Three Years Of Plumbing

When I reached age 60, in 2005, that was the retirement age.  I decided to become a DC-8 flight engineer again.  There was no maximum age for FEs.  The retirement we had at the time sucked and I decided to work at least to age 65 or until UPS parked all the DC-8s.

My 60th birthday was August 16.  My Mom's 81st birthday would have been August 20th, but she died on the 18th.  I was in ground school at the time, so I had to take some time off to travel to Pittsburgh for the funeral.  

We celebrated Mom's 80th birthday the year before.  My mom had survived a heart attack and a stroke.  She was tough.  As she was walking to the building where the surprise party was to be held with her sister, Aunt Marion, friends and family were waiting inside.  My brother Kevin said, "Don't make this surprise too big.  Remember, she is 80."

It was a really nice event and she was very happy.  I was already in Pittsburgh the day before and called her to wish her a happy birthday.  I sensed that she was a little disappointed I would not be there for her birthday, but did not want to ruin the surprise.  She learned she had lung cancer about 4 months later.

For the rest of the time before her death, I was still a 757/767 captain.  I was senior enough that I could hold good schedules and was able to travel to Pittsburgh to hang out with Mom.  She lived in a condo with Aunt Marion and I remember one time I was hanging out with them playing games at which they were kicking my butt and I was accusing them of cheating.  Fun.

Doreen and I attended the meeting with the oncologist, when they discussed the fact that her cancer was incurable and whether she wanted to go through cemotherapy or not.  She decided not to.  As the pain got worse, she was asking people to pray for her to die.  She never said that to me.

Doreen, Caitlin, Mike and I drove up there.  Mike drove his own car, because he had to leave immediately after the funeral mass.  He was very upset that he could not stay longer.

When I returned to Louisville, I had to make up the time missed in ground school on the DC 8.  It wasn't too hard, because of my previous time plumbing on the plane, even thought it had been more than 20 years prior.

There is not too much that is interesting to talk about of my 3 years as a DC 8 flight engineer.  I was becoming more and more junior every month, because there were people who were senior to me on the list, but younger in age.  As they retired and became flight engineers on the 8, they pushed me down on the list.  I was flying trips to San Juan, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and Memphis, hot places, in the summer and cities near the Great Lakes in the winter.  I remember one night in Toronto, as I was doing the walk around, with deicing fluid dripping on my overcoat.  The wind was blowing across the ramp and the temperature was very cold.  I thought about retiring as soon as I got home.  I wised up and kept working.  I didn't like the Great Lakes cities in winter, but the other places in summer weren't that bad.  It was in the best interests of my family, that I work to 65.  I did not want to reverse the direction of the cash flow into my retirement accounts.

One of the fun bid periods on the 8, was when I flew with a guy who was an instructor for Initial Operating Experience (IOE).  That is the final stage of training for pilots and engineers before being released to the line, training in the airplane on line trips.  This guy was training a new first officer (copilot) during each trip.  I would fly 4 trips with this guy, with a new FO on each trip.  He liked to make sure the FOs knew he had flown F-16s.   Sometime on the first leg we flew together, he would tell them.  On the fourth trip, after hearing this shit 3 previous time, I just could not control my big mouth.  I knew it was coming and when he did it I said, "Hey, I did not know you flew F-16s," in a really surprised tone.  He just looked at me and smiled, because he knew I was just a smart ass.  We really had a great time hanging out, going to good restaurants and busting balls.

I spent 3 years plumbing on the 8.  The company and the union settled the new contract at about 2 years or so.  This was the one that had a reasonably good retirement plan, so I could have left, but decided to stay.  

It wasn't long before there was talk about changing the retirement age for pilots to 65. At the time, it was not clear if UPS would allow geezers like me to upgrade, if still younger than 65.  I was around 62 or 63 when the change occured.  UPS decide to allow us to upgrade.  The first system bid occurred when I was 63 and my seniority only allowed an upgrade to the 747-400, based in Anchorage. 

