Disobedience a la Thoreau: The Case of Gus Yates

Gus Yates did not set out to break the law. Instead, he wanted to climb a mountain. He took calculated risks that could have resulted in death. In the course of his climb he broke Baxter State Park regulations. He doesn't want to encourage anyone else to do the same--either break the law or climb the mountain: he doesn't want his climb to serve as any kind of example. Instead, he emphasizes that what he did raises certain important questions about "civil liberties and the pursuit of happiness."

Mt. Katahdin, Maine's tallest mountain, is just short of a mile high. During clear summer, spring and fall weekends its rockstrewn summit is always crowded. Besides offering an impressive view, Katahdin marks the starting-point of the 2000-mile Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia.

In summer, a solo hike to the summit, though permitted, is impossible because of the number of other people. Crowds thin out significantly during winter, when severe weather locks the mountain in ice and snow, but solo-hiking is illegal. Baxter State Park winter regulations ban parties of fewer than four people from camping or climbing anywhere above the treeline. However, despite the rules, groups of one, two or three campers often attempt the climb. Last winter, rangers apprehended a pair of climbers; two weekends ago they caught Eugene B. (Gus) Yates '79.

In response to a Waterville, Me., newspaper editorial which criticized the selfishness of the climb, Yates explained, "When I started out I was aware that some form of park regulations did exist and endeavored to climb quickly and secretly in the hope that I would be done and out before the rangers became worried or irritated." Unfortunately, before Yates even entered the park he ran into a ranger.

Hiking into the park on a hard-packed, snow-covered road, Yates expected to hear a snowmobile before he saw one. That would give him time to duck into the brush and escape notice. The ranger who spotted him, though, was riding on a snowmobile with a muffler. The ranger caught Yates trying to disappear into the woods. Although Yates offered the alibi that he was heading for the nearby Appalachian Trail and not Katahdin, and though he was not yet within the park bounds and there was little the ranger could do, the ranger's suspicions were aroused. Likewise, Yates now knew that park authorities would be on the lookout.

Yates continued to hike that night, by the light of a full moon, until he reached the trailhead where he set up camp. The next day involved most of the climb, 3000-3500 feet up the A-ball slide--an old and steep rock slide. This is where Yates "got the mountaineering aspects I was after. There was a lot of delicate crampon work under variable snow conditions."

At dusk, he camped on a ledge barely large enough for one person. As it was, he couldn't pitch his tent properly or use his stove. The tent fabric whipped back and forth in 35-40 m.p.h. winds and the Harvard senior occasionally worried about dehydration--since he couldn't use the stove, he was unable to melt snow for water.

After a 14-plus-hour night, Yates broke camp the next morning in wind that threatened to carry off all his gear if he wasn't careful. He then set off for the summit. It was on the way up that he heard and spotted an airplane which looked as if it might be searching for him. Later that afternoon a national guard helicopter replaced the 2-man Cessna airplane.

As he began the descent from the summit, Yates decided to leave the trail and bushwhack the rest of the way down, mindful of the plane and the ranger he had run into two days before. He continued to hike into the night, hoping to avoid rangers, get out of the park and station himself near the road for the trip back to Cambridge the next day. Unfortunately, he did not go far enough. Although he was outside the park boundaries, the rangers, who had been on his trail for two days, tracked him down early the next morning.

Since it was Sunday and local government offices were closed, the rangers took Yates to the county seat, an hour away. To do so, they had to go through the formality of arresting him on a civil charge--failure to register for the climb, which entails a $25-to-$30 fine. Bail was set. However, Yates didn't have the money to both pay the bondsman and buy a bus ticket back to Cambridge. Plus, there was the lure of spending a night--on civil disobedience charges--in jail. So jail it was.

The jailer took out a large metal key and opened a heavy steel door. Beyond that were "grungy guys and dingy, dark cells where you have to scrounge for toilet paper. The floor was grimy. The walls had been repainted about 25 times." There were four or five men in their mid-20's arrested on drug charges. After listening to the six-hour-long conversation of one prisoner with the chaplain. Yates was convinced the man had been framed on a rape or child-molesting charge.

After three days of intense hiking and climbing, the 23-year-old geology major was ready to eat a hearty dinner. What he and the other prisoners got instead were three dill pickle spears, a bologna sandwich, re-warmed canned hash, three-day-old stale cake and cold milk. Not allowed to eat any of the food he'd brought in his backpack, Yates eventually went to sleep on a mattress mounted on a steel lathe platform, without sheets.

Yates was only too glad to leave when his hearing came before the Dover-Foxcroft District courtroom. Though he was able to write a long letter, read as many paperbacks as he wanted to and watch T.V.--"Ironically the movie on Sunday night was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'"--Yates realized that "time goes very slowly. You're trapped. You've nothing to do except what you can generate yourself. Ten days in jail would have been too much. One hundred days would have been out of the question."

Before his courtroom appearance, Yates learned that he faced a criminal charge for violating park rules, rather than a civil charge, and that it entailed more than a mere $25-to-$30 fine. The new maximum penalty he could receive was a $1000 fine and 100 days in jail. He was scared.

