Mather Pass and Celebrating a Friend in The Palisades

Abe Finkelstein
Jul 6, 2021
3 min read

Saturday Morning, June 26

At Palisade Lakes, around 10:30am or so after a long early morning! Early wake-up before sunrise, my eyes opened to the alpenglow hitting the peaks to the west, just glowing tips of the Palisades before me under the glow of the moon still out, shining and illuminating the rocky boulders in the foreground.

I decided this was the best way to celebrate Vik’s life, here on the backside of his favorite mountains, and the place he fell earlier on Memorial Day weekend. A sunrise ceremony that required me to climb Mather Pass in the dark last night around 10:30pm by headlamp.

The switchbacks became steeper and steeper with steep dropoffs and I realized that Mather might have been a gnarly one to choose in the dark...then the moon-rise finally illuminated the very last of the path revealing the beautiful lake studded valley below. It was fun playing around with the new iPhone night photography settings:

I awoke before dawn, and set up the memorial (of flowers I found earlier the day before going up Pinchot! I did not pick them, but fortuitously found the discarded flower crowns on the trail). I read my remembrance aloud to the wind and sun peeking over the mointain tops.

For Vik

Saturday June 26, 2021

at 5:43, sunrise over the back of the Palisades from the top of Mather Pass.

I only just met Vik recently for a long weekend over Easter, but it was an immediate friendship. We could have been friends forever, catching up laughing and ragging on each other (well mostly ragging on Cody together).

I was so glad we got Vik to join on our ski tour that Easter Sunday. He was convinced late in the game after our breakfast and coffee together, but after taking his sweet time to get ready (faffing about looking for crampons that we contentiously didn’t need anyway) he still needed to rent boots, in which even more waiting ensued and I was able to buy the yellow sun shirt still wear while writing this. Anyway that seemed to be Vik’s style, he was so gung-ho and down for adventures, eager to learn and figure it out, and he fit in so well.

We were a team that weekend, the three of us, but again with Cody up front a couple hundred yards jeering us on, making us laugh! Vik and I got to spend most of the time together, the “slow” pair (compared to Cody’s superhuman speed) but it gave us time to get to know each other and chat about everything from movie quotes to snow science and safety, and our mutual love for the mountains.

The last I spoke with him we were making a plan to all meet up again this 4th of July weekend, at my arrival to mammoth from the PCT, a homecoming return celebration! He was supposed to meet my trail friends. Well be sure that they will still be learning about him, and hopefully inspire some of the same love for the mountains. There will always be a place for him in these adventures with me, especially when we overeat again at the Mexican place or almost getting stuck in the snow in the white SUV again

He died doing what he loved. They say it could happen to any of us, and we take on that risk every time we go out there in the mountains. Well, you know I’ve been thinking a bit about it, when he fell what his last thoughts might have been. More importantly what his heart was feeling. And I know his heart was full and happy doing what he loved, no compromises, no faking it - I am certain of that. I know if it happens to me I want my heart to be full as Vik’s was every day.