North To Alaska And Beyond

 You may remember my discussion about being in the army and not understanding Great Circle geography.  I did not understand that Anchorage Alaska is near the Great Circle Route from most places in the contiguous United States to just about anywhere in the Eastern Pacific Rim. (You need to put a string on 2 places on a globe and see where it goes.  You can also see that if you know how to play around with Google Earth.)  Anchorage is close enough to midway between all these points in the contiguous US and those in Asia, that it made a good point for UPS to establish a crew base for its airplanes that were doing most of the flying between them.  That is why the 747-400 was based there, along with some of the MD-11 crews.

This meant that I would have to commute to work, for the first time since the few months I commuted from Orlando to Louisville, during my first year at UPS.  Commuting is a pain in the ass, but I was not going to move to Anchorage for only2 years.  I ended up getting in a crash pad with several other guys.

I was planning to drive my car up there.  It would have been quite an adventure.  I had it all planned out, with hotel reservations and all that.  I had a period of time off, that gave me just enough time to do the drive.  I was beginning to wonder if I could do the long days of driving back to back, that would have been necessary. My car saved me from doing that.  The steering began to make a funny noise and I chickened out.  I thought it was going to require replacement of the steering box, but it was no more than bad tie rod ends.  I could have made the trip.

Before I got into the crash pad, I stayed at a couple dumpy hotels and spent a few nights staying at the home of a friend.  It quickly became obvious that these were not long term solutions.  I decided to use taxis as my means of moving between the crash pad and work.  I was able to jump seat on UPS airplanes, so they were only 2 places where I needed to be transported.  Sometimes one of the crew members or another jumpseater who lived there would offer to drop me off at the crash pad on the way home.  There were stores and restaurants within walking distance of the pad.

There were a few things to worry about in this arrangement. One was availability of a jumpseat to and from Anchorage and reliability of the taxi companies to get me to work on time.  The jumpseat thing worked out pretty well.  I was always able to get back and forth without issues, except for one time, when I had to travel a few days early and spend New Years Eve alone in the crash pad on a very cold and snowy night. No problem.  My dad always said he didn't like drinking with the amatuers on New Years Eve. 

The flights between Louisville and Anchorage were about 6 hours.  I bought a good camping air mattress and used my sleeping bag to get down on the floor in the large area behind the cockpit on the upper deck of the 747.  There were bunk rooms, but you couldn't plan on one of them being available.  I was able to change into pajamas or sweat clothes to be more comfortable.  This way, I could blow up my mattress, crawl into my fart sack and sleep most of the flight.  Otherwise, my sleep could be interrupted.  I viewed getting to work as more important than getting home after a trip, but I never had problems with either. The toughest part was letting the air out of my mattress and folding it up to fit back in its stuff sack, after just waking up.  

The MD 11 did not have quite the space to spread out, but I found a little room near the entry door, to get out of the way of anyone who needed to move around.  It was a little cold there, but I have a really good sleeping bag.  Just part of the glamorous life of a rich airline pilot.

I loved the trips on the Whale.  The only ones I didn't like were from Anchorage to Shanghai and back.  That city is extremely polluted.  They are burning all the coal over there, that we have stopped burning here in the US.  If it really is Global Warming, shouldn't we be trying to reduce pollution all around the globe?  Besides, the Chicoms were not as friendly as the Asians in all the Free World cities.  Buy a fucking clue.  Don't be a Useful Idiot.  I guess the realize they can't do shit with the Chicoms, so they are going to destroy our economy and let the bad guys rule the world.  OK, that's all I'm going to say about that.

My favorite international layover cities in those days and in my previous 5 years on the older 747s were Cologne Germany and Hong Kong.  The company started flying an around the world trip during my year on the Whale.  It started in Anchorage, flew to Louisville, then to Cologne.  After that it went to Hong Kong.  Then it could do one of several variations.  The ones I flew went from Hong Kong to Dubai United Arab Emerates, then Cologne, Hong Kong Anchorage.  It was all in the norther hemisphere, but it truly circumnavigated the globe.  Yep, it's round.

