"I wouldn't say I'm specifically a hero for what I did. The real heroes do what I did and drive a Prius."
In March I drove out to Joshua Tree to do a DPS peak, Eagle Mountain. I turned around shy of the summit due to timing.
So, I decided to try it again and this time I got an earlier start. Things were going well until they took quite a turn for the worse.
See the previous report for the first part of the route. While just about 10 miles RT and 2500' of gain, both times I've done this I've been bedeviled by navigation issues. I'm not the best navigator around, but this route is not very favorable to me.
After the point where I turned around before, things don't change that much: there's no tricky Class 3 or anything, just more of the same. There's an annoying talus field that wasn't fun going up and was worse going down. Then, there's a bit of a long summit ridge/plateau with a few false summits and its own route finding difficulties (for me at least). I was slowed down yet again due to navigation issues, but eventually I got to the attractive summit. I'd seen a tortoise and saw and heard a large rattler further down and I saw and heard a large sidewinder approaching the summit, but there weren't any snakes on the summit itself.
The summit includes a small wire frame cactus and a register that contains two notebooks (one only halfway full). To give you an idea of how rarely the summit is visited, those two notebooks go back over thirty years.
After lunch and signing "The Eagle Flew on Sunday" ("Stormy Monday", link) in the register, I was feeling good about myself. I packed up and made my way down the talus section, grateful to get to the canyon itself. I had more than enough time to get back before dark. I had actually considered doing Pinto Mountain too but, as before, navigation sucked up a lot of time so I'd given up on the Pinto idea.
While I continue to leave you in suspense about what happened, keep in mind that I use a Granite Gear Crown2 60L pack as a daypack. It's large but it's only 2lbs and it can carry a lot of stuff. It doesn't have as many zippable pockets as I'd like but it works well for the most part. In the right pocket I had a 2L soda bottle filled with water and electrolytes. Picture that because you'll soon see why it's important.
I forget the exact sequence of events after that. I might have heard the rock first, or I might have felt the pain first. In any case, I suddenly had the wind knocked out of me. I was gasping for air for at least 30 seconds before I could breathe a bit. It felt like my lungs had been turned inside out. As far as I can tell, somehow I'd dislodged a large rock - about the size of an encyclopedia volume - and it had slid down into the soda bottle, jamming the cap of the bottle into my back.
Even after I could breathe again there was a fair amount of pain from my back and I had trouble taking deep breaths. It wasn't debilitating, but it did slow me down and cause some worry about if I'd suffered some sort of internal damage. I carefully made my way down the canyon, still hoping I could get back before dark.
In addition to my back, I was worried about my phone running out of power. In fact, I was so worried that I made a stupid mistake (not the first or the last): I overshot the exit route because I didn't want to overuse the phone. That resulted in me having to expend even more of my dwindling charge trying to get back to the route. It soon started to get dark and I had to put on my headlamp. And, because my main phone was down to 5% charge, I switched to my backup phone that had been off. However, it was only charged halfway and it drained fast (perhaps due to a battery app I'd recently installed). The backup phone shut down and I still hadn't found one of the wide washes that I'd come up on.
I evaluated the situation. I was only a few miles from the trailhead. On a maintained trail, a sporadic use trail, or even a trailless area where I could see the route, getting back would probably be fairly easy. But, navigation in that area is very difficult because there's no use trail and you're in one nondescript wash or another. You can't really look down or across at distinct landmarks. It's the antithesis of a monotonically-increasing ridge trail. I didn't think I could navigate all the way back given how little power I had. I also worried about my headlamp giving out. I could probably hunker down until morning, but then it would heat up and I'd run out of water.
I really, really didn't want to do it but I decided to use my PLB to call SAR.
I've put in a separate post about why you shouldn't get a Motorola Defy PLB and why you shouldn't give Bullitt your money. Go read it if you're in the market for any kind of satellite communicator.
While I was very embarrassed about anyone else finding out what happened, I was in a survival situation. Not as dire as if I'd broken my leg, but things could turn bad. So, I turned on the PLB. I pressed the red call button for five seconds and hoped for the best. It made a series of beeps and flashed its lights but I didn't know if it had gone through or not.
