MOMENTS OF BEING

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

When the editors asked me if I had ever written anything about personally witnessing the effects of climate change, I said no. I was thinking that because weather has always been wildly variable, climate change would always remain at the level of the statistical, a scientific finding that’s hard for some individuals to see.

But then I realized that wasn’t quite true, in my case. I’ve been going to the Sierra Nevada of California for almost fifty years now, and high mountains, like the polar regions, are warming up and manifesting impacts of climate change faster than other regions of the Earth, for reasons not fully understood.

So, two things: The Sierra Nevada has about one hundred small glaciers and four hundred “glacierets,” glaciers so small that their ice doesn’t slide downhill. Even the biggest remaining glacier in the Sierra, the Palisade Glacier, is only about a mile long, and it’s lost about half of its ice mass since 1935. That ice loss is like a thermometer, in that the rise in temperature causes something you can see with your own eyes; and I have. Photos I’ve taken of Sierra glaciers over thirty years show very clearly how much ice they’ve lost. Soon all the ice in the Sierra will be gone. This loss will be bad for some meadows, and for the look of the range, as far as humans are concerned; in the Himalaya, glacier melt will be catastrophic for almost a billion people, because glaciers provide their primary water source.

That’s one thing. The other is this: in the last several years, it seems as if the summer monsoon, which used to come out of the Gulf of California and rain on southern Arizona over a few weeks’ time, has been extending northward and striking the Sierra Nevada more often than in years past. Articles in the scientific literature confirm that this is the case, and not just our unhappy anecdotal impression.

That makes backpacking in the Sierra pretty dramatic. Summer weather in these mountains used to be famously benign. Among members of the mid-twentieth-century Sierra Club, it was a truism that you didn’t even need a tent in the summer Sierra, because it never rained then. People laughed at this, knowing by experience that it wasn’t totally true. But it was a tendency. California has a Mediterranean climate, and lower parts of the state rarely see rain from late April to late October. In the high Sierra in those dry months, thunderstorms frequently cook up on hot days, soaring from small origins just over the peaks to heights of thirty or forty thousand feet, where they become billowing masses. Then comes a dramatic hour of black cloud, lightning and thunder, and a downpour of cold rain, or even hail, after which the sky quickly clears to a glorious sunset.

That was normal. The appearance of an Arizona monsoon was not. Only once or twice in my life did the Sierra in summertime get visited by humidity, thick low clouds headed north, and irregular but copious all-day rain. In this last decade, however, it’s been happening more and more often.

In 2013, Carter and Darryl and I were at the elbow of Seven Gables Canyon, setting camp in a cloudy sunset. Earlier in the day we had stood under trees waiting out a downpour so intense that the ground of the entire canyon suddenly turned to water under us, as accumulated rain poured down the tall gleaming side walls on either side of us. We had to clamber awkwardly onto big tree roots to get above this flood, which though only a few inches deep covered the whole canyon floor. We’d never seen anything like it. After a while the water drained into the roaring creek and we continued to pick our way up the canyon.

Now we stood in an open sandy meadow, very wet but nice for camping. We set up our three tarps and bedded down in the cloudy dusk. That night it began to rain again, then to blow hard. The wind seemed to be coming from the south, down the canyon, until it whipped through the elbow bend we were in and headed west. It threw rain against our tents in what sounded like sprays from a fire hose.

There was no sleeping that night. Our tarps were barely holding on. Mine seemed to have water running up its inner walls, perhaps under the pressure of the wind. And I was camped on thin grass, growing out of the usual Sierra decomposed granite, which this time was maybe contained in a shallow bowl of bedrock, a pretty common situation; now rain was coming down so hard that my bedrock bowl was filling with water above its level of sand. I was beginning to flood from below.

My air mattress floated me above the shallow pool of water growing under me. This is another great thing about modern ground pads: they float, and they’re pretty tall. So this was the least of my problems. Rain was still bombing down, wind hitting in violent slaps. Something could very possibly give—a tent stake in the ground, a loop holding tent stake to tarp—even the nylon fabric itself could split. If the tarp failed, my widespread incidental dampness would change to total fundamental wetness instantaneously. I had to plan for that, and I did; it passed the time, sleep being out of the question.

When the tarp gave way, I decided, I would quickly put my rain jacket and wind pants on over my night warmies, get into my boots, wrap my down bag and failed tarp around me like a burrito, and sit with my back against the lee side of a big tree, waiting for dawn and the end of this incredible downpour. It could be done, if I had to do it; it would not be the worst thing that had ever happened to me in the mountains; etc. In my mind I was prepared to march through all the necessary steps. Meanwhile, the storm lashed us.