The Dom, the cathedral in Cologne

 

Hong Kong Harbor from Kowloon

  That is the cockpit of a -400, with my old friend, Aaron.  He and I flew together back in the day on the -100, during my early years at UPS.  We were able to fly together for an 8 week bid period during my time in Anchorage and had a blast.  This was when the trips around the globe were introduced.  We were actually displaced by management pilots for the very first such trip.  That sucked.  Some of those guys were barely competent, because they didn't fly as much as we did.  Aaron and I stuck together for almost all of the bid period and we had a guest International Relief Officer (IRO) for each trip.  One of our IROs took that picture.  

We were on a week on week off schedule.  We could fly around the world with some back tracking and have some quality time to enjoy our layover cities in one week.  With the bunks and inflight breaks, I felt that I was more rested while flying the -400,  than at any other time I was employed there.  

Aaron was a big NFL fan also, so we found a restaurant in Hong Kong that was open all night during the NFL playoff season.  We could go there and watch all the games, while enjoying a couple meals and some beers.  Remember that we were halfway around the world, so the games were on at night over there.  The restaurant was actually on the basement level of a building and we would come crawling up the steps, after the games, as the sun was coming up and the people of Hong Kong were going to work and opening their shops.  No problem for us, it was on our daytime hours.

Back To The Whale

 I spent 3 years as a DC 8 flight engineer.  It was not too bad, but it was not great.  I had some fun, because it was always transportation from one party to another for me.

I kept getting more junior, because people who were senior to me, but younger, kept retiring and going back to the panel and popping in on the flight engineer seniority list, senior to me.  I was only able to hold trips to the Great Lakes area in the winter and to places like San Juan, Puerto Rico, Memphis and New Orleans in the summer.  There was one really shitty winter night in Toronto, when the weather was cold and windy, with deicing fluid dripping off the wings onto my overcoat, that I considered retirement.  However, I calmed down and realized I had to keep the cash flowing in the right direction.

There wasn't much that was interesting during that time, until the talk that the retirement age was going to change to 65.  This started a big fight among UPS pilots and there was also a fight about our contract, between those who were closer to retirement and those who were younger in age and seniority.  Having been hired by UPS at age 44, my retirement situation there was not good. While I was plumbing on the DC 8, there was a contract agreement between UPS and our union, the Independent Pilots Association (IPA), that literally tripled the amount of my pension income.  Shortly after that, the retirement age change happened.  My thoughts toward those who were pissed off about that, were that I was as concerned about their financial situation as they were about mine.  I thought they were acting like inconsiderate little assholes, since people like me, who had come to work at UPS when the situation was shitty, had created the good paying situation that they were going to enjoy for the rest of their careers.  We had a chance to try to make some money for a few years and pile up some wealth for our retirements.  There was also a fight on the contract, between the senior and junior pilots. that revolved around retirement versus pay rates.  It was a dark time for the pilots of the IPA.

I knew that the change of the retirement age would occur whether we wanted it or not and it was futile to argue about it.  When it did happen, the next issue was whether those of us on the seniority list as flight engineers, would be allowed to bid to return to a window seat, as pilots.  The answer was yes, we would,  I just had to wait for a system bid to upgrade.  The first such bid only allowed me to upgrade to a first officer position on the  Boeing 747-400, based in Anchorage Alaska.  I had about 2 years to go until age 65 retirement and the company allowed me to upgrade.  I would have to commute from Louisville to Anchorage.  I talked it over with Doreen and she said, "We can tolerate anything for 2 years".  I bid the Whale.

 

I remembered seeing the 747-400, taxi by when I was preflighting a DC 8 on the ramp in Louisville and thinking I would never have a chance to fly it.  Now it was going to be a reality.

In the past, when I had not flown for a period as long as 3 years, I had trouble getting back up to speed.  That was not the case this time.  The flight management system was very similar to the 757 and 767 systems I had flown for many years.  I had flown the 747-100, so I was familiar with the size, weight and sight picture from the cockpit.  

