4 Peak Bagging Month

Peak Bagging Month. November 2022.

Conflicting Interests
We overoptimistically view November as our “peak bagging month”, but it often doesn’t materialize, and 2022 was one of those years. We slipped summiting San Bernardino onto our calendar on short notice for November 5th, the day before we moved our trailer to the first of our preferred 2 venues for peak bagging. We barely summited that walk-up peak on 1 of the 3 days between the two early snowstorms in Southern California.

If our highest priority was to summit the 3 peaks near Palm Springs, we’d shift our itinerary by a month, arriving in the area in early October. Having lunch on those dramatic high points is a cherished goal, but not the most important event in our year. To arrive at those venues earlier, we’d need to sacrifice almost all our 6-week stay in the Grand Canyon area.

Happy Bill on San Bernardino Peak just before the 2nd, bigger snowstorm.

We aren’t yet willing to give-up our treasured goals in the Grand Canyon and, by forfeiting our time there, we would lose the weeks of altitude acclimation to 7,000’ (2100 m) needed to comfortably do the even higher elevation hikes. Bill was painfully clear this season that he needs 3 weeks of acclimation to feel well in the mountains, especially when we tackle these California trophy hikes that top-out at 10,600 to11,500’ (3200 to 3500 m). It’s frustrating, but a good problem to have.

Plan B
We arrived at the deferred-maintenance RV park in Pine Cove, near more fashionable Idyllwild, on the west side of San Jacinto Mountain on Sunday, November 6th; scurried out for an 8-mile (13 km) hike on its slopes on Monday; and prepared to hunker down for several days. However, nothing about the weather matched the forecast.

We encountered “rain” on that dry Monday afternoon hike in the form of heavy fog driven by strong winds. Not technically rain, but it required the same gear as rain to avoid hypothermia and few hikers were prepared for the harsh conditions. We were acutely aware that we were barely outfitted well enough for the wet and cold and, unusually, had no margin for error.

The lovely trail to our high point, Suicide Rock, has a series of prize-winning, natural landscaping vignettes of scrubby trees, manzanita, weathered stumps, downed trees, and white granite boulders and grit. The persistent fog, and then fog morphing into rain, deterred me from capturing the eye-catching images on the scenic trail that I love.

This first (and eventually only) hike on San Jacinto for our stay was one of those wintery outdoor events that trigger cherished memories of getting out of the elements into a warm, interior space, and our truck was the first stop. We sat in the grit parking area with the engine running, under heavy overcast skies blending with the low light of sundown, savoring the deep joy and comfort of having done the hike, of being safe, of being dry. It was one of those precious “hot cocoa” moments without the warm beverage.

Snow was due within a few hours of our return to the trailer, but it didn’t materialize. Instead, we received about 4 inches (10 cm) of rain in a little over 24 hours, and then the snow came. The forecast varied from a few inches to a couple of feet, and the snow was expected to quickly melt. Instead, we only received inches of snow that developed into lingering ice.

Snow piling up on our truck & on the roads in Pine Cove.

We didn’t dare drive our truck for the first 3 days after the snowstorm because all our rustic campground asphalt roads were extremely steep, with some grades surely being over 20%. We cautiously exited our trailer once a day at the warmest point each day, to bath in the community shower houses. Doing so was preferable to showering inside our trailer to better manage the indoor humidity for the days of sub-freezing temperatures.

The forecast warming at Pine Cove never materialized. Even more than a week after the snowstorm, we had freezing temperatures at night and our high temperatures briefly rose into the low 40’s (4-5° C) some days. We were never able to reconcile the huge discrepancy between our own weather station readings and those purportedly less than a quarter of a mile away from us that were sometimes as much as 10° F (5-6° C) warmer. However, our cooler readings fit with the lingering snow and ice on the ground surrounding us.

I was carefully watching the mountain weather forecasts for the 3 area peaks at their summits and lower on their slopes, and the forecast temperatures for the peaks were often warmer than our temperatures at 6,600’ (2100 m). I could never make sense of the differences, and, with each passing day, I expected that they would synchronize but never did. It was absolutely baffling.

The discrepancy between the forecast and our actual temperatures was disheartening because I heavily rely on those forecasts for planning our mountain hikes, especially when having other people join us. Ultimately, I cancelled both our San Jacinto Peak and San Gorgonio Peak hikes because of presumed lingering snow. Had we not been sitting in small amounts of snow and ice for a week, I might have pressed-ahead with the hikes, having to turn-around once we encountered the unexpected ice. The confidence-inducing input for my decision to cancel came from viewing the live cam at the 8,200’ (2500 m) level on San Jacinto, which showed more snow than we had on the wet side of the same mountain at 6600’.

