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

by Bob Madgic

  3

  THE HIKERS

  I was lying in a great solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by the hands of man.

  —Theodore Roosevelt, Yosemite, May 1903

  AMONG THE MULTITUDE attempting to reach Half Dome’s summit . on Saturday, July 27, 1985, were three parties, their fates destined to merge there on the top.

  Rice and Esteban headed their contingent. Esteban had recruited his work supervisor, Bob Frith, a recent East Coast transplant. Frith, in turn, had enlisted his best friend, Bruce Weiner, also from the East Coast and newly arrived in California. Bill Pippey brought along sixteen-year-old twin brothers, Bruce and Brian Jordan. The boys were drifting into chronic substance abuse, and Pippey hoped that exposing them to nature would redirect their lives in more promising directions. Rounding out the group were Karl Buchner and Steve Ellner. Buchner had persuaded a skeptical Ellner, his closest buddy, to join the outing. The group would backpack to the top, camp there, and celebrate Rice’s birthday the next day in style.

  Leading the second group was Mike Hoog of Santa Rosa, a town one hour’s drive north of San Francisco. His party included Linda and Dan Crozier, Rick Pedroncelli, and Jennie Hayes. A Half Dome veteran himself, Hoog wanted the others—all of them Dome first-timers—to spend the night up there so they could experience its full impact.

  The third group consisted of six men in their twenties from San Jose, five of whom worked for high-tech companies and lived in the same apartment complex. Their experienced leader and organizer, Brian Cage, had logged at least ten journeys to Half Dome’s summit.

  The leaders of all three groups shared deep ties to this granite temple—feelings of wonder and devotion that would infuse their companions as well. Staring up at that stone mass and realizing you’ll be trekking to one of the most remarkable places on earth is enough to jump-start anyone, even veteran outdoorsmen.

  There were twenty hikers in all, eighteen of them men who, to varying degrees, were risk-takers and self-styled outdoor warriors. They all had the same agenda: spend the night on Half Dome.

  IN 1985, FOLLOWING two decades of upheaval, the nation was mostly unruffled. It had returned to conservative values in politics, education, entertainment, and social affairs. The 1960s began with high hopes and idealism inspired by a young president, John F. Kennedy. But his assassination in 1963 and then the assassinations in 1968 of two other revered public figures—Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy—mired the country in prolonged grief and despair. The escalating war in Vietnam, moreover, ignited more protests than ever before. Intense demonstrations rocked college campuses, where students took control of administrative offices and, in some cases, shut down all operations. Police brutality sparked race riots and fires in several cities. Trust in government and institutions spiraled downward.

  Questioning authority and convention became de rigueur. Individualism and alternative lifestyles flourished, symbolized in part by male hairstyles—shoulder-length manes, ponytails, Mohawks. Use of marijuana spread among the young. The advent of birth control pills in the 1960s liberated women and led to greater sexual license and promiscuity. The credo of the times was Do your own thing. These and other newfound mores coalesced at Woodstock in upper New York State in August 1969, a mammoth throng devoted to rock and roll, drugs, sex, and lawlessness.

  At the dawn of the 1970s, anti-establishment activities—fueled by the Nixon administration’s Watergate shenanigans—gathered even greater momentum. Drug use soared—not only of pot, but also of LSD and cocaine, the drugs of choice among the rich and famous. Violent underground movements took form. The Black Panthers, the Charles Manson cult (which murdered actress Sharon Tate), the Symbionese Liberation Army (which kidnapped and brainwashed newspaper heiress Patty Hearst), and other radical groups lashed out against what they saw as a corrupt system, but did so mainly to wreak destruction for its own sake. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and the resignation of President Nixon didn’t immediately reverse Americans’ cynicism. Slowly, however, extremism ebbed. Even some of the most radical protesters realized they still had to earn a living.