The -400 was actually a much better flying machine than the -100.  There was more thrust from the engines and the wings were much better.   For example, I always kept the power set a little above idle, into the touchdown, when landing on the -100s.  On the -400, I had to go to idle, or the plane would float down the runway.  Other than that difference, the planes landed similarly.  (In fact, I thought the 747,757 and 767 could be landed with the same techniques.  The only difference was the sight picture from the cockpit, because of the difference in height. I learned to listen to the radio altimeter call outs.)  The -400 flew better at cruise altitudes also.  This was mostly wing related.  On the -100, you had to always pay attention to speed and not let a downdraft get you slowed down too much.  It was a dog.  The -400, with its flight management system, more engine thrust, auto throttle and improved wing, flew very well, regardless of vertical wind conditions.

My training partner (we called them sim partners) was a guy about my age, who had only flown DC 8s and steam gauge 747s at UPS.  Now, he was trying to learn the modern planes, with flight management systems (FMS).  I had made that transition at about age 50.  That was tough.  Doing it at age 63 or so was excruciating.  I felt sorry for him.  Fortunately, I picked things up quickly, so the instructor could spend more time with my partner.  One day the instructor said to me, "You are a very patient man, Denny Cleary".  I could sympathize, because I saw him struggling the way I had, so many years before.

My partner in the airplane for Initial Operating Experience (IOE), was a completely different story.  He had picked it all up quickly and was a very good stick.  A natural pilot.  I had served as a flight engineer for one of his DC 8 simulator check rides, before he reached age 60 and he was the only guy I ever saw, who could land the DC 8 well on every attempt.  We had a good instructor, who enjoyed expanding the training envelope a little when he saw he had students who could handle it and we learned some good stuff about the 400.  As big as it is, the plane could be flown in a fashion that was almost as sporty as some of the smaller planes. 

I loved this airplane.  I felt bullet proof flying it.  It had 4 of everything.  There is nothing like redundancy.  I was going to revisit my favorite international layover cities, Cologne Germany and Hong Kong. This was 2008, the Chicoms had taken over Hong Kong, but it was still nearly as free and open as it had been before the United Kingdom had turned it over.  It was a 2 pilot airplane, but on really long flights, a second first officer was required.  The plane had two bunk rooms behind the cockpit.  When we flew with an additional crew member (International Relief Officer), when we got to top of climb, we would see how much time we had to top of descent, divide it by 3 and ask who wanted to take the first break and go back to the bunk rooms for a nap or just to relax.  Most guys didn't like going back first, but I did.  It was just like my days in the Army.  I would volunteer for the first break and everyone thought that was cool.  You may remember that I went against the conventional wisdom and began volunteering for everything after basic training and it always worked out as a good deal for me. 

I flew with several good guys during this time.  I was a fairly senior first officer on the Whale in Anchorage.  I remembpoer one flight from Honolulu to Hong Kong, which was probable just a repositioning flight, to get a plane in position to carry rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, because we were empty, except for empty "cans",  the large containers that were loaded with packages to facilitate the quick loading and unloading of the airplanes.  There was a lot of time when we were not talking to controllers on the radio, just via data link and so we were listening to the tunes on my iTunes app to pass the time.  We passed Midway, Guam, the Philippines and places like that.  

This was the first time at UPS, where I felt up to speed upon first making the transition, except that I needed to get used to the international flying stuff and relearn how to understand the foreign controllers and their accents while speaking English.  We could fly over Russia now and understanding them when they were drunk on Vodka took a while.  The plane was no problem at all.  I really loved flying that plane.  

    

First Retirement

 At the time I reached age 60, in August 2005, the FAA retirement age for airline pilots was 60.  UPS had a lousy retirement at that time, especially if a pilot was retiring with only 16 years of service, as I was.  Fortunately, UPS was still flying Boeing 747s and DC-8s, which required flight engineers.  There is no retirement age for engineers, so  I was able to continue working, by accepting a demotion to Second Officer, along with a pay cut.  I don't remember why, but I chose the DC-8, perhaps because of my previous experience as an engineer on that plane during my probationary year.

