[Hangin’ with Batso in Yosemite…sorta! A sorta casual history of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley and my associations with it]

A bit of backstory about Yosemite Valley

I recently stumbled across a fairly new book by Joe Reidhead titled ‘Half Dome: The History of Yosemite’s Iconic Mountain’. My first reaction, having had not yet read it, was “Ho-hum. Another boring natural history account of a part of California we’re all (more or less) familiar with, even people living in such far-flung, off-the-beaten-track parts of rural Bavaria and Timbuktu.” How wrong I soon found myself to be!

Reidhead, a resident in Yosemite for ‘several years’ (as he phrases it) and also a climber of moderate note, has managed to put together in a relatively short read of about 160 pages, one of the most readable, enjoyable and informative compilations of salient facts and details pertaining to Yosemite’s most prominent landmark as I have yet encountered.

Did you know, for example, that Half Dome was not cleaved in two by glacial action several million years ago (as so many commonly think)? No, it was sculpted into its present distinctive hemispherical configuration by ordinary repetitive processes of moisture and temperature that occurred over the past several thousand years. This process, when it relates to massive granite masses of stone like Half Dome (and almost all of the other massive uplifts of Basaltic matter it shares the park with), is known more commonly as ‘flaking’, in which moisture invades the many cracks and crevices of the rock, freezes (causing expansion), then thaws (and so forth), until sheer weight and the force of gravity shears off gigantic flakes (many of them weigh hundreds of tons) of the rock.

The erstwhile glacial action so many commonly regard as the primary causative dynamic at work here actually confined itself to massive grinding, polishing and ‘smoothing’ effects that merely helped take the sharp edges off the Valley’s rock formations. Remember, in most cases that we’re talking about repetitive actions that have taken place over and over, spanning millions of years. Think about the fact that ‘modern’ humanity’s civilization has a history of only about several thousand years and you get a better comprehension of the impressive nature of the timelessness that characterises the natural forces of nature at work.

But this is just a single fascinating detail of the natural history and geology that Reidhead shares in his book. In its larger context, it is a plea for the same sort of reverent regard for nature exemplified by the ancient Hawai’ian peoples, who felt that all things, whether animate or inanimate, possess a sort of ‘soul’ or spiritual sentience that defies human definition yet binds ALL things (whether plant, animal or mineral) to each other.

Interestingly enough, there is a current theory in physics that explores the possibility that all objects in our observable, physical universe emanate detectable, vibrant frequencies, and it is the interactive nature of these harmonic oscillations that constitute a kind of basis of communication and understanding between disparate form of ‘non-living’ matter. If there is even the slightest validity to this startling hypothesis, then nature (in the form, in this case, of stones, mountains and so-called ‘inanimate objects’) all have a sense of each other and, in so many words, share a sort of awareness (this seems to tie into a once popular notion known as the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’).

Reidhead speaks of humanity’s ignorant disregard for the natural world we inhabit and the resulting progressive degradation of our planet and its life-fiving, life-sustaining resources that left unchecked, evidence strongly suggests, shall surely result in the destruction of our environment and almost assuredly guarantee the consequent extinction of all life on our planet.

This philosophy first began to become more widespread back in the 60s, when the so-called ‘ecology’ movement gained prominence in the activism of younger individuals. Today, although commercial/corporate entities (read: profit-centered businesses) resist acknowledging the importance of this important set of insights, we are both witnessing and directly experiencing the first hard indications of the peril posed by ignorance of the need to live on the Earth more carefully and conservatively. Climate change is perhaps the most obvious early warning of the consequences of our cavalier disregard for nature but it is just, to use an apt if ironic metaphor, the ‘tip of the iceberg’.

