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

by Bob Madgic

  Although he possessed feeling in his feet and could move his toes, Rice’s lower body was still numbed and fraught with pain. His right leg in particular was severely damaged, his entire calf muscle split in half and exposed two or three inches deep, as if someone had split it down the middle with a knife. There was a large wound spewing pus on his back near the spine. Dr. Klein’s initial prognosis was that even if he didn’t have to amputate, Rice would probably never walk again.

  A toxic compound released into the bloodstream by the burns continued to threaten both victims by attacking the kidneys. They were retaining fluids, which caused their body weight to increase dramatically.

  After only a few hours of sleep, Weiner and Rice each underwent two hours of surgery early Sunday morning. Internal pressure on their leg muscles had to be released and the wounds cleaned out to prevent infection. Dr. Klein led a surgical team of five physicians, who performed a fasciotomy on the leg muscles: They cut the fascia, or lining that holds muscle together like a sleeve, and thus allowed the swollen muscle to bulge out. This, in turn, reduced pressure on the blood vessels and nerves, averting permanent damage. Once such swelling subsides, physicians repair the fascia and then graft skin over the affected areas.

  AFTER THE HELICOPTER rescue, postclimax letdown settled in among those who remained on Half Dome’s summit. Everyone was mentally, physically, and psychologically spent. Crozier broke the tension.

  Okay, guys, she said. It’s Miller time.

  After nearly seven hours of life-or-death anxiety, the fates of Weiner and Rice were in someone else’s hands.

  The adrenaline rush that had kept Crozier alert and focused for all those hours abruptly cratered. Weary and cold, she now had to descend the cables and Sub Dome and reunite with her hiking companions. Except for Scott Jackson, the trail maintenance employee, who offered to accompany her down, the others would spend the night on Half Dome as they had planned. Steve White and his fellow hikers offered to share with her their sleeping bags and anything else that provided warmth if she elected to stay on top for the remainder of that short night. She declined.

  Crozier: “I desperately needed to get off that mountain—to get away from the edge, away from the danger, away from death!”

  Before she left, she thanked those who had lent so much help and support throughout the ordeal. Everyone there felt the strong sense of cohesiveness and mutual affection that had blossomed during the long hours.

  Jackson and Crozier began their journey down the treacherous slope. It was fully dark; the moon had long since set beyond the western ridge. Crozier clutched the cables as hard as she possibly could and half slid, half staggered down the slick granite. The descent, although dangerous, was nevertheless manageable at that point. The next leg down Sub Dome was definitely more perilous—there was nothing to cling to for support. The steps were narrow, uneven, and irregular. A slip and fall could prove disastrous. Jackson led the way with his dimming flashlight as the pair groped along. He would descend a short distance, stop, turn around, and illuminate the path for Crozier as best he could. To Crozier, the combination of shadows and faint light was almost more treacherous than no light at all.

  Panic seized Crozier. Jackson was going too fast.

  Maybe I should have stayed on top after all, she wondered. No, I had to get off that mountain!

  They reached the final steps, then level ground.

  At the base of Sub Dome, Crozier reunited with Mike Hoog, her brother Dan, Jennie Hayes, and Rick Pedroncelli. She gave them a somber update on what had transpired on the summit after Mike and Rick left, then collapsed into her sleeping bag, wrapping her chilled, depleted body tightly for as much warmth and comfort as possible. Jackson spent the night with them. But the evening’s events proved too unsettling for Crozier to fall asleep quickly.

  Back on Half Dome, it was 3 A.M. before Brian Cage’s group crawled into their sleeping bags. Clu Cotter, whose bag had left the summit with Rice, managed to find a stray one. He didn’t know whose it was. It was too small, and in the frigid night air he could barely keep warm. By morning, the water in the campers’ canteens would be frozen.

  The six men lay there, each trying to surrender to his exhaustion, each aware that the body of a sixteen-year-old boy was still slumped in the cave only a short distance away. Nearby, Bill Pippey and Bruce Jordan were battling despair.