My last flight on the B-767, as a captain, was pretty cool.  I tried to get one of the guys I had flown with before to join me, but no one could work it into their schedules.  I flew with the son of a former chief pilot, with whom I had flown as an FO on the 747 many years before.  The flight was from Ontario CA to Louisville, was in the daytime and my wife and daughter were able to greet us as we parked the plane.  

Air traffic controllers were congratulating me on my last flight as we crossed the country.  UPS was pretty good at things like that.  As we entered the parking ramp, the airport fire department had pumper trucks on either side of the entrance, squirting water across the plane.  

I hadn't been very emotional during the entire flight, but as I walked down the stairs from the plane, I could see that Doreen and Caitlin were a little teary eyed.  I got a little choked up for a few seconds and my eyes got a little misty.  It wan't like I was really done with flying, I just would not be at the controls of an airliner again, or at least that is what I thought at the time.

Whitney 2002

 As we discussed our previous adventure on Mount Whitney, we grew the size of our group of people who decided to join us.  The original group of 5 had discussed bringing family members on a big trip.  I started planning and decided to include my family, if they would join me.  Because of the hiking, camping and skiing I had been doing in the western mountains on my layovers and on a few trips we put together for time between trips.  When I would be at these beautiful places, I felt that I would love to have Doreen, Caitlin and Mike be there with me.  Naturally, I expected that they would love to join me.  Furthermore, there was a small group of former Florida Express people who had been hired by UPS and moved to Louisville.  We got together several times a year, but especially at Thanksgiving, when we all went to the home of our pal, Bobby Z and his wife, Marylynne. 

From these gatherings and the stories we told at them, our potential group for 2002 grew to 15 people.  Russ and wife, Susie, Jon, Lloyd's son and daughter, Snake's wife, Laurie, my friend, Darin, Bob's daughter and all my family were among the newbies.

Lloyd and I had revisited Mount San Gorgonio once again, with a better planned and executed hike and brought his daughter along.  I don't remember much about that, except that I was in much better shape, could actually keep up with Lloyd and his daughter was a very fast hiker.  She left us miles behind, as we once again did the South Fork Trail.  We all made it up and back during the hours of daylight.  I don't remember much except seeing Lloyd's daughter so far ahead of us when the trail allowed.  

My family and I flew into Reno and drove south on Highway 395.  I wanted to see the Eastern Sierras on that section.  It was beautiful.  My kids were complaining from the time we woke them up to go to the airport and essentially, never stopped for the entire trip.  Teenagers.  So much for feeling guilty about having all that hiking fun without them.   

I decided to get to Lone Pine a couple days early, so that we could do  some hikes to adjust to the high elevations.  The first one was from Whitney Portal to Lone Pine Lake and back.  As you may remember, that is a climb from 8,300 ft. to 10,000 ft.  The next day, we drove to Horseshoe Meadow, which was at 10,000 ft. and hiked on the level for a few hours.  After that, it was dinner and then to bed to get as much rest before our very early morning start on the hike to the summit.

I woke up too early and could not get back to sleep, because I kept worrying about the size of the group and hoping no one got sick or hurt. 

When we arrived in Lone Pine, there was smoke from fires to our southwest, on the other side of the ridge.  As we began our summit attempt in the dark, we could not smell smoke, probably because of a fortuitous shift in wind direction. 

I had advised everyone to either invest in a water filter or stay close to someone who had one.  Water is available on most of the trail until Trail Camp, which is at 12,000 ft. and 6.3 miles from the trailhead.  From there, you have to carry enough water to go another 4.7 miles to the summit and back 4.7 to Trail Camp.  One of the new hikers asked me how much water was necessary to carry for the entire hike.  I advised that this was not a good plan, because water weighs about 8 lb. per gallon.  Furthermore, it is impossible to estimate how much water a person would need, if you have never hiked with them and they did not know themselves.  The water needed is a function of time spent hiking.  I know that I tray to carry 3 quarts from Trail Camp to get up and back, but a faster hiker could carry less.  I usually refilled my bottle at Outpost Camp and Trail Camp on the way up.  

