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

by Bob Madgic

  In hoarse tones, Weiner tried to convince Esteban he was still alive. The message didn’t register right away. In Esteban’s blurred consciousness, everything was taking place in extremely slow motion. A strong odor like burning sulfur filled his nostrils. Objects and sounds drifted in and out of focus. At length, as though he were fiddling with the image and volume controls on a TV monitor, the picture began to clear. He discovered he could move his arms.

  Turning his head to scan the cave, he saw Rice slouched sideways against the granite wall in a fetal position, his body jerking and twitching. His bare legs were badly charred, the blond hairs blackened. Lightning had shot into Rice’s back where it rested against the rock wall and out through his thighs and legs. His glassy eyes were expressionless.

  Esteban looked over at the youngster, Jordan, who was slumped forward, his still form reeking of burned flesh and hair. The two packs flanking him bore basketball-sized holes, as though there’d been a grenade attack. Conducted by the metal frames, the lightning had passed instantly from them onto Jordan’s right shoulder and out his left pectoral.

  The sixteen-year-old appeared lifeless. This realization unleashed a crushing sense of tragedy in Esteban—almost as if he’d suffered a second lightning bolt. Injuries, no matter how severe, were one thing. But death meant finality, hope extinguished. Nature had an answer for those who dare challenge her preeminence. With sickening clarity, Esteban now saw that the risks had been miscalculated, limits exceeded—and it was too late for corrections.

  He pulled himself forward painfully, dragging his still-paralyzed legs behind. Twisting to glance out at the King’s Chair, he was horrified by what he saw: Frith contorting on the stone perch, vomit and froth gurgling from his mouth, eyes rolled back and showing their whites. His forehead bore a dramatic, cauterized-looking gash no more than an inch long, as if someone had plunged a white-hot dagger into his skull. In this case, though, the thrust probably had come from within. Friths lower body had absorbed the violent charge, which apparently rocketed up through him and out his brow. Or had lightning traveled through the air and pierced him directly in the head? It didn’t matter now. He was making dreadful noises. His thrashing body threatened to catapult itself off the narrow ledge.

  Esteban maneuvered his upper body over the boulder. Grabbing frantically at Friths pants, he managed to snag the waistband. He pulled him back from the lip, but Friths body continued to convulse toward the edge, as though seeking the void beyond. Esteban strained to hold on. With a monumental effort, he tugged Frith back again. He tried to pull him over the boulder and into the chamber, but Friths writhing, 190-pound bulk was too much for him.

  Fighting off panic, Esteban yelled over to Weiner, You’ve got to help me, man! He’s gonna fall off the ledge!

  Seeing his friend’s peril energized Weiner. His legs still numbed, he struggled to where Esteban was, leaned over the boulder, and managed to grip the sweater on Friths left arm while Esteban grasped the right. Together they pulled Frith back so he lay more securely. They tried to raise him off the ledge and over the boulder, but with their legs useless, they couldn’t exert enough leverage.

  Momentarily releasing his hold on the sweater, Weiner gripped Friths hand with all his strength, hoping that he might return the grip.

  Wake up! Weiner yelled frantically at Frith.

  A chilling awareness that another bolt could strike at any moment seized Esteban.

  Convinced he could do no more, his brain shrieking at him to seek safety, Esteban let go of Friths right arm and allowed him to slump on the ledge, desperately hoping he would stay there. Esteban started to drag himself past Weiner, who had renewed his grip on the sweater. As he did so, a violent convulsion arched Frith and propelled his legs over the edge. Weiner desperately held on.

  Frith slid farther, his weight yanking Weiner closer to certain death.

  Weiner had no choice but to let go.

  In horror, he and Esteban watched as Frith disappeared over the precipice to the rocks twenty-two hundred feet below.

  Weiner screamed No! No! No! then clamped his eyes shut and began to sob.

