Falling Into Grace, Gary Yamaguchi

Falling Into Grace
by Gary Yamaguchi

My own story of finding peace and direction with God came about through my love of climbing. More specifically, through three falls that were necessary to bring me to my knees with nowhere to turn but upward.

- Story written February 2022

..................................................................................

I. Commitment – Unnamed Cliff, Mount Rainier National Park, June 1973

The summer of my 16th year saw me return to working at Mount Rainier National Park with the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), then a pilot program initiated by President Nixon. This was my second summer with the YCC, doing work on the trails and meadowlands. The year before had been filled with many new experiences, having been introduced to mountaineering and rock climbing, climbing Mt. Rainer twice by different routes, and being acknowledged as a promising young climber. “Super-climber” was my nickname at the camp. Having that early reputation can get to a 16-year-old’s head!

At the time we were bouldering at about a 5.6 level in our mountaineering boots, though we’d never lead anything beyond class 4 in the mountains. We had our own all-metal MSR Thunderbird ice axes, boundless energy, and no concept of what was or wasn’t dangerous.

Gary, Summit of Mount Rainier July 1972

YCC, Summer 1973

One evening after work was done, another YCCer and I decided to go climb two cracks on a small cliff we’d seen above our camp for the week. It was a fist sized jam crack in the basalt that looked to be easy to climb, and about 10 feet high after reaching a small ledge above the talus. He decided to climb one, and I the other. We decided to race. I remember starting to climb, and with zero jam-crack technique was trying to climb it like Gaston Rebuffat, palms outward against the sharp edges of the crack. I remembered starting up, and my hands starting to slide…

My very next memory was waking up in a tent covered with 3 or 4 sleeping bags. It was dark out. “Where am I? And what I am doing here?” I asked Sue, who was sitting with me. I tried to get up, but couldn’t move as a bolt of pain shot through my right hip.

“Don’t you know? You fell,” she answered. She told me that another boy, Glenn, had seen me take a backward swan dive off the ledge, about 15 feet high, landing head down on a sharp boulder. It had made an ugly hole behind my right ear which was bleeding and bleeding and wouldn’t stop. I’d been unconscious the entire time until then, which was nearly midnight. I’d been carried down the talus slope and placed in the tent, and the other boy I’d been climbing with and Glenn ran down the 8 mile trail to the Carbon River Ranger Station to bring up a litter in the morning.

YCC, Summer 1973

Morning arrived and the entire work crew plus the ranger were there to carry me down. It’s no fun being carried in a litter, and I’m glad I didn’t really eat much beforehand. The ranger directed the rescue effort. Because the litter had to be carried down over the center of the trail, the people on either side had to walk through small trees and bushes, over rocks and logs, whatever was beside the trail. Six people were carrying the litter at a time, three on each side. Only one person could take a break at a time. I was struck by how Sue, maybe 5 foot 1 and 100 pounds, was doing all she could to contribute. Some of the time, she was literally hanging onto the side of the litter and being dragged through the bushes! Meanwhile, the other girl on the work crew always seemed to be taking a break. She was a strong girl, raised on a dairy farm, and had been saying the previous weeks that she liked me. This was such a contradiction! Why was this physically strong girl always taking a break, when the much smaller, tiny girl with no professed affections just wouldn’t let go?

To cut to the end of the story, I was driven to the hospital where I stayed for a few days, and then was able to be transferred home. I’d sustained a concussion, a puncture wound of my temporal skull, and a hairline fracture of my pelvis. It could’ve been ‘way worse. My doctor told me that if I’d struck my head a half-inch or an inch in either direction, I would have lost my memory or been killed. My mom said something that struck me, that perhaps there was someone up above who saved me for a reason. I thought long and hard about that, and about the Bible studies my sister had brought me to, and about what gave that little Sue so much strength. I knew she was a Christian. I decided to give it a test…

Sue, YCC, Summer 1973

“God, if you’re there, please show me by healing me quickly so that I can rejoin the YCC and climb Mt. Rainier with my brother David. If you do that, I’ll dedicate my life to serving you.” God did! I was able to bear weight on my legs within two weeks, rehab by swimming, and was back at Mr. Rainier 5 weeks later. David and I even made a summit attempt with a group from the camp. Though we didn’t make the summit, we did have a grand time trying.

