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

by Bob Madgic

  Rice wasn’t modest when it came to showing Crozier his wounds and scars. He had lost a lot of weight in the intervening weeks. He spoke at length about his family, how he was “the black sheep.” It came out that Crozier’s and Rice’s fathers worked at the same company, Chevron.

  In all of the time Crozier visited Rice at the hospital, there were never any other visitors.

  WEINER WAS FLOWN TO Massachusetts General Hospital, where Dr. John Burke, chief of trauma services, treated him. He was isolated in a special room with a plastic enclosure around the bed to prevent direct human contact, an extremely depressing state for Weiner. After several days, he was moved to another room without a plastic shield and finally allowed to have some human contact. This boosted his morale tremendously.

  Instead of bathing Weiner frequently (as UCD Medical Center in Sacramento did), hospital staff swaddled him in heavy layers of gauze and, around the clock, kept the gauze soaked in a diluted solution of silver nitrate, which kills bacteria. He was constantly wet from the middle of his back to his toes, like lying in a puddle twenty-four hours a day. The silver nitrate turned his toenails and fingernails black. Weiner despised these treatments.

  Dr. Burke performed eight skin grafts on both of Weiner’s legs and his left foot, where the lightning had exited. Initially, Burke used skin from a cadaver, which was a temporary graft, acting more like a biological bandage, and subsequently removed. In later surgeries, he lifted skin from Weiner’s intact left thigh.

  He commended the emergency medical technicians on Half Dome for saving Weiner. “If Weiner had stayed overnight on the mountain, he wouldn’t have survived.”

  According to Dr. Burke’s prognosis, Weiner would have sufficient strength in his legs to lead a normal life. However, some permanent loss of muscle strength was to be expected.

  Weiner left the hospital on Friday, September 13, about six weeks after the episode on Half Dome. Rice remained hospitalized for three months.

  THE SIMULTANEOUS Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon missions carried out by Yosemite rangers on the night of July 27 and morning of July 28 involved fifty-nine park personnel in all. All of these individuals under the command of Ranger James Reilly received an Exemplary Act Award—the National Park Service’s recognition for outstanding performance.

  FOOTNOTE

  * This individual’s name and whereabouts during the episode have remained undisclosed. He was the anonymous observer of that striking scene that opened this book.

  10

  AFTERMATH

  We are not building this country of ours for a day. It is to last through the ages.—Theodore Roosevelt, May 1903

  When Weiner returned home from the hospital, he weighed 130 pounds. He was so thin, it hurt to sit on a wooden chair without a pillow. Dr. Burke instructed him to consume thirty-five hundred calories a day, almost double what an adult normally consumes.

  One night several weeks after his release from the hospital, Weiner had a horrific nightmare.

  “I was back in the cave and everything was happening all over again. This time, I knew we were going to be struck by lightning, but I could not convince anybody to listen. When Bob got hit and started to fall off the mountain, I could not let go of him and I was dragged over as well. I awoke screaming and my parents rushed into the room to comfort me. Even after I woke up, I could still smell burned flesh and I could still hear the screams of those around me in the cave.”

  In November, two months after discharge, Weiner returned to California and his job at Lockheed, determined to put his life back on track. He could work only five hours a day. Whether sitting, standing, walking, or lying down, his constant companion was pain—the “pain of healing,” as he referred to it. The first thing he felt in the morning was severe pain, most likely brought on by damaged nerves attempting to regenerate.

  “Sometimes it felt like there was a knife being driven to the bottom of my foot. Sometimes it felt like someone was pulling my toenails out.”

  He underwent physical therapy for a full year. His legs were shriveled due to the loss of muscle mass; some parts looked like raw steak. They remained stiff, causing him to shuffle around and reach with his arms and torso rather than bend his knees. He used a cane and took great care climbing stairs. He had to wear pressure bandages every day for about eighteen months; otherwise, his legs would painfully swell and the grafted skin would form into keloids, or elevated, irregularly shaped, progressively enlarging scars. For the first year, his scars were very angry looking—bright red and highly conspicuous. Several years passed before they became inert and therapy could be discontinued. To this day, the hairless scars covered by abnormal-looking skin are readily noticeable.

  The accident severely scarred Weiner’s mind as well. Before, he was an easygoing, affable guy who made new friends effortlessly. Afterward, he became very cautious and withdrawn. Driving made him especially nervous, and loud noises easily startled him. Expelling the Half Dome events from his mind took a long time. One relentless torment was the image of Bob Frith slipping over the edge. It prompted him to seek professional help.

  Doctors assured him there was nothing he could have done; that Friths fate was sealed when the lightning lashed his head.

  Weiner: “The first four weeks, the story ran nonstop through my mind. I visualized pulling Frith back into the chamber or Frith falling over the edge while I still held on to him. Now, months later, it’s still in my mind, but I have more control over when I run the story.”

  During his recovery, Weiner experienced many emotional states: guilt that he survived, which others told him was a normal response; moments of elation, thankfulness, depression, despair; and everything in between. After his return to California, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He tried two or three counselors until he found one he liked—a man who helped him stabilize his life.

