The Will to Live - Two Stories
701R, this is Helicopter Hotel X-Ray, how do you copy?
This is 701R, I’ve got you loud and clear, go ahead.
We have a visual on our two climbers on the south side of the Middle. Just below the dike pinnacle. We plan to land in the south fork and rig for short haul. Hardesty spotting. We’ll insert Edman for extraction.
****************
Ninety minutes earlier -
446 McCallum, this is Teton Interagency Dispatch Center, are you SAR coordinator for the day?
Affirm.
Are you available for a call?
…7424
….
John, this is Kate at dispatch; we have two climbers on a cell phone asking for assistance on the Middle Teton; I’ll patch you through.
This is John McCallum, Search and Rescue coordinator for Grand Teton National Park. What’s the situation?
Hi, thanks. There are two of us. We are climbers in our early 60s. We just climbed the Dike Route on the Middle Teton. We’re near the top of the Dike.
And?
…We’ve lost the will to go on.
(The Ortenberger/Jackson guidebook lists the Dike Route as Grade IV, 5.6 and involves a fair bit of rock and snow climbing and a fair bit of route-finding. When you enter Garnet Canyon proper after hustling through the switchbacks above Lupine Meadows, your jaw drops as you pan across the throne room of Nez Perce to Cloudveil Dome to the Grand to the south buttresses of Disappointment Peak. But squarely in the middle is, exactly, the Middle Teton and the dike cleaves the east ridge cleanly in two. It’s a sight to behold. The dike attracts climbers like moths to a light. Some might even call it an attractive nuisance. Because after you’ve climbed the dike proper, you still have almost a linear half-mile of climbing to go.)
~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a few days after Stearny’s 92nd birthday when he tripped and fell in the snow while walking back from the woodshed. It was late April. Dark. Clear. Stearny fell and pivoted, landing on his back, looking up at the stars. The new snow cushions his body beneath the pines and firs. He thinks, It feels so good to just lie here.
Temperatures are in the single digits. And then, I better get in there with the wood. Dodie'll get cold soon. He reaches over and crawls to his knees, stands and walks back to the back door of the cabin.
(Clarence Stearns was a B-17 pilot in WWII. As he tells it, "The Germans made two passes, and got a lucky hit on our No. 3 engine and set us afire.” He parachuted from the plane and was captured by German police. He spent the next 13 months as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft I, Barth, Germany. Through these difficult times Stearnie emerged with true compassion for others and gratitude for life. Stearnie worked in Yellowstone before the war and moved to Jackson Hole in 1950 where he and his wife Dodie bought and ran the mercantile store in Wilson, Hungry Jacks. He passed away in 2015. Sometimes you'll see bumper stickers in Wilson, Wyoming - "Stearny skiied the pass before you."
Stearnie signing the 384th Bomb Group Veterans signature panel
Thanks to TK and JL
