After Mike went off to the Viet Nam War in the Air Force I felt sort of lost without my old friend. Mostly we were really good influences on each other and mostly kept each other out of trouble. He had almost died from Polio up until age 6 and I had almost died from both whooping cough around age 2 and from childhood epilepsy around ages 10 to 15. So, having almost died both of us at different times we weren't as silly and ridiculous as most kids our ages were. So, because of this as other friends were caught stealing cars like Covette's and going off to honor camps and then joining the army as a helicopter pilot and then sueing the Army because they didn't let them be helicopter pilots, my friend Mike and I were just much more practical people than all that and much more thoughtful and low key. So, though he built up and raced cars it seemed like we were always working from about age 10 each and we helped each other get jobs various places after school and weekends so we always had money to buy cars, and we always had money to do amazing things like surfing, Scuba diving, and flying gliders in the desert at El Mirage. Also, I bought several motorcycles for riding off road mostly in the desert back then of Yucca Mesa (near Yucca Valley) where my Dad eventually bought 2 1/2 acres in 1968 to build a retirement home.
So, after Mike took off for the Viet Nam War (actually a Thailand Air Base to repair jet fighters and bombers) I met another friend that I began to mountain climb with. The first thing we climbed together was the back side of Half Dome up the wires. We first were traveling down from a church conference in Mt. Shasta that we both went to. He was a musician and had his own rock band and eventually opened for Chicago at the LA Forum back then. So, he was and is a very good musician. He went professional part time then in his 30s went professional full time and also started his own recording studio and doing concerts all over the world. So, even though he has a bachelor's degree form UCLA and a Master's degree from there too, he found his bliss through writing and playing his music all over the world. So, the head of his department at UCLA told him that he was the happiest of all his students after they graduated and got up into their 30s and 40s.
So, at first we climbed Half Dome in Yosemite. I remember the night before we were driving up the Merced River and it was very hot so we got out to jump in the water. Unfortunately, since there was slime on the rocks underwater I slipped in the swift current and was swept downstream in the dark. My friend heard my expletive but couldn't see me and hoped I would survive. When I was spun upside down in the dark in the river I was pretty scared at first. I was worried at first that I would hit my head on the rocks underwater and be knocked unconscious. So, I kept trying to jam my feet at an angle to get purchase on the rocks so I wouldn't die. I finally succeeded but by then was about a block downstream and my feet hurt a lot but I was alive and relatively okay.
(I had broken up with my girlfriend of two years that June 1969 a month before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July). So, I found myself taking a lot of risks because of my malaise because I had thought I was going to marry this girl. That night we went first to the base of El Capitan which is one of the most popular rock climbing sites even then for advanced rock climbers. The hot sun left the face hot and warm and as it cooled it made a cracking humming sound which was amazing. I couldn't find a place to camp and drove up a trail and decided to just throw a sleeping bag on the trail near my 1968 Camaro. My friend had just gotten his first speeding ticket driving my Camaro down interstate 5 from Mt. Shasta on our way to Los Angeles where I lived then and to where he lived in Palos Verdes on the ocean.
So, we began to climb local mountains. He was also interested in Rock Climbing with ropes and pitons and as he would walk down a Los Angeles street if he found a rock wall on a building often he would free climb it as a new UCLA student. I found this kind of funny. However, this was how much he loved free climbing and climbing with pitons and ropes. We eventually went up to Taquitz Rock near Idylwild, California.
As we were climbing our route up Taquitz Rock he let me lead the rock climb as we carried and used ropes and pitons for safety. At first he let me lead the climb but then realized my routes he couldn't climb because I am 6 foot 5 inches tall so being 5 inches shorter he couldn't reach the handholds that I found and couldn't follow my routes. So we traded places and I let him lead because he didn't have the reach to follow my lead.