  AT 6:30 A.M., the pilot of Yosemite National Park’s helicopter prepared to retrieve the bodies of Bob Frith and Brian Jordan. He flew to the base of Half Dome and located Frith among the rocks, then returned to pick up Rangers Evan Smith and Dan Dellinges. With them on board, the helo flew to a ledge at the base of Half Dome’s face, right above the rocky jumble—a landing zone the park routinely used for rescues in that vicinity. In contrast to Medi-Flight’s large helicopter, this aircraft was much smaller and better able to maneuver in tight places. The pilot carefully finessed the helo to the ledge and brought the front half of the landing skids down on it for stability. This enabled Smith and Dellinges to hop out. After they moved a safe distance away from the rotors, the helo lifted off, bound for the summit.

  Smith and Dellinges followed standard procedure for a fatality. They took pictures and measurements, and surveyed the scene for evidence of foul play As with all accidents, the rangers didn’t want to assume anything, only to be surprised later on.

  The helicopter flew to the summit to get Bruce Jordan and ferry him down to the Valley. There, a priest, Father Rod Craig, offered comfort. The teenager broke down, his pent-up emotions and sorrow finally spilling out.

  He sobbed uncontrollably, asking over and over, Why him and not me? Why did I survive? Why didn’t I save him?

  The helicopter returned to the base of Half Dome to remove Friths body, which Smith and Dellinges had placed in a body bag and wire rescue basket—a “wire coffin.” Part of Friths foot was missing and couldn’t be found. They attached the basket to a rope lowered from the hovering helicopter, which rose and headed toward the park morgue.

  After a long night and only a few hours of sleep at home, Colin Campbell—the first ranger on the scene the night before— returned to the Valley at 7 A.M. Someone told him a female hiker had brought his cowboy boots down to a ranger station in the Valley from the camp where he had swapped them for sneakers. According to the ranger there, the hiker had held Campbell’s well-worn boots at arm’s length. Campbell collected them and then joined the helicopter flight taking Rangers J. R. Tomasovic and Jim Tucker to the summit to prepare Brian Jordan’s body for removal. After the helo deposited Tomasovic and Tucker on top, it dropped Campbell off in Little Yosemite Valley. There he saddled up John Paul and rode down to the Valley floor. The helicopter returned again to the base of Half Dome, picked up Rangers Smith and Dellinges, and transported them back to the Valley.

  On the summit, Tomasovic asked Pippey to identify the body in the cave, a standard procedure. It was a heart-wrenching moment for Pippey; he confronted the tragedy all over again. The body of Brian Jordan lay before him, more than seventeen hours after lightning had ended his brief life.

  Jackson had since returned to the summit. He helped lift Jordan’s body over to the helicopter landing site. One image that still lingers in his memory is that of a partial head of broccoli on the granite cave floor.

  By noon on Sunday, July 28, the rangers and Jordan’s body had been airlifted from the summit. The rescue mission was officially

  HOOG’S GROUP ROSE with the sun. They packed their gear and said good-bye to Jackson, who was heading back to the summit. The group spoke little on the way down to the Valley. Crozier mused that, during the long ordeal the previous evening, she’d never once absorbed the view from atop Half Dome, her reason for going up there in the first place. She and her companions promised themselves to return the next summer.

  Along the trail, they heard hikers chattering about something that had happened on Half Dome overnight, but neither Crozier nor Hoog said a word in passing.

 
From the Valley floor, they saw a helicopter flying up to Half Dome’s summit. The helo and speculative human buzz in the Valley about what was happening seemed eerie to Crozier, as though there were a locked room holding profound secrets and only she had the key.

  The group went to the Yosemite Clinic to inquire about Rice, Weiner, and Esteban. The staff were reluctant to give out any information, saying only that Rice and Weiner had been transported to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. Crozier and Hoog didn’t mention their role in the rescue.

  Later, they spotted the park helicopter swooping away from the base of Half Dome with a body bag slung below. This was the image that stayed fixed in their minds as they departed Yosemite.

