As many readers of my pages already know, John Miksits and his partner Craig Heimstra perished in a storm, with high winds and whiteout conditions on Mt. Shasta on April 12, 2000. The loss of John has impacted many of us in the climbing community greatly. He was a good friend and a source of joy, fun, inspiration, and a wealth of information, not only in climbing, but also in Scouting, where I first came to know him. This page is dedicated to Zippo. We miss you John!

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Barbara and I took Friday off to beat the crowds exiting the Bay Area for the Labor Day holiday. We headed over Sonora Pass to the Tioga Pass area. This route is more winding, but avoids all the RVs within Yosemite National Park. Took us 5 hours. We headed for the walk-in campground up Saddlebag Lake road, then left a note Zippo at the Tioga Lake campground so he could find us. Next a typical huge lunch at Tioga Pass Resort (hangout of Tuolumne Meadows climbers for at least 40 years, probably much more, but that's when I started going there). We spent the next few hours hanging out and enjoying the sights, plus getting acquainted with Dennis, the campground host.

Zippo appeared late afternoon, so we made our plans for our assault on Dana Couloir. Zippo had been up the couloir just east of the summit and a couple ice fingers further east a year or so ago, so we decided to do the couloir to the west of the summit, called Solstice Couloir. According to Roper's 1976 and Voge's earlier (1965 revised) Climber's Guide to the High Sierra, the "real" Dana Couloir is the prominent couloir east of the summit, the larger of the ones Zippo did last year. The two large ones (Dana to the east and Solstice to the west of the peak) are about equal in difficulty and steepness, although the east one (the left one as seen from Dana Lake) has a bergschrund that can offer a challenge in crossing. There are a couple of other narrow ice-filled gullies farther east than the "real" couloir as well.

After the usual first night at 9800 feet coming directly from sea level, we headed for the Tioga Entrance Station, parked and headed for the hill, Barbara to hike up the trail and Zippo and I headed up Glacier Canyon and Dana Lake. As confirmed gadgeteers, we were fully instrumented, wanting to check on claims of 80 degree slopes with our clinometers and such. Barbara and I are both licensed amateur radio operators, so we each carried a shirt-pocket sized handytalky, with a scheduled contact every hour on the hour. We left the cars about 7:30 finally, at an altitude of 9950 feet (according to the benchmark indicated on the USGS topo map).

Zippo and I contoured around from the entrance station over talus and through willows onto glacial polish, then down to the creek bed, over more talus and rock benches until we got to the glacier. First step was to measure the slope - 35 deg at the foot and 40 deg average slope, just as the guidebooks said (both couloirs are about the same). We strapped on our crampons (Zippo on new Kong aluminum, I was on my Sabertooths with antibot plates, unsharpened since well before my Denali climb), put our hiking poles away, took ice axes in hand, a final swig of water, and headed up the ice. Well, ok, it was 3 to 4 inches of snow over pretty hard water ice, with some neve in places. It was now about 10 AM

Progress was fairly rapid for the first 300 to 400 feet up to the rognon. We climbed independently for the entire climb, with me giving Zippo some coaching (mostly of the "do as I say, not as I do" type, with a major consequence to be mentioned later). We climbed onto the rognon to pause for lunch and for me to make yet another radio contact with Barbara. We were at about 11,600, while she was at 12,500, making more rapid progress, despite her much longer trail. This is Zippo a bit above the rognon. I used my Nikon FM with a Tamron 24-70 zoom and a polarizer. The film was ED-200, a slide film which I generally prefer, except when using professional slide films.

We continued on upward another 500 to 600 feet finding that the slope varied between 35 deg and 45 deg, with some slightly steeper slopes coming out of the incipient suncups and boulder pits (helmets are a good idea). The Old Greybeard somehow was managing to climb faster than young Zippo, despite the altitude. At the same time we were following the progress of a pair of climbers on the buttress to the east of us paralleling the couloir. The buttress is moderately difficult, but with lots of loose rock. The slope just below the rognon got up to 45 degrees. We paused here for a bit of water and a snack, then moved on up.
 
 
 
 

Zippo shot this photo of me close to the rognon. He was using a tiny AFS camera with print film. Behind me you can see one of the "boulder holes" where rocks from above had come down, then melted large pockets when warmed by the sun. These proved convenient places to rest, although getting out of one often meant a couple steps on a slope closer to 50 degrees.