Later more of our friends joined us in Climbing in Yosemite National Park. At one point we were climbing in the winter on Star King but we didn't have enough equipment so I didn't have crampons which was kind of dangerous. So, my feet slipped on the ice on the dome and my friends got a great picture of my sliding. Luckily, I did have an ice axe so I didn't slide to my death. However, slamming the ice axe into the ice on the dome to prevent my death almost dislocated my arm from its socket. So it was sore for a few days after that. But I was still alive which was great and a good story to tell. But I had second thoughts of winter back country rock climbing in snow and ice after that.
About a year later we climbed Mt. Shasta with Friends in August 1970 to the top. I reached the top late in the day about 4 pm and I remember how I felt like about a 5 year old there because of oxygen deprivation. At around 13,000 feet in altitude I had to push a seagull off a cliff because it was flapping around and couldn't fly because of not enough air under it's wings to get off the ground. Since I knew it would die if I didn't do something I scared it off a cliff so it could get enough speed to fly and it did fly away after that. It was something to think about how little air I was getting too after seeing that.
Because it was so late in the day at 4pm and I didn't have a sleeping bag with me or a ground cloth or tent I had to somehow get all the way down to Bunny Flats where my car was before dark. I did this by using my Ice axe as a brake and sliding down on plastic I brought with me. So, I traveled about 20 mph down an ice chute on the plastic while braking with my ice axe so I didn't go faster than about 20 mph. This was my technique not to get stranded and too cold and hypothermic on the mountain for the night. I reached Horse Camp near sundown and hiked down to my car in the twilight so I was lucky. Out of the 4 of us climbers 3 of us had made it to the top so we were very happy. We went to a restaurant we liked there called then "Marilyn's" to get veggie Burgers as we were very hungry after the climb that began at 2 am the previous night. Mt. Shasta is 14,161 feet high.
That next Christmas Vacation from college in 1970 my friend and another friend who was going to Sacramento State University all rode up to Mt. Shasta thinking we would stay at Horse Camp which is an emergency Stone Lodge at Tree line on Mt. Shasta for a few days. So, we packed up our backpacks and put on our snowshoes after about 14 hours of driving for me that day already. It as night time but being young and thinking we were immortal like kids under 22 often do we set out in the dark with the snow coming down. This wasn't a good idea in retrospect because within the hour it went into a "Whiteout" Snowstorm where you could barely even see your hands in front of your face. So we had to dig a Snow Cave to survive the night. We never made it to Horse Camp ever on that trip and almost froze to death. Anyone higher on the mountain than us lost fingers and toes in that storm which dropped about 5 feet of snow total on us while we were trying to survive in our snow cave that night. When the morning came I was a little claustrophobic and didn't realize 5 feet of snow had fallen since we dug the snow cave and started to panic a little while trying to dug us out. But finally we reached the surface and were really glad that the whiteout was gone even though it was then about 20 degrees Fahrenheit out. Since we were all wearing Levi Jeans at that time our pants were wet from melting snow and froze solid except for the knees and hips for walking. So, our frozen pants insulated us and kept us from freezing to death at that point. We had been convulsively shaking all night long in the snow cave from the wet and cold as we were not prepared for this eventuality. We spent the next 4 days in a Hotel room taking turns thawing out in the hotel bath. My joints all hurt for several years because of how close we came to freezing to death on the mountain in a snow cave we had dug with our snowshoes to survive the night.
Though my friends and I kept mountain climbing and rock climbing throughout most of the 1970s there were also girlfriends and then wives and children. Eventually my friend was on a music tour and visiting some of his relatives in Switzerland when I called him and told him I was taking my wife and kids to the Himalayas in 1985. He said, "You SOB you are going to get to Nepal before me!" He had always had this dream of climbing up into the Himalayas and now I was going with my family before he would get there. So, he got a discount ticket or a series of them to fly directly to Kathmandu from Switzerland through Europe, Turkey on the way to Kathmandu. He met us two months later just after we had returned from 2 months in India in Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Taj Mahal, New Delhi, Dharamshala and Rewalsar. Then we took an Air conditioned Bus for westerners back from New Delhi through Lucknow back to Pokhara and then we met him in Kathmandu, Nepal. He climbed up some of the peaks in the Himalayas up to about 11,000 or 12,000 feet and then joined us in going to:
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