Stuart Ellis

WILDROSE PEAK HIKE
OCTOBER 1998

Dan called me up and told me I was going back to Death Valley. No exceptions. I was going. Period.

And thus my return to the valley that I had not seen since my thirtieth birthday. I had missed a few trips, and it was time to reenter the wilderness that had captured my heart. This time we had a clear-cut agenda: A through-hike. We would attempt to crest Wildrose Peak, and then … kind of find some way to hike down the east side of the Panamint mountain range and hopefully find our camp. Easy.

Regrettably, Greg was not available. Dan and Cameron and I were joined this time by Johnny, his younger brother Billy, and the incomparable Captain Mark Mooney. The ‘A’ Team would be Dan, Cam, Billy and myself as the hikers. Mark and Johnny were the ‘B’ Team that would relocate the rigs and set up the new camp. Keys were exchanged, ‘goodbye’s and ‘good luck’s were said, and they drove the rigs from the trailhead near the Charcoal Kilns back down and around the mountain range to a designated place in Trail Canyon that washes down into Death Valley.

Wildrose Peak is a rounded, dome-like mountaintop in the Panamint Range that summits at 9,064 feet. The trail is only a little over four miles long, and a two thousand foot ascension.  But the trail stops there. As Dan said, that was were the fun would begin.

The October weather was picture perfect, sunny and blue with a cool breeze that brought a hint of ice from the higher peaks. The trail started out steeper than I expected as we climbed out of Wildrose Canyon. I kept thinking the altitude was getting to me. But I had been harboring a secret. It was a little something that I was trying to keep from myself; I was having problems breathing. I didn’t say the word because it scared me: Asthma.
At a prime age of thirty-three, this was embarrassing. I brushed it off as an allergic reaction and just work through it.

Cameron and Billy were already way up ahead of me. Dan hung back to stay with my lumbering pace. I should have acted grateful, but instead something just slipped. With tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I decided to explain in a prophetic demeanor what would happen to him if he didn’t fully commit to his personal relationship back home. It was that type of stream-of-consciousness sort-of-thing that always gets me into trouble. But I was on a roll. I pointed out the clear, step by step process of how his life would crumble one miniscule bit at a time, until he slipped into a depthless pit of misery and despair that had no hope of redemption. I thought it was well calculated out, believable, and pretty damned funny. Which means I was being an asshole. Poor Dan.

The trail leveled off as it cleared the shade of the canyon and the pinyon pine and juniper trees. And there, across the top of the ridge was a view of Death Valley deep below in the vast white salt flats of Badwater. I tried fruitlessly to see if our footprints were still there from three yeas before. Here we headed north and up to another ridge crest that we followed to the rounded base of Wildrose.

Then the snowballs fell upon us.

Dan and I were cresting up the first of a series of twisting switchbacks that strafed across the side of the steep slope when the sky darkened and we were hit by the ice and snow. From above we could hear the laughter of Cameron and Billy. We didn’t realize that we were just below the snowline. Obviously, they were above it. Ambushed. We didn’t stand a chance.

They let us catch up with them, Cameron holding his belly from laughing so hard. We retaliated. They took cover and let us have it. After regrouping we all studied the zig zaging lines on the USGS topo map and figured all we had to do was push on a little longer and we would be at the top. The snow was only on the shadowy south side of the slope and dusted lightly enough not to cause us any problems. The trail was rockier and bare of trees. My lungs were screaming in a red, swollen haze, but the trail leveled off once again and we were at the summit. It looked, however, like the others had not even broken a sweat.

We took a break at the USGS marker and wrote in the peak’s journal that was kept in an ammunition box. Then we pondered the map again trying to figure out what Dan had planned. It seemed easy enough. We just had to be aware that below our line of sight there were some drop-offs that appeared, in a word, steep. Lethal, would be another word. Probably more accurate too. There was a small ridgeline that was bordered by two such lethal cliffs that should take us down to a navagatable area on the east side of the range. As long as we found this ridge, we were okay. If we missed it … well, that was not going to happen.

We took in the summit view one last time. South of us was Telescope Peak. East was the expanse of Death Valley and the looming Funeral Mountains. Mount Whitney was to the west of us, if you knew where to look. We left the trail’s end point and headed east down off the mountain.

The way down, while rocky, was open and easy going. So easy, in fact, and without any restraint of a trail, we started heading down very rapidly. We were off the dome in no time and into the tree line. I remember hearing Dan call out for us to head ‘right’, since we were spread out in no discernable pattern, all pelting down at high speed with no thought for anyone else. I was in the dirt now, surrounded by shady trees, and with no view at all. I slid to a stop in a shower of dust and rocks to catch my breath and to figure out how far ‘right’ I was suppose to go. Then I looked down.

One of those lethal cliffs lay at my feet. Right at my feet. It was unbelievable how I did not see it. A low line of bushes crowned the rim, right where I was standing.  Literally, two more steps down and …

I heard the scraping and sliding of Dan above me. I shouted out for him to stop. He came skidding up to me, half burying my feet in dirt. I reached out to steady him and stop his momentum. He was grinning from ear to ear. “That was fun!” he said, then he looked past me, then down; the smile slid off of his face. “Holy …”

“Uh huh,” was all I was able to utter.
He leaned over farther for a better look. “Dude!” He turned back to me.  “We almost died!”
“Uh huh,” was all I was able to utter.

Dan started shouting for Billy and Cameron who were somewhere to the ‘right’ of us. They came back over where we could regroup. Cameron said, “It gets pretty steep over there,” pointing back to the way they came.
“Uh huh,” was all I was able to utter.

