, while Rice listened and offered advice. And Rice proved able to get beyond his dogma while offering his friend comforting personal advice.

  Esteban: 'When I had questions about life, Tom was someone whom I could talk with on a deep level, about women and relationships, about problems that I had at home like the bad communication between me and my parents and my father’s gambling addiction, things that I was learning in Scientology that were giving me some interesting and different perspectives on life. I also sensed that he was able to relax his guard around me when it was just the two of us. He had this image of always being tough and unafraid, and able to handle any situation. To people who knew him just casually he could come off as arrogant and standoffish. But when we were by ourselves Tom could be very kind and sensitive. He told me that of all his friends he trusted me the most and that I was the most honest. With Tom it was all about truth. He did not like people who were 'plastic,' people who were fakes and not true to themselves. He did not like lia
rs and people who did not respect themselves or others. He always told me to be true to my heart, to be honest to myself and my true feelings, no matter if everyone else wanted something else. This is the greatest attribute that I admired about Tom—the ability to always be true and honest to oneself no matter what other people thought.'

  ENHANCING RICE’S AUTHORITY was his aura of mystery. Few won entry into that private, inner world—not even Esteban, who by this time was probably his closest friend. To all, Rice remained an enigma, and that was the way he wanted it. He didn't discuss his innermost feelings, his personal struggles, his many relationships with women. He spoke about human issues mostly in the abstract. To those who knew him best, he seemed unattached on a deep emotional level—a closed person. The more you hung out with Rice, some claimed, the less you knew about him.

  Yet it could be argued that Tom Rice craved attention and feedback. Although he seemed to respond little, if at all, to external influences, his attire—outrageous tie-dyed garments favored by acidheads; T-shirts with logos of obscure rock bands—and his extroverted persona seemed to cry out for attention. More than one of his peers suspected that beneath Rice’s veneer of flamboyant confidence was insecurity.

  Whatever the case, Rice above all sought to control—expectedto control—his and friends' agendas and whatever physical challenges he took on. Rice believed that he alone was always in charge.