  By 1980, an across-the-board retrenchment of mores was under way. Many people heralded conservative family values. And many in the new generation aimed to earn lots of money. Meanwhile, men’s hair got shorter and inflammatory words and phrases like pig, racist, anarchist, and burn, baby, burn faded from the lexicon. Cool, awesome, gnarly, and dude reflected the more laid-back times. In schools, it was “back to the basics”; innovations from the ’60s— flexible scheduling, individualized learning, inductive and problem-solving curricula—were curtailed. The spread of sexually transmitted diseases decelerated sexual promiscuity. Patriotism once again came into vogue. Spearheading this conservative movement was the new president, Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 and reelected in 1984.

  ESTEBAN, RICE, AND CREW at mid-decade were among the era’s “upwardly mobile” crowd, the original “twenty-somethings,” the “me generation.” Succeeding in their Silicon Valley high-tech jobs and making money were important, but enjoying life came first. For these guys, parties, drinking, drugs, and raucous gatherings were a way of life. Theirs was a true-life St. Elmo's Fire sans Demi Moore.*

  The big ritual for Rice’s crowd was attending the happy hour that most major nightclubs in the area—the Baja, The Rodeo, Terrace, Saint James Infirmary, P. J. Mulligan, D. B. Cooper’s— held on Friday evenings. To entice customers, the clubs served up not only cheap drinks, but also free food. The group hit several venues every week, an activity they called upper hoboism.

  The upwardly mobile were cool and had that Miami Vice/Don Johnson look—designer jeans, sport coat, casual dress shirt, no tie, tennis shoes, no socks. The exception was Pippey, who often showed up with ripped or stained clothes, sometimes both. Those who frequented the clubs were mostly singles, the last of the baby boomers. AIDS had not yet stormed into public awareness, so the pursuit of casual sex was still mainstream; booze and pot remained rampant; and smoking indoors was not only legal but hip.

  By this time, the frenzied disco beat of the ’70s was giving way to ’80s pop. Culture Club, Prince, Dire Straits, and the sassy, unconventional Madonna hit the airwaves and distributed their music in a newfangled format, compact discs. Radio tunes in 1985 were likely to include Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” “Material Girl,” and “Crazy for You.” Nevertheless, hard rock persisted and a guy needed to know how to dance to have a chance with the free-spirited young women who frequented local clubs.

  Rice’s charisma and often outrageous behavior attracted many followers, including a parade of females. Pippey, who often shouted across a crowded room to snare someone’s attention, was loud and boisterous. Esteban, on the other hand, was usually laid-back and low-key. However, his hair-trigger temper could erupt if anyone annoyed him or he sensed disrespect, especially after a few beers, giving rise to the occasional parking-lot brawl. The group’s other members were the more sedate Buchner and Ellner.

  A newcomer was Bob Frith. He had moved to California that April to work as a laser tech supervisor at Spectra Physics. The youngest of eight children, with six older sisters, Frith had grown up outside Arlington, Virginia. He held a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the University of Rochester in New York, with a major in optical engineering. Only twenty-four years old in 1985 when he took the supervisory job at Spectra Physics, Frith was bright and had good business and people skills—definitely a young man on the move.

  Frith charmed everyone he met with his sparkling personality and good looks accentuated by a strong chin, clean-cut features, and rich dark hair. A happy-go-lucky type who was always ready with a quick joke, Frith loved life and having a good time. He plunged enthusiastically into everything he did and always with a smile. He could arrive at a party not knowing a soul and, by night’s end, be friends with everyone there. Plump at 190 pounds for his five-foot, eight-inch height, he nevertheless had a way with women. B
etween his and Rice’s charm and good looks, the other guys would, as Esteban put it, “hover around like vultures waiting for scraps!”

  EXCEPT FOR THE MORE culturally inclined Ellner, the main bond among these men was sports. They competed fiercely in pickup basketball and touch football contests. After each game of the highflying San Francisco 49ers, Esteban typically hosted a barbecue bash on the pool deck at his apartment complex that often blared long past midnight. In January 1985 Coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana led the team to their second consecutive Super Bowl title by shutting down Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins.