In the event, all our tarps held. The wind relented, then the rain stopped. When the sleepless gray dawn came, we crawled out completely bedraggled. We consulted with each other. We’d all had the same experience, so we didn’t have to describe the particulars, merely marvel at them, pretty pleased we had done as well as we had. We concluded we could maybe use stronger tarps. Carter had heard of a new fabric called Cuben Fiber, said to be more waterproof than nylon.

The next year we had new tarps made of this fabric, now called Dyneema. On our third day we climbed to the pass between Sixty Lakes Basin and Gardiner Basin. Mid-afternoon on a warm muggy day, with some clouds overhead. We had been rained on during both the previous days, so we suspected the monsoon. Even so, we were surprised when in about fifteen minutes the sky went from white to dark gray, and suddenly it began to rain, then hail, then thunder loudly. We didn’t see any lightning bolts, but the clouds over us turned white right before each big rolling boom. Time to leave.

So we put on our rain gear and started down. The descent into Gardiner Basin is steep and rocky at first, a wall of big boulders that one has to traverse, down toward the highest Gardiner lake, a long skinny thing extending as far as we could see, especially in the rain; the rest of the basin was out of sight below this endless lake. The rain was hard and cold. The clouds lit up over us, then immediately banged. Their bottoms were scraping over the ridge to our right, and the boulder slope we were descending was slippery. It was like an immense, long room: two gray rock walls, between them a long gray floor of lake, under a pelting rain coming out of a gray ceiling of sky. We were inching along the bottom of the right wall, where a narrow band canted into the floor.

I was using one of my blue backpacks, the ones you could cut with your fingernail. I love them, but they’re not waterproof, and my gear inside this one was stuffed into stuff sacks that also were not waterproof. We had our new tarps, and it might have been possible to pull them out and figure out a way to use them as capes, or at least as backpack covers, but with the thunder now cracking overhead, and no shelter anywhere, and the rocks so very slippery, and everything so cold and wet, we didn’t feel like stopping to make experiments in gear deployment. I was going to have to deal with what I found in my pack when we found a place to camp. Even my wool mittens, which would have been great to have on in the cold of this storm, were packed too far down in my backpack for me to want to stop and get them out. I pulled my rain jacket down over my hands as far as I could and grasped the sleeves against my walking poles, leaving only my fingers exposed. Having cold fingers was not a major problem. As always, I wondered if aluminum walking poles were in effect little lightning rods. It seemed like they could be. It even seemed like they were humming, although I confess this sound could have been just in my head, an electric buzz like wet tinnitus. Probably the keening of the wind.

The descent needed care, and I gave it. The ridge above us to the right was now completely lost in the cloud. The thunder was getting less frequent, the rain harder. The highest lake in the Gardiner Basin was turning out to be really long. Before the storm struck, we had been planning on hiking to the next lake below it. Now I was thinking that maybe the flat spot I could see at the far end of the lake, where a little promontory pinched off the endless stretch of water, might do. It would be very exposed out there, the cat’s paws flying across the lake’s beaten surface made that clear, but it looked flat, and nothing around us was flat or even close to it; it was a slope of rocks between the size of refrigerators and bowling balls. Nothing to do but clamber down and across this jumble, getting wetter and colder.

This was one of those hours where you just have to bite it and forge on, coldly determined. Total exposure to the elements. Lear on the heath; Beethoven’s mad blind energy, as in the Grosse Fuge, or the end of the Hammerklavier. I think Beethoven must have gotten caught out in storms once or twice. Often I like those hours, even while they’re happening. It’s like sticking your finger in a wall socket, but at a level of electrocution that you can stand. Hammered by the elements—unsheltered—focused—at one with the world. Forge on!

Then, as I was getting closer to the little ridge that pinched off the end of the long lake, there appeared at the start of the pinch a little triangular patch of grass. Real grass, and almost flat—certainly not the biggest tilt we had ever camped on. And it seemed like it might be just big enough to fit our three tents side by side. This was like one of Piaget’s tests of cognitive development for toddlers: Was the patch big enough for three tents? Maybe?

When Carter reached me, I proposed the plan. He nodded. Good idea, he said. I think we’ll fit. And if we don’t, we still have to.

Darryl joined us and we sketched the idea to him. He nodded. Let’s do it, he said. We were all drenched to one extent or another.

In the pouring rain we set up our tents right next to each other. You could barely walk between them, as our tie lines overlapped each other. I was in the lowest part of the patch, and set my zipper door (so fancy, a tarp with a real zipper!) on the side away from Carter.

