Show me a place that you keep returning to. Show me a place that keeps a little piece of your spirit, that beckons you back, that you feel is yours. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s yours exclusively, but it’s a place that you love, or that somehow defines you, and it keeps you coming back. And if you’re too young to have developed a tie like this to a place, show me someplace that draws you…a place you instinctively feel that you will belong.
I have a few such places. One is Yosemite Valley, another is the Great American Southwest. But these are large, and “belong” to millions. So I’ll share a narrower corner of the world with you, one that often entertains no other visitors than me and the ones I am with at the time (if any).
This is Deadman’s Buttress:
It’s located in the Sierra Nevada of California, along State Route 108. The photo was taken at a point almost exactly 8,000 ft. above sea level. There is a surveyor’s bench mark near by attesting to the elevation. The top of the outcrop is about 9,200 ft. I began visiting this area in late summer 1977, and I’ve been back countless times. I can’t drive past the place without making an obligatory stop. I look up towards the summit, on the sun-dappled rock face, and deep into the gullies, and I see my youth.
The outcrop is a short walk from the road, once one has managed to cross Deadman’s Creek. Early in the season, the creek is often covered by a snow bridge, which one must carefully probe before trusting it to bear one’s weight. If the bridge collapses with one on it, most likely one would die. The alternative is to cross on a fallen tree that lies across the rushing waters. The spray makes the log slippery, and perhaps icy, so one must pay attention. :) In the summer, the creek subsides enough to cross it by hopping from rock to rock. And the penalty for falling in is much less severe.
Climbing here in summer is delightful. There are several rock climbing routes on the buttress, as well as on other rock walls in the area. I have spent many an afternoon esconced on ledges, or dangling from ropes, on these rocks. There is always a breeze, which coupled with the altitude provides a welcome escape from the valley heat, down below. There are trout in the stream, and good undeveloped camp sites.
I especially like the area in May or June, when the highway dept. opens the road after its winter closure. It snows a lot up here…it gets deep, and it avalanches from the heights above. It would take a small army to keep the road clear in winter. But they plow it clear in late Spring and that means I can get up here before all the snow melts from the peak.
The gullies face north and get little sun. By the time the road is open, the snow in the gullies has compacted and metamorphosed into an almost ice-like quality. This provides a taste of alpine-like climbing, without the arduous approach necessary for the big peaks. The first “winter” visit I made was with a good friend and climbing partner. We chose the line up the right hand gully. EDIT: I just realized the entry here has cropped the photo on the right side to effectively exclude the gully. The complete picture is here. We roped up, and kicked steps into the snow with our boots and crampons, sinking our ice axes and alpine hammers into the snow for balance and belay points. It was exhilirating. The route, which we named Silver Wings, doesn’t look particularly steep in the photo above, bue here is a photo taken from up on the buttress, which gives you a better perspective:
Silver Wings is the gully with the tree standing at the top in sillouette. The Central Gully…the one on the left side of the photo…is what we climbed the next year, and the year after that. This was a much more serious undertaking. There is an off-width crack in the rock we had to ascend to gain access to the snow and ice in the gully, and the entire route was steeper and more exposed.
I moved away for a while after that, but returned a few years later. When the highway opened in Spring, I found myself drawn once again to this familiar haunt. I drove up by myself one day, and donned crampons and ice axe and wandered up to the bottom of Silver Wings, intending to just look around and entertain memories of prior climbs. But there is something about upward progress that is hard to arrest, when the day is sunny and the air is crisp, and the snow conditions are just so…and I found myself at the summit in fairly short order. One can move much faster solo than when one has to muck about with ropes and belays. (Of course, one can move down at a very fast rate should one not pay attention.)
I keep coming back. After I gave up climbing (knee issues) and took up motorcycling, my bike headed up this mountain highway as though it had a mind of its own. And even now, I look for excuses to cross the Sierra on this road, so I can drive by Deadman’s Buttress. I reconnect with a part of me every time I do. There’s a piece of my spirit that resides here.
I think the road is going to open back up in another month or so…
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Show me yours. To what part of this planet are you attached? And why?