Dan whipped out his GPS unit to find the ridge that he had meant us to descend down.
“Is that it right over there?” I asked looking at the barest little thread of a ridge that merely peeped out from the cliff face right next to us.
“Nah” Dan dismissed it. He checked his GPS against the topo map. “Wait, it should be right over there,” he pointed to the same ridge. He looked up again. “Huh. I guess that is it after all.”

It was not very big, but it would be enough for us to get down. And down we went, much more carefully and somberly for this leg of the journey. There were some sketchy spots, but armed with the knowledge that this is the only way to go, and with no turning back, we hiked down the exposed spine and eventually into a large ravine without incident. Here there was a spring and some shade and vegetation. A ramshackle miner’s shed still stood. And a mineshaft. A perfect spot to rest and sooth our trembling legs.

The mineshaft was beckoning, and I do not have a clear memory of either Dan or I going in. I think we did, but mostly I remember Cameron and Billy. Billy was hesitant, but Cameron was full of adventure. I clearly saw his light silhouette himself and Billy as they ventured into the darkness. It is funny how memory starts to distort with time. This incident (oh yes, there was an incident) melds with the events that took place in the hollow mountain of Skidoo. I remember getting a headache. It was sudden, like the thinnest ice pick to the right side of my temple. And I remember losing my breath. So I got out, fast. But that had happened at Skidoo as well. I remember staying outside the mine feeling the breeze, moist from the spring, upon my face. Then there was a commotion from inside the mine. I remember Dan and Billy pulling Cameron out. Their faces were set and serious. I remember thinking, ‘This is not the time or place for an accident. We are still hundreds of feet up the side of a bare, God forsaken, desert mountain range.’

In the light outside, Cameron looked green. It was a shade of green that looked like an undercoating of a newly forming bruise. It was very faint, but defiantly green.
“Dude! You’re green!” Dan exclaimed.

How does one care medically for someone who has gone green? Air? Check. Water? Check. Induce vomiting? Luckily, the deathly hue started clearing so it didn’t look like it was needed. Was Cameron poisoned? Did he get a whiff of the legendary and lethal ‘bad air’ that hangs low in unvented mineshafts? Were there going to be any long-term effects?

Poor Cameron was shaken and very nervous, but lucid and talking to us the whole time. There was confusion as to what had happened. Apparently Cameron had seen some interesting looking fungus that was growing on the side of the mineshaft. He had stopped to take off his glove and touch it, and his fingers went numb. Were the two events related? Then he felt lightheaded and was pulled out of the mine. Was that related? There were mixed feelings of excitement and disbelief. Perhaps his coloring was an optical illusion brought on by the refracted light through the shadows and vegetation? No, he was definitely green. He was breathing easily now that he had a fresh breeze, so CPR was not necessary (however much some of us wanted to use it as an excuse). Was he poisoned? If so, was it respiratory or topical? We told him to wash off his hand that did indeed look red and slightly swollen. He gulped in fresh air. He drank plenty of filtered water. He was patient as we all perched around him ready to spring into whatever action was needed. We waited as he slowly resumed a healthier looking demeanor. Obviously, when he felt able to, he wanted to get out of there. We didn’t argue, but kept a watchful eye on him as we continued our way down to camp. Cameron looked more embarrassed than anything, but we wanted to make sure he was not going to suddenly drop dead, or become faint and fall off the damned mountainside.

As it was, the farther away from that mine Cameron got, the better he looked. His strength returned, and for the remainder of the hike was without problems. And for the rest of us, the strange event at the mineshaft became more and more unreal. Except, probably, for Cameron.
He kept quiet the fact that his fingers had not felt normal for months afterwards. What had really happened? One can only speculate. But we all felt thankful that whatever did transpire did not escalate into something life threatening.

I was ready to make an end of it. We had leveled off into Trail Canyon that fed off into the alluvial fan that slides it way down into the valley floor. Mission complete. We traversed the mountain range. On Dan’s map there was a marked four-wheel drive road that we were to follow out to where our camp should be. The problem was that there were more than one road exiting the canyon through a network of burms and washes. After checking and rechecking the map we figured the best thing we could do was simply head downhill. But fatigue started to make us second-guess if we were going the right way. We were so close, but couldn’t connect the last dot. Dan contacted Mark and Johnny over the radio, but they could not seem to pinpoint each other’s location. They were driving; we were walking. But we were not finding each other.

The starting and stopping was driving me crazy, so I started out on my own. I needed a beer and my tent.

We all knew that we were close, so apparently Dan thought it was a good idea to fire off a round of his nine millimeter so Mark could take a sounding and home in on us. I ‘guess’ this was a good idea, but considering how sound bounces off canyon walls, I suspect it was simply an excuse for Dan to squeeze off a few.

I however, being somewhat ahead of the group, was not privy to this new development. I was focusing on what was ahead of me, keeping my ears open to the sound of the truck, when suddenly from behind I heard an unmistakable ‘crack’!

My first thought was that Dan shot me.
Then, to duck and cover, but I was too tired for that.
Then, ‘Did Dan just shoot AT me?’
Then, ‘Why the hell did Dan just shoot at me?? I’m not Greg!’

I realized that I was standing dead still and that the rest of the hiking group was laughing. Part of me wanted to rush him, but he was armed, so that was stupid. But I knew it was on my face because Dan slowly put the gun away. But he looked like he was satisfied with his revenge after my stream-of-conscious rant about him earlier.

Then the truck arrived.

Well, maybe the gunshot really did work.

That shadow that had fallen over us was dissipated back at camp. Mark and Johnny welcomed our return. There was beer and food and friends and lots of laughter. We were young and indestructible once more, and already plotting the next trip for when we returned. And return we would.