Photo Illustration by J Koch and M Preusch

So we’ve talked about the best way to tell this story: if we should embellish it, add parts, flesh it out or whatever. In the end we decided we’d just split it up and each tell our own part of the tale.

December 16, 1999

Nick: Both of us had finished our finals (mostly) and were planning to have a quick 4 hour hike to celebrate the end of another semester. Joe’s girlfriend Kari was supposed to take him to the airport at 5 that afternoon and I had a 5AM flight the next morning to London for an interview. We thought a hike would be a good idea to get some fresh air before heading home.

It was a beautiful day. We parked by the waterfall and started hiking up to Baldy summit. We hadn’t really eaten anything and the only thing we brought with us was a couple of jugs of water. We got to the top at about 11:15 am.

Joe: We looked out at the Inland Empire and decided to take a shortcut home in order to get back in time for a lunchtime sushi buffet at Fukuya. Bartlett said he had learned a shortcut down from our friend Steve a few months earlier.

Nick: I led the way as we walked away from the trail that we’d come up. After about ten minutes I decided we should head over the ledge and start sliding down the face of the mountain. I was 95% sure it was the way I’d gone with Steve.

Joe: After "skiing" for quite a while, I started to wonder how long this short-cut was going to take. Nick assured me that once we made it to the valley, we’d be only moments from our car. After another half-hour of running down the mountain I spotted a stream bed and suggested that we follow it out to the valley floor.

Nick: This shortcut was taking way longer and was a lot more overgrown than I remembered, but we kept on pushing down. My new boots were finally getting broken in and I felt good. Joe was starting to dawdle.

Joe: As lunchtime came and went, I started to get a little cranky. To make matters worse, I was wearing what amounted to high-top dress shoes with very little traction. As Bartlett skipped ahead across the icy terrain, I had to carefully maneuver myself in order to keep up. As I was trying to climb across a sheet of ice, I slipped and took a 15 foot thrill-ride down to the stream bed. Nick turned around and yelled, "Hey, stop dicking around!" My foul mood turned into rage.

Nick: By 1:45 we had gone down what felt like twice the distance we should have to hit the falls. I climbed up the side of one of the banks to see where we were and stared out into ranges of mountains. No LA, no roads, nothing but mountains. Joe pointed to a "man-made construction" higher up the valley bank and we took a half hour detour to examine a fallen tree.

Joe: After discovering that my "trail-marker" was a broken tree trunk, I knew that we were in more trouble than we had thought. As the 2:30 sun began to dip behind the mountains, I realized that the entire time we had been heading Northeast instead of South to Claremont. It would have been impossible to "ski" back up the way we came, so we decided to head due South, traversing the giant peak that we thought stood between us and civilization.

Nick: The climb up the sliding shale face of the mountain was one of the worst experiences of my life. The only way to get traction was by digging our bare hands into the brittle rocks. Every foothold slid and the incline was so steep that we were continually slipping back down. After an hour of continual scrambling and ripped open hands, we reached the summit and looked out…

Joe: …nothing but another valley and another giant peak. This is when I started to lose it. Bartlett went back down the way we came. I took a bit longer. I felt I like had just completed a Roger Caron "hell week" condensed into one hour, and all for nothing.

Nick: By 4 we were safely down in the valley again, but it was the farthest we’d been from home all day. Joe arrived at the bottom and was not looking good. While we were standing talking about what we wanted to do, his legs were shaking uncontrollably from low blood sugar and seemed like he was pretty close to flipping out. We decided to head back up the stream bed as far as we could.

Joe: I started to regain my composure and proposed that we attempt to traverse the ridgeline again. It was not an easy decision to make. We didn’t know which peak was Baldy, and we didn’t know if our efforts would be all for nothing once again. Nick was concerned about getting stuck at a high elevation after sunset and then freezing our asses off. I was more concerned about the fact that my girlfriend had been waiting for me since 2 :00 expecting to spend the afternoon together before my flight at 8:00.

Nick: Our decision made, Joe started heading up the third mountain we would climb that day. I started after him, but hit a wall. All I could think of was finding a place to sleep. Both my legs cramped and for 20 minutes I sat at the bottom of the mountain wishing I was on my plane to London. I called after Joe, but he had strategically moved out of earshot. I could either spend the night on the North side of Baldy by myself, or keep on going up. I slowly continued following him up.

Joe: I started to sense that Nick had been paralyzed by the same feelings of despair that almost drove me into a homicidal rage. I decided not bother him and I parked myself on a nice log about a quarter mile up the mountain. I waited and waited and when I finally saw the rustle of brush below I caught my first glimpse of the humor of the whole experience. I burst into song, "Bartlett’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when he comes! Bartlett’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when he comes!" In retrospect, I realize that I was probably delirious at this point.

Nick: Although it is funny in retrospect, Joe’s song almost got him killed at the time. Luckily for both of us that I was too tired to do anything rash. Morale at this point was very low. Both of us were getting delirious and I was starting to get spots in my vision. After catching our breath, we devised a "tree game" to help make the climb go faster: we would pick a random tree way up the mountain and when we reached it, we got to pick another one. For a special treat we decided to break out the diseased water that we’d filled our jugs with in the streams below.

Joe: Despite the success of the "tree game," things were not looking so good. The sun was setting, we were running out of contaminated water, and it seemed like we had ages to go before reaching the peak that we hoped would let us cross over. My feet were bleeding through my socks, my hands were ripped open and covered with little thorns and Bartlett wasn’t much better off than I was (except, of course, for his "comfortable hiking boots").

Meanwhile, back at college, Kari was in hysterics filling out a campus security report, the Dean-on-call was calling various area search terms and sending my parents into a panic, and our noble friends Richard Park and Chris Ross were preparing to search the wilderness for their foolish friends. It was clear to Nick and I that if we wanted a winter vacation, we were going to need a little luck.

TO BE CONTINUED…