  Cage’s party packed up and left the Dome sometime early that morning. An unnamed hiker joined them on the somber hike out, relating a story about how, when the previous day’s storm rolled in, he’d taken cover in a rock enclosure on Half Dome, fearing for his life.* Aghast, he’d watched five guys dance on the granite as the storm raged. Then they disappeared. He said he’d scrambled down the mountain as soon as it seemed safe to do so.

  Now he knew what had befallen the dancers.

  After the helicopter lifted Bruce Jordan from the summit, a solitary Pippey hiked down. Karl Buchner and Steve Ellner were there to meet him at the camping area below. The three trudged back to the Valley. Ellner’s primary thought was that he needed to call his parents and tell them he was alive. He suspected there already had been publicity about the episode.

  He was right.

  Pam Pippey, Bill’s wife, who was four months’ pregnant with their first child, was driving home at nine o’clock Sunday morning from an appointment when she heard the radio report: Lightning strike on Half Dome, five people hit, two killed. Her first thought was that her husband was among the five, and she might now be a widow. Frantic, she raced home and called Yosemite. No one there could give her the names of the people involved. A park official she spoke with said someone would call her back. Three hours passed before anyone did, just shortly before her husband himself called.

  By noon, Pippey, Buchner, and Ellner had arrived in the Valley. Pippey immediately called Pam, and Ellner phoned his parents. When the three reached the ranger station, Mr. and Mrs. Jordan, whom park officials had contacted the previous night, were there with a stone-faced Bruce Jordan. Seeing the Jordans was more than Pippey could handle; he broke down yet again. Mr. Jordan’s attempts to comfort him helped Pippey considerably.

  Esteban doesn’t remember much about what transpired after the helicopter evacuated him from the Dome, including whether he even slept. All he recalls is the flight down and then sunlight. That morning, rangers questioned him. Esteban briefly described the incident and what happened to each of the men in the cave.

  “I didn’t know there was a lightning rod there,” he added, referring to the iron pipe that park officials had sawed off after the lightning incident in 1973, leaving a one-plus-inch section protruding from the granite.

  A priest tried to comfort Esteban, who could think of nothing but Frith tumbling over the edge. The image terrified him. Later that morning, he passed a structure—the rescue cache building— where there were rangers and search dogs.

  This must be where they took Frith, Esteban thought.

  He wanted to see his friend one last time. A ranger told him that wasn’t a good idea, but Esteban persisted. A body bag was inside, and to Esteban, its size and shape seemed odd. Then it struck him why. He stopped in his tracks, whispered a farewell to his companion, and left.

  Esteban had placed a note on Pippey’s windshield telling him to meet Esteban at the rescue cache. When Pippey, Buchner, and Ellner arrived, they were surprised that Esteban seemingly didn’t have any injuries. Park officials interviewed the three men; Buchner and Ellner could offer little information about what had happened.

  Word was circulating that a lawsuit would be filed.

  Mrs. Jordan asked rangers, Why did the park allow my son and the others to go to the top of Half Dome if it was dangerous and

  Mrs. Jordan: “We hold Yosemite rangers responsible for the tragedy. They allowed the hikers to scale Half Dome despite the hazardous weather. How many city people realize the danger? They were permitted to go, so they must have figured it was safe.”

  That Sunday, Monroe Bridges and Brian Cage, two of Linda Crozier’s helpers the prior night, lumbered into the ranger station in Yosemite Village, introduced themselves, and were escorted to an office. At the request of Ranger Tomasovic, the two men agreed to make a voluntary statement “for the record” summarizing what they had witnessed. At that point, both were physically beat, having completed the hike to the top on Saturday, helped with emergency care into the wee hours on Sunday, and after minimal sleep hiked back down to the Valley.

  A ranger asked if they had seen the sign at the start of the stairs at Sub Dome. Both replied that they had. Then the ranger asked if either could recite what the sign said. Again, they responded yes, and repeated its warning. The ranger thanked them for cooperating and added that their statements could help the National Park Service defend itself in a potential lawsuit.