I spent that next school year applying to colleges, and was pretty distracted from serving God, but remembered the commitment I’d made. Once in college I did join the campus fellowship, a local church, and a small group of guys devoted to one another, and began to develop an understanding of the ways of God.

Mount Rainier 1974

...................................................................................

II. How the Proud Fall! – Magic Mountain, North Cascades, July 1977

Winters were now spent going to college in southern California, where I’d been introduced to real rock climbing and had experienced several spring breaks in Yosemite Valley. Summers were now spent working on roads and trails in the North Cascades National Park. It was an idyllic life, spent out on the trails all week and climbing nearby peaks and rock walls on weekends. The only problem was finding willing climbing partners, as there were none among the trail crew or ranger staff in my section of the park. When a climber came in, it was great. Otherwise, it came down to twisting some non-climber’s arm and teaching them what they needed to know.

Well, the weekend came when there was nobody to go with me to climb Magic Mountain, a beautiful pyramid-shaped mountain south of Cascade Pass. I decided that I’d just go on my own, then. I didn’t need anybody else to do this climb. And climb it I did, everything going well until I discovered that I’d climbed the wrong summit! Unfortunately, there wasn’t sufficient time to go around to the correct summit, get down, and make the afternoon shuttle bus. I decided to just descend the couloir below the north summit that appeared to lead all the way down into the basin below the peak, and gain the trail from there. After all, I had the right training, a good ice axe, crampons, everything I needed.

Front-pointing down the icy couloir proved to be slow going. I thought I’d never make the shuttle bus that way… Why not Frankenstein step the rest of the way? The frozen snow was beginning to soften, and if I took large enough steps I thought I’d be able to punch through the crust. The first two steps went according to plan. On the third step, I discovered that I’d made a (near) fatal oversight. I hadn’t removed my crampons, and the snowball that formed and adhered to the bottom of my foot caused my foot to immediately skate out from beneath me, and I fell backward onto my ice axe. Falling with my entire body weight onto my hand caused my hand to open and lose my

grip on the axe, and immediately I was shooting down the gulley, bouncing up on the sun cups (sunken areas where the snow had sublimated directly to the atmosphere). I tried desperately to get ahold of my axe, which was attached by a two-foot leash to my wrist, as I didn’t want to get impaled by it, and I wanted to stop my fall by executing a self-arrest. But every time I tried to grab it, another sun cup would throw me up in the air again and I kept tumbling and whirling down the slope. I was completely out of control. I’d heard of stories where people had let go of their ice axes, and I’d retorted that those people deserved to die because one should never, ever lose their axe. But here I was with my axe and I bouncing together down a steep couloir, with no way to grab it.

Magic Mountain

All of a sudden, I landed face down on the slope with all four extremities hitting the snow at the same time. My feet were down and my hands were up. I miraculously had screeched to a halt. There is no way that I should have stopped like that. What were the chances? I felt as if the hand of God or an angel had reached out and pressed me against that slope to keep me from peeling off.

When I gathered my senses, I grabbed my axe and sunk it into the slope. Shaking uncontrollably, I carefully crawled and kick stepped to the side of the gulley to sit in a hole. I checked my body for injuries – none. No blood, except a bloody nose. One crampon was missing and was somewhere up the slope. From my tracks I estimated the distance of my fall at 300 feet. Looking below, I’d stopped maybe 100 feet from hitting a small band of rocks cutting across the gulley. That small band of rocks, I later found, was the top of a 200-foot-high rocky cliff from which there would have been no survival. Against all odds I’d been saved again!

I sat there in the hole for a long time before I dared to move again. A large raven flew and perched on a rock across the couloir. Its call made it sound like it was laughing. Was that the voice of God, speaking through the raven? I felt that it was mimicking Solomon of the Bible, telling me that I had lost my way because of my vanity. I realized then that it had been my pride that had caused that fall. My pride in my abilities, my equipment, and training, and that I needed no one to accomplish my vain goal. But what was that compared to the God who had made the universe?

.................................................................................