Saving Face
Having to essentially cancel our peak-bagging season for 2022 because of snow was both a huge disappointment and a gift. The disappointment came from months of anticipation of the difficult San Gorgonio hike that is 19 miles (31 km), 5500’ (1170 m) of gain, and going to 11,500’ (3,500 m). Summiting it again is a motivator, like hiking between the Rims in the Grand Canyon, both of which had us refining on our endurance training and optimizing our altitude acclimation for 2 months.

Cancelling our high peak hikes because of snow was, however, face-saving. After struggling to creep off the San Bernardino trail hours late in the dark because of an as-of-yet undiagnosed orthopedic issue, we had concluded that I was a hazard to myself and others on the scheduled San Gorgonio hike which was even higher. I kept doing the planning, but Bill and our friends would go without me

The snow melted quickly in the full-sun areas once the storm passed.

A similar, though more mild pain event 2 days later, on Suicide Rock, validated my lack of suitability for the dawn-to-dusk hike on San Gorgonio. As Club hike leaders, we are accustomed to telling others that they weren’t fit to be on our hikes and now I, and we, were telling me that I wasn’t welcome. It stung to say it out loud but on deeper levels, it was an easy decision to make.

An additional loss from our cherished peak bagging dropping by the wayside, was the collapse of our endurance training for next October’s Rim-2-Rim-2-Rim in the Grand Canyon. Of course, we still had a year to salvage our conditioning and a several-week setback now was inconsequential, except for the mental aspect. For the first time in 6 years, we had insufficiently trained for the effort in 2022 and we were already implementing a program to make amends to ourselves. It was painful to have gotten derailed in our fitness program so quickly after firming our resolve. The flip side of course, was that my body seemingly wasn’t available for hard training, and I still didn’t have a diagnosis for my new pain issue.

Killing Time
It was so strange, so unexpected, to have our highest performance month of the year degrade into whiling away the hours and days, waiting for the snow to melt. Five days after the snow dump, we did drive 45 minutes to a lower elevation trailhead to do a 15-mile (24 km) hike on a segment of the Pacific Crest Trail and planned to hike in the other direction on the route a week later.

Snowshoeing to make the best of it after the ice cleared from the roads.

A thin consolation for not hiking much was breaking-out our 10-year-old, low-budget snowshoes to explore the snow-covered forest above our trailer park. Given that the ice was finally clearing from the campground’s paved roads, the next day we spent 70 minutes doing 10 laps up and down one of the steepest roads outside our door, and the following day, doing a dozen 1-minute speed walk intervals over the course of a 3-mile walk. Hardly peak bagging, but these activities added some novelty for our minds and bodies during our relative confinement.

Riverside Rock Gym
Day 1 Revelations
After our planned 2 weeks at Pine Cove, we relocated on schedule to Banning, between LA and Palm Springs, for 11 nights before settling at Palm Springs for 3 months. Banning was venue #2 for peak bagging—peaks now too deeply buried in snow for us to hike until next fall. Instead, we walked in the low elevation Whitewater Preserve between Banning and Palm Springs and made our first visit in years to a rock gym, one near LA.

If I’d ever had any fantasy, any hidden part of me, that entertained a career in the Navy Seals or as Spider-Woman, I had the information that that part of me needed know: I clearly would have washed-out early in the training processes.

This bad news was presented to any buried parts of my self, in no uncertain terms, when using an auto-belay system at a rock gym for the first time to sort of free-fall to the ground. There was this nifty pulley system attached to my sturdy rental harness that lowered me down safely, but my hands couldn’t believe it. “Just let go and push away from the wall” was the extent of the formal instruction, but I couldn’t do it, my brain processed it as a free-fall. “Wash-out!” My mind could not reconcile its perception with reality.

I wasn’t consciously afraid of falling or of hurting myself; I trusted the equipment, but I couldn’t let go. I had the strength, the skill, the experience, and the courage to readily climb up and climb down the indoor sport wall, but I couldn’t let go. It was a bizarre little nano-second every time I tried to release my grip, during which the conscious control of my hands was overridden; my being could not overcome my powerful survival instinct.

The snow was slow to melt in the forests around & above us.

Years ago, we’d navigated around the easy routes at a climbing gym at home and subsequently, with careful route selection by Bill, we’d successfully climbed on via ferrata routes multiple times over a number of years in Italy. But that was all about persistently hanging on and here, I repeatedly clutched when I commanded myself to let go to launch from the wall. I tried more than a dozen times, to the point of exhaustion, and had to walk down after all but one attempt. Even being successful once didn’t shift my block, I couldn’t do it again during another hour of intermittent attempts, which was baffling.

Releasing my hands from the holds and pushing myself away from the wall with my hands and feet hit the same anxiety buttons in me as riding a Ferris wheel when the bench seat crests the top, then reaches the point where it is halfway in its loop down, and there is no view of anything underneath my feet. That motion, when I feel suspended in the air without a footing, was always terrifying to me. I haven’t been on a Ferris wheel for years, but I vividly remember the brief panic.

