Ranger Confidential

by Andrea Lankford

  This is the park ranger’s catch-22.

  Fortunately for the brave and the desperate, there are always loopholes. To beat the ranger’s catch-22, a devout nature lover has several options. All of them grim. You can compete for an entry-level “open to non-status applicants” ranger position at a big city park like the Statue of Liberty or Independence Hall (where the scenery is scarce and the cost of living–to–wage ratio is punitive). You can accept a job as a federal prison guard, probation officer, or postal worker. You can work for the IRS. You can volunteer your services for two years while exposing yourself to political unrest and exotic diseases in the Peace Corps. You can enlist in the military and hope you become a veteran of a war. Or you can do your time as a Park Service clerk-typist, toiling behind a desk until a ranger supervisor rescues you from administrative exile.

  Most park rangers work many years as a temporary ranger before they are deemed worthy of seeking a permanent full-time-with-benefits assignment. But patience wasn’t one of Mary’s virtues. After laboring two years as a summer ranger in Yosemite, she desperately wanted the benefits and job security of a full-time job. Of all the paths leading to a permanent full-time ranger, Mary figured the least painful was to take the route of a clerk-typist.

  Her first challenge was to take a clerk-typist test. She woke up early one morning and drove three hours from Yosemite to downtown Sacramento, where she got in line with all the other people desiring jobs as clerk-typists for the federal government. But before she got in the door, a test administrator turned her away. She wasn’t among the first forty people in line. Weeks later, they gave the test again. Mary got up earlier and drove faster. This time she was third in line. She took the test and passed it. In the fall of 1994, at the end of her second summer as a park ranger, Mary started her job as a full-time clerk-typist at Yosemite National Park. Her duties included filling out time sheets, making photocopies, typing letters, and grinding her teeth into a smile every time the district ranger massaged her shoulders when she’d rather he didn’t.

  It was hell. Sitting in the stale air of the office. Punching numbers into an adding machine. Watching the rangers swagger in, their guns on their hips. By Christmas the guys were treating her like they treated all the other office women: flirting with her when they needed something; ignoring her when they didn’t. They seemed to be forgetting that a few months ago Mary had been one of them. They seemed to be forgetting that this clerk-typist thing was only temporary.

  * * *

  A Yosemite April can be dreary. It may even snow. Indeed, on April 13, 1995, rain, sleet, and snow took turns punishing four rock climbers ascending a route on El Capitan called “the Nose.” A classic climb, the Nose is perhaps the most sought-after big-wall ascent in the world. In 1950 three men achieved the first ascent of the Nose. It took them forty-seven days stretched out over seventeen months. Today the average climber completes the 2,900-vertical-foot, thirty-one-pitch climb in five days of “immense physical and psychological drain.” The failure rate is high for those who attempt this route. The first rock climber fatality on El Capitan occurred in 1905. Since then more than twenty-six climbers have died on “El Cap”—nearly a third of those deaths related to bad weather.

  The weather certainly challenged the four climbers on El Cap that April 13. In their struggle to reach a safe position to hole up for the night, one climber dropped his sleeping bag and watched it plummet two thousand feet to the valley floor. Eventually all four men made it to Camp Six Ledge, a triangular platform of rock smaller than most bathrooms. Six hundred feet from the top and 2,300 feet from the bottom, this ledge offered relief from the cliff face but not from the weather. That night, a waterfall of rain and melted snow poured down the rock wall through a crack at the back of the ledge, soaking the climbers and their gear. A vertical half mile above the ground, the men huddled together and contemplated their predicament. Four men; three wet sleeping bags; two icy ropes; one exposed ledge; zero relief from the weather—and it was getting darker and colder by the minute. Although they were loath to admit it, without help from the park rangers, the climbers might die.

  Around 6:30 p.m., tourists heard cries for help coming from the face of El Cap. By the time rangers received these reports, the sky was too dark and the weather too dicey for a rescue helicopter to pluck the men off the rock face. If the climbers were to receive any assistance before dawn, a strike team would have to approach the top of El Capitan on foot.

  For this mission, rescue coordinators organized a strike team of twenty-one men. Led by paramedic park ranger Keith Lober, this team consisted of rangers, other park employees, and trained rescue volunteers known as “SAR-siters.” In return for their assistance on SARs (search and rescues), rock climbers earned free camping privileges in a designated area (the SAR site) of Sunnyside Campground. The role SAR-siters play on the Yosemite rescue team cannot be overstated. Without the additional talents, manpower, and athletic abilities of SAR-siters, Yosemite rangers would be overwhelmed by the number of rescue missions they respond to each year. A good number of SAR-siters have more technical search and rescue knowledge than your average park ranger.

  In 1995 Mary was still “cutting her teeth” as a rescuer. So that night the strike team leader didn’t let poor Mary play any rescue ranger games. Instead the clerk-typist strapped snowshoes onto the varsity rescuers’ backpacks. She helped load gear into the rescue vans. She watched the strike team drive off into the blustery storm. Then she sat behind a desk and filled in the blanks on time sheets. On that snowy April eve, Mary the Split-Tail Clerk-Typist must have felt like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

  The vans drove the strike team from Yosemite Valley (3,900 feet) to Crane Flat (6,100 feet), where they got into the snow machines that would take them to Tamarack Flat (6,300 feet). From Tamarack Flat the team would snowshoe nine miles through the snow to the top of El Capitan (7,500 feet). From the top of El Cap they could lower a rescuer, supplies, and dry sleeping bags to the rock climbers—ideally, before they all froze to death.

  It was a doable plan. But the April storm had something else in mind. The snow machines bogged down in sticky snow before reaching Tamarack Flat, leaving the rescuers many miles from their intended destination. I imagine this is the point when the strike team leader cursed the crippled Sno-Cats and threw the snowshoe that made his rescue team flinch. This expedition to El Capitan was turning unpleasant, triggering an eruption from their leader—Sheriff Lobo.

  * * *

  El Capitan’s name comes from a Spanish interpretation of its Native American name Tu-tok, or “rock chief.” Tu-tok’s profile is evident in the three-thousand-foot-long slope of granite that forms his “nose.” Although El Capitan is the largest granite monolith in the world, it isn’t the tallest. To the east sits a granite dome a thousand feet higher and a whole lot prettier. They say that of all the photographs taken by Ansel Adams, including a misty shot of El Cap, it is a shadowy portrait of Half Dome under a waning moon that made the landscape photographer famous.

  The Ahwahnee name for Half Dome is Tis-sa-ack. Controversy surrounds the source and authenticity of Yosemite “Indian” legends. At least two tribes claim the Ahwahnee as their ancestors, and several bastardized versions of the Tis-sa-ack story are floating around. Yet the Half Dome legends all have at least one thing in common—a woman with man trouble. In a story documented by Galen Clark in 1904, Tis-sa-ack is a spirited wife who drinks up all the water in Mirror Lake. When her husband tries to beat her, Tis-sa-ack curses and throws her basket at him. For their wickedness, the Great Spirit turns both spouses to stone. Half Dome is Tis-sa-ack. Basket Dome is her dropped basket. North Dome is the angry husband.

  Another Tis-sa-ack story includes Tu-tok, the spirit of El Capitan. One day Tu-tok falls in love with the lovely Ti-sa when he sees the angel of Yosemite Valley lounging around on the top of Half Dome. But Ti-sa rejects the rock chief’s repeated advances and
eventually flees. Devastated, Tu-tok neglects Yosemite Valley. His heartbreak sends rockslides thundering off the mountains. His tears flood the rivers. His apathy allows green leaves to turn brown and flowers to wilt. Eventually the Great Spirit intervenes, restoring the Valley to its original splendor and imprinting an image of Ti-sa on the side of Half Dome for Tu-tok to look at. A dark stain represents her long black hair.

  Most people view these scenic rivals from the valley floor. But the relationship between El Cap and Half Dome is best appreciated from their tops. Hike the arduous route to the peak of Half Dome and see that, from Ti-sa’s point of view, Tu-tok has his arrogant nose turned away and appears to be snubbing her. But when standing on the top of El Cap, one realizes that Tu-tok’s disdain is only pretense. No rock chief can ignore the sensuous swell of Half Dome’s backside.