I got under my new tarp, sat down cross-legged under my poles, and began digging in my backpack to assess the damage. As I pulled things out, I grew more and more appalled: everything was wet. Incidental dampness was long gone, although there was a lot of that too, but mainly it was a serious case of fundamental wetness. All my socks were too wet to wear in my sleeping bag. My blue warmies were wet. Down vest was only incidentally damp. And the sleeping bag was only wet in places, but where it was wet, it was soaked.

It was only about three in the afternoon, which gave me time to take full stock of the situation. My new Dyneema tarp was pale green and translucent; I could see the rain running down the outside of it, but as I touched the inside of it, I could tell how dry it was. And it was big—well, bigger than what I was used to. It’s not actually that big. But the light poured through it. And I wasn’t in the rain, which continued to pound down. The grass under me was wet, but that was incidental dampness; with my ground pad inflated I was well above that, and my gear was resting on my rain pants or jacket, or something else waterproof or irrelevant to my night life.

So I lay on top of my sleeping bag, which was draped on the ground pad, and figured I would sleep barefoot, since I had to. The tilt was pretty steep for a bed, but it was cleanly tilted head to foot, not side to side—I had set the tarp to get that. And the exertions of the previous hour or two—I found I had no idea how long our descent had taken, but probably it was more than an hour, and maybe less than two—that work had warmed me up, all but my fingers. I could eat, drink (the long lake was not far from our patch of grass, and we had grabbed water for the night), and rest. Listen to the rain drum on my taut new tarp, and even watch it running down the other side of an impermeable translucent barrier, in the usual infinity of delta patterns. I was sheltered! Over the next couple of hours I began to settle in to a deep sense of safety, comfort, and even warmth. Damp warmth, but so what! Warmth is warmth, and I wasn’t going to get any wetter than I already was. This new tarp was not just a refuge; it was a miracle. In that hour I fell in love with that tarp. I was home.

The following year, we went up Center Basin to see if we could follow the old route of the Muir Trail up to Junction Pass. It was easy; the trail is still very distinct, even though it has been abandoned and was taken off the maps in 1934. The old wooden sign in the pass, just a mile or so west of Forester Pass, is very evocative of the 1920s.

On our way back we decided to try to go over University Shoulder. This is just what it sounds like, a high traverse over the west shoulder of University Peak. We had seen the north side of this shoulder on our way in, and although it was obvious it would have been really tough to go up it, going down it had looked feasible. So I suggested to the others we try it—yes, it was my idea, and yes, I had failed to take in the sentence in the Secor guide that called this shoulder a ski route. Although, parenthetically, I am amazed at what backcountry skiers will think to try.

So we left the froggy pond at the bottom of Center Basin and took off up the slope to the shoulder. This slope is the side of a very big glacial canyon, the upper Bubbs Creek canyon, with the Muir Trail at its bottom heading up to Forester Pass. Soon we were using our hands to pull ourselves up, grabbing on to the exposed roots of small trees at head height above us. It was a vertical forest in decomposed granite, nobbled by big boulders that blocked our way but also stabilized the sand and gravel and trees between them. Ridiculously steep, and we could see, by looking across the big canyon to its other wall, just how slow our upward progress was. Most of two thousand vertical feet, at the same steep pitch. Frequent breaks. Already far more effortful than staying on the trail would have been.

Finally we got onto the shoulder proper, which gave us an easy sandy traverse across a high space where nothing but the big triangular pyramid of University Peak was higher than us, blocking our view to our right. In every other direction we could see forever. Joe and Helen Gompertz LeConte, and many other early Sierra Clubbers, had ascended University Peak from this shoulder in the 1890s, the women wearing long skirts, etc.; those people were tough. We were happy with our high traverse. Our canyon wall climb was almost feeling worth it.

At the far side of the shoulder, we came to a drop-off and could see down the steep slope we had declined to ascend three days before. A steep descent indeed, sand and scree dropping down a broad shallow funnel that at its bottom shot through a gap between boulders—that part looked a little nasty—but we could do it. So we sat on this fine overlook and ate our lunch and enjoyed the view. Which clouded up as we sat there. It had been muggy before, but the clouds had been mostly in the north. Now suddenly they were everywhere; they darkened fast; thunder rumbled.

Kevin Kline, playing the Pirate King in the film version of The Pirates of Penzance, said it best: Here we go AGAIN! Yes, I shouted his slogan as we poked into our rain gear. We hurried to get off the ridge and as far down the slope as we could before lightning started. It began to rain, cold and hard. Then lightning, thunder, hail, the usual dreadful combo; although again, the lightning was of the flashbulb-in-the-clouds variety, not visible bolts hitting the ground, which is the real heartstopper when you see it, those little elbowed lances of fire torching reality itself. This was just the usual awful booming overhead, with the whole world flashing in momentary flashbulb style before the gloom returned.