  DRAINED OF EMOTION by what had happened, Esteban felt remarkably dispassionate as he looked over at Rice, whose left leg was twisted beneath a dislodged rock. Rice retched and gagged on regurgitated broccoli, unintelligible noises issuing from his mouth. Dragging himself over to where Rice was, Esteban propped his friend up slightly, cleared his mouth of food, shook him gently in a vain attempt to restore consciousness, and wondered what else he should do. Severe burns scorched Rice’s legs, which even then were smoking. His wounds were bloodless, cauterized by the searing electricity, and blanched, like acid burns. To Esteban they resembled the insides of charred, split-open frankfurters. He lifted Rice’s shoulders to turn him and was alarmed to see a fire-blackened hole in the back of his shirt. Through the hole he saw a skinless depression about six inches in diameter. Esteban slowly let Rice down again, thinking maybe there was spinal damage. Rice’s eyes were open but unfocused. Minute seizures—aftershocks—still wracked his body. Esteban stared into his friend’s eyes. Was it just his imagination, or had he seen a flicker of expression? Was Rice trying to communicate?

  An ominous, atmospheric crackling sounded outside. The hairs on Esteban’s arms stood upright. His newfound calm vanished in a torrent of fear. He screamed to Weiner, to all of them, conscious or not:

  We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!

  Weiner heard the terror in Esteban’s voice and tried to stand but fell back again, the muscles in his legs severely knotted. Knowing he couldn’t get very far, he hoped and prayed that lightning would not strike the same place twice.*

  Esteban, convinced that he was in mortal peril, could think only of escape. He turned away from Rice, gripped Weiner s shoulder in passing, and pulled himself toward the cave’s entrance. His legs were inept, but with his powerful arms and upper body he thrust himself up onto the summit and then powered his battered frame across the granite, his elbows clawing the unyielding rock like a belly-crawling soldier. His sights were on a crevice called the outhouse that was about 150 feet away in a depression obscured by rocks. Campers used it as a toilet, but that was the least of Este-ban’s concerns at the moment.

  His senses, leavened by fear, told him another bolt was coming. Crawling frantically, rolling down a decline, scrambling even faster, he finally reached the depression. Another blast shattered the heavens just as he scrunched himself into the crevice. The granite around him shuddered. His body absorbed a charge from the moist rocks, but this one seemed no more potent than from a household outlet.

  He had been spared.

  Giddy with relief, Esteban blended tears with shrill laughter. He was alive!

  And for an instant, that was all that mattered.

  FOOTNOTE

  *In June 1963, a lightning bolt struck rain-dampened granite near the top of the cables, streaked across the rock, and hit the cables and approximately fifteen hikers gripping them. They screamed as the electrical charge clutched their hands and whipped across their arms and chests. No one was killed, but several incurred severe burns.

  *Tall trees, like other high spires, are natural targets for lightning. During this storm, a female hiker took refuge under a tree. A stringer from a lightning bolt struck the tree and the electrical charge shot down the wet trunk and along the exposed roots under her feet, delivering a jarring shock to her and searing each of her fingernails.

  *A naive hope, actually, because lightning follows no such rule. A case in point is the Empire State Building, which has been hit by lightning dozens of times in a year and several times during a single storm.

  7

  SECOND STRIKE

  The Half-Dome possesses one feature in particular that I always found remarkable and charming,— the strange manner in which it catches and holds the last light of the day. Often for a full hour after the valley has sunk into shadow, this high Alp, overlooking by two thousand feet the int
ervening heights, receives the western glow, and like a great heliograph reflects the peaceful messages of the evening over all the quiet valley.—J. Smeaton Chase, author of Yosemite's Trails, 1911

  Although Weiner was shaken to the core by the catastrophe that had befallen him and his companions, and despite his weakened legs, he survived the first electrical blast with no apparent major injuries. Amazingly his body was slowly coming back to where it was before the lightning blast. Whether Rice would come out of it alive, however, was not yet clear; he was still unconscious, his head sagging to the side.

  Fearing the worst, Weiner thought that he wasn’t going to make it.

  Weiner possibly could have mustered enough strength to scramble out of the cave, as Esteban had. But getting down those cables with legs still immobilized—more from fatigue and cramps than from the lightning—was unthinkable. And he wanted no part of being out there on the bare summit, a human lightning rod, during another killer strike. So, desperately praying that lightning wouldn’t strike the cave a second time, he stayed put.