III. Redirection – Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, June 1982

A young man’s dream came true that summer, accomplishing a clean climb of the Northwest Face Route on Half Dome! Ever since the landmark 1973 article by Doug Robinson had come out in National Geographic about the first hammerless ascent of Half Dome, I’d wanted to do that. I had a great and complimentary partner, Rob, who was tall

and could take the big, scary chimney pitches. Even though we’d spent our first night sleeplessly, sitting on a reallysmall, down sloping ledge one pitch short of our intended bivy ledge, we’d managed to get to Big Sandy Ledge and had a restful second night. We grunted up the Zig-Zag pitches, and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacular open-air scenery of the Thank God Ledge. I led up the A3 aid pitch with many missing bolts, and had some memorable moments standing on micronuts and climbing atop bolt hangars to lunge for rotting slings hanging down. All that was behind us now. We’d made it to the last, easy pitch.

The topographic map showed that the route went right, which was exactly the wrong direction. I went right. It started out okay, though there weren’t many places to put any nut anchors. Everything seemed loose, with dirt behind the flakes. Oh well, “Mr. Friction” wasn’t going to fall anyway on a 5.7 pitch! I started up a friction slab which immediately got hard. I was thinking 5.10b, which was up at about the top of my abilities. Looking up, I saw that there was a big jug to grab, and after that, the angle of the slope lessened. That’s where the 5.7 pitch must be, I thought. Just one move! I stepped up on a slick knob, reached for the jug, and felt a very shallow, slippery dish. The rays of the setting sun had thrown a shadow across the hold, making it appear sharp-edged where in fact it was shallow and rounded. The thought immediately came to me that I was in trouble, and then I vaguely remember being sideways and hearing my two nuts come out. “Pop-pop” they went…

My very next thought was, “Why is Rob yelling at me? And what is he doing ‘way up there?” I had been 40 feet above him, and now was 40 feet below, having pulled out all the anchors between his belay and where I’d been. I’d blacked out for about 5 minutes and Rob was frantic, for good reason. An 80-foot vertical fall is pretty extreme, and in those days usually resulted in massive injuries if not death. Fortunately, his belay was anchored with several cams and was super solid, my 11 mm rope was new, he was using a new-fangled Sticht belay plate, and my homemade harness held together!

I had struck my head on something on the way down, and there was a golf-ball sized knot on the top of my head. The knot of the swami belt had pressed into my side and created a bruise that lasted for months. Other than that, no injuries!

Again, I’d been saved against all odds. I realized this was my third major fall that could’ve, should’ve, would’ve ended my life if not for my life having had a divine purpose. After this fall, I thought long and hard about who would have missed me if I had died. I sadly realized that there weren’t many people that I’d invested either time or part of myself in, who I’d really contributed to, and who would really miss me when I’m gone. I had lived a selfish life, dedicated to developing myself, achieving things that were really only meaningful to me. I decided that had to change right then and there, and began serving and leading youth groups at church, teaching, working to support missionaries in the field, and spending time with people from all walks of life.

I became a professor, dedicated to using engineering to improve the lives of people with disabilities, and later a biomechanical consultant to bring honest and factual analyses of injury into the courtroom. My wife and I raised three wonderful children who are leading productive lives. All of them enjoy climbing with friends – carefully! They’ve heard all my stories…

Half Dome, Summit 1982

....................................................................................

So there you have it, three falls that changed my life. Like Marty, I thank God for these falls, as they stopped me abruptly in my path and turned my life around from following a selfish and meaningless path. If you’re reading this, and you think you don’t need God, I hope you won’t have to go through what I went through to find my way. I’ve heard many stories of how proud men and women like myself had to be really broken before they saw that there was light shining on another way out there, that a man’s past can be forgiven, and that there really is a Jesus who welcomes all with open arms. If you’re at the end of your rope, and you don’t know where to turn, please reach out to me or to someone you know and trust. And reach out to God! You’re not alone!

Gary T. Yamaguchi
Lynnwood, Washington
[email protected]

....................................................................................

Gary - The Black Dike 1981

Gary - Boston Peak 1975, North Cascades

Gary - Yosemite 1978

Gary's family, Thanksgiving 2021

...................................................................................

Showing a few of the many items that Gary donated to the Karabin Climbing Museum

Gary Yamaguchi 2/2024