The string of helpful suggestions from others didn’t penetrate, didn’t convince my anxious self that all I had to do was let go of the climbing wall handholds. And no amount of self-talk would convince that now-dominant part in me to go into free-fall.

I tried distracting my mind by making short videos of Margaret successfully descending with her auto belay and debriefing her form with her. I had thought that being instructive, being analytical, being helpful, might shift my mind into a more empowered place. I tried threatening my being with “We aren’t leaving until we do this!” Then there was scampering up to my highest point as quickly as I could, barely pausing, then hoping to shove off without time to think about it. I tried going up to my pre-selected launch point and rapidly moving up and down a few levels multiple times, hoping to suddenly release my hands without knowing what happened. I’d get to a comfortable, relative-rest position on the wall and run through positive self-talk scripts and try it again. I only got shoulder shrugs when I asked the gym staff person for tips for dealing with my block.

Taking a day-off from our snow-zone to hike at lower elevations on the Pacific Crest Trail.

We’d been at the gym almost 2 hours, I’d taken many long rests hoping to shake the frustration of failure, and my arms were nearing exhaustion, when I tried again jumping down but from only a few feet from the floor instead of my usual 10’. Previously, I had thought it was too low for the auto belay to engage and take my weight, but I was wrong. Even as close to the floor as I was, I could feel the device catch and slow me before my feet touched the floor.

I was finally able to perform the push-off from this extremely low position; however tiny, it was progress. I repeated the lower-level launch over and over again, succeeding each time. It was such a puny accomplishment that I rated it as a half-success, but at least I was creating a positive, new pathway in my brain, hoping to convince my hands to let go when higher on the wall next time.

Taking the suggestions of others, I released the carabiner attaching my harness to the belay line and took a few steps to clip-in at a different climbing route. The change of ‘scenery,’ combined with my half-successes on the other route, allowed me to barely penetrate my overbearing survival instinct.

Discouraged, frustrated, but determined, we picked a date to go at it again. Bill and Margaret would continue enjoying climbing to the top of our several 5.8 routes (a difficulty rating) and I would continue my quest to comfortably use the auto belay system from any distance off the ground.

Bill wanted to reconvene in 3 days, but I pressed for 6. Three days out would be Black Friday and the freeways towards LA and likely the gym, would be packed. I also believed I would need a few more days for the 30 pre-blisters on my fingers to heal. I had 3 neatly positioned, polka dot-like red spots on each finger from gripping the rough-textured hand holds. The redness was gone by morning but hot water on them still stung my hands several days later.

Bill going up while Margaret begins her descent.

I hoped that 6 days wouldn’t be too long of a break: I was looking for the sweet spot between my damaged skin and sore muscles recovering but not so much elapsed time that I lost the little bit of nerve I gained in my overbearing mind. We later learned that 6 days hadn’t been enough for Margaret’s overworked triceps to fully recover, though she pressed-on at our 2nd session together.

Disappointingly, online resources I checked in the evening after our first climbing event didn’t provide any guidance about overcoming my block on letting go of the wall with my hands. The only concrete advise, other than “Just let go,” was to do what I did at the end of our session, which was to start by performing the release maneuver even lower on the wall. That did help, as did moving to a different wall with a different route without all my failure associations stuck on it.

Bill kindly offered that in the future, we could go to the sister-gym 15 minutes farther away, closer to LA, to do top-rope climbing. That technic didn’t require the dreaded “Not hanging on to anything” transition. That was an excellent Plan B suggestion that I hoped I wouldn’t need.

Margaret, Bill, and I all recalled encountering the same kind of mental blocks we’d experienced that day in other settings, like on diving boards and zip lines. Some blocks were walked from, others were conquered, but they both succeeded in overcoming their issues on this wall while I was lagging farther and farther behind them.

I trusted and hoped that I too would prevail over myself, that I would do better the next time. Visualizing success was an online recommendation and I was pleased to see that a single image of me bounding down the wall popped into my mind and easily replayed over and over. It, however, was so odd: the objective, which was climbing, wasn’t an obstacle, it was auto-belay, an easier way to get down the wall, that was my barrier at the climbing gym.

Round 2
About an hour into our second visit to the rock gym in a week, I responded with “It’s a draw” when Margaret sympathetically asked, “How goes the battle?” Slowly, I was breaking through my block.

Beginning my push-off very low on the wall and using a bit of a cheater’s modification, I’d been able to perform the necessary exit. I let one hand lag in releasing its grip from a secure handhold while the other simultaneously grabbed the belay line webbing. One was supposed to completely let go with both hands and push-off, and then hold the line or not, but I wasn’t quite there. It was an intermediate solution that allowed me to approximate the form and gain confidence but not disable the self-belay safety system.

Margaret launching from a difficult overhang.