  It took a good ten years for Weiner’s emotional roller coaster to grind to a halt, until a degree of equilibrium and happiness returned to his life. But issues lingered. It’s still difficult for him to establish new relationships. He has made few new close friends and shies away from being fully open with anyone other than close family members.

  Weiner remained at Lockheed for almost two years before he left in September 1987 to join InSystems, another Bay Area company, where he worked until late 1991. Then he returned to Massachusetts to take a position with Image Engineering Corporation in Somerville. Although he worked there during most of the 1990s, Weiner began transitioning to a more helping profession. Before Half Dome, material values hadn’t really driven him; they were even less important afterward. Instead, he wanted to contribute to others in some way, to be proud of his work and feel fulfilled. As early as 1994, Weiner had started doing volunteer work at an animal hospital. He continued volunteering over the next several years at various veterinary agencies. Meanwhile, he enrolled in the School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in 1995. In spring 1998, he began working full time at a veterinary clinic, thus ending his long career in engineering. He received his veterinary degree in May 2000.

  Throughout his long recovery, Weiner has endured constant physical discomfort. Now, twenty years later, he still doesn’t have much feeling in his feet. Pain shoots through them, then travels up his legs—a result, he explains, of severed leg nerves still trying to regenerate. The pain and suffering have made him a more tolerant and grounded person. He’s more appreciative of his life and tries to express that to others. On the other hand, he is less patient when someone uses his time unnecessarily, as if he realizes the pre-ciousness of each minute and doesn’t want to waste it.

  As a veterinarian, making a difference in peoples’ lives and those of their animals brings Weiner pleasure and reward. His own experiences as a patient have helped him be a more caring vet. One of the things that disturbed him most in the hospital was a sense of dehumanization: Staff seemed to ignore his wants and wishes. They bathed, fed, disturbed, awakened, or left him alone at their own c
onvenience and paid very little attention to his emotional and spiritual needs. Doctors and nurses treated him like a large burn, not as a human being with injuries. Weiner realizes as a vet that even though his charges have a physical ailment, he must treat their entire being. Before treating an animal, he always spends a few minutes just petting and calmly talking with it. He thinks this helps.

  WITH ONLY A FEW exceptions, Rice remained adamant about not discussing the Half Dome episode. However, he did communicate at length with Linda Crozier while hospitalized, and the two corresponded in the months following his discharge in November. Those exchanges revealed a sentimental and receptive side to Rice that others rarely saw. Crozier respected Rice’s strong desire for privacy, but she did reveal some of his sentiments to others to illustrate how the tragedy had affected him. His experiences served as a kind of instructive mirror.

  After his discharge, Rice really zeroed in on earning a college degree. He enrolled at Chico State University in Chico, California, studied diligently, and kept to a tight schedule, often remaining at the library until it closed at midnight.

  Physical rehabilitation was almost as intense a pursuit for him as academics. Once he was able, he began biking, hiking, swimming, skiing, and lifting weights.

  In letters to Crozier, Rice shared his thoughts and detailed his progress toward full recuperation. “I’m still dancing,” he wrote. He charted that progress using the Half Dome hike as an analogy and baseline. In one letter, he drew a diagram for her depicting the trail and how far his recovery had advanced along it, with an arrow labeled I AM here pointing to the spot. It would be great fun, he mused, to visit Yosemite with her, though “most of the park rangers probably think that I’m a cross between a stupid idiot and a crazed maniac.”

  Rice also expressed interest in meeting Linda’s brother, Dan, but acknowledged that “I know he probably isn’t too anxious to meet me.” The couple of times Dan Crozier had seen him, “I was either burnt to a crisp cluttering up one of the most beautiful places on earth or stark naked around his sister. Not a good first impression.”

  In a rare reference to the episode, Rice described his feelings on his helicopter flight down from the Dome: "I probably would have been scared to death flying down the face of the dome if I was all there. As it was, a blur of noise and stars and then awesome, almost breathtaking silence (though I had not much breath to take), and a beautiful, calm, peaceful feeling… floating… floating… until we landed!!! Then it was time to find out if I was going to live or die. You see, being sober in an accident for the first time I finally felt the feeling of death trying to fill my body. It had already crept through my left leg and was emptying the life out of the bottom half of my body." Rice confessed that the episode had given him greater faith: “You know, it is just amazing how many wonderful stories have been written depicting the power of faith. But for a stubborn man like me it takes the pleasant shock of reality to drive the message home.”

  That faith reemerged in a letter he wrote to Crozier in spring 1986:

  “I am very thankful for my health, the fact that I was just alive has never been enough for me and I think God knew this. Though it has been a long hard road toward recovery, I feel good, real good. My legs are getting stronger and stronger, ankle not up to par yet but I am starting to hike….I’m starting to enjoy progress at a slower pace now. Before it was flying off of cliffs, instant gratification, standing in the winner’s (he-man’s) circle; basically having to satisfy my ego so I could temporarily lose that scary feeling of insecurity. But now I’m finding I am slowing myself down, gaining more over a longer period of time by steadily working toward a goal. Granted the limelight doesn’t come to swoon me away; but, I feel good within myself… I can go off by myself on a nice hike, swim, workout… and feel good. This freedom is wonderful. I can feel God with me and I don’t feel alone.”

