CAMP SHEPPARD REFORESTATION PROJECT

The plan to reforest the summit of Mt. Rainier began incubating during one of my early climbs at Camp Sheppard. I remember thinking about it the day after the first of a somewhat annual summit bowl game amongst the staff and kids. The crater makes for a beautiful football stadium, huge in circumference and ringed by outcrops of pumice and frozen lava blocks. We laid out the field in the smoothest patch of snow and ice we could find near our tent sites. Although the whole Rose Bowl could fit easily into the crater, we found attendance always to be somewhat sparse at our bowl games.

Doug Driscoll was the opposing quarterback and Don Wilson the wide receiver. Don was a rangy six feet something and hard to cover when running, or actually gasping and hobbling, over the sastruga in our clunky boots. Luckily Doug was a lousy aim. Scott Mason and Doug Rowe were evenly matched over the middle. Joey George played line backer on our side, which gave us an edge since he was taller and bigger than everyone else.

Needless to say, at 14,000’something, the games tended to be short lived. It was soon suspended for lack of air, and as we collapsed into the tents, we congratulated ourselves that we actually had the forethought to pitch them before the game. We had two new McKlinley tents donated to Sheppard by Explorer Search and Rescue and a couple of old flapping canvas Logan tents that soaked up water like sponges. Woe to the person who had to carry them after a heavy rain.

Cooking was always an adventure, since nothing really cooks at that elevation, and so we settled for kippered herring on pilot bread and lukewarm cocoa. Much of the time in the tent is spent melting water and trying to stay warm, or staking claim to the best sleeping spots on the leeward side of the tent where the limp fabric doesn’t slap against the sleeping bags quite so hard. Joey was a great tent mate. Contrary to most staff, he had a sense of manners, and an easy Texas drawl we poked fun at. Driscoll was annoyingly cheerful all the time, forever yelling things like "Yabadabdooo" and he seemed to delight in getting us all up before dawn, urging us to get up and at ‘em even when we were pinned down in storms. I think the character Ned Flanders in The Simpson’s was modeled directly after Doug Driscoll.

Early the next morning, emphasis on ‘early’ thanks to Driscoll, with frost rimming the tent entrance tunnel, the sun’s frozen disc hanging just above the rocky crater rim, the guys in our tent frolicked and wrestled in a sea of down sleeping bags. Immersed in our parkas and coccooned in our mummy bags, we listened to Robert Service poems, and once the water got warm enough, contentedly sipping Cool Whip bowls full of our usual thick slurry of tea and sugar.

Suddenly someone spotted a climber descending from the edge of the crater rim where the Muir route hits the rim. He slowly worked his way across the crater ice to the opposite side where the register box can be found. We could tell he was tired. He was likely one of the many who would just sign their name, take a picture and head home. Just above the register box one can climb the last few feet of loose rock and ice to the actual summit, but many people don’t bother. Moving is slow. Each step requires a breath or two, a pause, then a gathering of energy for the next step.

To get from one side of the crater to the other and back can be an exhausting journey at that altitude, even with the ribbon like ice sastruga worn down by all the people climbing from Camp Muir. If you really think about it, the trip across the crater seems a lot of wasted effort considering the summit is just a few feet higher than where the Muir route first broaches the crater rim a quarter mile away.

Soon we saw another climber and then another. The third person however, was visibly exhausted and soon lagged further behind the others. We watched as a surreal scene unfolded in slow motion in front of our tent–we supping lukewarm sugary tea slop and listening to another round of Robert’s Iceworm Cocktail–while a scant hundred yards away in the gray icy dawn, a climber was stumbling to his knees, struggling back to his feet for a few more yards, and then collapsing on his face. We looked at each other knowing our morning bliss was about to be shattered. We couldn’t just watch from our warm nest as this guy was apparently about to die. But before we could sort out whose boots were whose, the guy worked his way to his hands and knees and started to slowly crawl on all fours. Not back to the rim towards home, but toward that damned register! It seemed he’d rather die and stuff his name in that little aluminum register box than to head for safety.

We watched him crawl along on all fours for a while when two more climbers came on the scene. They picked him up, conferenced for a bit, and then, holding the guy up between them, marched three abreast toward the register rock. Definite signs of high altitude dementia setting in.

Why would anyone want to extend themselves to the point of complete exhaustion in such a god forsaken place anyway? Up here was nothing but ice, rocks, and a few ice caves used as latrines. Admittedly the view was OK, particularly the sunrises and the grandeur of the mountain’s shadows at sunset. We would jump up and wave to the folks east of the Cascades as the tip of the mountain’s shadow slowly stretched itself all the way to Yakima and beyond. In the right conditions, delicate, crystalline ice formations could be found off the beaten track, and small steam vents the diameter of a pencil could burn your butt while sitting along the crater rim rocks.

