 |
Few mountaineers have ever reached the 10,805-foot summit of San Jacinto peak by the precipitous route which leads up Snow creek from the floor of the desert on the north side. So far as the records show, Ruth Dyar of the Sierra Cub of California is one of the few women who have ever made this climb. Here is her own story of the ascent, a beautifully written version of a thrilling adventure. You'll have a better understanding of the urge that prompts men and women to climb difficult peaks for the mere sport of it after you have read this narrative. |
 |
|
| By RUTH DYAR |
| THE Rock Climbing
Section of the Sierra Club is filled with vague legends of treks up Snow creek
- how the climb takes from 12 to 27 hours; how one youth went to sleep at the
top with a piece of cheese he was eating hanging out of his mouth; how another,
bivouacking before a fire sunk four feet in the snow, after the climb one
January, ran 20 feet in his sleep before he woke up; how tired people become,
how cold it is, what beatings they take. But eventually, being rock climbers,
they gaily make the climb again. "old Timers" staunchly assert that the sheer, rugged, trail-less north face of San Jacinto is unclimbable. Notoriously, it is one of the longest climbs in the United States, second only to Telescope peak on the Death Valley side for gain in elevation. San Jac's 10,805-foot peak floats mistily lavender, scored perpendicularly with deep canyons, from Riverside county desert about 120 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Up its forested southern slopes, which rise gradually from dry foothills, a pleasant nine-mile trail leads to the peak, starting at Idyllwild, at about 5,000 feet elevation. The northern side |
of the
mountain drops abruptly to the desert near Palm Springs, almost 9,000 feet of
precipitous, barren slopes, rocky and fierce. Above the 7,000-foot elevation
grows scattered timber, below are brush and rocks. Across the brown, dry valley
to the north, more mountains rise, in bare, eroded undulations, to the
11,485-foot peak of San Gorgonio. Snow creek drains the northeast face of San Jacinto, dashing down a sharply. cut, wild, granite-walled canyon, over sheer falls and tumultuously heaped boulders, out into the wide white wash that meanders down the desert valley. From the desert, the eye can trace the course of Snow creek. Its gray canyon rises up and up, through wild, rugged, brushy mountains. Far away and high up, it spreads out into two flat, gray, almost perpendicular channels that score the upper ridges of the peak. I wanted to make the climb, not because it sounded particularly pleasant, but from the mountaineer's unqualified but self-sufficient desire to climb something. I wanted to find out just what this almost Legendary Snow creek was like. Originally our party was to be composed of four RCS climbers, two of whom had ascended the creek before. At |
the
last moment, however, the two more experienced members of the party could not
make the trip. So Friday afternoon, November 11, George Templeton Jr., from
Fontana, and I found ourselves alone at the mouth of Snow creek. We were fairly
new at this business of mountaineering, but with the sound apprenticeship of
one season of group climbing behind us. we were filled with the single desire
to reach the peak. A dirt road leads from the desert, a short distance up the canyon, to the fence that cuts off the watershed. We were absolutely alone with the desert except for our cardboard boxes of commissary, our rolls and rucksacks of gear, and a coil of climbing rope. We looked at the ragged clouds tearing across the far bleak skyline above us, and thinking how cold we would be next day we shivered. Snow creek rose boldly in an ominous gray streak, At five in the evening it was completely dark. I had forgotten how abruptly the California winter night falls out of-doors. Huddling over a cheering little blaze in the great darkness, we ate stew and milk. At six p.m. I dived into my sleeping-bag, which was unrolled behind a boulder, under a live-oak tree, on a |
| 12 | T h e D E S E R T M A G A Z I N E |