June 11

Chris 817- backtrack to 811 and then 16 miles to taboose pass exit

Right at sunrise I climb up the lower slopes of Mather Pass and scout the snow conditions. The snow is hard, and the ascent looks less technical than it looks from below. Still, it will be a very steep slog uphill on the ice and an ice axe and crampons and two functioning hands are a must. I get back to camp and take a look at Golden’s arm. She is very tough, but is in considerable pain. Her lower arm is grossly deformed and it seems obvious to me that it is broken. I splint it the best I can with my long handled spoon, some gauze, and KT tape.

We decide as a group that she should not do this climb. In the event she falls, it would be disastrous. Decisions in these conditions are made as a collective, since we all rely on each other for safety. Unfortunately there are very few good options to exit the Sierra from this point. Our best bet is to have her backtrack 5 miles, recrossing the raging South Fork of the Kings River and then taking an unmaintained trail and pass out of the Sierra over the “Taboose Pass Trail.”

The comments in our GPS app give the following quotes about this trail- “Whoever created this trail does not care for the sanctity of human life. If you have any love for your life or limb, do not go this way.”Great. Sounds terrible. Yet, it is our only option. We decide that she cannot take this exit alone. Golden is a mid 50s mother of two, and although very capable, it would be reckless to have her hike over an unmaintained pass in unknown conditions, alone, with a broken arm.

I elect to hike Golden out of the mountains, while Amber decides to continue ahead over Mather Pass with our very experienced and capable group. We will take separate routes to town, but meet back up in about 24 hours. Golden and I soon depart from the group and make our way down the lower reaches of Mather Pass. The day is already very warm, and the upper area of the river drainage is already swollen with snow melt. On the way down we encounter the inexperienced hiker who was in over her head on previous passes. It is easy to see that she is completely unprepared for being out here during snowmelt season. Golden convinces her to turn around, and we try to get her to push her SOS button to get rescued. She is very slow and unable to follow us, even on flat snow. We tell her our bailout plan, and she wants to follow instead of getting rescued. We cannot wait for her. Golden needs to get out of the mountains to get medical care for her arm. Slowing to have this woman follow us would add 1 or 2 days to our exit. I have to make a triage like decision, one I have to make frequently at work. Golden has a broken arm and needs the be the priority. This woman is in no apparent distress. she has food, shelter, and water. She just lacks the necessary skills to self rescue. We part ways, again urging her to press her SOS button. If she doesn’t, someone else will get injured trying to help her.

Golden and I follow the South fork of the King’s river down for a few hundred feet before deciding to cross the river at this very early point. We Then bushwhack our way down the slope for a few miles until we reach the trail on the other side of the official crossing. Back on trail, we reach our turnoff and take a big breath. Beyond this point is completely unscouted by any other hikers this year. We take our time to navigate carefully as the trail becomes obscured by snow near the top of the pass.

There are no footsteps or trekking pole marks to follow. It is clear we are the only ones who have traveled through this area in at least a year. The trail turns to talus, and we walk over bowling ball sized shifting boulders as the trail descends off the pass.

The jostling of the uneven ground has to be massively painful for Golden. I can see her hand and lower arm continuing to swell. It would be best to have her arm in a sling, but she is very concerned about falling and wants her arm free for balance. There are a few instances where I have to kick steps into sloped snow, and chop steps with my axe, for Golden to follow. We take it slow. We descend 7,000 feet from the upper reaches of Mather Pass down to the desert floor along the Eastern slope of the Sierra. As we descend, temperatures become sweltering, and the noise of the creek we are following along becomes deafening.

Soon, we get to a crossing of the creek that is completely impassable, and the run out would take us over a waterfall if we were swept away. I make an attempt on it, and my feet are pulled from the ground before I am able to stumble back out. There is no option to turn back. Every other route out would require multiple days of hiking over numerous other passes. Our first thought is to camp directly on the trail and make an attempt at the crossing first thing in the morning when the weather is at its coolest and the water theoretically would be at its lowest point. Temperatures have been very warm though, so this is not a guarantee. Golden finds a spot to rest in the shade.

I come up with a plan. There are enough boulders along the crossing that I think I can wedge logs amongst them to form a bridge. It seems ridiculous, but possible. The trail we are on switchbacks down a very steep canyon. There are no other possible crossings. The walls of the canyon we are in are nearly vertical and over the next few hours I climb and drag every long stick and log I can find up the hill to the creek. My feet are frozen from standing in the water at the edge of the creek. I am sweating profusely from the exertion and get quite dehydrated. Eventually the bridge seems less and less ridiculous and more of a realistic exit route.

I make a crossing over the bridge to test it, and then cross back to find Golden. “I built a bridge,” I say as I walk up to her. She laughs, and then realizes I am serious. She makes her crossing scooting on her butt, since she is unable to balance on the logs with one arm.

Once across we cheer, elated to have a route out, and continue our descent.

I am completely spent from the bridge building, and zombie walk down the slope through overgrown brush. The trail takes us to a desert scene. It feels completely surreal. We started our day above the treeline, and now we are below the treeline in the blistering desert. It is 100 degrees.

We are exhausted. At the trailhead we are able to get a ride to town and get Golden to the hospital. The nurses are impressed with my makeshift splint. I walk to the nearest motel and collapse into bed without showering or drinking any water.

This is a 2600 path in the woods, and at its face absolutely meaningless- a walk between two arbitrary points. Somehow, it inspires greatness and allows people to push themselves beyond what they thought was possible just to get to that second arbitrary point.

The diagnosis at the hospital was a broken radius, and unfortunately the doctors there were unable to properly reset Golden’s broken arm. She will be traveling home to reunite with her family and to surgically fix her fracture at her local hospital. We learn, with some relief, that the inexperienced hiker we passed did press her SOS button and was rescued by a search and rescue helicopter.