I was also refining my use of a newly discovered calming technique for my push-off. When at the top of my climb, I took the 2 prescribed, strong, sniffing-like inhales through my nose, followed by a single, protracted exhale through my mouth. One or two cycles of this breath were supposed to do the job, but I felt like I needed three. Armed with this assistive strategy from a neuroscientist’s podcast, I’d successively climbed a little higher with each attempt on the auto belay and was able to release.

I further refined my application of the calming breath by initiating my launch from the wall at the end of the 3rd exhale. It was a variation on the gym’s recommended technic of “One, 2, 3 jump” with the addition of coordinating the calming breath with the count. I could tell that it was working, that I was slowly chipping away at my block.

When I was a little more than halfway up my 5.8 (lowest difficulty) yellow route, I was stunned to look at a near-useless, just out of reach, little yellow knob and heard myself saying “Look at that!” It was a trivial comment, but my observer-self recognized it as a cataclysmic shift in mind set: suddenly I was curious, not just in conveyor-belt mode with problem-solving. I paused a little longer to revel in the shift in my mind-body. This is what I had been waiting for without knowing what it would feel like. This curiosity signaled that I was in the process of flipping from being in “I have to overcome this failure” mode to having fun.

I employed my new 3-breath state-shifter tool to execute my release from this yellow route, though still with some difficulty. Soon, I was back on the same route and impulsively decided to carry-on higher. Margaret and Bill were cheering me on even though I was still not committed to going to the top, but I did.

Once there, I took a long, long time, using multiple cycles of my new breathing practice, to focus myself. Margaret finally inquired “Are you OK?” to which I said “Yes, I’m centering myself.” Indeed, I was trying to center myself, but it wasn’t going well. She then suggested changing my foot holds, which was magical.

My sideways death-grip on the wall was precarious, requiring all my concentration. Her suggestion, as she explained, put me in a frontal position on the wall, requiring half as much of my attention, which I could redirect to releasing my grip. Bill was also encouraging me. Finally, my breathing practice settled me sufficiently to be able to release my hold at the top of the route, and I had enough presence to rally my best descending form yet for my arms and legs.

It was the triumph I hadn’t expected to claim that day. I immediately got back on the same route to deepen the groove in my being created by that successful descent. After that and resting a bit, I moved over to the 5.8 green route that had been my nemeses the previous visit and repeated the process there: I went 1/3-1/2 of the way up multiple times and released each time to anchor my success. As Margaret was walking away to do her last assault on a harder route I said: “I’ll save going to the top of this one ‘til next time.” Her reply was “It’s easier than the other one, it’s a walk-up.”

I headed up on my last climb of the day and discovered that she was right, the climbing challenge on the green route was easier after the first few moves at the bottom than the other route and I impulsively went to the top. Both Margaret and Bill were doing their own things and, relatively easily, I made it up and executed my release with a bit more ease.

Sugar Bush fruit in Whitewater Preserve.

It was a relief for all of us that by the end of our 2nd session at the rock gym, while they were conquering routes, I had overcome my auto belaying block. Better yet, I’d been archiving my new technic, my new mantra, should my demon reappear in another form. This mastery had been an investment in being better able to confront future, unknown challenges, as well as my challenges with the auto belay.

On our 3rd visit to the gym, I continued using my cheater technique of prematurely grabbing the belay line while pushing off and managed to do a dozen, successively higher launches without agonizingly long pauses at the top. The new breakthrough on this day was actually feeling it was fun to whiz back down to the floor one time. I didn’t experience that same delight with my second and final effort on the same route, but once was enough.

I was certain that I would still be facing-down my demons on future visits to the gym, but I’d deepened the etch in my brain for overcoming this survival instinct if I chose to, if I needed to. I had a tool based in science, the calming breath, that I could also share with others. Soon, I would be able to combine the fun of climbing with cementing my newly claimed capacity alongside Bill and Margaret.

On To Palm Springs
Repeatedly climbing up an indoor wall on manufactured plastic hand and foot holds for an hour or 2 bears little resemblance to spending 8 to 12 hours hiking to an over 10,000’ (3,000 m) mountain summit, but the problem-solving challenges at the rock gym were welcome substitute activities for our lost peak bagging season.

We had spring-boarded from Margaret’s delight in doing her first via ferrata with us in Italy this summer, expanding that shared experience at the rock gym, to give us a dab of sports-oriented social time off the trails this winter. Like hiking, the climbing gym workouts were great for putting to use our strength, muscle flexibility and joint mobility and motivating us to sustain those gains.

We hoped to continue at the rock gym after relocating to Palm Springs for the winter, even though it would increase our driving time over that when parked at Banning. Bill had longed for something new to spice-up our snowbird retreats to the desert and the rock gym met his needs without the considerable overhead of going to Joshua Tree National Park for the outdoor climbing experience.