  Cage: “That’s when it really hit me. As much as this was an accident caused by a combination of Mother Nature and poor human judgment, there remained a looming wrongful death lawsuit against Yosemite National Park. I remember the ranger commenting that a big-money lawsuit could easily consume the entire budget the park allots for making Half Dome and other back-country destinations accessible.”

  Bridges and Cage also told the ranger they were prepared to testify that the accident happened because the five men in the cave had been reckless. Esteban himself had stated as much.

  That same day, Yosemite closed the trail to the summit until the electrical storms abated. According to park rangers, the hiking tragedy on Half Dome was one of the worst in Yosemite’s history.

  “Half Dome is probably the worst place you can be during a thunderstorm,” said Bruce Brossman, director of Yosemite Moun-taineering School “It gets hit all the time the skies that day were black, and it had been raining on and off for several days. These were the fastest-moving and most violent thunderstorms I’ve ever seen in sixteen years I’ve been in the Sierra. But they were predicted.”

  WITH NOTHING ELSE to do in Yosemite, Esteban, Pippey Buchner, and Ellner left. Pippey wanted to rejoin his wife as quickly as possible and begin his healing. He drove home alone and remembers little about the trip, his mind in a complete fog, his emotions swinging wildly. He knew that his sudden bout of diarrhea on the cables of Half Dome surely had saved his and Bruce Jordan’s lives. But that was small consolation. With the previous day’s events, he had suffered another severe setback in his young life.

  Why, he wondered, do tragedy and death follow me?

  His mother, grandparents, best teenage friend, and now Bob Frith and Brian Jordan—all dead. And Rice and Weiner might yet die.

  Buchner also drove back alone, still speechless and distressed. He found solace in the fact that Esteban and Ellner, his two closest friends, had survived the ordeal. Ellner drove Esteban in Este-ban’s truck. Ellner talked incessantly on the journey home, hoping to boost Esteban’s spirits.

  Esteban was tremendously agitated. He and Rice had been the leaders that day. Others followed them and suffered grave consequences. The fates of Rice and Weiner still hung in the balance. He could not rid himself of the crushing knowledge that he and Rice were ultimately responsible for the tragedy. But further riling him was Rice’s accusation that he, Esteban, had abandoned him in the cave. And Esteban kept telling himself he had done everything possible to save Frith.

  Esteban: “The dilemma I faced: Do all I could to save someone else, and let myself possibly die, or save myself and let someone else possibly die.”

  In trying to rationalize his actions, Esteban wanted to believe Frith “told” him with the whites of his eyes that it was okay to leave him. He felt like their souls had touche
d, had connected. He thought he had had little choice but to leave Frith “in God’s hands” on the ledge.

  However, he also had fled the cave and sought safety for himself. Of the five hikers in the enclosure, only Esteban had endured the catastrophe with no major injuries. He should have felt thankful, and he did feel enormously thankful, but guilt nevertheless overwhelmed him. At the moment of peril, the self-preservation instinct took over.

  Now self-doubt tormented him.

  Ellner turned the radio on and began flipping from station to station, hungry for news. The story came on, although by now it had widely circulated: Hikers hit by lightning on Half Dome.

  There were still many untold parts to this tale to dissect.

  LINDA CROZIER RETURNED to her apartment in Davis. She recounted for her roommates what had happened and called her parents to fill them in. That night, she still felt traumatized. Crozier could recite all the events but, at that point and for many days to come, felt no emotions tied to them.

  “I was terrified up there, but I learned a lot about myself. Up on top, I kept my cool, but once it was all over, I was totally numbed. I was in mental shock for days afterward. For the first time in my life, I didn’t like being alone at night.”

  Like Esteban, Crozier felt guilty. But the genesis of her guilt was how she had consciously avoided checking on Brian Jordan in the cave. She wondered if he might have been in a state of suspended animation rather than dead; if he could have been revived with CPR. She did some research on lightning injuries but couldn’t find any definitive information.