"Happy Hare's Death Valley Days - Part 2"

At Death Valley National Park, the phrase, “A walk in the park” takes on a whole new meaning. Don’t take that walk in the Park unless you can endure scorching temperatures in torturous terrain.

Death Valley is a moonscape where no step is a step for mankind, but selfish steps aimed toward getting out of that Hell on earth. No amount of preparation will gird you for the muscle burning agony. The relentless trek wears down any natural joint lubricant, and then it becomes bone grinding against bone.

Vince Lombardi, coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said that “fatigue makes us cowards.” In the relentless ordeal of a marathon, your will can melt away and your mind and body tell you that nothing is worth this and it’s okay to surrender, sometimes to death itself. This happened often in Death Valley and it is why the remains of poor wanderers were found just yards from water. Their bodies and will quit on them and it no longer mattered that life-giving sustenance was within reach.

I have forgotten all the torture of the Death Valley Walk, but I remember never having more fun.

On Labor Day weekend, the time of the Jerry Lewis MD Telethon, the Happy Hare Death Valley Exhibition (Not Expedition) was assembled at Scotty’s Castle in the northern end of Death Valley, ready for the sacrificial Hare to embark on his historic trek.

There were my wife Carol, Marine Lt. Dick May, head of Marine Corps Boot training at MCRD, Will Tapp, Wes Reynolds, and Lois McCoy of the San Diego Mountain Rescue Team. Scotty was not there, but his ghost still haunted the place.

He had conned an admiring millionaire, Alber Johnson, into building this large compound in the Valley, because the place was great for the man’s health..Scotty also promised the man great wealth, that he had discovered a lost gold mine in the Valley and only needed a grub stake to bring it in.

Johnson liked Scotty and remained his amused admirer even after he realized that Scotty was a major con artist. Today, Scotty might be either a talk show host or a bawdy morning man.

The 27,000 square foot compound was deserted during the summer, as were all of the principal buildings at Death valley. Only rattlers, lizards, scorpion, hawks, peccaries, coyotes, wild cats, cougars, desert camels and our intrepid party braved this alien landscape. The inhabitants were mostly cold blooded creatures, which probably included Lt May, my Marine DI escort.

He brooked a moment or two of niceties between us, then it was time for me to fall in and break into the Marine double time. It had been agreed that Will, Wes and Lois, having driven the vehicles all day, would not have to join us.

They entered the big RV and began a slow drive along the main road south with Lois bringing up the rear in her radio truck

At May’s signal, I fell in. We were too pumped to feel the heat, a good 110 degrees, and close to 200 degrees. on the deck.

It was comforting to see Carol fall in with me.

She matched May’s determination to get the show on the road., then off the road as we trotted a 1000 yards out and onto the grinding terrain of the desert.

120 steps per minutes were our marching orders and May relentlessly set the pace without looking back It was up to us to stay with him. and his crisp attitude showed that he expected us to be Marines. “Yes sir, 120 steps per minute, SIR!

It became apparent hours later how valuable Will, Wes and Lois, our support team, were going to be. They were all rugged hikers with Indian-like tracking skills . They had often trailed lost hikers for hours, rescuing them just as they were surrendering to thirst and exhaustion. The trio was skilled at high grade first aid, able to set a broken leg or worse, and lug the injured party off a mountain ledge from thousands of feet up..

It was not unusual for even the most seasoned climber to freeze, suddenly consumed by a paralyzing fear of heights. Will and Wes were cheer leaders on mountain ledges. They could go up and sit with the guy, gradually easing the fear out of him, then leading him off the perilous mountain..

Lois, in her early forties, and also a seasoned mountaineer had proven her worth by setting up a base camp with radio communications and supplying food- including bean and bourbon soup- and a cheery presence to her fellow mountain rescuers.

Their mission here was to be good company and to make sure I made it out of there, if I got hurt. They had hauled me up 10,000 foot Picacho Del Diablo in Baja the year before, so there was no doubt about their strengths and abilities.

I was in top shape, thanks to the training given me by Maylen and Lt. May. Once settled into the hike, I soon took the hint from his silence not to make small talk, as this sapped energy.

He wielded a flash light lighting our path. The night passed smoothly enough with the howl of coyotes and other indecipherable animal noises wafting across the wasteland. In the early morning light, I even saw a couple of desert camels galloping in the distance. They’re the survivors of a failed experiment to make them the work animals of Death Valley.

A squealing peccary was flushed from behind a boulder after we had walked a few hours. May brandished a razor sharp bayonet out of nowhere, and stood in front of me like I was the President., and he was ready to take a bullet for me. The pig showed the good sense of swerving away at the last moment, then rushing out of sight, still squealing angrily. “Porky just escaped being dinner,” He said, betraying his seeming resolve to avoid anything light-hearted. .