Sitting in the courtroom, Yates realized for the first time "just how much power a judge really has. She was handling cases at an average of three minutes each." When his turn came, Yates pleaded guilty and made a "philosophical rather than legal argument" in his defense. Yates believes his argument, as well as overcrowding in the Piscataquis County Jail, influenced Judge Jesse Brigg's decision. She handed down a $50 suspended sentence, and, when reached for comment later, said that "the crime was not particularly worth a night in jail, which Yates had already spent."

In all, Yates got more out of the weekend than he'd bargained for. He originally climbed the mountain to surpass former experiences--Mt. Rainier, Mt. Anderson in the Olympics and extensive winter camping--and prepare himself for future climbs--Mt. McKinley this summer.

Despite all his previous experiences, Yates had never slept through a windstorm in such an exposed position not bivouaced on a rock. He had set off "anticipating part of a Mission Impossible chase scene with rangers hot on my trail. That aspect of the chase was all just a game. I would play fair if they caught me," he said, but added he didn't expect the plane, the helicopter, or the searchers.

According to Lee Tibbs, the park director, the park supervisor made the decision to send out the plane when he realized someone was climbing alone. Though Yates claims he was in full view and can't understand how the plane missed him, it did. Since there were no tracks leading down the mountain and since they couldn't spot him from the air, park authorities assumed that Yates was injured. It was then that they decided to call in the helicopter.

The decision the supervisor made is a routine decision taken "in cases when we know someone is on the mountain. They're not supposed to be there alone. The weather was severe--a 70 to 82 degree below zero wind-chill factor on top of the mountain. We had a moral and legal obligation to get Mr. Yates," explained Tibbs.

In the park administrator's view, "No one is competent to do the hike alone. It only takes one slip. Mr. Yates had good equipment and seemed a capable individual but he shouldn't have done it by himself," continued Tibbs.

The authorities may have taken such extreme measures to find Yates because of an accident last year, when a pair of climbers illegally attempted to scale the mountain. One of the climbers fell and broke his arm. If it hadn't been for a ranger who spotted them--much as Yates was spotted--no one would have found the two men.

Yates is sorry that he put a lot of rangers and the pilots of the helicopter and plane in a dangerous situation, and he regrets that he underestimated the scale of the operation. However, he still feels that the park officials never should have had to do what they did in the first place--namely initiate the search.

Yates feels that "no one else was affected by my actions including the wilderness itself. You should have the right to make decisions about yourself."

The incident raised what Yates calls a "fundamental issue in democracy. How much can people be responsible for themselves? When are you competent enough to judge your own competence?"

In his letter to the Central Maine Morning Sentinel, Yates wrote "It is my belief that every person should have the fundamental right to make decisions regarding his or her own fate and to be able to accept the consequences of those decisions. The government should not have to be responsible for protecting me from myself. As long as I am the only one affected by my actions, there should be no need for the government to interfere. I judged myself capable of completing the climb and willing to accept the risk of injury or failure. Who else is as familiar as I with my own competence, and why should I have to defer to someone else's definition of acceptable risk?"

He points out that the plane, helicopter and ranger hours were already paid for by taxpayer money. And although the park authorities feel that four is the minimal number of people needed to deal with an accident in severe weather conditions, Yates thinks that one can be just as safe. At least an injured solo hiker isn't endangering the lives of anyone else.

Yates would like to see park systems institute a legal waiver system which would free the government from any responsibility for camper safety. Signing a waiver would also make the hiker more aware of the seriousness of undertaking a hike in the wilderness. However, at the present time, most waivers do not hold up in court.

Friends, hikers and fellow climbers at Harvard are proud of Yates. No one doubted his ability from the outset. Not only did he bluff the system, but the climb was a success. However, they are not so clear on the answers to the questions he has raised about who should take responsibility and how. For instance, the places in the U.S. where one can climb and no one would know or care greatly outnumber the regulated areas. Someone wanting to climb unimpeded could in any one of countless mountain ranges. At the same time, though, as Yates' case illustrates, it isn't fair that one can't climb solo in a particular area just because it happens to be nationally- or state-owned. Park land is land that the people have bought; they should be entitled to use it however they please provided they don't abuse it or anyone else.

Up to a point, Yates' arguments make sense: everyone should have the right to determine his or her own competence. As long as people are made to realize that the alternative to a successful trip may be death or injury, then their decision to go should not be subject to government intervention.

On the other hand, not everyone is able to judge his own competence realistically. Mountains, rivers and deserts witness many deaths annually--because people err in their self-evaluations, because they don't know what to expect and because neither they nor the wilderness act predictably.

By allowing everyone to do anything, by allowing people to judge their own levels of competence, one would be sanctioning those deaths. By assuming that each person is his own best judge, one would be placing implicit faith in man's self-perception. While this might benefit the expert or the lucky hiker, it might also sacrifice those who are ignorant, overly ambitious, or unlucky. According to one friend, Yates came back "the conquering hero." But suppose he had slipped and twisted an ankle, suppose he hadn't come back? What then?