Somewhere in here, I paused in a suncup to make a contact with Barbara, but had problems, since we were nowhere near line of sight and someone else was on frequency (I couldn't hear them, but Barbara could). I started again, the section being about 45 deg, but somehow got a little off balance. As I tried to remedy the situation, I did what I had just been telling Zippo not to do, edged one of the crampons instead of putting it flat to the slope. Needless to say, it peeled out, throwing me completely off balance and into a slide. My first thought was "where is Zippo?" and the terrible thought that he was directly below me and about to get speared with all 24 main and multiple auxiliary points of my Sabertooths, so I better stop quickly. Zippo said later that he thought about this, too, when he saw me start to slide. One of his big "lessons learned" for the day is "don't climb directly under or above someone else." I did manage to notice that he was 25 or 30 feet to the side, which turned my worry to the rognon a few hundred feet lower, or worse yet the talus of the moraine at the foot of the glacier. Somehow my self-arrest was not going as planned, despite many years of practice. I kept accelerating, with the ax bouncing up out of the snow/ice and never really digging into the hard ice under the snow. Still I knew I had to keep the crampons from hooking and flipping me in the air. So put the pick back in again, but never in the text-book position. Well, this was my first ever self-arrest in anger, despite 40 plus years of practice and teaching it to dozens of students (well, ok, maybe 5 years of actual practice, since Yosemite walls don't afford much opportunity for use of ice axes). My buddy Zippo said afterword that it looked like a perfect demonstration of the proper technique. He also says he kept yelling encouraging things like "keep trying, Bill!"
 
 
 
 

Eventually I stopped, by which time Zippo had his camera out and shot this picture. As I lay there recovering and trying to decide whether to bail or go on up, the rock climbers were yelling to see if I was ok and telling me to be careful (yeah, right). When I said I was considering bailing, Zippo said he really didn't want to go down the 900 or so feet from where he was as opposed to going up the remaining 300 feet. That had some logic, except that I was below him. Oh, well, let's go up. Zippo's next comment was "get your altimeter reading so you will know how far you slid." This had some sort of perverse logic, so I made note and headed back up, finding that I had dropped about 80 vertical feet. On a 45 deg slope, this is a 110 to 120 foot slide along the slope.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

After I climbed back up to where I had been, we headed for the buttress on the west side of the couloir where it narrowed, and I worked my way up the edge of the moat. Zippo decided to move onto the rock at that point (70 or 80 vertical feet remaining), but moved into the moat for the last 30 or 40 feet. The headwall got to about 50 deg for the last 2 or 3 feet, the remnants of the winter cornice - no 80 deg slopes here and lots of potential exit slots of 45 deg. I got out of the couloir just about in time for my noon contact with Barbara and told her that I had taken a slide. She had gotten tired of waiting on top for us and was about a third of the way down.

When Zippo got out of the couloir, we realized we were essentially out of water (2 liters each), but stashed out packs and headed up one of the myriad of trails to the top. Somehow, despite the slide, Old Greybeard was in passable shape, while young Zippo was bonked, so I had to wait at the summit for a few minutes.
 
 
 
 
 

The register is apparently long gone, so we got a few obligatory summit photos and headed down. As you can see, I used my hiking poles for the last part. In case you haven't figured it out, Zippo is the taller guy on the left in the yellow parka, and I am the shorter guy with the grey beard on the right in the blue Kichatna. Yes, he is taller than me, but notice that his lower foot is a few inches higher than my feet, so it isn't as much as it looks at first glance. We got one of the tourists on top to shoot the photo.

Zippo headed off to see the Tuolumne ranger about arranging a cache for next winter's ski tour, while Barbara and I headed back to camp and supper.

My original plan had been to do Conness the next day, but I was a bit tired. So we slept in late (Zippo headed back home), and Barbara and I went for a circuit hike in 20 Lakes Basin. Beautiful country, burned lots of film, and a profitable hike. By which I mean, we had stopped for a couple minutes by a stream, when I noticed something of a green color that didn't match the vegetation. I picked it up to discover that some littering tourist had carelessly and thoughtlessly littered the landscape with some green paper with a picture of Alexander Hamilton and the number "20" printed on it in several places. As honest folks, with a background of some years as impecunious climbers, we looked up and down the trail and could see no one in sight from where we stood who might have been the litterbug. We thereupon resolved to take the litter out of the backcountry and dispose of it properly, namely at Tioga Pass Resort, converting it into the Sunday night lasagna special.

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