Return to Bloody — jeremy p. mcghee

On June 2, 2012, I made a promise. As I lay in an orange toboggan, my friends carrying me to the base of Bloody Mountain, an emerald lake came into view. Its stillness was captivating. In the movie—which documented our climb and descent of Bloody Couloir—you can hear me say, “I wanna jump in that!” Silently, to myself, I swore I would come back and do just that.

I don’t want to be one of those people who says they are going to do “All These Things” and never does them. So, on September 12, 2019, I staged to finally fulfill that promise. Stormy Dan (my trusty Subaru) took me to foot of Laurel Lakes Road, and the long, arduous climb promptly began.

That road is heinous. It rises 3000 vertical feet in just under five miles. That’s steep. It is also very rocky and loose, a struggle for even the most capabl…and I needed to do this alone. I didn’t want anyone to feel obliged to suffer it with me. The difference between then and now is my bike. With full suspension and a power assist, solo missions are now a possibllity. No need to be carried.

The beginning of the road goes straight up. When you look at it from the 395, it looks pleasant, like a benign dirt corridor leading up a green knoll. You might think to yourself, “That road looks nice. Maybe I’ll explore it someday.” Well, I’m telling you … up close and personal, it’s a beast.

My drive wheel spun in the loose terrain with almost every rotation. That “green knoll” is a small mountain and the straight, “benign corridor” evolves to switchbacks to accommodate its pitch. Hope for relief is dashed at each turn, as a new boulder field much more menacing than the last is revealed.

It took me an hour and a half to go a mile and a half. Eventually, I crested the knoll, but it was bittersweet. On the one hand, you’ve conquered a harrowing journey. Your brain bathes in the beauty of a lush green meadow, fed by a waterfall and a sleepy creek. On the other hand, you realize the expedition is not even half done, and the hardest parts lay ahead. Any sense of accomplishment is quickly thwarted by the painful understanding that you cannot stop if you want to reach the top during daylight.

At one point, the road travels alongside the creek. The smell of wet rocks is powerfully nostalgic. I breathed it in, and the memories flowed. I recognized the spot where Colin, the Bloody Expedition Leader and my dear friend, took a picture of me in the trees. It turned out to be a hilarious, find Waldo in the trees moment. I used it as my profile pic for several years. I laughed out loud thinking about it and resolved to find it when I got back.

Bloody Couloir slowly came into view with every inch of road I gained. There it loomed, old and ominous. The sense of history I feel in this area is stronger than anything I’ve felt anywhere else in the world. When I’m in Europe, for example, I like to imagine all the people through the centuries who passed the exact spot where I am standing. But this is older … much older. The scree fields scream of prehistoric, cataclysmic events that wiped out entire species millions of years ago. You can feel it.

Selfie at the top. You can see the switchbacks in the background

As I kept climbing, I looked up at Bloody and spoke to the camera, sharing the experience with my YouTube audience. My focus briefly lapsed and my left wheel ran up a bush, which caused an irrecoverable sideways shift in momentum and I flipped over. I pulled the release on my seat belt and ejected from the bike. As I lay on the ground, I realized I was actually touching the ground. That almost never happens for me, since my wheelchair acts as a barrier between me and the Earth. I touched her and thanked her. I felt balanced by her, a feeling so light you don’t know it’s there until it’s gone. Something we should all experience more often.

To climb back in the bike, I needed to flip it over, then re-position it so that I was projecting downhill instead of up, and remove my heavy pack. It was full of tools, food, water, and everything for every contingency I could think of. Once I was back in the saddle, I let out a heavy sigh. I was only about halfway to the destination. I kept inching along, one crank at a time.

The controller for my power assist has nine levels. I’ve learned that level three keeps pace with most able-bodied riders. It’s just enough. I call it The Equalizer. I may be writing this just for myself because I feel I need to justify it, but with the assist on level 3, that’s right about the same level of effort anyone else would be putting forth. The difference is that anyone else can walk though the chunky sections. I cannot. As my tire spun and spun, trying to find traction, my battery began to die.

The long, straight section though the meadow eventually makes an abrupt U-turn up the first of three major switchbacks, and the real climbing finally begins. “This is it. This is the hard part. After these switchbacks, its basically a straight shot to the lake and its all downhill on the way back. If I can make it up this, then i’m all good,”…or so I thought.

Once to the top, the road down to the lake is steep and covered with extremely loose scree. Scree is “a collection of broken rock fragments at the base of crags, mountain cliffs, volcanoes, or valley shoulders that has accumulated through periodic rockfall from adjacent cliff faces.” (Wikipedia) It moves underneath you. I would need to climb back up this and I knew my battery would die.

First things first, though. I needed to jump in this lake, and how the heck was I going to do this? I crawled the bike, precariously, down an embankment to a grassy spot right at the water’s edge, dismounted, ate a turkey sandwich, and soaked in the view. The lake was so captivating that I completely forgot about Bloody sitting patiently right behind me. I turned around. Seven and a half years had whipped by since I last saw her so close. I wept.

I took off my clothes. The sun warmed my pale skin and I scooted along the bank, strategizing where to make an entry and successful exit. I knew it was going to be very cold and wanted to make sure I could get out before hypothermia could grab hold. Its a shitty feeling—hypothermia—foggy brain, fumbling mouth, and swirling balance. I like to avoid it if I can.

I wore socks to protect my ankles and cycling bibs to pad my boney butt. I slid my feet into the water and leaned down to put my hand on the rocks below. Frigid. I knew the water was going to be cold, but not like this. This was going to need to be a quick baptism. I shifted my weight onto my submerged hand, swung my ass around and lowered myself, my body quickly girded by the clear, bitterly cold, water. I scuttled on my back out a little ways, took a breath, dunked my head, and headed back to the bank immediately, survival taking precedent over “soaking” in the moment. Hypothermia was already starting. It was that cold.

Luckily, a young, strong Australian fellow named Tim happened to be there and took interest in what I was doing. I tried to pull myself out and couldn't. He reached down and helped me onto the bank. This would not be the only time he helped me.

I dried off quickly, pulled my clothes back on and remounted the bike. Almost as soon as I started climbing the steep road up from the lake, my battery died. The shortest distance my battery had died in the past was 16 miles. This day, it died in 5 miles! That’s how brutal and demanding the climb to the lake was. Now, I had to climb out from lake, and the gearing is just too big to pedal without the assist. I wrapped a strap around the front of my bike and Tim and I got out of there together. He pulled and I cranked as much as I possibly could. I could see the strap biting into his hand and fought off the urge to quit until he said okay. The pain was intense, but there was no way I was going to give in while he toiled.

It took about half an hour, but we eventually got out of there and to a point where it was downhill all the way home. Tim snapped a picture of us and of me, with the red-orange and gray-blue layered rock mountain beyond, across the green meadow stretching far beneath us. We bombed down the road together, our eyeballs vibrating in their sockets and arms barely able to hold on.

At the bottom, Stormy Dan sure was a sight for sore eyes! I was so happy to be back safely. I now keep a spare battery in my arsenal of contingency gear, and I promise to think ahead about seemingly little details like getting back up on the bank. Thanks to Tim, everything turned out okay, and my Return to Bloody is finally checked off the bucket list.

Here’s the video and a couple others if you wanna see more of this momentous day and my trip to Mammoth.