Troop 3

The Scout Troop began tossing around the idea of hiking the John Muir Trail.  My dad and I were among the 8 adults and 6 kids that signed up for the trip.  The John Muir Trail begins in Yosemite Valley, heads southeast through the High Sierra backcountry, and ends 211 miles later at the top of Mount Whitney.  The trail never dips below 8,000 feet in elevation and the last 30 miles are all above 10,000. 

A couple of adults in the troop volunteered to drop us off at Yosemite and pick us up 3 weeks later when we came down off Whitney.  To reduce the weight we would have to carry, we arranged a rendezvous about halfway, where a pack station would deliver food to us for the second half of the trip.  In 2014 approximately 1,500 people attempted to complete the trail.  In the 3 weeks we spent on the trail in 1959, we met only 3 other groups trying to do the same.  Prior to reaching Rae Lakes, we went 6 days straight without seeing another soul.

The number of miles covered on any one day depended on the terrain.  Some sections of the trail rise and fall dramatically and can slow you down.  We also detoured to climb several peaks along the way and that too cut down on our forward progress.  Although Mount Rixford was not the highest mountain that we climbed that summer, it proved to be the most exclusive. 

On the summit of any notable peak in the Sierras, there is a register in which climbers can record the deed.  It is a simple small book with lined pages for climbers to record their name, the date and a brief note.  The book is protected against the elements by a pot metal box that a climber usually finds stuck between a few rocks at the summit. 

In recent years people have been stealing these books to keep as souvenirs or to sell on eBay.  For all I know, the use of registers may have been abandoned.  When we first started climbing in the Sierras in the mid 1950s there was always a register on any peak over 12,000 feet.  The more difficult a mountain top was to reach, the fewer climbers were recorded in the register.  We never tried climbing anything that required a rope.  If we couldn’t find a route to the top by hands and feet, we’d turn around and go back down.  In some registers the dates and names would go back decades and include well known mountaineers, some of whom have peaks in the Sierras named after them.  When we got to the top of Mount Rixford that summer, the register indicated we were the first to do so since 1947. 

We spent one day just enjoying ourselves at a high altitude lake that we had never been to before.  It was a unique setting and it was worth losing a day’s progress to take in the scenery.  Handy and I spent the afternoon sitting on a log in the middle of the lake.  We discovered that the shear cliff that rose above one end of the lake produced a great echo.  In the Sierras, especially above the tree line (usually around 11,000 feet), there is nothing other than wind or running water that can produce sound.  The silence is all the more pronounced as it is paired with spectacular visuals.  We found that the cliff could reproduce and bounce back our belches with little if any distortion whatsoever.  We were intrigued enough by this to spend hours at it, resulting in a sore throat that limited my speech to a hoarse whisper for the next 3 days.

When we arrived at the rendezvous point, Dick Savage was there waiting for us along with the food.  Savage was a very large kid who played football for Eagle Rock High School and was going to walk the last half of the trail with us.  In the 1950s there were never more than a few players over 200 pounds on any high school football team,  Savage was 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed over 300 pounds.  Fortunately, he was a gentle soul with a good sense of humor.  His size was put to good use the previous summer.  The troop had gone camping at the beach in Carpentaria one weekend.  A group of us were walking along the water’s edge one night and spotted a waterlogged telephone pole sitting just beyond the reach of the shore break.  We all had the same idea at the same time – roll it down the slope into the water. 

We lined up along the pole and soon had it moving down toward the water.  I was very focused on the task at hand and failed to pick up on the fact that everyone else had bailed out before the log met the incoming wave.  It was the middle of the night and I didn’t see it until the last second.  I turned to make my escape and the telephone pole, with the help of the wave, mowed me down like a steam roller.  I was face down, underwater, and the telephone pole had rolled up to a point where it now rested on the back of my neck.  I had no other option than to wait for the wave that had flattened me to retreat back into the sea.  When the water did recede, Savage was a key member of the group that rolled the telephone pole off of me.

Savage, my dad and I, and 2 other scouts from our troop had been asked to join the Order of the Arrow earlier that summer.  None of us had ever heard of it before but discovered it was some honorary Boy Scout organization that inducted a small group of new members once a year.  We were instructed to bring a sleeping bag, provisions suitable for a weekend of camping, and show up in the Tujunga River foothills.  When we arrived we were told to go up the trail a short ways, pick a campsite, and await further instructions. 

We took a campsite and had a look around as we waited.  There were a dozen or so other small groups waiting at campsites in the same general area.  My dad was the first of us to notice that some of the officials running the affair were moving through the campsites. It appeared the officials were looking for the group they were assigned to lead through the weekend initiation ritual.  They had helpers with them that my dad said were confiscating any and all food carried in by the inductees.  My dad told us to take out any food we could reach in our backpacks, wolf down half of it immediately, and stuff the other half in our pockets.

An official entered our campsite and asked hurriedly, “I’m looking for Troop 1 from Eagle Rock.”  My dad answered, “I thimp thar owver thur!”, and pointed east with a hand holding an empty food wrapper.  My dad’s pronunciation was impaired by a mouthful of lunch meat.  The official must have thought my dad had a speech impediment since he sped off to find us.  By the time he returned we were done with our meal and had loaded our pockets with snacks for later.

The initiation consisted of walking around the foothills all hours of the night, partaking in Native American symbolic rituals, and a big graduation breakfast the next morning made from all the confiscated food.  The highlight for me was the bow ceremony.  Around 3:00 a.m. they led all of us up to the top of a butte and made us form a circle.  They then produced a bow, instructed each of us to repeat something in Cherokee, then draw back and release the bow string, launching an imaginary arrow into the happy hunting grounds.  This was to be carried out by each of us, one person at a time.  The bow monitor for the ceremony was none other than Iron Eyes Cody.  He was featured on those anti-polution ads wearing a war bonnet and a tear on one cheek. 

Everything was moving along until halfway around the circle. Iron Eyes Cody handed the bow to Savage who was next in line.  Savage, unintentionally he claimed later, drew back on the string and snapped the bow in half.  The war paint on Iron Eyes Cody’s face did little to hide his expression.  Since Iron Eyes was a full blooded Italian, I doubt the bow was a family heirloom, but none of us knew that at the time.  The ceremony was cut short at that point and we moved on to the next ritual as there was no back-up bow.  So much for the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.