In addition to delving into the fascinating geophysical origins of Yosemite and its massive features, such as Half Dome itself, Reidhead goes on to broadly cover the major climbing achievements of the Valley that began in the late 40s, 50s and 60s. Such accomplishments as the first successful ascents of not just Half Dome, but nearby majestic El Capitan, Lost Arrow Spire and dozens of other major climbing firsts in the Valley all stemmed from the nascent yet rapidly burgeoning post-war popularity of mountaineering. Leading the new post-war wave of interest in mountaineering were such former WW2 notables as Dave Brower, who was a 10th Mountain Division trooper…America’s answer to the formidable and elite German Alpine troops (the Wehrmacht’s Gebirgstruppe).

Brower, as you may recall, was one of the principal founders of the Sierra Club (which back then was far more grass-roots in its operational philosophy than is today’s massive, corporate Sierra Club oganisation).

Some of my own Sierra rock & snow/ice climbing experiences

Back in the 1970s, subsequent to my return to the San Francisco Bay Area I came from, I lived, worked and studied in that ‘Athens of the West’, the City of Berkeley. What set me and my immediate circle of friends apart from the major climbers of that era (who were also part-time students at UC Berkeley, for the most part) was the fact that I had to regularly work for a living, managing therefore to reconcile studying and recreating into my affairs only as a peripheral concern, meaning that any climbing I did was done strictly on weekends (and my studying took place on several campuses, including UC Berkeley). Lacking the wherewithal that a wealthy family could provide, as well as a distinct uncertainty as to where I wanted to end up in terms of any professional ambitions I had, but also possessed of only a modestly high IQ (assayed to be a mere 125 or so, according to academic testing undergone), I lacked that singular drive that otherwise characterised so many of those climbing contemporaries who achieved much higher aspirations (either academically or as climbers).

I suppose I was, candidly speaking, a mere ‘wannabe’ who was somehow always hovering on the fringes of what was going in in many spheres of several different then-popular youthful peer activities. Despite my tyro interest in photography, I soon discovered that I lacked that crucial ability to skillfully compose through the shutter (that separates the more gifted Ansel Adams clones from the run-of-the-mill snapshot-takers) and although I early-on found myself entranced by the natural scenic splendor California’s oceans and mountains that abounded in our state, I was again not driven to achieve notoriety either in surfing (I could barely stay on the board for more than a minute, and only in relatively calm seas at that) or in the mountains, where I dabbled in mountaineering and climbing well below the level that many of such formative personalities as Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, Chuck Pratt and Steve Roper possessed in spades.

Even as a left-leaning anti-war activist, I was invariably not fully-committed, since getting hauled in for protesting the war would result in an arrest record I could scarcely afford in the narrow medical niche (cardiopulmonary and cardiovascular technology) I worked in. This ‘second string’ mindset even extended into my love affairs back then, perhaps the most flagrant example being a rock-climbing rope-mate of mine (who was a former Naval Aviator, then flying LTV A-7 jet fighters with the Reserve squadron at NAS Alameda) when he literally swept my main heart-throb (a gorgeous nursie at one of the Berkeley hospitals) right off her feet and flew away w/her! Needless to say, we did no further rope-work together on steep rock faces after that sneaky Pearl Harbor type maneuver he pulled! Roped climbing, you see, requires the sort of mutual, loyal commitment experienced by still-conjoined Siamese twins. You don’t f*ck around with your rope-mate (or at least you didn’t back then!) unless you have a strong death wish!

Perhaps it was an insufficient titer of hard-charging testosterone that did me in or perhaps I was just too gentlemanly to find typical male macho competitiveness appealing (a superior of mine at a cath lab I was working at once paid me the supreme insult when he said “I guess you’re a real ‘gentle’-man!” Not exactly a compliment from one guy to another, even back then!). [Of course, he was a French-Canadian by origin, a region known even in Canada for its arrogant, over-the-top Gallic male macho affects, and had enough overweening ego for 10 native-born Californians, so I do take some comfort from that!]

