In a race with the storm

I LIE ALONE IN A TENT during a snowstorm in the High Sierra, and I’m reviewing the decisions and planning that brought me here.

My gear is good, my food sufficient; when it gets light, I’ll check the amount of the snowfall. I’ve got no reason to panic, but I’m scared the roof might collapse. At 10,000 feet, I’m camped higher than the Donner Party. I’m 10 tough miles from anyone who could help me. Gingerly I poke at the sides of my green cocoon. Snow slumps off. It’s a long wait until dawn.

The plan was to hike to Mott Lake in the John Muir Wilderness. The jumping-off point is Lake Edison. Created 50 years ago for a hydroelectric project, it is a drowned valley of super-clear water ringed by steep granite slopes. Because it lies at the end of a hair-raising, single-lane road, only the most committed fishermen and backpackers find their way to it. Hiking here last year, I’d sported in the October sunshine. The aspen leaves were at their finest, making dribbles of yellow among the conifers and bright slashes through the boulders.

A friend who knows the Sierra well suggested that this year was different and that a weather radio would be a good thing to carry. Likewise, chains for my tires (indeed, signs urging chains are posted along Route 168 east of Fresno). Instead I relied on backup layers of clothing and a close tracking of the weather forecast. I may have slighted those risks because they were dwarfed by the greatest risk of all: hiking in the Sierra alone. Yet I have found this the greatest pleasure too: to be by myself with the mountains beneath the stern eye of God.

Two days earlier I had paddled across Edison in my kayak with the advantage of a strong tailwind. It was a glorious ride as the sun bounced from the waves in blue and gold bolts. Making a fire at my first night’s camp, I grilled a spicy sausage. A resinous chunk of wood wouldn’t quit, but sent a low, inauspicious stream of smoke into the tent through the night. In the chilly morning I put on shorts and a T-shirt and lugged my pack up the creek trail toward the turnoff to Mott Lake. The temperature by afternoon probably hit 70. As I labored for breath, I noticed that the aspens had passed their peak.

Mott Lake, a small jewel, is set into a towering amphitheater of pale, craggy stone. A waterfall tumbles into it, with a splashing sound that slips in and out of the high rush of wind. Friday afternoon and all of Saturday I sat above the lake, watching the trout glide by. I studied the map for off-trail hikes above the timberline, but didn’t care to explore. Rather I followed the light as it picked its way across the sheer faces and flutings of rock. The sun painted a different chiaroscuro every hour. I was content but uneasy too. Cirrus clouds made claw marks on the sky and then vanished. I felt very close to the weather and the pitiless, cracked mountaintops.

When I’d left on this trip, no rain was predicted for Saturday or Sunday. Some precipitation was expected on Monday from a low-pressure front advancing from the Gulf of Alaska. But in its forecasts, the National Weather Service had misjudged the movement of a smaller system, known as a cut-off low, stalled just off the California coast. Computer models can’t accurately predict the path of cut-off lows when they move east. Like a pushy moviegoer, this particular system jumped to the head of the storm queue. When I went to bed on Saturday evening, a strangely bulbous cloud appeared on the south horizon, gray and laden with moisture.

The temperature at 8 p.m. was in the 30s. Then it warmed up. I slept and woke and slept. Electrical flickers began in the dark, which at first I mistook for flashes on my retina, since they made no noise. A light clicking sound came next -- freezing rain. Finally, around 3 a.m., the soft, sickening sound of snow sliding from the tent.

Sticking my head out at 6, I stood up unsteadily in a new world of white. The small trees standing about the lake looked like badly built snowmen. Five inches lay on the ground, yet to my relief, it was only 5 inches. When I found I could make out the outline of the trail, I packed up in a hurry, the wet flakes licking the back of my neck. I was grateful for the mittens I’d brought at the last minute. Slinging on the pack, I began to descend to Lake Edison, more than five miles and 2,000 feet below. I left an orange food packet under the snow. Sorry, it’s there until spring.

Three or four times I lost the trail in the drifts so completely that I couldn’t retrieve it. I had to continue downward according to my memory of going up. It still snowed but not as hard. I passed silently between big pine trees and boulders, my boots sinking in but gripping, and after two hours, about halfway there, I knew I was going to outpace the weather. I lingered on the flank of a dripping gorge, its sides sprayed white as if with firefighting foam. Lost in the clouds, the triangular tops of the mountains put their huge, oblong bases on display. In a sloping meadow, I roared at the scenery in delight and defiance. The freshly fallen aspen leaves were like yellow rose petals upon white felt.

Just before reaching the lake, I fell while crossing a brook, too giddy as I hopped across the stones. A banged shin was a small price to pay. It was early Sunday afternoon. Wintry clouds twisted across Lake Edison and skidded above my head. While I waited for the wind to ease so that I could handle the kayak, I met a rough-and-ready party of three who were on their way in. The trio made me pause and question my worry. (I later learned that they didn’t get far before the real blizzard hit, and they had to struggle out.)

The wind persisted through the afternoon, and I had no desire to camp another night. I ditched my backpack beneath the kayak and hoofed five miles on the easy trail around the lake to the Vermilion Valley Resort, a crusty collection of cabins and tent platforms.

“The last customer of the season,” the staff called me. Also the only one. I handed over my credit card.

The next morning, as the temperatures fell, I towed the kayak across the wind-whipped water with a rented motorboat, and in the afternoon I drove out of the mountains, slithering on the road, gunning first gear. I passed two abandoned vehicles but beat the next snowfall.

When the storms peaked on Tuesday, some 3 feet of snow had fallen. The weather didn’t clear until Thursday, freeing the skies for helicopters. Twenty-two hikers were pulled out by search and rescue operations. Two climbers in Yosemite were killed. Given the sweep of the emergency, I cannot decide if I was safe because I was fit and capable, or just stupid and lucky.

So what is the difference between those who were rescued from the great Sierra storm and those who didn’t have to be?

Although we all faced the same conditions initially, some of us bolted like rabbits and others froze in uncertainty, guaranteeing that they would be snowed in. You never read about the rabbits.

It’s said that people who take physical risks “live on the edge,” and the trick is to creep out on it without falling off. If that’s true, why do they do it?

I think it has to do with taste. When the blandness of everyday experience becomes dissatisfying, even the predictable discomforts, such as cold nights and sore legs -- to say nothing of the anxiety of the unpredictable -- are attractive. Sweetness and sourness, in whatever combination, are better than nothing at all.

Oddly, I’m thinking of going again next year.