Chapter 2.
A Start
Good
Intentions
The planning, in essence, ran like this. We needed hiking training; we needed camping training; we needed backpacking training. There had to be room for other life too. First, we would start with some walks.
Every other weekend we would go on some hike, every other hike would be major, every other major hike would involve some sort of overnight or other major camping or backpacking activity. Viannah would keep a journal. After each hike, we would talk about it and she would write down some details (so would I, in my own journal). I gave her a spiral notebook for the purpose. This would be part of her memoir, something she could look back on in future years and remember all the planning and the Big Event itself. La Canada, our fair city, was crisscrossed by horse trails, one of the reasons it was considered "rural." For at least the minor hikes, we would take this opportunity to acquaint ourselves with some of these trails. The major hikes might be out of town or further off. At our organizational family meeting, this plan was agreed.
Viannah, lacking experience in such planning, would agree to anything I said at first but then put up resistance to execution during the event itself. Viann, accustomed to my scheming from years of being subject to it, agreed only from the standpoint of understanding, but not particularly from helping or hindering progress. Her advice was that life was busy. Viannah and I would have to make this happen by doing it. Conflicts would happen. We would need to negotiate for time and opportunity on a case-by-case basis.
We set the following Saturday as the starting date, the first hike would be a small one, four to five miles. The meeting adjourned, we got back to our routine business, I started thinking about the first route. Let's see, what horse trail path would be about the right length and interesting or novel for us? We wouldn't try real backpacking at first but would take a daypack with a snack or lunch.
Green
Street Horse Trail, May 25, 1996
The first walk was to start and end at home. We would go up to Foothill (main street) and catch the bus down to the Child Education Center near JPL, then return home by the horse trail to the west and northwest of JPL. This was a route most of which I'd done by myself on foot, going to or from work. We left the house, marched up the 1100-meter route from our house to the nearest bus stop and sat there discussing our plans for half an hour. This was longer than the advertised interval between "free" La Canada shuttles but only half the period of the Rapid Transit county busses. After another ten minutes, I decided that no busses of either type ran on Saturday and we walked downhill back home. This allowed us to pick up a forgotten item or two and confirm our observations against printed bus schedules.
We
then loaded everybody into our new Chevy Astro van and had Viann take
us down
to the trailhead at the bottom of the hill on Foothill across from the
High
School. She parked in the Child
Educational Center parking lot, we got out, said our good-byes, and
marched
away.
The trail began at the west perimeter of the Flintridge Riding Club and then went along the west edge of the JPL parking lot, ever increasing in grade. To our left were back yards with various activities, people in pools, playing in the grass or building something as a weekend project. Before the ridge gets too steep, the trail turns left and goes along well above houses at the dead ends of residential streets for several blocks. We were warming up to the stride. Smaller trails went off to the north. I made a mental note to check these out sometime and pointed them out to Viannah as unexplored opportunities. She wondered what horses might live up there.
After a sharp drop (a street bicycle should be walked up or down at this point) and a meeting with another dead end street (at Dick Wetzel, WA6JBZ's house), the trail crosses a fairly busy thoroughfare, is blocked by a log (no to bikes, yes to horses and hikers) and runs single width around the middle of a block, defined by a dozen back yards, trees overhanging. At the end of this block, it joins a drainage channel claimed decades ago from a hillside creek (usually dry) and proceeds up to Paradise Canyon Elementary School. This happened to be a "last Saturday" of the month, the day on which the TRW Swapmeet (for ham radio gear and computer junk) had been held. Walt, a neighbor of this section of trail, had just returned with Dale, both fellow PERCS (Public Emergency Radio Communication Service of La Canada). They hollered greetings at me out their window, 'I just can't go anywhere without being recognized!' I thought.
The street intersection at the school was cut at forty-five degrees by the trail. The curb was taken out across one corner for it. We crossed the street carefully, went through the cut, and crossed the other street to proceed behind some more houses, ever on the up slope. In this section, a truck-capable trail went on both sides of the fenced drainage ditch. We stopped to rest, eat a banana and have some water at one crossover.
After some more back yards, the trail cut to the left, fenced away from a large settling basin and climbed steeply up to an alley, another "carry the bike" point for any wheeled users. There were horse steps for the equestrians. At the pavement, there was another choice, up a single trail that stays with the stream or to the left onto Green Street. The latter was the way home, we made a mental note to try the other trail too sometime; all this trail exploring was going to be fun!
The trail, unmarked except on bridle maps, is Green Street crossing Angeles Crest Highway down La Canada Blvd. to Olive and from there to an Edison easement that contains a gravel vehicle path back down towards Foothill Blvd. We strolled along the street, watching people do their Saturday chores, talking about our long range hiking plans, then crossed a log into the easement and followed the dirt and rock trail. We stopped for another rest under a power line derrick then waded through the weeds behind a garden store, onto Indiana Ave., then Foothill, and down La Granada for the second time in the day, finishing up the last of our Saltine Cracker supply as we rounded the bend on the way back to the house.
We were home in time for a late lunch, just after 1 p.m. and then were off to other busy activities of the day. Not a bad start for hiking training. We were tired but it had been cool and broken overcast during most of the two hours we were out. We felt fine. The provisions had been just right for this particular case, we needed to work on our shoes and hats. I measured the map carefully and decided it had been 4.2 miles, mostly up and down (not counting the trip to the non-bus and back) and sent Viannah off with this information to start her hiking journal. I had done walks similar to this many times capably and it looked as if Viannah would do fine too.
It
appeared that we might make it.
For the Memorial Day parade, I took my radios and stood in the street and learned that all of my NiCd radio batteries were at the end of their useful life and that I had lost all my connectivity to the JPL repeaters through capability upgrades that I hadn’t followed. During my post-AMSAT retirement, they had installed PL (Private Line) on all of the systems and none of my radios (aside from those that featured PL out of the box) had ever been upgraded. I went home and ordered a new radio that was properly equipped, a GPS receiver, some new batteries or battery inserts (the inside parts of batteries), and made a note to start asking around about PL board modifications for the other radios. Within several weeks all of these upgrades were duly performed and logged.
Ranger Station to Palm Crest, June 15, 1996
Now it was time for the first "big" hike and there was someplace I wanted to go that was about the right distance.
Before moving to the area, I had studied maps looking for a way to walk or bike to work that wasn't through town. Being from Texas, I did not particularly take into account significant elevation changes of the rural looking trails running through hills, nor did I consider the fact that those hills were the reason that development had stopped where it had. Nonetheless, there was a route that looked to be about twelve map miles that ran up behind what was now the kid's elementary school, Palm Crest, into the Angeles National Forest, and along behind JPL. One day in the summer of 1994, I had left the office at four p.m. to try going home along that very route. Out the east gate, up Gabriellino Trail to Gould Campground, then out the service road to Angeles Crest Highway, up the highway one mile to the ranger station (a long walk in a narrow gutter not really intended for foot traffic), and up the fire road. The fire road was (at last) new territory to me. A mile walk uphill with several hundred vertical feet and I'd traveled a net of about 300 yards map distance above the ranger station. Though it was summer and the days were long, it was nearing sunset as I continued the climb behind La Canada. The worst of it was that the only food or drink I had with me was a roll of Wintergreen Lifesavers with only about four pieces left. (I had taken a long stop at a water fountain at the ranger station, however.) These conditions together heightened my interest in finding some early route back into town.
After a while, there was a sign ahead, "Lucken's Cutoff." The trail turned left and crossed a meadow. I decided to follow it, a big mistake. Lucken's Cutoff was a horse-trail that doubled back east and re-entered town near the highway not far from where the Gould Campground road had emerged. The grades were steep, much more than the typical hiking trail, probably better for horses going up than down. The trails were narrow in places, perhaps an improvisation. I reached city streets at dark and still had three miles to walk to get home. At 9:00 p.m., with less than a mile left, I called from a pay phone (this was before I started carrying upgraded radios again) to be picked up. They were beginning to worry.
It was a classic underestimation for me, in addition to the wrong turn. Someday, I had wanted to go the new part of this route again and to do it right this time.
This was the day.
We packed a lunch with frozen juice boxes and my brand new dual band hand-held radio in a plastic baggy and Viann drove us up to the ranger station and water fountain which was to be our starting point. Paula Bush, from church, was there and was just finishing walking her dog Savannah on the same trail! In fact, many other people seemed to be finishing this trail just now too. We said our good-byes and started through the ranger residences and up the fire road against traffic and against gravity.
We wound past dry and damp streams, through some shade but mostly in the sun. I was trying out a new $10 straw hat today. Viannah needed one too. We proceeded up past small cataracts. I pointed out that we could just climb one as a shortcut to another piece of the road above. Viannah looked at me like I was crazy and indicated that she wanted to just stay on the road.
After many switchbacks we reached the point where the road looks down on the ranger station, so close down below that it was discouraging for the unprepared, as it had been for me on that adventure in the past. Cars passed on the highway. We continued around the eastern point of the road and out onto the southern side of the hill overlooking La Canada. Up some more and nearing what seemed to be the top we came to a concrete block, some sort of improvement, now unused, that afforded a tiny amount of sitting space. Thinking it must be near noon; we got out our lunch. Never one to live in the moment, I wanted to talk about future plans and fill in my thinking about the build up to the Big Hike. Viannah was more interested in eating her sandwich and shooing insects.
As we continued up the road, she retold to me the story of a book that she had read and a dream she had had. This would become a regular feature of our walks, she talking about things in her mind and me talking about things in mine. We came to Lucken's Cutoff. I described my mistake from before and asked which way she wanted to go. We followed the road straight. I pointed out that now we were in new territory where neither of us had ever been before.
We met or were passed by other hikers or mountain bikers and a few vehicles driving someplace up the road, perhaps to the Mt. Luckens radio site.
Finally we reached a 'Y' in the road that, though unmarked, seemed obviously to be the way we wanted down. A vehicle could go either way but it seemed clear that most went right and up rather than left and down as we were going.
There was a large rock in the divide. A man in jogging shorts was standing on it looking around in a triumphant pose. After a while he told us something we already knew, how this road went down to Palm Crest Elementary. He'd driven there from somewhere just to take this steep path for a run.
Finished with climbing for the day, we started down, taking the left fork. Someday we would come back this way and take the other path, on to the top. I expected today's route to take us past the surveying platform that we called "LEON." A large billboard sized target was on a plateau about a third of the way down. Talk was that this target had been used to survey the 2 Freeway in the 1970s. Since living here we had seen it as a blank sky-blue object. Later a red heart had been painted on it and then later still overwritten again in black with the word "LEON" which could be read for miles down below. As a family we had hiked up to LEON before but never beyond, once we were there we would be back on known terrain.
Some distance down we stopped for a break. Our small canteen ran out of water. I took out my new radio in the plastic baggy and inspected it without getting it out or turning it on. It was too new to get dirty. We had a snack and rested in the shade for about ten minutes. Some mountain bikers passed on the way up. I got up to continue. Viannah was tiring and needed encouragement to get up. At least the rest was downhill.
We stopped at LEON and it was gone! No fence, no target, barely a gravel road and foundation where it had been. Talk had it that the word "LEON" might have been a college prank. Whatever the case, it wasn't there; all that was left were concrete foundations and the view of freeways and communities below. We went on, tired and thirsty.
Finally, we came out onto streets and were at Palm Crest Elementary. We stopped for a twenty-minute rest, drank liberally from the water fountain, refilled our water containers, and lay on the picnic tables outside in the shade of the awning at the cafetorium. Then it was another mile and a half or so home. Sagging and never thinking of calling for help, we stalked down the back trail.
Now we had water, but were out of energy. I offered to buy large Dr. Peppers at Jack in the Box that we would reach just before crossing Foothill Boulevard. Viannah would accept anything like this. We sat inside the fast food place, making it into another rest then got up to finish the day’s adventure.
There is a small street, Rockland Place, on the last major downhill between Foothill and our house. It features a bad, blind turn. We cut across the parking lot south of Foothill and climbed over a brick fence near this turn. While we crossed the street, a car coming fast down around the corner had to stop fast to miss hitting Viannah. I was annoyed, partly at fault for this near miss. It had not been really close, but it had been enough to shoot adrenaline. Pedestrians, even tired ones, have to be careful. So do drivers. This is an easy blind downhill curve on which to hit parked cars. I had nearly done so on a bicycle once.
And then five more blocks and the steep Ahlin uphill to the house and we were home. It was 4:30 p.m., somewhat later than I had been expecting. Viann was worried. We should have called from Jack in the Box, but by then we were so close.... I needed to get my 220 MHz radio fixed up with PL so we could use the JPL repeaters to talk to each other again. The radio I had with me wouldn't go on any Novice frequencies and Viann was only a Novice licensee, only really able to use the amateur 222 MHz band for something like this. That meant more stuff to carry in the future. We were more tired than I had expected.
After an hour I got out the topographic maps and tried to accurately measure the distance we had gone, including all the turns and switchbacks. It came out to 8.1 miles. This was the low end of what I had planned as "major." Well, we had known we would have to work up to the big distances.
It was another chronic underestimation. I had expected to get home by 1:30 or 2:00 p.m. It was more like 4:30. Viann had already said, "no way" to my estimated time of arrival before we had even started.
Cerro
Negro, June 29, 1996
Two more weeks passed and it was time to try another horse trail for a short workout in town. I knew of the Cherry Canyon trail, the one that goes the other direction from JPL from the path we'd used on our first hike last month. I had crossed it in places and used parts of it, but had never been up it all the way to see where it joined with the fire roads on Cerro Negro (if it even did).
La Canada-Flintridge is the township formed to avoid annexation by Glendale or Los Angeles in the 1970s when the 210 Freeway came through. The part north of the freeway was La Canada and the part south was Flintridge, roughly speaking. Flintridge ran up into a ridge of hills, one capped by Sacred Heart Academy for girls which overlooked the Rose Bowl, another to the west had an old fire tower which had become a radio site (where some of the JPL amateur repeaters were) and overlooked the I-2, I-210 interchange and Verdugo Hills Hospital. Cerro Negro, the location of the fire tower was the highest local peak, but lower than the hills we'd been on two weeks ago on the north of town.
Walking or biking home, I had many times taken surface streets up Cerro Negro, eventually joining the fire roads near the top and taking various ways out on the other side, down into Glendale or behind the hospital. Now we were going to go horse trails all the way.
We packed a snack, drove down Foothill and were dropped off in Oak Grove Park, about two blocks from the High School and Child Educational Center where we had started on the first hike before. This time we headed south through the park towards the Devil's Gate dam.
The trail passed under the freeway at its bridge over the feeder arroyo that created the canyon. We passed under the bridge and beside the bridge abutment noting that the gorge was fenced off to protect us from getting near the water. Shortly, however, we passed a hole in the fence large enough to lead a horse through.
The trail then flattened out in the basin below the level of the freeway and roughly parallel to the stream. We walked along talking about ham radios and their utility in being prepared for a disaster like an earthquake. I was quick to point out, in integral fashion, that there was much more to being prepared for a disaster than just communications, still, this was intended to recruit Viannah to get an amateur license.
The trail descended into and crossed the stream. We got our feet wet, the stepping stone pattern being trickier than it looked. Talk turned to the logistics of getting across. Then, the trail proceeded under the Berkshire bridge then steeply up to parallel Berkshire for a block, then back down into a community of horse properties in the stream bottom. This was an easy place to get lost regardless of the mode of transportation. It was not clear how to get in or out by street as most of the roads ended in dead-ends. Soon we were following the stream again, now a concrete flood control structure with high fences of its own.
The trail now crossed perpendicular roads in places, paralleled a driveway in another and then split without much of a hint whether to go left or right. One day prior to this hike, returning home from work, I had gone to the right at this junction. The trail got less and less obvious until I found myself deep in someone's back yard thrashing through a swamp of tall grass and ivy. Eventually I had to climb over a fence to get out. Today we turned left at this dangerous junction to stay on the main trail.
Near Commonwealth, we met two horses in stalls adjacent to the trail. Viannah stopped to pet and talk to them. This meeting was what she remembered about the day, this and the heat. The day was warmer than any before, particularly our last outing and we would soon be out in the direct sun near mid-day.
The road crossed Beaulah then turned left between back yards and horse stables and re-crossed Berkshire. I had been on this small two half-block piece before on my bicycle, emerging from under a sign that said "No Bicycles." To the south of Berkshire was new territory for me, I had always turned up Chevy Chase from here whether walking or biking home.
The first new feature was a different type of trail. Between expansive horse properties, the new trail was more, lighter dirt. Then it passed behind a large yard being re-landscaped that contained a leaky swimming pool. Just before the turn west and up we were walking in mud. The path then crossed Chevy Chase, a crossing I'd seen before from the street but had never associated with this trail. The path was steeper here than anyplace we had seen before and was under a canopy of trees. We stopped and sat on a concrete structure for a lunch-snack. I handed out apples, Viannah didn't finish hers, Viann had told me she wouldn't eat a whole one. Sure enough. We needed some Zip Lock bags to repackage leftovers like this. A resident was tending her hanging gardens in sight of our position on the trail, I wouldn't have stopped here if I had seen her beforehand; not that it was illegal or rude, just that it seemed less 'rural' that way.
The trail from there was sharply uphill, some places nearly like stairs. And then it became rutted and muddy. Someone putting in a pool or other improvement had used it for heavy equipment. Part of it had even been cleared to get the equipment in. And then we crossed Hampstead and were out on the fire road, finally out in the open, and in direct sunlight.
"Take care of my little girl," Viann had said. She still didn't have a hat but had lots of thick hair braided down her back. We stopped for water at a wide place in the road then continued up to the junction of fire roads near the L. A. Police Dog training center and shooting range somewhat below the top.
"Do you want to go to the top?" I asked as we found a stone fence under a tree nearby to rest on.
"No," she looked at me, tired and out of breath as if that would be a bad idea. No adventure. No energy for adventure. I had been to the top before, had driven nearly all the way there many times and had walked and ridden others. I didn't need to go today either. It was just a rhetoric question to see what she would say.
As we rested, I tried out the radio, now newly equipped with PL so I could once again use the JPL repeaters. Viann was set up to be listening at home. She answered and we talked about our progress and the time. She said, “be careful, it is hot.” We signed off and had some more water and some more of the snack.
We got up to go on. Viannah was lying on the fence and didn't want to get up. We discussed this. After a time, she got up and we went on.
From here it was about a mile to Verdugo Hills Hospital. Right off there were some non-obvious choices of branches in the road. We took a wrong turn that went up sharply through needle grass and dead-ended into a boundary fence. After resting near the top, we were fortunate to find a route back down to the correct road that did not involve a complete back track. Another tempting wrong turn (because it left the main road in a more downhill direction) went several hundred yards to a power line tower and stopped there. I had made that mistake on a bike ride before and didn't want to do it again. I commented on the spiritual analogs of this while we walked along and also pointed out that I usually came to this part of the trail in the dusk when I walked home from work this way.
The road turned left around the end of a ridge and headed for an apiary on a knoll above the 2 Freeway. As we rounded the corner, a honeybee got stuck in Viannah's hair. I told her to be still and tried to brush it off. It didn't work; something was still snagged. She was holding her breath; eyes squinted shut. At least her hair was thick. 'This is not the right way to do this,' I was thinking. A couple more swats with the hat and the bee was gone. We breathed, resumed. 'Take care of my little girl,' I heard in my head again.
We passed the apiary and down to the bottom of the dip behind Descanso Gardens, then up to the end of the road behind the hospital. At the very end, the road widens just as if it were a parking lot. Across the end was a tall chain link fence meant to protect hikers and horse riders from the steep drop behind the hospital. There was a hole in the fence large enough to ride a motorcycle through on the left side. Shorter extensions of the fence ran off in both directions out of sight. We stopped to consider the situation.
I had been here before back in my Schwinn Varsity riding days. This cliff had been a much worse problem that day. I had looked at the steep descent along another fence line and had decided it was too difficult with the bike. I had then gone back and forth along the boundary looking for another place that would be better. There really wasn't any, but there was a city street that appeared to come up near the extreme east end so I had climbed over the fence then lifted the bike up, reaching through chain links at first to get it high enough to reach over, then finally reached over, then I had the bike on top and could let it down without fence interference. It had not been easy to get down to a wide culvert through brush and along loose rocks and dirt. It was not easy to get down to the next wide culvert either. The bike complicated all these difficult descents. Then at the end of that, the drainage descended steeply to the access road of the upper parking lot at the hospital's upper professional building. This was a quandary. Finally I descended more steep rock and dirt and sticker bush territory to the retaining wall and another four feet into the lot. I would never again try this with or even without a bike! A bike trip to this overlook would be followed by another bike trip back out the same way. No wonder the published guides and maps call this a "no-access" overlook.
This day I was prepared for this decision and, having tested it myself before on foot was prepared to gird up and follow the fence down the 45-50 degree slope beginning at the tear in the fence. I went first so as to be below if Viannah slipped. Two thirds of the way down we talked about Gracie's Bluff on the Red River in North Texas. Dad used to take me there and we would hike up. Right at the top was a rock cap and we would have to go nearly straight up the cracks between boulders. He would always come behind in case I slipped, but I never did. It seemed like of all the crazy things we did, I hardly ever got a minor scrape much less a well deserved major injury.
And today we were going down, debatably the better way to go, but still having to be careful. I had my pack on as tight as I could get it so as to have both hands free and not have to worry about it. The radio had been clipped to my belt but was now in the pack too. I just hoped for the best with the hat. If it fell down ahead, it might be retrieved later.
It took about ten minutes to descend the sixty or eighty feet to the retaining wall, hanging onto the fence all the way. I talked about having three good holds for safety. I talked more about Gracie's Bluff. Viannah concentrated on the task. We reached the retaining wall and I jumped down and waited then lifted Viannah down into the parking lot when she arrived. We were hot and tired. Viannah asked if we could have momma come pick us up. This was not something I would ever have thought of myself. Start what you finish! Do it the hard way to the bitter end! But it wasn’t such a bad idea. Inside the lower professional building below the hospital, we called for Viann to come get us. We used the water fountain and rest rooms in the main lobby to clean up and the chairs to rest. The air-conditioned air was cool and dry. People came and went trying not to look. I had some scrapes on my sweaty arms. Viannah was glad it was over. In a quarter hour, the new green Astro pulled up and we were on the way home. This had been only a 5-1/2 mile 'short' hike, but it seemed longer, more like the previous 'long' one. More training was needed.
Rescue
at Oakwilde, July 13, 1996
It was time to schedule another long one and I decided it was time to re-open the quintessential hike down the Gabriellino Trial from Switzer's to Pasadena. This was a far cry from the day when we had done this with little girls who were three and five years old and John was an infant. Viannah was now nearly as tall as her mother and able to carry her own substantial pack. This was also not a major backpacking or overnight trip as had been the plan from the first, I rationalized that we would work up to that and that we weren't ready (or equipped) for the hard stuff yet. Overnights would be hard to schedule and allow for, given our church and other commitments. We would still do some, but not this one.
The beginning of the walk was routine and uneventful. We walked along the now-familiar stream, crossing it just above Switzer's Falls, noting the fish. We passed a dead skunk in the trail. Viannah acted appropriately grossed out. We then climbed up to the fenced overlook, then around into the quiet of a mountain trail. Mountain bikers whizzed past us. Noting one without a helmet, I commented to Viannah that he must want to die quickly in case of an accident in order not to prolong suffering. Perhaps this came to mind because at that moment we were talking about birth and death and life and the finite nature of it all.
I spotted bear tracks in the soft dirt of the trail heading the other way. They had been made this morning but we had met no bear so he or she must have left the trail before us. We compared foot sizes. Viannah thought at first it might be a person's footprint (a small one) but we discussed shape and size and decided it was indeed a set of bear paws.
Down in a canyon the trail joins a side stream and follows it at various elevations from stream level to well above stream level until rejoining the main flow again below a fifty-foot waterfall. We descended to and through these features, around bends, through washes, narrow places, wide places, down a switch back and to a rest stop before crossing the creek and continuing into Oakwilde campground.
Oakwilde was about the half way point. It was where we had cut off to go back up to the road in past hikes. There were vault toilets, picnic tables, and campsites at least one of which always seemed occupied. There were no trashcans but signs telling you to pack out all your trash. And so it was at Oakwilde shortly before noon where we encountered real adventure.
Our mountain cyclist without the helmet was parked in the middle of the road, sitting on the ground and stopping everyone who came by. He'd taken a sharp turn too hard and had "blown out his knee," as he put it, that is, his foot hadn’t come out of the clip so his knee came out its socket. He had tried walking for a few hundred yards then decided that he was truly stuck. His cell phone was lying beside him and the bike on the trail, ready light flashing but unable to get a dial tone. My radio was in my backpack, but it was a 222 MHz, one-and-a-half-watt hand held with a stubby antenna. I didn't have much hope of getting out from way down here, even to one of the JPL repeaters nearby. I scanned the walls; they must be 200 meters high in every direction. This was the single worst location for radio on the entire route.
Jeff, our victim, had just dispatched other hikers with instructions to make phone calls from Gould Campground about 1-1/2 to 2 hours' hike downstream, or if not there the Oak Grove Ranger Station another hour or two beyond that. Then he stopped us. We discussed his injury; he was unable to walk unaided. We discussed the cell phone. I decided not to get his (or my) hopes up by offering amateur radio. As a seasoned "ham" I had been in many debates over the value and quality of amateur communications in situations like this, even so, except for the near certainty of not being able to talk out from this hole, I'd have already tried it. And so we also took directions to make a phone call as soon as we reached a phone and we made sure Jeff was set up in reach of everything he would need for the two or three-hour wait until help could arrive.
We walked down into the campground proper, I wondering out loud what form such a rescue would take. I was sure nobody could easily drive in here, so, would people hike in with a stretcher? Hours indeed! Such a hike couldn't even start until mid afternoon, they would still be carrying him out perhaps after dark. And while I was talking about this, I was glancing back over my shoulder to see if we were still within sight or within earshot. When we weren't, I found a picnic table and stood on it, took out my speaker-microphone and radio and held the radio up 'Statue Of Liberty' style high as I could reach. A 144 MHz radio would have more flexibility, more local repeater options in this situation, but Viann's license did not include that frequency band and so I hadn’t brought two heavy radios in my backpack.
I squeezed the microphone button and the JPL repeater on 224.08 MHz responded. I was surprised. Bolstered by this success, I tried activating the link between that repeater and another JPL repeater on 147.15 MHz. My friend Jan Tarsala might be listening there; he had no 222 MHz equipment himself. This, too was a success, so I gave the call, "WB6VRN, WB6VRN, WB6VRN, this is N5BF, and he replied! Of all the unexpected luck! He was home doing the dishes, part of newlywed bliss. I explained the situation and he got on the phone to try to reach the Forest Service. Being Saturday, none of the offices were open. He tried various public safety phone numbers and finally called 911. This was all complicated by the fact that, following our initial contact, radio conditions degraded considerably. Later we would decide that this was due to an intermittent malfunction in the 224.08 repeater but it was impossible at the time to know what the problem was nor would knowing have made any difference.
After the requisite explanations to the 911 operator (no, the emergency isn't at the address on your screen, I'm a radio operator relaying for someone down in a canyon on a hiking trail) she then started through the same set of Forest Service and other public safety numbers and finally got connected with the volunteer Search and Rescue dispatcher for the weekend. Several exacting questions about location, the condition of the rider, the nature of the injury, and so on, were asked and relayed out to the dispatcher. Jan wanted to just hold the radio up to the telephone and have them hear me coming over, but the connection was not that good. He had to depend on nearly thirty years of radio experience, some of it non-optimum like today, and knowledge of my voice and habits to extract the information which he then repeated to the operator and dispatcher. Meanwhile, during every transmission and reception, I was waving the radio around looking for the spot with the best reception.
All the queries and responses concerned verification that this was indeed a new incident. Another mountain biker in a different part of the trail had fallen over and broken her wrist earlier in the day and was already being helped. They didn't want to send out another crew to the same accident. Finally all this was cleared up and Jan relayed back to me that help was on the way. I made a transmission acknowledging this and started discussing what to do once help arrived. Jan replied that he was hearing aircraft flutter on my signal and in his reply I heard the same thing.
Whoopa Whoopa WHOOPA WHOOPA WHOOPA, while I was still talking, a helicopter appeared over the ridge and started circling down. This must be for us! I ran back to give Jeff the good news, indicating the radio in my hand as the source of help.
"I didn't think it would work, but gave it a try anyway," I yelled over increasing rotor noise. The helicopter was descending into a clearing on the other side of the campground. With the trees and rocky, boulder-strewn stream, I wouldn't have thought that there was anyplace to put down in here, but they did, as I waved them in from the side, superfluously.
A team leader and another weekend rescue volunteer jumped out with a stretcher and small med-kit. Three others stayed in the helicopter. They were harnessed up and prepared to let people down on ropes while hovering if necessary, but they had been able to land. "The So-and-So Memorial Landing Spot," I overheard one saying to another. This particular landing had apparently been pioneered by 'So-and-So' in local Search-and-Rescue lore. We trotted back to Jeff while I briefed the medic. He took vital signs and we splinted up the leg with a piece of cardboard. The leader and I carried him back on the stretcher while the other volunteer medic followed behind carrying the bicycle and Jeff's other equipment. Jeff and the bike were loaded aboard, regards were passed to the pilot and crew, and they revved up and were gone as fast as they had arrived, blowing dirt and leaves everywhere.
In less than five minutes Jeff and his bike would be at Verdugo Hills Hospital on the way from the helipad to the emergency room. Meanwhile, our hike started getting back to normal. Two or three other hikers and a Boy Scout troop had collected to help out. We all exchanged adrenaline comments and told a few stories about similar incidents and then went on about our business of getting somewhere or setting up camp today.
Viannah and I decided to proceed to the next campground, Paul Little, for lunch. One of the ground helpers, Ian, a former in-law of one of the JPL Amateur Radio Club members, followed us along to help wind himself down from the excitement. He told me that he had decided not to get a cell phone for hiking based on this demonstration, that he loved this little grove of trees we were in here. It was a nice place, but didn't strike me as that remarkable, 'City folks must not get out much,' I thought.
All this while Viannah tugged on my shirt, "Dad, tell him we're going across the Grand Canyon," she whispered.
"He doesn't care," I whispered back, unable in any case to get a word in edgewise.
I kept trying unsuccessfully to re-establish contact with Jan until the trail started up switchbacks to go around a dam in the stream. Once I had a little elevation, it was easy, "full quieting" is what it is called on FM. I briefed him on all that had happened and at last "secured the site" from the rescue. Now, he was able to get on with his day. Jeff had asked for a message to be passed to his job, a campaign headquarters in Montrose. I changed frequency to the auto-phone-patch repeater but could not reach it. It might have been considered a business call anyway, and as such taboo for amateur radio.
This had not been a life-threatening emergency, but had all of the features of one and made a good drill and example. In the following weeks, Jan and I put our heads together and wrote an article for the JPL Amateur Radio Club newsletter, "W6VIO Calling" about the incident. Jan tells the story from his point of view and ends with several philosophical conclusions about how to be a good radio operator.
And so we hiked up, past the dam overlook, and down into Paul Little where we stopped for lunch within earshot of a couple of Boy Scout leaders who were doing the same route with their group that day. As we passed the Nino picnic spot later, one of our last rest stops of the day, the troop was discussing having run out of water early, among other hardships of such 'natural' living.
Further down the trail we spotted a tree full of termites and inspected it closely.
I called Viann as we came out on the Arroyo east of JPL. This was not a good time to be picked up. Katherine was having company arrive at four and they all needed to be home to receive the friend and her parent. I was trying to get locked up for the last GPS position, one that I would name 'PICKUP' or some such, and Viann was rushing us into the van and speeding off.
We talked about the first aid events of the day later that evening. Viann, a Registered Nurse, queried me mercilessly, "You didn't check his pulse? You didn't check for feeling in his foot? You didn't try to move him?" and on and on.
Whenever I would tell the story to my ham friends, I would always say, "It was amazing that I could get out of that canyon on 222 MHz, you should see the walls!"
Viannah would always start out by saying, "A helicopter came and landed within a hundred feet of us, and we carried the hurt guy in a stretcher!"
Interruptions
from All Sides
And so with the first four training hikes and a rescue under our feet, the schedule conflicts began to pour in. Something consumed every weekend for one of us, in staggered form. The two-week training cycle had stumbled, as fresh plans are prone to do.
I decided to 'do something little' with Katherine. Nostalgic for the time when I was building a 1260 MHz yagi antenna and she, aged two, had carried off all but about three of the sixty pieces of hardware in her diaper, I thought we'd use her growing artistic and mechanical skills to build an antenna for 446 MHz to use in the summer's UHF contest. Working with a one inch by one inch six foot length of lumber for the boom and #8 wire for elements, we built up the antenna from a plan in an old Amateur Radio Handbook. This took several evenings after which we painted the boom fluorescent orange, Katherine's choice. August 2 and 3 we went to camp at Buckhorn campground in the mountains and Saturday the 3rd set out on the trail up Mt. Waterman intending to hike to the top and make contest contacts for about an hour. The hike of a couple of miles distance and several hundred feet up was supposed to be one of the small training hikes for Viannah and I, and Katherine, the collaborator on the antenna, was supposed to come along because of interest in its use, but all the kids stopped to throw rocks down a ravine just a few hundred yards up and I went on with my backpack full of radios, negotiating the antenna by myself.
All the radios turned out to be of no practical use for the rendezvous at the top. I scratched a frequency in the road dirt at one point but Viann and the kids missed it and, in any case, Viann hadn't brought her radio along on the hike. The ski lift had been operating all morning, hauling mountain bikers up who would then race past us going back down. One of the operators located me at the pinnacle and gave us all a ride back down to the bottom in his heavy-duty truck. He was headed into town anyway, he said. I had made about a dozen contacts. It was unclear whether the beam had been very helpful.
In two more weeks it would be time to go on vacation.
Summer
Vacation 1996
Our two-week vacation started on August 17. The difference this year is that we were sightseeing with my parents, Bailey and Louellyn Duncan who were coming from Hillsboro, Texas. I came to think of the trip as "Touring the southwest with dad in the rear view mirror."
We met in Antionito, Colorado on the 19th and rode the Cumbress and Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad the next day. From there we drove past Mesa Verde, which was closed due to fires, then to the Four Corners area. We spent the night nearby in the upstairs of a wonderful old Mormon house in Bluff, Utah, then went on to Holbrook, Arizona the next day to see the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest nearby. Deciding in conference that we were driving too much, we decided to skip the Grand Canyon South Rim and proceed directly to the North Rim where we spent three days and two nights. This gave occasion for a few short hikes around the campgrounds, along the rim and up to the lodge. The five of us camped in the campground while mom and dad stayed in the lodge.
Ostensibly in order to save time on that future day when we would begin our major backpacking trip from this side at first light some morning, I wanted to locate and start down the North Kaibab trailhead for a short distance. We did this on the way out on Monday, the third day. Around 11:00 a.m. we were packed and ready to go. Maps showed the trailhead about a mile back, just off of a sharp curve in the windy route. Approaching this curve we found a parking lot that would accommodate, perhaps, fifty cars, and a stable of mules. Mules were present but no keepers were in sight at this hour. We parked, got out, looked around, read the signs and warnings and found what had to be the path down, a well worn, sandy foot trail with erosion breaks and prolific evidence of mule traffic. Setting radios to an agreed frequency, Viannah, Katherine, granddad and I started down while grandma, Viann, and John stayed at the top.
The four of us skipped merrily down the trail. I was again using my new toy, the GPS receiver, mainly to watch the time and make sure we didn't spend too long going down. It was supposed to take twice as long to come back out as to go down any distance. Just a couple hundred yards down we met some backpackers coming out.
"How much further," they panted, looking miserable but in good physical shape.
"Oh, you're nearly there, right around that next corner." They huffed on, resolve renewed, canteens swaying behind full-looking packs, "You've got it made," I shouted after them, encouraged to see that somebody who had been far enough down to be camping was coming out this early in the day, before noon. Maybe our Big Trip wouldn't be so hard!
I noticed after the first few switch backs that dad wasn't in view anymore. Perhaps he had fallen behind more than one turn. We continued through the sand and occasional mule muck and after fifteen minutes reached an overlook at the first geological break. There were even signs describing where we were. We rested here for a time, Katherine climbing out further on the rocks than I could be comfortable about, the standard parent's problem anywhere around any such edges.
I called Viann on the radio, dad had returned to the top shortly after we had started down. He wasn't feeling as spry as he used to but it was a good sign that he was sensitive to his limitations even if I thought he was being conservative. Or perhaps I should have slowed everybody down to wait up....
We started back. Walking was clearly twice as hard for the same distance. Going up was a painful workout. We pushed along, making uphill headway in sand, stepping on erosion breaks whenever we could. After twenty minutes Viann called to check on our progress. The top was not in sight yet, we were not as well oriented going up as we had been going down so it wasn't obvious to us just where we were except that it had seemed for three or four switch backs that the 'next turn' would have to be the last. And then we rounded one more last turn that goes straight up through a little stand of aspen and it was in fact finally the last. Forty-five minutes in the canyon, just the upper edge of it and we were coming out tired. Maybe our Big Trip wouldn't be so easy!
The rest of the day was spent driving to St. George, Utah, skipping Zion National Park for lack of time. Though I had been conscious of not wanting to drive so much, this tour had still been over planned. The next day after doing laundry we headed south to Boulder City, Nevada from which we visited Hoover Dam. This was particularly memorable because I backed our brand new (12,000 miles) Chevy Van into a post in the visitor center parking lot and damaged the side door and rear quarter panel. Dad and I were able to bend it back into shape well enough to reliably shut the door and continue the trip in reasonable comfort, but the evening was still a downer for me. We played some 42 in the room that night and I was able to forget about the damage, at least for a few minutes at a time.
Then, back through Las Vegas and across the desert to Death Valley. It was in fact 120 degrees Fahrenheit in Furnace Creek where we stopped for lunch in an air-conditioned and expensive restaurant. We worried that engines might overheat on the long drive up out of the valley and I saw the highest temperature gauge reading I had ever seen on the new vehicle. Dad's truck did fine, they cruised by as we made a potty stop at which I left the engine running and watched the gauge crawl even higher. They spent that night in Lone Pine while we camped up the mountain at Whitney Portal.
The next couple of nights were at Sequoia National Forest. We camped up in the park while my folks stayed below. Due to missed connections, they didn't make it to Crystal Cave with us. It was several miles drive down and back up a very winding mountain road plus walking half a mile to the cave entrance, going through, and hiking back out. This constituted something as close to a second training hike for the trip as did anything.
At lunch one day near the end, overlooking Lake Isabella, my folks mentioned that they didn't want to do anymore mountain driving. They didn't trust the truck, they were getting sick, dad didn't like the drive. I should plan flatter (more Texas-like) routes. Five miles further around the rim of the lake, we turned left passing a huge sign indicating a 30 mph speed limit for the next 30 miles of very windy roads. This was the worst pass yet for driving: narrow, steep, dark from the canopy of trees, wet in places, with surprise side roads around many bends. I wore down my new van tires and my parent’s nerves once again but nothing more was said about it. Nothing could have been done anyway short of considerable backtracking.
We crossed the central valley, going right past the place where movie star James Dean had died (though I would not discover this fact until a year and a half later) and ended up in Pismo Beach for our last night out. My folks named a much milder drive through hills here "Piker's Pass," having returned to good humor about all the driving. We went to the beach to watch the sunset, but it was so cold in August that we all had to wear jackets, or wish we had. This was something else you didn't see much in Texas summers.
Back home by way of the Santa Barbara Mission and more games of 42 over the Labor Day weekend, we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary September 2. Then it was time for school to start and my folks to head back toward Texas on I-10.
End
of Summer, Suspension of Training
And so, as the summer drew to a close, we went to Universal Studios to watch the newly released "Apollo 13" movie. Viannah went off to the bathroom, and returning to her seat in the dark turned a foot and cracked a bone. Soon she was on crutches with her foot in a brace for six weeks. The school year had started; Viannah was in sixth grade, Katherine in fourth and John in first. This was the last year they would all go to the same campus together (possibly excepting the 12/10/7 grade year in the far distant future) the last time carpooling arrangements would be easy.
The training hikes were off until Viannah's doctor
cleared
her to walk, much less hike with a load, on her foot again. We couldn't tell what this setback would
mean, but we had plenty of time before the coming summer of 1997 to
make up for
lost training time. Or so it seemed.