Due to the issues mentioned at the last link, I wondered whether I'd really called SAR or not. If I hadn't - if the signal had just vanished into the ether or been rejected - I'd be really SOL. I waited around for a bit. It was starting to cool down but thankfully it was still warm enough. There was a big, bright full moon that had risen over Eagle Mountain. I turned things over in my mind. If I waited for SAR that would be best, but I didn't know if they'd been alerted. I briefly - very briefly - considered gathering up bits of vegetation to start a fire where I could wait out the night. I decided starting a fire would not be a good idea at all.
So, I decided to keep looking for the exit wash and I moved a bit further. Then, I pressed the red button again and waited for a bit. I did that another couple of times before I decided to just go for it. I headed off in the general direction where I thought the Cottonwood campground was. I realized there was a strong possibility that I'd miss the mark and go heading off into open desert, but given the concerns about the PLB I decided I'd keep walking until I found something. Thankfully I had enough energy even if I had some minor hyperventilation when exerting myself. The route was flat and I had no big elevation gain ahead. I had to skirt some rocks and I thought they looked familiar but I couldn't tell for sure.
After walking for a while, I was extremely thankful to find what looked like a wash with footprints in it. It looked to me like that was the wash I wanted. I started taking it and turned into successor washes that I thought were the ones I'd come up on.
Then, would you know it, about an hour or so after starting my make-or-break push, I came across a metal pipe in the ground and I realized I was near something. Shortly after that I saw a couple of lights in the distance that I assumed were the campground. Then I saw a sign with an arrow: I was on some kind of nature trail or something (perhaps the Mastodon loop or the Cottonwood Springs trail, I don't know). I followed the trail knowing that it'd get me somewhere and it was going towards the lights. Then I saw a sign saying I was just .2 miles from the campground. I made it back, found my car, and drove off towards the freeway. I'd started recharging my phone and used it to call the SB County Sheriffs non-emergency line, thinking they might be the ones handling SAR there. They didn't answer so I called 911 and they connected me to the SAR responder at the Joshua Tree National Park itself. He knew right away who was calling because the PLB had in fact gone through and it included my name. I told him I'd made it out OK and apologized for the situation. He was cool about it, and I'm glad I was able to make it out on my own.
I drove back to L.A. but couldn't find an urgent care that was open. By this time it was Monday morning and I waited a while for the clinic I go to to open. I was then forced to wait a few hours to see someone because I didn't have an appointment. While I thought there was the possibility that I might have just got a bad bruise, the doctor was insistent that I go into an emergency room to be checked out. I did so and found out that I'd cracked a rib and I had a small pneumothorax (partially collapsed lung due to a small hole). After not sleeping for around 36 hours, I was in the hospital overnight for observation. They put me on oxygen to help resolve things. The next day they informed me the pneumothorax had already healed and I was ready to be released. As far as I know and I hope, I'll recover completely.
So, whether I learn from this experience or not, what can you learn? Here's some points:
- Obviously, the first thing is to not do such routes alone. I'd already done part of the route without issue, the stats are moderate, and I've done lots of things like that before. But, things can turn bad quickly. I'd tried various ways to have traveling companions for this peak but I had flakes on Meetup and I'd decided against going on a Sierra Club trip because it involved backpacking (which I hate). Gritting my teeth through a backpack would have been preferable to the above.
- Always have backups. I had 1.5 charges over two phones. I should have had a power brick too. Mine doesn't weigh that much, it holds at least 1 and maybe 2 charges, and it really would have come in handy. But, I foolishly left it in the car. Also, while I have two USB-rechargeable headlamps and they barely weigh anything, I'd foolishly only brought one.
- Another foolish thing I did was leave my compass behind. It too barely weighs anything, but for some reason I'd taken it out of my pack a few days prior. That would have helped me chart a course and stick to it. A paper map would have been helpful too.
- If you're going to do anything beyond well-traveled hikes or even just nature trail-style hikes, invest in a real, 2-way, self-contained satellite communicator. Don't cheap out on something that might save your life.
Throughout all of the above, I was praying. Whether you want to believe in divine intervention or just luck, I'm very very thankful things worked out as they did.
So, what's next? A few of the people in the register raved about getting to the peak via Munsen Canyon. On the one hand I'd never like to see Eagle Mountain again, on the other...