After hours of steady walking, I saw the difference between me, an ordinary man and Lt May. I began to take hourly ten or fifteen minute breaks. He tolerated this, but stood trotting in place during my break.

Will and Wes grew restless when morning broke. To them, we were having too much fun trekking through the rugged desert floor, their kind of country. I looked up to see Will’s impish face a few yards from us. “Do you mind company?” he asked, falling in with us.

He was a five foot seven hunk of granite, able to scamper up and down even the most demanding of mountains. A little walk like this was, to him…well. a walk in the park. Wes Reynolds would let Will have his fun for part of the day, then replace him. They had talked it over, and wanted the San Diego Mountain Rescue Team to be represented.

Lt May said nothing when I first whipped out a flask full of Gatorade, but I hereby give notice to future Death Valley walkers that Gatorade is fine for short hauls, but the rich sugar content in the drink began to back up and burn in my throat and esophagus. May handed me a canteen of plain water. “This is best for long marches,” he said.:

“But, what about energy?” I asked, concerned about my staying power. He handed me a small bunch of green grapes. “These are all you’ll need,” he said. He had brought along a knapsack full of them.

After 12 hours, I told him that my legs and hips were beginning to ache with lactic acid build-up.“ He held out more grapes. I took a handful, and experienced how delicious and thirst satisfying seedless green grapes can be. Within minutes, my lactic acid burn was magically gone.

Time for a Marine Survival lecture.. His tone was like he had said this many times to thousands of boots. “Grapes are rich with antioxidants that fight free radicals that are like teenagers running though your body, raising hell everywhere they go. The antioxidants in the grapes grab them, hold them captive, then purge them from the body.

The heat of the mid-day sun enveloped us, like we were baking in an oven. .

Going into the second day, I began to experience more difficulty getting up and taking off after each break. I stumbled for a few steps, before regaining my stride, like I had to re-educate my legs how to walk

Carol had made it obvious that she was up for the entire walk, but she reluctantly returned to the RV to join Lois, giving us rub downs and helping with the grub. I had not realized how strong in body and character she was, a template for today’s young woman.

At that time, In our four years of marriage, Carol proved to be as all-knowing and supportive as you saw on those old 50’s TV shows when Mom knew everything, but was happy to cook, fold laundry, get dressed in five minutes to go out, and look up admiringly to dad who knew best.

If you want to gauge a companion before you marry, take her or him to Death Valley. More realistically, rent an RV and go on the road together. The first day, it’s “dear and darling.” Within three days of the cramped isolation with your companion, you’re either more in love or looking at potential road kill. If you can get along under those trying circumstances, you have a rich bonus, a lifelong companion.

The initial rush of The Walk was gone, evaporated in the scorching heat. The trails grew even more arduous just as I began to feel the fatigue more starkly. .It was exhausting dodging basketball sized rocks and sliding down and scrambling up arroyos, and even climbing house-sized boulders.

In that phase of our Walk. it was a matter of walking several hundred yards around a stand of boulders or take the short cut over them. That was where Will and Wes came in. Wes mounted the boulders after roping me in and Will climbed with me shoving my feet onto micro-ledges and otherwise pointing to hand holds. He would often shield me with his body and give me extra support by wedging his boot against mine to give me extra traction. A short fall can be as fatal as a thousand foot one.

Of course, Lt May hand- over-handed them with little trouble

To my relief, Lois had pre-arranged, without fanfare, for a line up of ham radio operators standing by to bounce my signal back to the Jerry Lewis Telethon She had realized that driving me to a mountain top to give a report was going to be too time-consuming. This was the quality of their help I was getting, given freely, with no thought of thanks or publicity.

My first report to Jerry Lewis happened after we had walked thirty miles or so and morning jock that I am, I fibbed about the pure joy of being in scenic Death Valley. The reports after that were short because of his time crunch but he made sure that the drama of my walk was transmitted to his viewers. And, despite the selfless attitude of my helpers, I made sure the public knew how great they were.

My mind often wandered to my forebears as I trudged along the trackless trail, Moses in particular. How did he endure all those years in the grinding desert? Was he, like me, under the pressure of having to produce in front of a large audience? In his case, the Israelites, a tough crowd.

What kind of shtick would he have used in the warm-up? “I just came down from the mountain schlepping all these stone tablets, ladies and germs. And boy! Are my arms tired.?” Dadum.

During the Walk, I learned things about myself that remain with me to this day. Next week, what I learned.