Cali

 

July 4, 2022

 

Greetings from her biggest fan,

 Occasionally you may wonder about the next generation of young people, perhaps even fallen into trading cliches about ‘kids today’, which seems to be the burden of every era.  Personally, I have great hope for those who follow us; I’d like to share one story about my niece Cali that I think will matter.  We should all have heroes.

 Cali works multiple part time jobs to help pay for her college tuition, a patchwork of house sitting and babysitting and tennis lessons and retail.  I think there are plenty of reasons to respect her as she goes through her life, but I want to give you this very powerful example.

 Last Wednesday Cali woke up at 1:00 in the morning and laced up her hiking shoes and shouldered her pack and began climbing Mount Whitney.  It is no small detail that the summit of this climb is the highest peak in the continental U.S, 14,505 feet above the Pacific.

 Cali was not alone; her father, who is my brother, and I were with her.  It is appropriate to write it this way, we were with her, because virtually every step of the vertical ascent, Cali was leading the way. 

 We hiked through the darkness, climbing steadily along jagged trails, clambering up rocky steps, fording streams in the glow of our headlamps.  By the time the sun came up we had reached a broad ledge of the mountain where we refilled our water, and considered the next challenge, a series of 99 switchbacks that lead to the spine of the mountain.

 I watched Cali as we climbed, all of us feeling the altitude and the effort of pulling ourselves up.  She was smiling, talking with hikers we met, seemed to be enjoying the day, but I knew the work had to be taking some toll.  By the time we crested the ridge we had been climbing for ten hours.  We stopped to eat and marvel at the view, gulping the thin air as we talked about the next push. 

 Cali is a gentle soul, a musician, a writer, a poet.  She speaks softly, has an easy laugh, and it is easy to see she has a kindness for people.  She is petite, moves more like a dancer.  All this belies a strength, an essence, that has served her in great challenges.  And it would be challenged on Whitney.

 We clambered across the back of the mountain, traversing the steep slope on a narrow, rocky trail, often inches from dropping thousands of feet to the world below us.  Cali led us across this ledge, stopping once in while for us to catch up.  As lightly as she moved, I could see the climb was beginning to affect her.  By the time we reached the last push to the summit, we were all struggling.  Cali’s steps slowed, but she ground her way up toward the peak, my brother Douglas right behind her.  My own steps, considerably slower, followed theirs a short time later.

 We celebrated at the top, an emotional reunion, a little punchy from exhaustion and the altitude.  We looked across the top of the world, for hundreds of miles in all directions.  The sun paused in the deep blue sky to congratulate us, but not for long.  We had now been on the mountain for thirteen hours. 

 We began the descent after a short break, already late.  We knew we would not get down before dark, but we had food and could get water from the streams along the way.  We were optimistic we could muscle our way back to the finish.  We were also really wrong.

 By the time we made it back to the 99 switchbacks, we were trembling with fatigue.  All of us were too nauseated to eat much.  Worse, the wind had picked up in the last hour and now the temperature had dropped over fifteen degrees.  We scrambled down the switchbacks, skipping our chance for water to get out of the freezing wind.  By the time we reached the bottom of the switchbacks, the sun was gone behind Whitney, and dusk was rushing at us from the rocks.

 We put on whatever clothes we had to get warm, but we had left our thermal gear back at the hotel, never believing we would still be up on the mountain when it got cold.  Cali told us later that she was moving too fast on the switchbacks because she was trying to get warm.

 Now she was shaking with the cold as we stumbled across the rock shelf toward the trail down.  As soon as it got fully dark, we got fully lost.  Somehow after an hour of climbing down, nothing seemed right, we couldn’t trust our map and we doubled back to get our bearings.  And got lost again.

 We were all cold, but now Cali was getting the worst of it, with almost no fat on her body to keep her warm.  We bundled her in a foil blanket, and every chance there was, Douglas huddled with her out of the wind, trying to fight the cold.  Never once in these hours did she complain, only later did Douglas tell me Cali said, through chattering teeth: “Dad, I’m trying to be a good sport, but….”

 We were past exhaustion, now chilled, all of us fighting panic.  We clustered behind a rock, weighing our options, Douglas and I both holding the most desperate choices in our minds.  Douglas decided to do one more reconnaissance to get our bearings, walked up the rocks into the dark, while I sat with Cali, both of us shaking. 

 What happened next cannot be explained in ordinary terms.  Douglas walked less than five minutes in the pitch dark along a mound of a rock, and somehow met another couple coming the other way.  They had summited late, had lost their pack off a cliff and didn’t have headlamps.  But they did have a working GPS map.  We saved each other.

 Over the next five hours we zig zagged down the steep canyon in the dark.  It was a grueling death march, our legs already shredded from nearly twenty hours of climbing and descending.  Douglas and I clomped along, bringing up the rear, grateful to know how at least the direction to follow.  We barely had the energy to speak, both of our throats dry from dehydration and the mountain air.

 Cali found another depth.  We could see her just ahead of us in the dark, our lights dancing over rocks and rivers, and finally trees, as we made our way down.  She was gracious and chatty with the couple, thanking them again and again for helping us, making small talk as we slowly edged to lower elevation.  I watched her climb down, sure footed, lightly navigating each turn,

 When we got within an hour of the trailhead, the air warmed around us, and the last of the fear faded.  We were all weak and so tired we were seeing things, but we weren’t thinking about survival, we just wanted to get a shower and get in bed.

 Cali led us along the path toward the car, the last mile an easy, wide path.  We could hear the river roaring in the dark near us, and hikers were passing us coming up, trading good mornings as they started their climb.  Cali wished everyone good luck, answered brief questions about our day.  I think everyone that passed us wondered how we were still on the climb twenty-five hours later.

 We parted ways with our ‘lost’ companions and slumped into our car and wound our way down the mountain to our motel.  

 I am writing more than I intended, and it barely touches the surface of what I want to show you about my friend Cali.   She showed remarkable courage the entire adventure, never once blinking at the dangers of the climb or any of our challenges.  But what was most impressive, what gives me the greatest hope for her and for all of us, was the way she dug into a deeper place when she needed to.  At the end of our physical capacity, faced with what could easily be life threatening moments, she remained calm, and positive.

 Cali is my hero.  That may sound a bit dramatic, and maybe given the fact that she is a third my age the word seems awkward.  But I admire her steel, her courage, the way she shared herself with others when she had so little to give.  Even when things were at their hardest, she remained Cali.

 

Hope this finds you cheering,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith