Mt Dana Disaster Weekend

[lizolas]

Yosemite - Mt Dana Disaster Weekend
July 13-16, 2017

Let’s just get one very important lesson out of the way: Never count on what you can’t control.

What was supposed to be a fun, relaxed group trip to Yosemite turned out to be a series of mistakes that ended up being not-quite-an-epic with an entirely different group. I should probably have done more to find a group that wanted to do the trip I was intending, but Ryan said he’d ask his hiking group buddies, and then neglected to get back to me. I assumed that as many people would go as could fit it into their schedules, given the popularity of the permits, and didn’t worry too much about having anyone to go with. What Ryan ended up doing was not asking hiking buddies, but instead asking his climber coworkers, who are above measly cables. That wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d gotten earlier confirmation of who was going to be climbing and who wanted to hike. As the “planning” (mostly lack thereof) continued, it seemed like Ryan was leaning heavily toward a preference for climbing with everyone else, leaving me hiking alone. When I left, we still hadn’t planned the details of whether or not he was hiking with me, and if so, for what portions of the trail.

I left Wednesday after work, having taken Thursday and Friday off for what was supposed to be time to claim a campsite and explore a little on my own before the group joined for the weekend. After sleeping in my car outside the park and waking up what I thought was early enough to get one of the walk-in campsites at Tamarack Flat, I discovered that I was a couple hours too late for anything that might have been available, and drove down to the Valley to let people know we wouldn’t have a campsite.

While waiting on confirmation as to whether Ryan was hiking with me, I also talked to Joshua, who said he and Josiah were going to do Matthes Crest on Saturday and I could come with them if my other plans fell apart. While sitting next to the river, I managed to drop my phone in and had to quickly tell Ryan and Joshua where I would be. We agreed on the western side of Hardin Flat Road - barring meteors becoming crashed into me - as close to the entrance as I could reasonably park/camp on Friday evening. I gave both my license plate and van description, and at the time neither knew what theirs was, since Ryan’s group was renting a car and Joshua wasn’t sure which vehicle they’d be in.

Having no reason to stay in the Valley anymore since I didn’t have a phone that needed service, I headed over to Tuolumne. Due to the disassembled drying phone, I also didn’t get any more pictures for the rest of the trip. At that point it was too late in the day for much of a hike, but I walked around the Meadows a little, then continued to the Mobil station. It turned out that there was the first major event of the year going on there, and the parking lot was crammed full of vans. I tried to head to bed early after some socializing (mostly explaining my minivan to several full-size camper van owners).

Less famous than its cousin Tunnel View going into the Valley, I think this "Tenaya View" is at least as nice, if not better
The crowd at the Mobil station concert that evening
Cars completely filling the upper parking lot - an unexpected sight after my only previous visit to the Mobil station in February when it was deserted except for my group's two vehicles. Mt Dana is in the background.

The vintage drawing style [poster LINK] for Mono Lake is a purplish-pink sky over the lake. There’s a reason for that:

Friday morning I woke up at 5 and got ready to climb Dana. I waited until it was decidedly light to start, in case the trailhead was harder to find than SummitPost indicated. It was. From online descriptions, I was expecting something like a clear path through a meadow, lined with cairns. After meeting someone else in the parking lot looking for the same trail, also with no idea where it was, I resorted to asking a Ranger who had just pulled up to open the Tioga Pass Entrance kiosk. “Hi, could you tell me where the supposedly obvious trail for Mt Dana is?” “Oh, it’s not obvious at all. It’s back in those trees somewhere.”

View from inside the park toward the exit (and entrance) kiosk. The trail is behind the small staff parking lot to the right (generally south) of the kiosk.

With that beta, it wasn’t hard to locate, and Zach and I set off up the trail. By most accounts, I’m a fast hiker, at least around sea level, but I quickly began having trouble keeping up with him. I felt bad that he was going so slowly for me, and told him he could go on ahead if he wanted, but he said he didn’t mind the company and continued waiting for me to catch up every so often. The first mile and a half up the nicer portion of trail took 50 minutes. After that, it’s about a mile to the summit, but that took over an hour. The second portion is mostly talus, and there was still snow to cross at one point. The snow was melting and difficult to walk on with crampons, but we didn’t want to avoid it and go all the way around the largest part. We avoided the remaining smaller snowy areas.

The large snowy section of the hike that we stopped to put on crampons for

At some point, we gave up on staying on the trail after avoiding the snow and just took whatever line looked doable through the talus. The summit is visible for the entire second portion of the hike, and aside from very small-scale getting yourself onto a rock that’s awkward to get off of, I don’t think it’s possible to get lost there.

Zach taking pictures during a snack break

I was doing ok with the oxygen level in the air until about 12,000’, at which point I started going a lot more slowly, although I didn’t feel sick at all, just out of breath. I reached the summit at 10 am, about 10 minutes after Zach had. We signed the summit register, had a snack, and then left the summit around 11.

Me on the summit of Mt Dana
View southwest from the summit
The "Mt Dana" USGS survey benchmark
Another survey marker looking older and more worn than the other

The descent, much like the ascent, was tedious talus-hopping for the first part, but fairly straightforward. We followed the trail for the upper portion we’d bypassed on the way up, which took us through the snow we’d avoided before, but going down worked ok with just an ax to arrest any potential falls. Glissading didn’t work on the low-angle snow over rocks.

View toward Tioga Pass from the descent

We arrived at the trailhead at 12:30, and I went to get my food from the bear box I’d stashed it in at a parking lot a bit down the road. Then we made lunch in the parking lot, exchanged information, and parted ways.

Scenery around the trailhead

I had the idea that I was going to hike to Elizabeth Lake, but a Ranger at the kiosk informed me that last he heard, it involved “double black diamond boot skiing.” Additionally, the road to the campground and trailhead wasn’t open, so I’d have to walk in from 120. I for some reason felt like I needed to make sure I got to Hardin Flat early (despite knowing the others weren’t leaving til after work), and that sounded like more adventure than I wanted, so I decided to just proceed back to the Big Oak Flat exit lest meteors become crashed into me after all.

View east from 120 going through Tuolumne Meadows [TENAYA CANYON]

I pulled into the large driveway type site on the western end of Hardin Flat Road at 5 in the afternoon, and commenced snacking and waiting. I had been expecting a cluster of “dispersed” sites, but instead found it was just that one area - at least for a ways down the road. I thought that would make me easier to find. I thought wrong. Joshua and Josiah found me with no problem at 10:20 while I was napping/dozing in the van. Ryan et. al. never showed up, although he says they went in the correct entrance, and looked very hard for my van. Joshua put on a performance of assembling a tent while Josiah elected to sleep under the stars. At that point, they started sorting gear for the next day, and I decided I should commit one way or another, so we could get everything packed. I was more excited about the idea of Tuolumne than about climbing in the heat in the Valley. If Ryan showed up, I’d be able to plan out where to meet Sunday for the hike, and his group for climbing already had 2 pairs of partners. If they didn’t meet me there, going with Joshua and Josiah would ensure I had something to do and didn’t spent yet another day doing nothing but trying to coordinate. We had an adventure getting the food, especially my food, for several additional days and not packed for bear storage, into a tree. I resolved to pack food more carefully in the future. In the morning all the bags were undisturbed, although they’d almost certainly have been in reach of any bear that wanted them.

The Great Matthes Crest Cluster

Sunday morning I arrived in the Valley after leaving the Lee Vining Mobil at 6:30. I had IMs from Ryan via several phones that invited me to dinner Saturday night, but gave no hint as to Sunday plans. Assuming the rest of the group had stuck to the plan to do Half Dome, I planned to spend the day in the Valley to be able to catch them when they got back into cell service. Since they all had Monday off as well, I thought I’d at least be able to get some climbing in the next day.

I contemplated hiking up to Half Dome just to say I’d used my permit, but by that point it was miserably hot, and the money was wasted whether or not I used it. I didn’t feel much desire to use it without the Clouds Rest-Half Dome-Liberty Cap linkup that was the original goal of the permit. I hiked up the Mist Trail - the only place with some semblance of a bearable hiking temperature thanks to the spray from the falls - and opted to go down the JMT route to save my knees and avoid fighting the crowds on the slippery stairs.

Vernal Valls from the bridge crossing
Nevada Fall from above on the JMT
Liberty Cap and Nevada Fall from Clark Point After several hours of mostly aimless wandering/touristing around Yosemite Village since the hike had taken only 3 hours, I got in contact with Nick, who unfortunately for me had split from the rest of the group, but thought their plan for Sunday was still to climb Snake Dike. I decided to wait til 7 to hear from them, then head home if I still hadn’t made contact. I was getting incredibly frustrated with spending all my daylight time trying to make plans with people who put no effort into planning, rather than getting to do any of the easier hikes I’d planned initially. I was also a bit worried that maybe they’d gotten in over their heads on Snake Dike and were stuck, or someone was injured.
Yosemite Falls
Half Dome from near Housekeeping Camp

When I still hadn’t heard from them by 7, I began heading out, dragging my feet the whole time on the waning hope that they’d come back and I’d be able to at least meet them for one day of successful climbing on Monday. It turned out that they’d decided to go to Tuolumne to escape the heat, after having previously said they wouldn’t do both the Valley and Tuolumne in the same trip even when I pointed out how hot it would be in the Valley. I had no description of their car (which they could have sent Saturday once they were there), not even a vague idea of their plans (which they could have tried to come up with and stick to on Saturday night so I had some chance of meeting them, or else tell me they were going to do their own thing and see me later), and yet somehow it was still all my fault for the scheduling gone awry.

Lessons Learned:

• Don’t count on what you can’t control. In hindsight (although I don’t blame myself for poor planning at the time), going together as a group would have made more sense than trying to find a campsite with no guarantee of getting anything. By the time Joshua and Josiah met me, I’d figured out at least enough of this lesson to just commit to going with them in the morning rather than sit around hoping Ryan’s group would show up. They were splitting gear between packs and, not wanting to do a Ryan to them, I felt like I should make the call one way or the other so they knew what was happening.
• You’re allowed to be assertive and cut people out of a group for being uncooperative during planning. The extent to which Ryan wasn’t willing to commit to anything was far beyond ironing the minute details out in person later. Had I just gone on the trip myself (meeting up with the others for Saturday), I’d have had a much better time.
• Alpine starts, nutrition, and hydration are important. Who knows if we would have finished even so, but sleeping closer to the trailhead (suggested by Joshua but impractical for me waiting for Ryan) and/or getting an even earlier start would have at least bought us a couple extra hours to potentially get to the south summit at least. Reaching the south summit would have shortened the bailing time if we couldn’t do the north summit as well.
• One car is better than two. In an area with no cell service, with people (or, one person, serving as the liaison between the two parties) who hadn’t even planned an itinerary yet, two cars was a bad idea. Although I still maintain that my meeting place was entirely reasonable, and the only reason they couldn’t find me is because they didn’t do more than a cursory glance off the road, then quickly gave up and decided to look for me in the morning. Which I felt was unfair to blame on me, because me waiting around in the morning to be found wasn’t part of the plan, and could have meant yet another day of doing very little.
• If you have a GPS track running, the safer option is probably to stick to that rather than trying to navigate by possibly-incorrect landmarks (in the dark, specifically). If there had been some horrendous terrain we crossed on the way in that seemed avoidable later, it might be worth deviating from the track, but in my mind, what you have there is a definite route that works. Better to just stick to that than try to improve and end up lost.