I don't remember what I told this guy and thought it was academic anyway.  I had assumed he was smart enough not to try to carry the entire load for the entire hike, but I was wrong.  Wow.  There are some really inexpensive water filters out there.  You could also treat your water with iodine.  

Once again, I was lagging far behind.  On the Switchbacks, I told Doreen to press on and make it to the summit, I probably would not make it.  The poor night's sleep was making me feel fatigued.  

I made it to Trail Crest and down to the junction with the John Muir Trail, about 2 miles from the summit.  This is where I began to see some of the other hikers on their way down.  I decided to turn back, instead of making everyone wait for me at Whitney Portal after the hike.  Jon and my son, Mike, were cussing me out for talking them into doing this hike and both said they would never do anything like this again.  Later, at a lower elevation, with the thicker air making him feel better, Jon came by and apologized and said he would do another trip with us sometime.  Although teenage son Mike never did that, he is now following in my footsteps and hiking many of the mountains of Southern California that I hiked during my years at UPS. He finally gets it.

I started down with some of the others as Doreen was probably on the summit or just starting down.  Everyone in the group had made it, except for me.  I considered this a success.  As I got into thicker air, it occurred to me that I should probably wait for Doreen.  Some of the others told me they saw her getting close to the top as they were descending.  I found a tree to lean up against and waited.  I'm not sure how long I waited, but eventually, there she was and Bob was with her.  He had waited for her farther up the trail.

The next morning, water boy told me I had advised him to bring too much water.  He actually did try to carry all the water, it was getting heavy and he was giving it away to other people.  What he neglected to tell me, was that he had begun to feel nauseated, with a headache before reaching the summit and despite my explaining that these were early symptoms of altitude sickness, could be caused by dehydration and my clear instructions to turn back if that occurred, he pressed on.  That is the kind of stuff that I was worried about when I woke up in the middle of the night. Some people just can't follow instructions.

September 11, 2001

 The five guys on the First Whitney hike talked about getting together each year to do more similar hikes.  I usually selected September for these kinds of trips.  Kids were back in school, crowds were smaller after Labor Day and the weather was beginning to cool a little, without much risk of winter like conditions.

We did not really do anything like that in 2000, but in 2001, Lloyd was going to be the planner and what he came up with was a hike and camp on the Pacific Crest Trail, near Lake Tahoe.  

https://goo.gl/maps/6Xc2WfxwGYDAetNd7

This is not exactly what we planned and it is not exactly what we did, but it is close and is the best I can come up with on Google Maps.  We would be starting on the PCT just of Highway 50 at Lake Aloha Trailhead.  Then we would stay on it and find a trail down to Lake Tahoe. It was going to be a 4 day hike.

One of the problems was figuring a way to get back to our rental car at the trailhead after the end of the trip.  After considering several options, we learned that Lloyd solved the problem for us, but it had its downside.

He had been adding lime or something to his lawn, wearing shorts and boots, when he began to notice a gritty feeling on his ankles in side the boots and socks.  When he took them off, he saw that he had really bad chemical burns on both ankles.  The stuff he was spreading had gotten down in his socks.  I'm not good at remembering degrees of burns and stuff like that, but when I saw them, they looked really bad and painful.

He decided he could not do the hike, but planned to jumpseat to Reno hang out with us and drop us off at the beginning point and pick us up at the end.  In the mean time, he would visit some railroad museums and stuff like that.  What a guy. 

The hiking group would only include Bobby Z, Snake and myself.  Chuck was unable to join us for some reason.  Bob, Lloyd and I arrived in Reno the night before we planned to start hiking and stayed at our UPS layover hotel, the Hilton, which had a casino on the first floor.  It was September 10th, 2001.  Lloyd and I shared a room and Bob would share his room with Snake, when he arrived later in the night.

