Finally make it to the top, but it’s all downhill from there

Picture this: There is a light rain falling and the road leading upward to 6,000 feet is steep and winding, but the car is in good shape, the windshield wipers are whopping out a disco beat and the traffic is light. So why am I leery? I don’t trust mountains.

Despite the fact that I seem to be smiling in anticipation of viewing Crater Lake, it is a false smile, clamped on my face to please the indomitable Cinelli, who assures me that this silly little trip is nothing compared with what Edmund Hillary faced clawing his way up Mt. Everest.

I have pointed out to her as pleasantly as possible, being as this is a vacation, that when one stops to think about it, Crater Lake is nothing more than a hole in the ground with water in it. She says, when you stop to think about it, a man is nothing more than a biped with a bad attitude.

I find it wise to sometimes just go along, wearing a sappy smile and humming a little tune, the way Dagwood Bumstead survived when Blondie ruled the world. So I shrug and push on as my ears begin to pop from the altitude and the rain begins to fall harder in a funny, flat way, and a wind constituted to blow light things off the highway streaks down from the summit.

“Oh, look,” Cinelli says cheerfully, “snow!”

It is in dirty piles on the roadside, but in terms of word association, “snow” evokes visions of the Donner Party stopped by a raging blizzard in the Sierra Nevada and eating one another to stay alive, until only one little fat couple remain and the husband is beginning to look more and more like a pot roast.

“You can stop the Donner imagery,” Cinelli says, always knowing what I’m thinking. “We’re in a car on a paved road, there’s a lodge up ahead, and you’re too old and tough to eat. Anyhow, it’s old snow.”

“I’d be tender and delicious,” I say in rueful defense of my dinner potential.

“I’ll marinate you in red wine,” she says. “You’d like that.”

“No merlot.”

We are at the entrance to Crater Lake Park when it begins to snow. The stuff blowing against my windshield is not old snow. It is new and threatening.

“The rim drive is closed,” the ranger informs us. She consists of a voice and a hand emerging from a small kiosk, holding information pamphlets. Only when she bends forward is her face visible.

Cinelli is disappointed. The thought of a drive around the lake was what had drawn her this far. I worry that all of this will somehow become my fault, due to the negative vibes I have created. It’s like the T-shirt logo, “If a man should speak in the forest and no woman is present, is he still wrong?” At such times I lower my voice in contrition and, sounding a little like a mortician, say, “Well, I guess we should turn back. Perhaps next year we can -- “

But the ranger adds that we can drive to Rim Village seven miles up the road if we want to, and Cinelli, emulating others who have perished due to their determined attitudes, says, “Onward!”

I put $10 in the hand that is emerging from the kiosk, and as we drive away the ranger’s voice says, “I can’t guarantee a sterling view of the lake.”

As we drive upward, it begins to snow harder, accompanied by a mist that swirls through the evergreens, lacing the gray day with strands of silver. Then, suddenly, it’s a blizzard, and the silvery mist becomes a thick, dark fog. The road is impassable for normal humans. The snow is blinding and the fog is as thick as your grandmother’s quilt. A sign on the side of the road says, “Danger. Cliff edge unstable. Stay back.”

“This time,” I say, crouched forward over the steering wheel, trying to see through the murk, “you’ve really done it, Cinelli. This time, we are going to die.”

“Think of a rescue by a Saint Bernard dog carrying one of those little casks filled with vodka martinis,” she says. “That’ll keep you warm and hopeful.”

We reach the lake. Well, actually, we reach the area where the lake is supposed to be. We are parked in slush and trying to see through the blinding fog.

“I think it’s over that way,” Cinelli says, as the snow falls on our heads. She stares hard at the nothingness as though her gaze, like Superman’s, will pierce through the thickening fog and the lake will appear. It doesn’t. We abandon the quest and return to our dry, warm room on the Rogue River 78 miles away, all downhill.

I promise her casually that we will try for the lake some summer when the sun is shining and the skies are as blue as Brad Pitt’s eyes and the slush is all gone. She makes me sign a note to that effect, but I’m sure I can find a way out of the deal when the time comes. It’s a biped’s way.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.