  Buzzing and crackling suddenly filled the air. Weiner didn’t have time to budge before another blinding explosion blasted the granite and ripped through the enclosure. Unlike the first strike, when the electrical arc streaked across his bottom half, this one engulfed most of his body.

  Weiner immediately found himself floating in inky nothingness. In the next instant, he was halfway outside his body, watching it convulse once, then slowly sink into a relaxed state. He was drifting away. He sensed that if the connection between his body and fleeting spirit were broken, it would mean death.

  Then he started flowing smoothly and effortlessly back into his body. He was in the cave again, lying on the cold stone floor, his entire physical being seemingly frozen. He became aware of a cool breeze blowing across his bare skin, suggesting that indeed he was still alive. He also felt a deep, pervasive, excruciating pain in his chest, as if that cavity had been blown wide open.

  All Weiner wanted was for it all to end. A seductive, soothing thought fleetingly entered his consciousness: If I crawled to the King’s Chair, I could throw myself over the edge and join Bob Frith in blissful death, forever free of pain.

  For several minutes, he lay motionless. His fogged mind slowly cleared. He knew now that, in the wake of the second strike, he was seriously injured, that perhaps these were his final breaths. Charred remnants of his shirt, which had been burned open by the electrical blast, stuck to his exposed skin. Though the outside of his chest seemed to be intact, his ribs felt broken, tormenting him each time he sucked in air. And searing pain shot through his legs whenever he moved even slightly. The hiking boot on his left leg had been completely blown off

  Soon after the second blast, Rice gradually regained consciousness—almost as if the jolt had recharged his brain. He moaned, then screamed in agony from the weight of Weiner’s body on his stricken leg. Rice’s other leg was bent grotesquely under a rock. Weiner rolled off him. He removed his belt and, using it for leverage, he and Rice in turn pulled each other to an upright position, both experiencing excruciating pain in doing so.

  Next to them was Brian Jordan, his face bluish, his body slumped over and as still as the surrounding granite.

  By now the rain had slowed to a drizzle, the mass of storm clouds was marching eastward, the thunder and lightning were now just lingering remnants of their former rage. Weiner peered through the cave opening and saw the clearing sky.

  He began yelling for help.

  IN HIS CONFUSED STATE, Weiner thought the second strike had happened mere seconds after Esteban had left the cave and that he had probably been struck dead. In fact, Esteban’s frantic roll down the slope to the outhouse crevice surely saved him. As he lay there, Esteban thought only of his own miraculous survival and thanked God over and over for sparing him.

  But the reality of what had just happened—the Jordan kid killed, Bob Frith spilling over the precipice to certain death—doused his momentary relief. Tragically, Esteban’s long-standing premonition that someone he knew would fall from Half Dome had come to pass.

  His thoughts turned to Weiner and Rice in the cave. He heard screams coming from that direction but was too frightened to leave the crevice.

  Minutes passed. The unfolding clouds in the tumultuous skies above Half Dome, like the last wild leaps and thrashes of spawning salmon, were releasing their final charge before weakening and then dying. Soon, patches of evening sky showed between the fast-moving billows, their tops now illuminated by the emerging evening sun. Only faint rumblings of thunder persisted from afar.

  In this part of the Sierra Nevada, the storm was over.

  Esteban’s feet were numb, but he had feeling in his lower body. Finally, believing that the danger had sufficiently subsided, he left the crevice and began crawling back up the slope toward the cave.

  Nearing the summit, Esteban saw someone coming over the ridge at the top of the cables. He waved his arms and shouted to attract the hiker’s attention.

  It was Mike Hoog.

  THROUGHOUT THE DOWNPOUR, Hoog and his four companions had stayed mostly dry under their tarp below Sub Dome, where they planned to camp for the night. Hoog wanted a sunset photograph from the summit now that the sky was clearing. He asked if anyone cared to join him, but no one made a move. So he took off by himself, hustling up the stone stairs of Sub Dome and then up the incline to the top of Half Dome. Black clouds still hovered above, casting sinister shadows on the mountain. To the west, a light blue sky was dappled with wispy clouds. A distinct line separated the darkness of the departing storm and brightening skies.