The steepness of the scree slope wasn’t helped by being soaking wet, except maybe it was, as we could stomp into it with our boots a little. I sat down for a lot of this drop, in my usual style. Carter and Darryl, both good skiers, kept on their feet and stepped down skillfully, me bumping along behind.

We came to the boulders at the bottom of the funnel. I went down to have a look and discovered a drop of about fifteen feet, maybe a bit more; not huge, but for me an impossibility. It was pouring now, and the thunder frequently punctuated my cries of dismay. I shouted up to the guys concerning what I had found. Darryl immediately cut across the slope of the funnel to the boulders framing it on the left, to see if there was a way down through those rocks. Carter declared he was not to be stopped by any mere twelve-foot cliff, and came down past me to investigate for himself. I wished him luck on my way back up, then crossed the funnel as low as I could without slipping down its spillway and over the cliff. Darryl had meanwhile found a nifty staircase down the boulder wall to the left, and was already on the scree slope below the crux. Gratefully I followed him. Pausing on this boulder stairway, I looked across and was horrified to see Carter wedged in a crack partway down the little cliff on his side. He was in a nook that looked to be nine or ten feet above the steep scree under him—no way down, not easy getting back up, rain pounding us. I took a photo of him, hoping it would not be needed as evidence in any subsequent inquiry. He took off his backpack and tossed it down to the slope below. Holy moly! I shouted. Carter! The wind and rain and thunder were too loud for him to hear anything I shouted. Then, even though I was looking right at him, he was standing successfully on the slope below. He had jumped. I shouted again, amazed; somehow I had not seen his leap. But all was well. He put on his pack and proceeded. I did too. Darryl was far below, and the slope between him and us was straightforward scree, not as steep as in the funnel. We were past the crux.

But not. Secor mentions some “giant boulders” in his description, and I think these might be completely covered by thick snow in winter, so that as part of a ski route, they wouldn’t be an issue. For us they were. These boulders were indeed giant, the size of garden sheds and school buses, all strewn in a crazy broad band that was no doubt once the lateral moraine of a really big glacier. The boulders had been there forever, and were covered with a kind of black lichen that gets extremely slippery when wet. Like thousands of flat lobes of slick black plastic. On top of these boulders, the gaps between them dropped into cellar holes sometimes twelve or twenty feet down. But if we tried to stay down at that basement level, the corridors would close off in little dead-ends with vertical sides more than head-high. Nope; it was a fucking nightmare.

The hail had turned to rain and relented a bit; the thunder had stopped. It was now just a matter of being soaked and cold and hiking over a wet boulder hell. Even though we were moving horizontally, and were no more than half a mile from the uppermost Kearsarge lake, where we had camped on our first night and knew exactly where we would set our tents, etc., we were now engaged in the most meticulously slow and dangerous work of the day. Though flat, it could still be rated class 3, in that a mistake could kill you; so we had to make sure not to make a mistake. From time to time this involved crawling. Many moves had to be made as slowly as we could make them. The wet black lichen was outrageously slippery. It was a bit like the Batman TV show of the sixties, where Batman and Robin pretend to climb buildings even though you can see they are on a flat surface and the camera is tilted sideways. A class 3 horizontal surface! Who knew?

The boulder field ran right into the eastern end of our lake, and our campsite, the only campsite on the lake, was at its west end. When we finally got over these last and worst boulders onto ordinary ground, for a last walk around the shore of the lake, we were soaked and beaten, but also relieved. Ordinary walking never felt so good. We were going to make it. When we staggered into our first night’s campsite, it was like our long-lost home. We tallied up the day as we walked the final stretch; it had taken us eight hours to go two miles.

Recommendation: take the trail.

Not that I mean to generalize this! And it has to be added, Helen Gompertz in her trip report in the Bulletin of 1896 makes it clear that her Sierra Club group went up and down that very same slope when they climbed University Peak. They went over that boulder field twice in one day. And the route is listed in Secor’s guidebook, so it is a real pass. But still. A nightmare. Well, it was because of the untimely downpour that it went a little haywire. That was what made it a day to remember.

May we have more days like it. And given this seeming increase in the frequency and severity of the summer monsoon, we probably will. Is this stronger monsoon an effect of climate change? Possibly so. Normally, that is to say, before about 2015, it was a humid July flow up from the Gulf of California, which for a few weeks gave southern Arizona a big shot of moisture by way of spectacular daily afternoon thundershowers. It didn’t used to flow as far north as the Sierra, but now it seems that it does. There’s speculation that it’s an early effect of climate change.

Well, it could be worse. In fact, it will be worse. Drought is worse, and drought is coming; which means that these new extra summer rains in the Sierra might even be considered a good thing for the living biomes under them. In any case, we deal.