At any rate, since each week I faced a huge number of stressful challenges in my hospital work, my principal means of relaxing and ‘de-stressing’ from working with all the GOMERs (an epithet that is a medical acronym, variously, for ‘Grand Old Man of the ER’ and ‘Get Out of My Emergency Room!’, etc.) was to take off for the Sierra Nevadas and get as ‘high’ as I could on those lovely mountain summits thjat border the eastern edge of Yosemite (especially the ‘Sawtooth Ridge’ area, wherein is found 12-thousand-foot-high ‘Matterhorn Peak’ and a whole host of excellent rock problems). This amounted to gathering together a small cohort of fellow students and medical colleagues and making the 4-hour drive in my faithful old VW beetle from Berkeley to the Matterhorn Peak area, following the end of work on a Friday. Short trips of this sort allowed a regular work schedule and two days of climbing before I had to return on Sunday night to be ready for the next Monday grind.

Thus, I had to settle for carefully planned and scheduled climbing excursions, unlike the Yosemite Valley regulars who ended up making the Valley’s Camp-4 campground their own home-away-from-home basecamp, back then. This sort of vicarious mountain adventuring was very similar to what was called ‘weekend surfing’ in those days, in that instead of committing wholly to the specific lifestyle mandated for both surfers and climbers (recreation first, work second), I and my small coterie of working stiff colleagues were only able to insert ourselves half-way into those two activities. As such, we were doomed to remain peripheral ‘hangers-on’ at Camp-4 and never worked our way into the full confidence of such major players as Warren Harding, Chuck Pratt or Royal Robbins.

Think of us as those unfortunate, scavenging, bottom-of-the-pecking-order Omega wolves who skulk on the edge of a pack’s kill, hoping for a snack but never quite daring to go mano-a-mano with the Alpha wolves. Still, it was gratifying enough to bask in the heroic, golden glow of the Camp-4 inner circle notables and we could always come back to our dreary grid of working with pulmonary and cardiac patients bearing (only slightly exaggerated) tales of bravado and daring-do on the steep rock faces of the valley!

Today, when I read books later written by those rock-climbing greats of the Valley, although they were certainly not our peers in terms of their superior accomplishments on those walls that front the Valley, I can take justifiable pride in the knowledge that we were there (usually on the Valley floor, watching them ascend like spiders, with awe) when they scored their big Yosemite Valley rock wall firsts.

But we didn’t limit ourselves to Yosemite Valley, of course, since Yosemite Valley in the fairer, warmer months quickly became a zoo, full of noisy, obnoxious tourists (with their annoyingly amplified boom-boxes) and even less desirable hangers-on from the Central Valley (who would skulk up from their sleazy warrens in the post-dust-bowl small towns they inhabited to get drunk and act like the minor league delinquents they were down there). Petty theft, vandalism and even some occasional minor thuggery in the Valley were, unfortunately, not all that uncommon.

In fact, it wasn’t the occasional Black Bears that were the biggest concern in the Valley but these low-grade scum-sucking, bipedal critters. We had to strike tents, pack away our gear in cars and take other precautions if we planned to be away from camp for more than an hour or more. By comparison, the bears were merely Yogi Bear’s and Boo-Boo’s little furry, real-life buddies (and Smokey’s relatives).

Therefore, it was trips that required more lengthy approaches that were the most rewarding, like climbs of Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, Mt. Conness, Mt. Lyell, Mt. Dana, The Palisades (Mts. Ritter & Banner) and others in Tuolumne Meadows (such as Unicorn and Cathedral Peaks, Cockscomb and Lembert Dome), the last of which is a huge granite pimple in the Tuolumne Meadows floor that consists entirely of slab climbing (slabs are smooth, glacially polished stretches of mostly unwrinkled rock that require adept friction techniques to ascend…the best one I can think of in the Valley is the infamous Snake-Dyke Route on the western shoulder of Half Dome).

Back then, you could park your car and leave it unattended for days or even weeks without worrying that when you returned you’d find your vehicle vandalized, tires slashed, windows broken, etc., etc. Today, it’s a whole different scene and vehicle vandalism is a given, no matter where you go to climb…sad! Nothing is more dispiriting and deflating, I should explain, than returning from an awesome rock climb to find your prized wheels trashed!

