El Capitan-Original Photo- Mike Murphy
An Open Letter From Ed Drummond
The following relates to an attempt in October, 1984 by Ed Drummond to solo El Capitans's North America Wall, and his rescue,after days in a snowstorm, a pitch short of easy ground below the summit. Two other climbers died on the nearby route-Zodiac-in the same storm.
Epilogue: To Search and
Rescue Officers Mike Murray, John Dill and all SAR Personnel,
National Park Service, Yosemite, California.
Dear John, Officer
Murray and all SAR people...
It's now almost a month since — in a
very I real sense — you all brought me back to life. The operation
was difficult. After two weeks alone on the North American Wall, I
had become a possibly terminal patient in the grip of a condition so
overwhelming, as to render it almost impossible for a team to even
get near me, let alone operate: ice on the brow of the captain, the
sudden relapse of snow that forced even the most skilful and
experienced climbers to inch their way for hours tied together, where
in summer they could amble with their hands in their pockets. The
first October snow in 20 years. It was like trying to get blood from
a stone. And I was a long way down. Too far I had begun to think,
sunken beneath great overhangs like some pitiful heretic, shivering, beginning to repent. I started to call out, almost embarrassed to
be raising my voice: to a gap in the cloud, to a toy-red and white
helicopter spiralling past, wondering if they a could lip-read but
worried that they might think I was simply hailing them good-day and
a not drowning in the bathtub that my porterledge had become. And to
the drab valley floor with its sudden lichen of onlookers. I — and to the cloudy void where the wind was lurching like a drunk
smashing bottle after bottle of distilled water at the wall and
tearing a at my fly until that hymen of self-assurance, intact these
forty years, had started to come apart... I, I,.... well I, at first
shyly, then shamefully — suddenly — savagely — desperately —
miraculously — screamed.. "Help! . . . Help!"
I had
heard that there were two others in trouble on the Zodiac. And some
haunted, hurt part of me knew, just knew, they'd go for double,
rather than one on the NA. I in became my own dentist: 'get what I
deserve',poking in childhood cavities I'd forgotten I had, living
in California these past eight years after chilly Britain. Then I'd
start grabbing the drill and imagine I heard voices right next to to my head, like the couple next door . . . to Nothing.
I'd listen
again . . . Just footsteps in my a chest. The pipes kept running.
Does hearing go first? An hour. Two. Three. The web of suspension straps inside the hanging tent had become chains of
ice-water. My sleeping bag, like a shrunken mummy in some flooded
museum, was oozing through my hands. I had eaten all my food. Is
insolite edible? I imagined not, and given the rate of loss of my
core heat, even the vomit would be cold. I envisaged the headlines in
the National Enquirer: "Man Saves Life by Eating Bed".
And the tawdry photograph of me with the ectoplasmic taco,
grinning . . . But the bizarre scenario helped me stay awake for a
minute and generate the idea of padding my back with insolite.
Then a roll inside each trouser leg. Pretty soon I looked like
some punk Galbraith with my hang dog face and bean pole limbs. Intellectually and emotionally I was a scarecrow — flash of a
young man in Reagan country, sleeping beneath the freeway in San
Francisco last winter, with a sheet of cardboard over him. Why do I
do this?
Something fluttered in
my trousers. Greasy, slow bubbles down my thigh, not at all my usual
colourful fart. And cold too. Now that alarmed me .. . Suddenly
sleepy I tried to curl up — like when the bullies, Ormerod, Evans
or Jeremy Bentley would corner me. I felt nine years old, just lying
there in the freezing water, like I used to in the bath at home a
long time ago. And wait and wait and wait for my mother to come and
get me out and pat me, and dry me and warm me .. . Deep, soft,
sweet, Death was brushing my hair, running its reptilian fingers
across my damp forehead, whispering in my grubby ears: "Relax,
relax. Try to sleep." "He's here." Out of my mind, out
of the flapping tent, hanging like a lynching as he swayed to fro,
there he was: the other, thou, my not-me, the god-man with a radio,
out in space at the end of a white and blue line, swimming in towards
me, with the new moon on his shoulder. "How are you?"
Words
stick in my throat. John: young, shy, quietly competent as a
carpenter straddling the roof beams as he comes in, hand over hand
down my tied-in haul line and plugs me back in. I touch him. "Can
you jumar?" "What about all your gear?" The rest is
history and this story. How you all came back to me, one by one. Walt
— Cagney-tough at the last edge, snapping pits and talking down the
great north american wall that hung under us; Werner: silent,
reassuring, with a wink in his eye as I dredged myself upwards.
And then, now, there, here, all of you: grinning, grubby as pirates, efficient as pilots, snow sticking to your ears and beards, eyes
shining: Gary, Des, Mike, Livia handing me her head torch — the
clan, the tribe, my family I never really believed in or knew I
belonged to — reaching for me, clipping me in, guiding, slapping me
quietly on the back "Too bad, so close" — my eyes
tighten, glowing, liquid, making their faces wavery, dream-like as
they peer in, pushing, pulling me across dark, slick slabs and
shepherding me past the boney rope in its integument of ice, through
bottomless brush, feet dying a bit now in tight Fires, eddying
upwards on faint trodden tracks through the fourteen inches that had
clubbed the Sierras, to Paradise: huge, orange tongues, crackling
logs, melting the snow, illuminating the big tents, licking the
night.
Ed- Image John Cleare.
And two witches, with warm clothes, tending the fire, ladling
from an ancient cauldron, dripping spaghetti over sourdough bread,
passing dry socks, hot coffee and, unbelievably, when only the embers
were glowing, large, flashy, red apples, under the stars, scattered
like implacable dice. No matter — who can say whether for or
against us? —I was home. Without all of you — from those in the
office who made vital calls and kept the lines open; the drivers, the
pilots, Jim and the camp people, those two women who'd downed tools
from trail repair to go up in the snow and keep house in the night
for total strangers, the climbers themselves; the anchor men, those
at the edge, and John — you who all came in like surgeons, parting
the dark blue void and the webs of red and blue knotted together,
searching beneath the polypropylene clothing, inside the sodden
sleeping bag and the funny reputation, for that unique, red flower,
each carries from the cradle to the edge of cliff, fading and
fountaining every second —without everyone of you, I would be dead.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Edwin Drummond
Ed Drummond: January-1985
First published in High
