by Bob Madgic
As time passed, the temperature fell and a cold breeze swept across the bare granite. Still under cloud cover, the dome’s cast was dark, almost pitch black. Crozier, skimpily clad, was becoming increasingly chilled. Sitting, she stuck her bare legs, riddled with goosebumps, under the edge of the sleeping bags covering Rice. Others also clustered next to Rice or Weiner. Warm clothing was parceled out. Anyone who wanted a hot drink could tap Cage’s and Pippey’s ready supply of boiling water.
Slivers from a partial moon finally peeked through scattered clouds, diffusing the thin light that now reflected off granite and that illuminated, in eerily gray hues, the Dome and everyone huddled there. Zip Cotter described the scene as “surreal, what I imagined being on the surface of the moon would be like.”
Group morale was of concern to White. What would happen if there weren’t a rescue that night? He told jokes in an effort to perk everyone up and bolster their spirits. He didn’t want anyone to become disheartened or lose their focus if they had to spend the entire night on Half Dome. It was White whom Crozier leaned on most for support. He kept asking her how she was, telling her she was doing a great job and not to take Rice’s insults to heart.
White had a strong opinion about the tragedy—that sheer stupidity and craziness had kindled it. But he kept his thoughts to himself.
White: “While I felt deeply sorry about what happened to these guys and tried to do everything I possibly could for them, I also became very angry about what they did. In the face of extreme danger, they acted like there was none, almost in defiance of the storm and lightning. Just unbelievably reckless. It was all so unnecessary, a waste.”
Every now and then, a semidelirious Weiner called out: I can’t feel my legs! I can’t breathe! I’m going to die!
Again Rice yelled at him to get a grip, that he’d be all right, and again the words soothed Weiner. Rice’s inner strength was helping Weiner—and himself—survive the crisis.
It was now 10:45 P.M. Physical as well as mental fatigue overcame Esteban. Crozier urged him to try to sleep while Bridges sat nearby, nudging Esteban periodically so he wouldn’t drift into a coma. But Esteban couldn’t sleep. Numbed, he just closed his eyes and wrestled with distressing thoughts about the day’s events.
Rice suddenly exclaimed he was going to throw up. Crozier went into emergency mode, enlisting White and Cage to help her swiftly turn Rice on his side so he wouldn’t choke on vomit. The three grasped his sleeping bag and carefully rolled him over, avoiding any movement that might jar his neck or back.
Then Rice coolly announced: Just kidding. I wanted to see if you know what you’re doing.
White and Crozier looked at each other, incredulous. But as she regained her composure, Crozier reckoned that Rice, in his own twisted manner, was probably just trying to loosen everyone up, show he could roll with the punches, counterattack, take control again. The incident, however irritating to his caregivers, once more revealed his unflagging and indomitable spirit.
Eleven o’clock came and went without additional communication or sign of help from below.
Was a rescue under way or not?
And what had happened to Mike Hoog?
Stillness descended upon the Dome. When they weren’t conferring about the status of Weiner or Rice, everyone was silent, and the silence aggravated their anxiety and stupor. The hikers were drained. They were cold and weary and somber, and just wanted to curl up inside a sleeping bag, though if Weiner or Rice made the slightest noise, someone rushed to attend to him. How much longer could the two injured men hold on without a bodily collapse of some sort?
As Linda Crozier’s morale began to sink, too, her fears increased. The thought of what might happen to Weiner or Rice under her care was almost unbearable.
She quickly suppressed another surge of panic. The voice in her head said: Get a hold of yourself, Linda. You can’t be the one who gives up hope—the others are depending on you. If you despair, the whole group will lose confidence. And that would be disastrous.
Esteban: “One of the most heartwarming emotions I felt and that sustained my will on this terrible night was watching these unknown persons comfort and care for me and my fallen buddies in our most dire hour of need. I remember people giving me their food, water, clothing, blankets, attention, caring, and human warmth throughout that night, which seemed to last forever.”