At any rate, it was on these out-lying excursions that we had the best times and to this day I can think of fewer delights more satisfying than ascending one of those peaks or faces (usually by routes no more difficult than either Class-IV or Class-5) and sitting on the summit and marveling at the sense of spectacular views and vistas that went on almost forever at those altitudes (10K to 14K feet or so). At such moments, with a cool, brisk wind kept at bay with a sturdy Sierra Designs 60/40 mountain parka, it was so easy to erase in an instant all the memories of tedious hospital and clinical grinds that each week back in the Bay Area entailed! It’s difficult here to do full justice to the sheer ecstatic joy each of us felt that was so cathartic, such is the reward of ascending mountains, far away from the noisy crowds and unmindful day-trippers down below!

I finally make it to Mountaineering Nirvana!

Those days comprised a formative experience for me in that they whetted my appetite for many, many more climbing experiences that in the 80s and 90s prompted me to climb in the Valais Alpes (also known as the Pennines), in Switzerland (wherein the Swiss Matterhorn, the inspiration for Yosemite’s ‘Matterhorn Peak’ in the Sawtooth Ridge that borders Yosemite, is situated).

And of course, once I was in the Middle East, earning the rather princely salaries that Saudi Arabian medical project expats commonly made, I could indulge myself wholeheartedly and without hesitation, spending several weeks each year climbing in both Austria (Dolomites) and Switzerland (the Valais. In the winter, European alpine skiing was phenomenal, too! It was, to say the least, pure climbing heaven!

Today, now that I am retired, such extravagant adventures are no longer possible and I have to settle for the somewhat more modest pleasures available to pensioners of modest means, but back in those days I truly pulled all the stops out and lived the life of a wealthy, devil-may-care (if minor, and only for weeks at a time) adventurer, with money no object and pure hedonism the only objective in sight! [All too soon, these fantastic escapes had to end each year, naturally enough, with a subsequent return to the unique challenges faced by American expatriates living among Arabs in religiously conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia before further such luxurious sojourns would take place.]

One of the associated consequences of youthful mountaineering, once one enters one’s 7th decade of life, is wondering what happened to my climbing buddies and rope-mates (since back then, what we now call ‘solo free’ or unbelayed climbing hadn’t yet been conceived as more than a wildly unsafe excursion in what was a mere precursor of today’s ‘X-treme’ sports). It remained for such incredible, fearless rock-geniuses as Alex Honnold to make what we all considered a near-impossibility appear almost like a walk in the park!

Since I had many good friends and climbing cohorts back then, I’ll mention only one or two of them here. One of these fellow eccentrics would be the ubiquitous Bob Frommer, who when I met and first started mountaineering with him was a theoretical physics grad student at UC (Berkelely). Bob and I went out often to places like Desolation Valley (Pyramid Peak), and the Matterhorn Peak’s Sawtooth Ridge, but since I had a rep for always erring on the side of prudence, whenever weather or circumstances were less than perfect (this earned me the questionably complimentary sobriquet of ‘Little Old Lady of the Mountains’, LoL), I am sure Bob used to get regularly frustrated by my inherent disinclination to undertake needless risks if everything wasn’t absolutely ideal (a ‘fair-weather climber’? Mea culpa!).

Regardless, my conservatism saved our asses more than once, since on one particular planned climb of Matterhorn Peak on a May Day holiday in the 70s, the weather had started to cloud up a bit early in the pre-dawn and I decided that it might be better to sit things out and wait to see what developed, rather than push on as planned. While we lingered in the tent at our high-base, Bob predictably fumed, since he really wanted to strike out for the summit immediately. But I insisted we wait (fortunately for me, he admirably refrained from poisoning my bowl of Ramen Glop at dinner, that evening, in retribution!).