  * * *

  Snow and darkness obscured the inspiring view from El Cap on the evening of April 13, 1995. In the interest of safety, Lober halted his strike team’s death march through the hip-deep snow and ordered them to bivouac for the night. The conditions were miserable. They got worse when Lober discovered that his team hadn’t packed enough tents and sleeping bags to go around. On another rescue similar to this one, Sheriff Lobo resolved the same problem by forcing two SAR-siters to spend the night out in the snow. In a desperate attempt to stay warm, one volunteer hovered so close to the campfire that he melted the seat of his GORE-TEX pants.

  Lober and his strike team suffered a wretched bivouac near Tamarack Flat, while Mary the Clerk-Typist slept in her warm bed. In the morning she reported for duty at the rescue cache, expecting a shift of restocking gear and finishing paperwork, all the boring stuff, until the incident commander broke the news. The strike team had not reached El Cap. And at this very moment, the storm clouds were parting, opening a “window” of good weather. The commander needed to get rescuers flown to the top of El Cap before this window closed. With twenty-one of the most experienced rescuers in Yosemite Valley stuck under the heavy clouds covering the higher elevations, the incident commander had no choice. The fourth-quarter buzzer had rung. His starting lineup was stuck in a snowbank. It was time to send the bench sitters into the game.

  The SAR cache ranger was an obsessive-compulsive recycler. He jammed fax machines with used paper. He crammed packing peanuts into garbage bags and filled an entire room of the rescue cache with them. New rangers and rescue volunteers were warned to be leery of any food offered to them by the SAR cache ranger. He cut mold off cheese, ate fruit others had discarded, and offered rescue workers stale doughnuts in boxes retrieved from a garbage can. Notoriously thrifty, the SAR cache ranger loved a bargain. Instead of GORE-TEX parkas, he had purchased bright yellow raincoats and pants that looked like the kind worn by school crossing guards. No one wanted to wear them, so they were going unused.

  Before Mary left the rescue cache, the SAR cache ranger handed her one of these suits. He told Mary to put it on if she went over the edge. The SAR cache ranger was eccentric, but he was also a well-respected rescue guru with an MIT education and a genius IQ. Mary took the rain suit, which was still in the packaging, and promised to wear it.

  * * *

  Sitting inside the rescue helicopter, Mary’s scalp prickled with excitement. The military pilot lifted off, aiming for a blue hole in the clouds. Mary looked out the window. The people standing in Ahwahnee Meadow got smaller and smaller. Then El Cap got bigger and bigger. The wet granite sparkled like a prism in the sunlight.

  On top of El Cap, Mary leaned over the edge and peered down—a long way down. In her dorky rain suit, she looked like an idiot. But she didn’t care. Mary once told a friend she craved experiences that “make me have to wet my pants,” and today she was going over the edge of El-freaking-Capitan, as soon as SAR-siter Eric Rasmussen got the lowering system ready.

  With a few more knots to tie and a couple more anchors to check, Mary looked up. Uh-oh. Standing on the ridge above the cliff’s edge was Sheriff Lobo, glaring down on her. After dropping off the B team, the helicopter picked up Lober and part of his strike team and brought them to El Cap. As soon as the strike team leader saw Mary at the edge, Lober ran down the knee-pounding descent, waving his arms and yelling. Stop. Hold up. Wait for him.

  No way.

  “Go. Go. Go.” Mary said. “He’s coming.” The B team scrambled to tie knots and lock carabiners. “We got here first.”

  Once Lober reached the edge of El Cap, he saw a group of junior rescuers preparing to conduct a time-critical, high-angle rescue operation. The weather conditions were extremely hazardous. The lives of four climbers were at stake. And the “man” they had chosen to send over the edge was a clerk-typist with hazel eyes, a freckled face, and a long ponytail—and she was wearing a ridiculous yellow rain suit.

  “McDevitt, you’re going over,” Lober said, pointing to Dan McDevitt, an experienced rock climber and rescue volunteer.

  “But I’m ready,” Mary said.

  “Give McDevitt the rope.”