  The men tracked most other sports as well. In the National Basketball Association, Larry Bird was voted the most valuable player for the 1984–85 season and a young player, Michael Jordan, was crowned rookie of the year. And in a rarity for major-league baseball, two Missouri teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals, were riding high and would later meet in the World Series.

  Rice, Esteban, and company paid little attention to politics and international affairs, which were fairly low-octane at the time. There was no hint of a warming trend in the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev took the Soviet helm in 1985, but subsequent events—the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the USSR—would make Gorbachev one of the most significant political figures on the twentieth-century world stage.

  Aside from St. Elmo’s Fire, movie hits included Back to the Future and another youth flick, The Breakfast Club. Out of Africa, starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, won Best Picture for 1985. Redford also launched the Sundance Institute that year and organized the first Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

  The Half Dome crew may have read Tom Clancy’s blockbuster The Hunt for Red October, but most likely didn’t pick up two other big sellers that year: The Color Purple and Lonesome Dove. Treasure hunters located the Titanic on September 1, sparking renewed interest in the tragedy seventy-three years earlier and culminating in the monster film hit Titanic in 1997. Another tip of the iceberg that shocked the nation was the announcement on July 25 by movie star Rock Hudson that he had AIDS. This revelation and Hudson’s death six weeks later generated big headlines. In recognition of the unfolding AIDS plight in Africa, music stars convened to record “We Are the World,” which won a Grammy.

  IN THEIR QUEST for adventure at Yosemite, Rice, Esteban, and compatriots probably didn’t realize that beneath the beauty and splendor of this famed national park simmered many long-standing sociopolitical issues.

  Ever since the first national park—Yellowstone—was established in 1872, questions had swirled regarding the proper mission of national parks. Did America want them to be preserves for nature? Havens for tourists and recreationists? Resources for both private and public consumption? As much as any park, Yosemite reflected the conflict of priorities that buffeted these national treasures.

  Yosemite was first designated a national park in 1890 (the state of California managed Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove until 1906 when those land grants were receded to the federal government and made part of the national park around them.) Despite this protection from exploitation, powerful pressures to accommodate tourists and develop recreational amenities seethed. The Curry Co.—and other lodging and food operations—got started in 1899. In 1903, state officials reinstituted a nightly entertainment spectacle that began almost thirty years earlier: an evening bonfire at Glacier Point followed by hot embers dumped over the edge, which created a flaming firefall to the Valley floor.*

  The elegant, stone Ahwahnee Lodge opened in 1927, offering a golf course, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. The park’s Badger Pass Ski Area began operating in the winter of 1935–36. Over the subsequent three decades, gas stations, motels, gift shops, apartments, restaurants, houses, garages—all told, more than a thousand buildings, a few thousand campsites, and thirty miles of roads and parking areas—sprouted in the Valley, resulting at times in suffocating human and automobile congestion.

  The surge of environmentalism that swept the nation in the 1960s and ’70s carried over to the nation’s parks.** The preservation of nature became the National Park Service’s chief mission. Increasingly, science rather than recreational values directed the efforts of park managers. Their new philosophy was to let nature exist on its own terms to whatever extent possible in these high-use public settings.

  That put an end in 1968 to Yosemite’s nightly firefall, a small but symbolic change. To reduce congestion, park managers closed the upper end of the Valley to automobiles, built a one-way road system, and introduced shuttle buses to transport visitors throughout the Valley. The main parking area at the visitor center was converted to a pedestrian mall.

  In addition, certain meadows in the Valley became off-limits in order to allow restoration of natural habitats, while in others, boardwalks were installed to accommodate walkers. The Ahwahnee golf course was removed. Stocking Yosemite’s historically fishless streams and lakes with hatchery-reared trout would eventually be phased out.

