The Poker Report

5-27-01

"Keeping Expectations Low Since 2001"

On Thursday Shaw, Erik, John, Cooney and I drive in Erik’s Suburu up to Mt. Shasta. Erik is leading us up. Erik is the guy you want to depend on. He’s got talent to spare and is never greedy with the Gatorade. Erik has a personal relationship with the mountain. We’re loaded with equipment, pick axes, tents, stoves, plastic boots, crampons. We pick up vacuum packed tuna fish, granola and M&Ms, a twelve pack of beer to help Shaw get home in case we make it, pita bread, and pop tarts. It’s warm and we sleep in our bags beneath a clear sky at the Bunny Flats, sixty-nine hundred feet.

6:30 wake up, tragedy strikes the mountain: I’m still tired. Peanut butter bagels. Trail mix. Four hours to climb three thousand feet with fifty pound packs on our backs. Try to take a shit at horse camp, it’s the last chance you get. We reach base camp at noon. Poker on the mountain from two to six. Four hours of high altitude gaming beneath a blistering sun from which there is no shade.

The big hands: John "I don’t remember how to play" Morris kills my ace high flush with a full house. Erik takes Cooney’s small straight with king high straight. We keep score on paper, I am the accountant, the bookkeeper, the banker. Whispers of cheating and sharking slip from Cooney’s cornfed lips.

The view: Thousands of feet below the central valley, a thin pink haze over the adjoining peaks. At ten thousand feet it’s hard to think, my two nines become nine ten. Twenty five dollars becomes twenty six fifty. We play on paper, no chips. Only a fool would carry chips. We play on faith, no amount of sunscreen will keep the sun off your cheeks. A three thousand foot walk with fifty pounds of tent, stove, pasta, pots, pans, water, and heavy plastic boots to play a four hour game of poker, five dollar buy in, five cent ante, with a view.

We’re not alone. Forty people pitch camp on the ridge. Many more are expected on the weekend. They play frisbee. They talk peaks in South America. They talk loneliness. They talk bars full of women at seventeen thousand feet in Peru. The fashion: Floppy hats and long johns.

A poker game at ten thousand feet. We forgot the ace rankings t-shirt. We’ve got four thousand more feet to go vertical. We sit at the base of a steep glacier. Wake up time is 3:30. Have the coffee ready. Have your bag packed. Burn some incense for the mountain. Put one foot in front of the other. Don’t think about your money, your parents, your job. The mountain drops hundred pound boulders down its west flank. They thunder across the sky and then smash into a pile of slush at the ridge line below the red teeth. The sky stretches like a blanket. You can touch it with your fingers. The air is thin. You suck the air to the sound of tumbling boulders. I still can’t believe he beat my flush with a full house on the river.

At 7pm, as we’re eating soup, the sun dips behind a thick grey fogbank and a cold wind swishes down the south face of Shasta. Not a freezing gale, not a blizzard, but we are no longer comfortable in our bivouac. Shaw is no longer lounging shirtless paging through the New Yorker. The cold eats through layers of fleece and hats, the temperature drops thirty degrees in an instant. Later we cannot sleep. In the tent I tell Cooney not to put his arms around me, I am not his heating pad. The wind beats against the tent and the tent shudders and moves. The wind yells and screams. Tomorrow will be hell.

Last heard on top of Mt. Shasta:

Jensen: Hey Steve, how do you feel on a scale of one to ten?

Steve: Four, but if I took a shit I’d be a six.

At 3:30 am we peel out of our bags. Already you can see the headlamps marching up the mountain face. Gotta move while the snow is firm. But it takes a long time to make coffee at ten thousand feet. By 4:30 we’re moving.

By 9:30 we’ve crossed the glacier, we’ve climbed misery hill, we’re standing on the summit, fourteen thousand feet above the sea. You can see deep into Oregon. The altitude steals your oxygen and the beauty takes away the last of your breath. My bones hurt. I’ve been lagging behind, moving slower than the rest. I am to mountaineering what Bukowski was to tennis.

11:30 We’ve descended to base camp by sitting and sliding down the mountain on our ass digging a pick axe into the snow to slow our fall and moderate our speed. It doesn’t always work down a thirty five degree grade, flying down a steep glacier legs akimbo, hurtling over bumps, rocks scraping your ass at twenty five miles an hour. Mark Shaw lands in torn pants, a victim of his own ice axe, his forearm covered in blood, a gash across his belly.

We pack the tents, the pads, the bags, the stoves, and the cards. Three thousand feet to go to Bunny Flats. The grade’s not as steep, the sun has made the snow soft. We wave sliding down past the late risers treking to Lake Helena with fifty pound packs straining their shoulders. We wave tobogganing past them, our own fifty pound packs tied to our waists, still high from the summit.

At the base of Shasta fifteen religious freaks say prayers and open their arms to the mountain. There’s women in the parking lot. There’s men too, but there’s women. I want to grab one and point at the towering grey slab and say, "You see that? I climbed that mountain. Sex?" But I am sure I would be slapped, spit on, and beat up so I figure to wait until I get home and then call Abby who will listen patiently for a moment or two before saying, "Just an observation. You talk about yourself a lot." The mountain stands seven thousand feet above us. Fresh clouds are moving in across its tusk casting shadows over base camp.

At Berkeley Shaw and John climb into John’s car. REI is closed and we have rental gear to return. We draw cards to see who will return to REI tomorrow with the whole shebang. I pull a ten and hold it close to my chest. I say, "I like it." John pulls a card and his sunburnt cheeks glow. He says, "I like it." Shaw draws last and smiles wide, "I really like it!" I flip my ten. John "I don’t remember how to play" Morris flips THE ACE OF SPADES. Shaw turns over a lowly two of clubs and asks if we wouldn’t like to go two out of three.

Steve Elliott

Editor

The Poker Report