  “I’m already tied in,” Mary said. A sheet of ice the size of a sliding glass door slid off the edge of El Cap and crashed down the cliff face, zinging like a missile on its way to the valley floor. What a shitty day to be on El Cap. Yet here she was—fighting for an opportunity to dangle over the edge during a freakish April snowstorm while the only thing that kept her from plunging three thousand vertical feet to her death was a rope no thicker than a roll of string cheese. If I don’t go over the edge of El Cap today, I’ll be a clerk-typist forever. “Keith,” Mary pleaded, “I can do this!”

  “We are wasting time.” A shadow from a fast-moving cloud darkened Lober’s face. Their window of good weather could close at any moment. “Mary, I said give McDevitt the rope.”

  The clerk-typist tightened her grip. If you can pry it from my dead fingers.

  “Dammit, woman,” Lober said. Have it your way.

  Rescue volunteer Eric Rasmussen took a photograph of Mary as she began her descent. In the photo you see that rescuers have kicked off most of the ice, but the granite is still dusted with snow. The perspective is deceiving. The tiny trees behind Mary are actually one-hundred-foot-tall pines growing on the valley floor a half mile below. Mary wears a climbing helmet, sunglasses, and a chest harness with a radio. Her megawatt smile matches her megawatt yellow rain suit. She is about to become the first Split-Tail Clerk-Typist to go “over the edge” as the lead rescuer during a high-angle mission on El Capitan.

  The rescuers on top of El Cap lowered Mary six hundred feet. She used her feet to maneuver herself down the rock and over to where four shivering men squatted on a granite shelf the size of a king-size mattress. Soaked to the bone by the frigid water gushing down the crack behind them, these four rock climbers would not have survived another night exposed to the wrath of the April storm. Thank God, they must have been thinking, our hero has arrived. A climber reached out, grabbed the rope, and pulled Mary in. When she stepped on the ledge, the climbers got their first good look at the “man” the NPS had sent to rescue them.

  “Oh, no,” one climber said. “It’s a chick!”

  “I prefer to see her as an angel,” another climber corrected him.

  The climber who made the chick comment must have been a fan of Norman Mailer, a writer who famously said a man should approach a woman in the same way he would approach a mountain. On the front of this climber’s helmet was a cartoonish work of art—a pair of shapely female legs spread wide. The space between the woman’s legs was a mountain. The summit of this mountain, at the peak of the inverted V made by the woman’s legs, was the “pinnacle” of female anatomy—a split-tail.

  While rescuers lowered McDevitt down a second rope, Mary explained how the rescue was going to go down. All six of them, the four climbers and the two rescuers, would ascend the ropes using hand-held metal devices. They would go two at a time, one on each rope,
until they reached the top of El Cap, where a helicopter was waiting to fly them all down to the valley. As soon as McDevitt joined them on the ledge, the first two climbers would ascend the ropes. The two rescuers would go last. The window of good weather could close on them any time. It was dicey out there. “So be careful and keep moving.”

  The man wearing the sophomoric helmet had opinions—maybe they should do this, and maybe they should do that.

  “They wouldn’t send her down here if she didn’t know what she was doing,” another climber said, convincing the first to shut up.

  From El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite’s chief ranger watched the rescue operation through a telescope. Tourists joined in on the excitement. Through binoculars and telephoto lenses, they squinted at the tiny figures climbing the ropes to the top of El Cap.

  On top, Lober cursed a coil of rope for having the audacity to get in his way. This time Sheriff Lobo was mad at himself. He had made a tactical error. To reserve the energy of his exhausted rescue team, he had chosen to have the stranded climbers put out some effort in their own rescue. Now, in hindsight, it was clear that his team should have hauled the four climbers up the cliff face with a modified sailing winch rather than have them “jug up” themselves. Doing it this way was taking much too long. The temperature was just above freezing. Melted snow was turning into ice. A wall of thick, dark clouds were closing in. Mother of God, Lober fretted: Could they be moving any slower?

  As soon as the fourth climber topped out, Lober had the four men and most of the rescuers flown off the mountain. He kept a skeleton crew behind while Mary and Dan McDevitt started up the ropes. The rescuers were now racing against the approaching storm.