But aside from all that, it was really a barren place with absolutely no wildlife or vegetation. The crater itself really needed beautification. Just think about it. This whole area used to be forested until this scalding molten pimple burst through the earth’s crust--burying, burning and petrifying millions of majestic and innocent trees, and then freezing to death anything left behind.

It seemed our patriotic duty to restore what this mountain had torn asunder! We needed to do our part to reforest this bald old coot of a volcano. Unfortunately not all the staff exhibited total allegiance to our duty, and by the time the plan actually surfaced as something that just had to be done, I was sidelined temporarily from climbing by a heart ‘specialist’. In his wisdom, this good doctor dictated that I avoid any building higher than one story unless it contained a workable elevator. Certainly no mountains were to be ascended.

So it was up to the younger generation of staff to carry on the task of righting the wrongs of mother nature. Fortunately, younger staff tend to be easily influenced, but this particular project required some extra strong arming. With reluctance, Terry Hainsworth finally agreed to head the first great experiment.

We, excluding Terry, enthusiastically plotted out how we could give the tree the best chance for survival. We would select a small healthy alpine fir right at the uppermost boundary of the tree line, and replant it on the summit just below the crater rim near the steam vents in a protected, sunny spot that melted off early in the season. With the right environmental conditions met, we felt the key to the tree surviving and thriving was to take along enough topsoil for the roots to grow into (the limiting factor in the quantity of soil turned out to be not the ability to carry it to the summit, but the lack of commitment for the project itself. It took a fair amount of cajoling to convince anyone of the benefits of loading their pack up with bags of dirt).

The group was accompanied to lower Starbow Meadows. We stopped at our usual pit stop at Ome’s Diner, a crystal clear, icy cold spring bubbling up next to the milky white waters pouring off Inter Glacier. Max had always stopped here with us to rest and rehydrate, catch his breath and tell stories. He loved to regale us with his adventures with Ome, John Simac and crew hauling sixty pound steel plates and bags of concrete up to Steamboat prow to build the Camp Sherman hut. The first time I came up here with Max, I remember him betting each of us to take 10 big gulps of spring water without stopping. We all took him on. No one ever won. We would then proceed up to the meadows nursing lingering headaches and frozen jaws.

Setting off toward the meadows, it was clear by Terry’s look that he still considered this a wacko idea, but by tree line, the altitude must have started to have an affect. Proof that he and his climbing staff actually carried through with the plan came from an unexpected source. (Who else was on that climb?)

That fall, during Thanksgiving dinner, I was regaling my family with the summer’s exploits, and brought up our reforestation project. As I was explaining the rationale and patriotic fervor that compelled us to proceed with what others wouldn’t even dream of, my bother’s fiancé turned an interesting shade of purple. She finally blurted out, "So it was you Sheppard guys!!"

It so happened she worked as a Naturalist at Paradise that past summer, and it seems the Chief Naturalist had organized a summit climb for all the naturalists in the park. When the group rounded the crater rim and headed across the ice, one of them spied a small alpine fir tucked in among the boulders near the steam vents along one side. They all scuttled over to carefully examine this startling miracle of biology.

After considerable examination and discussion, several Naturalists concluded the tree was not likely indigenous, since it had to be several years old and no one had seen it before. Others pointed out that the tree was well protected, near some warming steam vents, on a southern exposure that melted off early in the season and partly shielded from the stinging winds. Could it be that this tree really did find a biological niche allowing it to survive? After additional close inspection, they noticed some of the roots exposed and frozen, (a testament to the need for more willing porters of precious dirt).

Doubts lingered. Who in the world would carry a pile of dirt and a tree to the summit of Mount Rainier? The Naturalists descended the mountain not quite sure which was the more plausible–a naturally growing tree at 14,000 feet that had gone undetected for years, or people stupid enough to plant it there?

Alas, the fervor to reforest Rainier has abated over the years without realizing any long term success. Younger generations of staff seem to have lapsed into high altitude lassitude as they lazed in their lounge chairs along the barren crater rim. They probably devoted more energy to reading Buick repair manuals and flying kites than asking what they could do to serve their mountain, not bothering to lift a single pinkie to making the place more picturesque and natural looking.

To this day, thousands of people struggle up the icy slopes of Mt. Rainier every year, risking their lives. For what? For rocks and ice? They deserve better. It’s time to write your congressman!