There was another large party of climbers on the mountain who also headed for the summit that day, since the mild early AM cloudiness was expected to likely yield to clear-skies a bit later. This was back when weather forecasting was still largely a guess-and-by-gosh affair, with neither GPS nor weather satellites providing accurate long-range prognostication, of course. Further, past year weather patterns had demonstrated that by May 1st, the skies usually remained free of stormy fronts and Spring-like conditions invariably prevailed by the first of May.

The just mentioned ‘large group’ on the mountain seemed to be rather inexperienced, to our observations, since many of them were clad in shorts and cotton shirts, so it seemed. But, off this group went with hardly any extra clothing and/or other provisions for unexpected bad weather (this we later learned) while we cooled our heels in our tent.

Once the night began to lift and daylight came full upon us, we could see them making steady progress up the standard route. However, quite suddenly and without any real warning, just below the ridge, the weather coming over the peak very quickly turned from clear to total white-out, accompanied by frigid winds that blasted through the higher passes. The large party we had been watching just disappeared into it.

One second they were visible, the next…poof! It wasn’t much different, in a certain sense, from Odell’s famously brief sighting (on 8 June, 1924), during the British Mt. Everest assault, of Mallory and Irvine on what he presumed to be the First Step of the North Ridge Route before they disappeared forever! Except that at only 12.5K feet, Matterhorn Peak is HARDLY a Mount Everest!

Long story short, a formidable ‘sneaker storm’ had suddenly blown in from the Pacific without warning, catching that group totally unprepared and dressed not for extreme weather but for the milder Spring-like conditions they had been anticipating.

Several died from a combination of disorientation and hypothermia that day and it still serves as evidence that you can never rely on what weather patterns ‘usually’ are or were in previous years, since down below the steep slopes that characterise the Eastern side of the Sawtooth Ridge, you cannot see anything that might suddenly blown in off the ocean that has quickly swept up the gradually inclined Western side of the mountain until it engulfs you. Today we have a whole battery of accurate weather resources that are directly accessible, not least of them being telecommunication types, so such ‘surprise’ events have by now been almost totally obviated!

Bob Frommer, I am somewhat bemused to report, later switched from a graduate program in theoretical physics at UCB to a dance (ballet) program…almost as fast as that ‘sneaker storm’ had blown in. To this day, every now and then it tickles me to imagine my old buddy Bob squeezed into a tutu (or tights, I guess) and toe-shoes, instead of exploring the gravitational limits of spaceflight on the International Space Station! Like I said, though, we were all a gnarly, wildly eccentric bunch back in those days!

The last climbing buddy worth mentioning here, as I wrap this up, would have to be Henry C., the ‘iceman cool’ (think ‘TOP GUN’) NAS Alameda US Navy Reserve A-7 ‘Corsair II’ aviator who stole my main heart-throb (that cute Herrick Hospital dialysis nursie I was infatuated with) right out from under me, but since I described this incident a bit earlier in the narrative, suffice it to say I’ll never forgive him for that bit of perfidious, ‘buddy-f*cking’ double-dealing!

Henry has since married a Japanese-American woman and lives in the Santa Rosa area with his wife and several kids. I’ve never subsequently contacted him but I certainly hope his life as a domesticated, de-fanged (and doubtlessly somewhat de-testosteroned) ex-Naval Aviator has been absolute HELL! May you forever rot in USMC ground-pounder Hades, Henry!

Ironically, with this single exception, I’ve otherwise always found Naval Aviators to be exceptional, admirable people and I have often remarked to my US Air Force associates that if I ever had to repeat my 60s military service, I’d have chosen Naval Air instead of the US Air Farce (sic). After all, guys that can regularly land 25,000+ pound hunks of flying metal on a postage-stamp sized deck that can rise and fall as far as 6 feet a second have to have cojones of pure brass, in my opinion.

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PS: If anyone’s interested, you can read an account of my ascent of the Swiss Matterhorn (the REAL one), back in the mid-80s here. FYI: There are several other pieces on mountaineering and the 'gentlemanly' sport of climbing scattered here and there among my other AUTHORSDEN articles...