  Rice added that he hoped “happiness has found you and spring is in your heart.”

  THE VERY NEXT SUMMER, Esteban, Rice, Pippey, and a companion returned to Half Dome’s summit. Rice may have undergone a personal transformation in the preceding year, but some things hadn’t changed. Once again, he was the prime organizer and motivator, demonstrating that he still lived by his face-your-fears credo, the lightning episode notwithstanding.

  We have to prove to ourselves we can do this, he preached.

  The group called itself the “Get Back on the Horse Society.”

  Esteban: “Rice was still assertive and our recognized leader. Because of all the medical operations, diet, and therapy, he was much thinner than before, but he appeared to be in excellent shape. He had curbed his drinking and indulged in wine instead of beer, even diluting the wine with water. He showed no interest in partying. He was more health-conscious than ever. The only thing that showed he was ever in the accident were long black elastic stockings he wore over his feet and legs to hide the scars, which he seemed very self-conscious about, and to provide support for his calf and back-leg muscles. He had to stretch his legs every morning and before any strenuous leg activity. He followed a very rigorous routine that had been developed especially for him while he was recovering in the hospital. He said he had to do this every day for the rest of his life so he wouldn’t lose the flexibility of his leg muscles and possibly the use of his legs.

  “Looking back at that return trip to the Dome, I remember we were all feeling very special about the whole thing because it was the first time we had been back since the accident. I was partly scared and very excited to climb Half Dome once again. We brought flowers to leave inside the cave to honor Bob and Brian, and when we reached it, we all gathered and gave a eulogy and toast for our fallen comrades. I said how we were sorry and that we missed them and if I had to go I would like it to happen at Half Dome. At that moment, I felt a real sense of loss, how sad and useless it was for both of them to die so young.”

  THE TRAGEDY GAVE ESTEBAN a new outlook on life: “I realized how short and precious life is and how quickly it can end. It was the first time I had seen death up close and personal.”

  The lightning jolt knocked much of the thrill-seeker out of Esteban. Before, he had been nonchalant about life, taking stupid chances without giving them a second thought. Now his attitude was: “It’s not worth the risk. Nothing is.”

  He often returned to Half Dome in subsequent years. The tragedy hadn’t detracted from its beauty, and going there continued to serve as a barometer of his physical well-being. The rock chamber, however, became for him a sacred place not to be disturbed.

  Esteban: “At times, I still acted impulsively. But after a trip to the Dome, I grew more reserved and reflective. In being there, it seemed like everything was put back into perspective, that life is really not as complicated as we all make it out to be. Living and working in Silicon Valley is very stressful, but for one day I can escape all of that by going back to the Dome, where I could always find a certain peace of mind.”

  Life was a gift, he now realized. And he resolved to live it to the fullest.

  “You only live once. If there is something that you really want to do or try, then just do it—you may never get another opportunity.”

  When Spectra Physics was bought out in the late 1980s, Esteban, who was twenty-seven years old by then, faced a deteriorating work situation. New management demanded higher performance. So, true to his newfound doctrine about seizing opportunities, he decided to fulfill a lifelong dream and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

  Esteban: “Surviving the lightning strike gave me the spark to join the corps. All our previous trips up the Dome created a mindset to continue in the face of adversity, so on that July day in 1985, that’s what we did. Even though it turned out to be a disastrous decision, I nevertheless retained the inner fire not to let obstacles deter me from going after a goal. I long wanted to join the Marine Corps. It was time to pursue it.”

  Like Half Dome, the marines dramatically changed Esteban’s life. He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve
s instead of combat infantry—his earlier goal when he was young and more gung-ho about the military. As a reservist, he kept his job in the laser industry. The corps taught him to overcome his greatest weakness: lack of discipline. It shaped his core values and beliefs about loyalty and camaraderie. In 1985, he had been a follower mostly; in the marines he learned how to lead.

  He designed a tattoo for his upper arm that celebrated more than just his status as a U.S. Marine. usmc was emblazoned beneath a big scorpio eagle whose claws gripped a red lightning bolt. In his mind, the two events—the lightning episode and becoming a marine—had merged.

  Esteban served in the reserves for ten years, earned the rank of staff sergeant, and held many different jobs. The one he loved the most was military policeman. With the expert training, experience, and contacts he gained, he thought he would be a shoe-in to get hired as a police officer—his occupational goal upon leaving the corps. But when asked in a job interview if he had ever used cocaine, Esteban responded yes, believing that honesty was the best course. Instead, he was rejected. He returned to the laser industry, enrolled at several community colleges, and eventually earned an associate of arts degree in laser technology. In 1998, he enrolled in Phoenix College and, two years later, received a bachelor of science degree in business management.

  THE HALF DOME TRAGEDY impacted—and in some cases shattered— many lives. It had driven a wedge between Esteban and Rice.

  Esteban: “The Half Dome brotherhood that we felt toward each other changed in the horror of the calamity. The long-standing mutual trust and loyalty we shared were gone, and they did not return.”