Eleven switchbacks in a half mile, and 600 feet of climb. About a twenty percent grade, and from our vantage point it looked to me as if we might have to do it more than once. The trail was visible all the way up Parker Peak, rimmed with snow. At least rimmed. How much ice was on the path itself, and how steep the talus slope beneath? A step placed wrong could send you tumbling downslope to climb again, a Sisyphean game of Chutes and Ladders. Christian felt the same. I think Matthew was a little annoyed. Less than four miles that day, and we wanted to set up camp?
We had walked into the backcountry two days before. Five miles from the road to our camp at Upper Sardine Lake, though we were only three from the road when the snow started. At four miles it covered the trail. Matthew pitched his little two-person tent, which he and I had planned to share. Christian fumbled with tarps and rope. We discussed whether the three of us would fit in the tent. Sardine Lake indeed. We fretted. The wind was cold and wet, 10,931 feet above sea level. Christian’s hands were beginning to shake. I had worn only cotton clothes. The “H” word loomed in our minds, unspoken.
Terry and Valerie hadn’t been sure they’d be able to get away from work. Maybe they’d meet us there, they had said. They arrived in camp just as the sun set with enough tent to share with Christian. The next day I left camp before breakfast, queasy with altitude. I hiked up over the low west shoulder of Mount Lewis. Coyote tracks in snow: Mama was there, across a rise, playing with her pups. They wrestled each other into little drifts.
We walked into a mine adit, a square tunnel at 11,000 feet.
But Terry and Valerie left that day, unhappy with the thought of snow camping. They lent Christian their tent. We spent another night at Upper Sardine Lake. It was cold again, and wet with melted snow. I shivered through the night, ate little again in morning. Four miles to the foot of Parker Peak was daunting enough. I was gratified to hear Christian say the same thing.
We camped in a trough beneath the switchbacks, a hollow flanked by two tilted blocks of granite. Gravel had filled the hole between. It was comfortable to lay yourself upon. Parker Creek rolled past to the north, placid and clear beneath its skin of ice. A few yards past our camp, it plunged 600 feet in a tenth mile. Beyond and three thousand feet down, the craters and the old saline lake. Beyond them the western part of Nevada, and beyond that, dragons. I slept in fits, still cold in my thin bag. I dreamed of falling from ice-treacherous trails.
But the morning came, and we walked those eleven switchbacks in a half an hour, and found ourselves on the arête between Parker and Koip peaks. Twelve thousand, three hundred feet, and we eyed the nearest summit. There was no trail. We dropped our packs and scrambled up the talus, half a mile to the cairn at 12,850, and looked down six thousand feet to the desert. A small glacier nestled under Koip and we trod on it, walked to a small crevasse at the head.
That night at the Alger Lakes we could not walk for fear of crushing frogs.