  On the summit, Hoog saw someone frantically waving and shouting at him. It was Esteban, whom he recognized as a member of the rude, boisterous group at Nevada Fall. That earlier encounter made Hoog suspicious now. Was this guy high on drugs? Were he and his pals playing a joke, hoping to scare Hoog or, as a dark inner voice warned, push him over the edge?

  He approached cautiously. When Esteban told him his buddies were injured, Hoog followed Esteban to the cave but avoided getting too close to the brink, his senses on heightened alert. Bending down and peering into the enclosure, he first saw a frenzied Weiner, screaming for help and begging that someone remove him from the cave. Close by was a second man, Rice, his body inert, his face pallid, his eyes glassy. Smoke wafted from the legs of both men. Farther in, there was a boy slouched to one side; a breeze tussled his light brown hair, the only thing on him that moved.

  Odors of burned hair and flesh hung in the air.

  Hoog was a trained emergency medical technician, or EMT, but this was the first time he would treat injuries in the field. The seriousness of it all and his place in these unfolding events dawned on him: Lives might be at stake.

  He was scared.

  The first emergency response in such cases is to ensure the scene is safe, that whatever caused the mishap has passed. Only then, after appropriate triage (providing priority assistance to patients, if there’s more than one, either immediately or as other resources become available), should an EMT proceed with medical care. Triage often entails a color scheme to denote the order for giving attention. Black typically represents someone beyond help, in most cases dead; red denotes someone who is in critical condition but might be saved; yellow means serious but not critical; and green signifies that a person is injured but capable of getting by on his or her own. The EMT does a quick assessment and then treats the red victim first, followed by the yellow.

  Other than the nearby cliff, Hoog didn’t detect any lurking dangers now that the storm appeared to be over. He inhaled deeply and steeled himself against his own nervousness so it wouldn’t prevent him from doing what he had to do.

  Esteban told him about Frith falling over the edge and how Brian Jordan hadn’t stirred since the lightning strike. Trying his best not to freak out, Hoog lowered himself into the cave and squirmed past Weiner and Rice and over to Jordan. With two fingers, he felt for a pulse in one of the t
wo large arteries—the carotids, which deliver blood to the head—in the young man’s neck. No pulse. That indicated a stopped heart and probable death. Hoog concluded there was nothing he could do.

  Then he turned to Weiner. First he checked to see if Weiner had any feelings in his legs. If he didn’t, that could mean a spinal injury, possibly caused by a violent impact against rock or a severe muscular contraction. Weiner would then have to be immobilized and stabilized right there; improperly moving a patient with a broken neck can prove fatal. Fortunately, Weiner confirmed that he could feel and move his feet. In a quick inspection, Hoog detected no other immediate life-threatening circumstances. He focused on Rice.

  Although Rice’s leg muscles were very tight and swollen, he, too, had feeling in his legs and toes. He also could move his upper body, so a serious back injury seemed unlikely. But his pallor suggested the likely onset of shock.

  Esteban, who now had full use of his legs, approached the cave to assist.

  When Rice saw him, he started yelling: Adrian, get your fuckin’ ass in here and get me out. Don’t leave me behind to die like you did!

  A shaken Esteban crawled to Rice and slapped and then shook him, shouting: Goddamn it, I was going to die! I had to go. It wasn’t my fault! Esteban couldn’t cope with this accusation, and his body began trembling. He had to get out of there.

  Outside the cave, he stomped around, violently upset. Esteban pleaded to himself: How could he accuse me of leaving him to die? What more could I have done? If I had stayed, I probably would have been killed by the second bolt. Then no one would know that anyone was in the cave, no one would be helping him now. I had to leave—I had no choice. Can’t he see that?

  Still highly agitated, Esteban lowered himself back into the enclosure to help Hoog, who was grappling with choices, among them whether he should move the two men.