Rice became more clearheaded as the night deepened, though he still complained vehemently about everything. Crozier made a pact with him: If help doesn’t arrive by midnight, we’ll move you into a more comfortable position. At this point, she had concluded privately that Rice probably would survive until morning if there were no rescue before then. He was stubborn and belligerent, intent on getting his way—a good omen.
However, the deterioration in his legs meant that without some kind of enhanced treatment, he would probably lose one or both of them to amputation.
The outlook for Weiner was bleaker. He lapsed into longer and longer periods of quiet punctuated by whimpering and sobbing, and into and out of consciousness. His injuries seemed more critical, his pain and unease more intense. Moreover, Weiner didn’t have Rice’s dogged determination. His fragile mental state might make him less inclined to resist death.
It was now 11:45 P.M., more than five hours since the lightning strikes.
Where were the rangers?
FOOTNOTE
*Morse code, widely practiced for decades, is now rarely taught, except in pilot training and in the military. The emergence of cell phones has rendered this form of emergency communication even more passé. We can confidently conclude that with this new technology, the 1985 Half Dome episode would have proceeded quite differently.
8
RESCUE
The age-long stability of nature—my God, you can depend on it! There’s eternity in these rocks. —Carl Sharsmith, Yosemite ranger, 1930–94
Ranger Colin Campbell felt uneasy that no one was on duty in Little Yosemite Valley; the assigned ranger had left earlier that Saturday morning due to illness. Many hikers and campers frequented this area—especially now, at the end of July—which meant that any number of issues involving campers, bears, injuries, and the like could demand the ranger’s attention. Campbell told his supervisor, Dan Horner, that he thought he should cover the station, at least for the night. Horner agreed. So Campbell saddled up his horse, John Paul, gathered some toiletries and a rain slicker, and departed for Little Yosemite Valley in late afternoon. He expected to return the next day.
Campbell, an assistant horse patrol supervisor, was thirty-five years old, married, and the father of a two-year-old daughter. More than six feet tall and husky at 195 pounds, he had held several National Park Service jobs, all in Yosemite. He’d received his bachelor of science degree in natural resource management from California Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo in 1980 and, the prior year, had begun working for the National Park Service manning an entrance station at Yosemite for the summer. The next season he worked in campgrounds, mainly handling campsite reservations. Then he patrolled the park in a vehicle as a ranger. After two years in that position, he settled into the horse patrol division. This was the post Campbell occupied in 1985, his first year as a full-time ranger.
At 4 P.M. on July 27, as John Paul plodded up the John Muir Trail, a storm was building overTenaya Canyon. It’s going to be a real douser, Campbell thought. And, his experienced eye told him, unusually menacing. Moreover, it was sweeping right smack toward this part of Yosemite. Ordinarily, he gave hikers and backpackers freedom and space to enjoy the backcountry as long as they obeyed the law. Campbell kept a sharp eye out for potential problems, but he usually played it low-key and attempted to stay in the background. This time, though, his instincts made him uneasy. Something about this storm seemed different. So, with John Paul’s hooves clacking on the granite, Campbell told people he passed not to take any undue risks, not to get caught out in the open, to be particularly careful in case of lightning
.
When he reached Little Yosemite Valley, Campbell first stopped at the ranger station there, which consisted mainly of two wall tents. He then made rounds throughout the area to make sure everything was all right. Back at the station, he settled down for the evening. Scott Jackson, a trail maintenance employee who lived here in one of the tents during summer, soon returned from a day of hiking and joined him.
Lightning and thunder started blasting the heavens as they sat. When heavy rain began falling around 6 P.M., Campbell and Jackson took cover in the tents. Sheets of rain hammered the canvas for the next forty-five minutes, accompanied by barrages of lightning that left a distinctive scent, like burned gunpowder, in the drenched air. Ferocious cracks of thunder sent shock waves more powerful than Campbell had ever felt reverberating in the very ground under their feet.
By seven o’clock, the storm had passed. Campbell fired up a propane gas stove, opened a can of SpaghettiO’s from the station’s food stash, and spooned it into a pot to heat. He and Jackson then plunked down in a couple of chairs and ate their meager dinner.