  A General Management Plan for Yosemite was established in 1980 with five broad goals: reclaim Yosemite’s priceless natural beauty allow natural processes to prevail, promote visitor understanding and enjoyment, markedly reduce traffic congestion, and ease crowding. But by July 1985, little progress had been made. Too many groups had vested, often conflicting interests in the park’s future. For example, those whose livelihoods depended on the arrival of millions of tourists each year, businesses both inside and outside the park, opposed restrictions on cars and any reductions in lodging and other visitor amenities. Environmental groups wanted the priority on preservation, while others insisted that the resources existed primarily to be used by the public.

  Although the management plan favored letting Mother Nature take her course in Yosemite, shifting political climates and disagreements in subsequent years impeded timely progress toward that end.

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1985, backpacking and extreme outdoor sports such as hang gliding, aerial skiing, and BASE jumping were riding a wave of popularity. Few aficionados were as intense in their quest for adventure as Esteban, Rice, and especially Pippey whose newly discovered love for the outdoors was toughening his body and spirit. Pippey liked nothing better than a grueling backpacking trip. He set a fierce pace way ahead of others, as if he were leaving behind years of family neglect and abuse. Pippey s favorite destination was Mount Whitney, offering one of the most spectacular hikes in the country.

  Summiting Mount Whitney—at 14,494 feet, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight states—involves eleven uphill miles and an elevation gain of more than six thousand feet, mainly on a steady, 15 percent grade. Fortunately, there are countless switchbacks—a hundred of them just between Trail Camp at twelve thousand feet, where backpackers overnight, and the crest of the ridge at fourteen thousand feet.*

  In early July, three weeks before the upcoming Half Dome event, Pippey organized a backpacking trip to Mount Whitney with Esteban and Frith. The plan was to hike to the summit, which is located in Sequoia National Park, then descend the other side and camp at the eastern end of the Park. It would be a major test for Frith, who had been in California less than three months, and who was overweight and a smoker. Frith may not have been in the best of shape, but his boundless enthusiasm usually carried the day.

  En route to Mount Whitney, the Bip Mobile cruised east across the Central Valley, through Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, over Tioga Pass, and south down Highway 395 for a hundred miles. The three men crawled into sleeping bags alongside the parking lot at Whitney Portal (elevation: eight thousand feet) and slept. At sunrise, they set out for Trail Camp, where they spent the night before the final ascent.

  Adding to the physical stress of lugging a fifty-pound backpack up more than six thousand feet are the risks posed by high altitude. As you climb higher, each breath contains fewer oxygen molecules due to decreasing barometric pressure; blood becomes increasingly inefficient as an oxygen supplier, so yo
ur body must work harder. Any exertion during the first couple of days at high elevation—even going up a typical staircase—causes shortness of breath, a normal response.

  What isn’t normal is altitude sickness, an unpredictable and imprecise affliction that generally can occur above five thousand feet. The first signs include headache and perhaps some dizziness or queasiness. Under the same conditions and regardless of age, gender, physical conditioning, or prior climbing experience, one hiker may experience altitude sickness while another feels nothing. Untreated, it can lead to acute mountain sickness (AMS), the body’s intolerance of a hypoxic (low-oxygen) environment. AMS symptoms include headache, nausea or vomiting, fatigue or weakness, dizziness or light-headedness, confusion, and staggering gait. A hiker with these symptoms should stop and descend immediately. Practically speaking, ascending to eight thousand feet—the altitude at which Pippey, Esteban, and Frith launched their trek up Mount Whitney (and approximately the same elevation as the top of Half Dome)—shouldn’t cause major problems. But above that level, and certainly above fourteen thousand feet, AMS becomes a serious, potentially life-threatening concern. If it occurs, you cannot get enough oxygen no matter how fast you breathe. That leads to brain swelling, a condition called cerebral edema, which can be fatal.