Mike Hoog and Dan Crozier reached Little Yosemite Valley a little before 9:30 P.M. It took them a few minutes to locate the ranger station in the dark. When they did, Campbell was in front of a tent brushing his teeth, while Jackson was seated by the camp-fire. Hoog gushed out the details: Five guys hit by lightning, two dead, one fell over the edge, three guys injured, two seriously, they could die, need medical help fast!
Campbell now knew that his decision to man Little Yosemite Valley had been a good one—and that it was going to be a long night.
On his walkie-talkie, he reported the information to the ranger at the dispatch station down in the Valley. He and Jackson then hastily loaded a couple of packs with gear kept there at the Little Yosemite Valley station: oxygen canisters, a breakdown litter, ropes and anchors, climbing hardware, flashlights, and a “blitz pack” of emergency medical supplies. Campbell’s walkie-talkie would keep them in close contact with the Valley. Because John Paul wasn’t equipped with a pack saddle, Campbell decided to leave him tethered at the station and go on foot, a decision he would later regret. Without further delay, each man hefted his forty-pound pack and, in pitch darkness, they departed up the trail for Half Dome.
AT THE VERY TIME Hoog was spilling the news to Campbell, John Dill was shouting questions via his loudspeaker up to Paul Kol-benschlag on the summit of Half Dome. Just after Dill repeated the question, Will anyone die if help doesn’t arrive? his walkie-talkie came on. It was the park dispatcher relaying Campbell’s report. Now Dill knew what had caused the emergency.
Dill yelled up to Kolbenschlag that he would get back to them, leaving those on top clueless about what would happen next. He himself didn’t know.
As in most of the country’s national parks, hundreds of emergencies occur in Yosemite every year—crises involving injuries, fires, climbers in trouble, lost hikers, lawbreakers, and more. When something potentially serious happens, the news is first reported to the central dispatch station. The ranger on duty there then forwards it to the shift supervisor. Usually the supervisor assigns each case to an “incident commander,” who then assumes operational responsibility for that emergency.*
The standard response to an emergency, if at all possible, is to move a ranger or team of rangers—a “hasty team”—quickly to the scene to assess the situation and report back to the shift supervisor. Regardless of whether a site report comes in, the supervisor and incident commander assign resources and brainstorm on strategies—including contingency or backup plans—to deal with the emergency. Reach, treat, and evacuate is the approach in most cases, reach being a ground action typically.
The shift supervisor this night was James Reilly Rangers wouldn’t be able to reach the top of Half Dome anytime soon, so he would have to make decisions without valuable information from the scene. Given the extreme nature of this particular incident and potential rescue attempt, Reilly chose to keep matters in his own hands rather than assign the case to an incident commander, at least until things became clearer.
Campbell and Jackson would be first on the scene, but they would need at least two hours from Little Yosemite Valley, placing them on the summit sometime around midnight. For support after their arrival, Reilly dispatched a team of rangers—Dan Horner, Mike Mayer, and Paul Ducasse, each a park medic capable of providing advanced medical care, such as starting IVs, administering medications, immobilizing limbs, and using MAST (Military Anti-Shock Trousers)—inflatable pressure pants to increase blood pressure and ward off shock. They would go on horses.
Reilly also sent a crew of seven, headed by top-notch rescue climber Dimitri Barton, in case anyone had to be removed from Half Dome. That would require team skills, such as lowering a victim by rope down very steep sections of rock. If victims couldn’t be evacuated this night, Barton’s team would establish a support camp in Little Yosemite Valley. Medical and other supplies could be brought there from the Valley for transport to the summit by runners.
By the time Horner, Mayer, and Ducasse rode off on their mounts, it was already 11 P.M. Barton’s team soon followed on foot.
The wild-card strategy was an air rescue, a long shot at best. The park helicopter wasn’t designed for night flying, plus it took a skilled and experienced pilot to carry out such a complex assignment after dark. The only real option was to summon a helicopter from a commercial service in San Joaquin Valley to the west. But even then, given the hazards of night flying at low altitudes—power lines, trees, and other objects to avoid, not to mention possibly strong winds over Half Dome—such a mission would be dangerous and very costly. Without sufficient moonlight, it wouldn’t even be considered.
Reilly was particularly conservative when he made decisions of this magnitude. He placed the highest value on the well-being of rescuers and was aware of a rash of helicopter crashes in recent years. As the clock neared 11 P.M., with clouds still filling the sky, he hadn’t called for a helicopter rescue. The hikers on Half Dome wouldn’t receive help anytime soon. Complicating matters was another emergency report that came in right after Reilly got word of the Half Dome incident. This one, too, was a matter of life and death.
THE SECOND REPORT arrived at the dispatch office at 9:45 p.m. Hikers lost in the park had used a CB radio to communicate their desperate situation to a son in Yosemite Valley, who then told a ranger.
The ranger was able to piece together this much: that four females—two adults and two thirteen-year-olds—were lost in the vicinity of Tenaya Canyon; that the adults were sisters, ages forty-five and thirty-eight; and that both suffered from epilepsy and needed medicine daily. The group had intended to hike from Olmsted Point near Tenaya Lake in the high country down to Yosemite Valley via the little-used and poorly maintained Snow Creek Trail. Because this was to be only a day hike, the women weren’t carrying extra clothing or food—or epilepsy medicine. The son had planned to pick them up in Yosemite Valley at hike’s end.
The foursome had left Olmsted Point at 1:30 P.M. and expected to reach the Valley around 8. This left little more than an hour of daylight after the hike—a very small margin of safety. Moreover, had they scanned the skies, they likely would have noticed the cumulus clouds building above Clouds Rest.
Staying on Snow Creek Trail can be difficult where it traverses bare granite. Indeed, midway down, the women lost the trail. They spotted a “duck”—a trail marker made of stacked rocks—and then more ducks, which they tried to follow. These occasional markers led them farther down into a canyon, which seemed like the right direction. But after some distance, they found themselves overlooking an impassable cliff.
Anxious about the dark clouds massing overhead and the looming storm, the women frantically retraced their steps in the hope of locating Snow Creek Trail. A duck here and there suggested they were back on course, though mainly they just headed downhill as swiftly as possible on the assumption their destination was ahead. The rain that began in early evening
quickly drenched and chilled them. When they hit level ground, the hikers weren’t anywhere near Yosemite Valley. They were in Tenaya Canyon, about three miles east of Happy Isles.
Exiting Tenaya Canyon is extremely difficult. Its steep, polished-granite walls rise thousands of feet, and dense vegetation carpets the floor. Rangers refer to it as the “Bermuda Triangle of Yosemite,” given the many hikers who have gotten lost there.*
Amid the fierce thunderstorm, wandering in the canyon maze, the women spotted and took refuge in a rock enclosure (not unlike Rice, Esteban, and their fellow hikers on Half Dome, and James Wunrow in nearby Kings Canyon National Park, all of whom took shelter in rock enclosures on this same day, with tragic consequences). They stayed huddled together in the enclosure even after the storm had long since passed. About 8:30 p.m. they were able to contact the son with their CB radio. By this time, the forty-five-year-old woman had had an epileptic seizure. Without medicine within ten to fifteen hours, she or her sister might die. To make matters worse, both had suffered ankle sprains.
Reilly got the report on the lost hikers shortly after the Half Dome report. He assigned only two rangers, Ron Mackie and Scott Emmerich, to the Tenaya Canyon rescue because he was short-handed due to the Half Dome mission. Mackie, a supervisory park ranger, knew the area well. Emmerich was a park medic.
At 11:30 P.M., each hefting forty pounds of gear, Mackie and Emmerich embarked on a strenuous and treacherous hike to reach the four women. Their route was Aircraft Crash Canyon, so named because of numerous airplane crashes there in the early 1940s when U.S. Air Force pilots flew practice and sightseeing missions over Yosemite. (To this day, a large engine from one of the downed aircraft remains in the canyon.) In Mackie’s experience, most hikers lost in Tenaya Canyon ended up in the inner gorge, in an area informally called Lost Valley. He and Emmerich headed for that location.