We were up early for Reno time, but it was before 0800 on the East Coast.  Lloyd had used the bathroom and I was in there shaving or something when I heard him call from near the tv.  I stuck my head out the door and he said, "The World Trade Center is under attack".  I said something brilliant like, "What?"  He repeated himself and said that 2 planes had been flown into the WTC in New York.  

He had turned on the news and was watching the live video of the burning North Tower, when suddenly, another plane flew into the South Tower.  At that point, everyone realized that this had not been an accident.  It was an intentional attack.  Who?  Why?  To my, why did not matter.  What kind of asshole group would do something like this.  Whoever it was, I didn't care what was their motivation.  I wanted long, slow revenge.

We quickly got ready to go to a restaurant downstairs and talked to Bob and Snake.  We were standing together in the lobby, watching the smoke rising from the buildings on a tv down there.  We ate breakfast and I don't remember much about the conversation.  We considered what we should do.  

We learned that all air traffic was shut down, so flying home was not an option.  Renting a car and driving was considered, but ruled out.  We decided we might as well go with Plan A and do our hike.  Lloyd was going to stay at a hotel at South Lake Tahoe.

As we drove to the trailhead for Reno, we listened to the radio and were learning more about the attack.  I don't remember if we saw the towers collapse live or just replays.  I do remember seeing bodies falling from the towers before they collapsed and remember the deep, burning anger that was building inside me.  At that point, I would have gleefully peeled the skin off anyone who had anything to do with this horrific attack on our country.  We all called home, said all the reassuring things we could say and told of our plans to press on with the hike.  Chances were good that things would be somewhat restored by the time we were finished, but we would see what we had to deal with and reassess at that time.  I don't remember if the perpetrators had been identified before we stepped off into the woods.

Lloyd took us to a parking lot, we unloaded our backpacks, said goodbye and headed north on the PCT.  It was a beautiful hike, past lakes and climbing gradually.  Snake had brought a tripod, because he fancies himself a photographer.  It looked like extra weight to me, but he is much younger and was a much faster hike anyway.  As usual, I was lagging behind the other guys.  

Eventually, we got to Lake Aloha, which I believe is a manmade lake, created to store water to irrigate the very thirsty state of California.  This is in the Desolation Wilderness, which strangely enough, looks like a desolate wilderness, very strange looking.  We dropped down a little to the east and found a nice primitive campsite near a small lake and called it a day.  

The next day would be a climb over Dick's Pass, then a descent to the Velma Lakes, where we would find a place to camp.  As usual, I was behind the guys all day.  As I climbed to Dick Pass, I could see what looked like a thunderstorm building and I was really pressing to get over the pass and away from the storm.  Bob and Snake were waiting for me at the pass and I steamed past them, saying I was being chased by a thunderstorm.  I think they thought that was funny, because the storm cloud had dissipated by then.  

Down we went and they could even pass me on the way down.  We found a cool, place to camp, surrounded by big rocks, that kind of reminded me of Trail Camp on Mount Whitney, only the air was not as thin, there weren't any other people and there wasn't lots of poop laying around on the ground, contaminating the pond where we got drinking water.  

Bob and Snake must have been talking about how much I was lagging and decided to cut the hike a day short and drop down via the shortest trail to Emerald Bay, instead of doing another climb to another pass.  I was OK with that.  I think we were all anxious to learn what we could about the attacks.

We cell phone called Lloyd and he picked us up.  We checked into a hotel, ate dinner at a casino buffet in the Nevada side of South Lake Tahoe and got up to speed on the news.  By this time, we were learning more than we wanted to know about Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida.  The air system had been restored and we could travel back to our home.

As we camped on the trail, it was eerie not to see any planes flying over.  We knew that we were on the routes that planes fly into and out of the San Francisco Bay area.  We did see a helicopter or 2 and heard a turbo prop plane one night.  I'm guessing they were government related, but who knows?

First Whitney

 OK, Mt. Whitney was an obsession.  It was an itch that just needed to be scratched.

You know I was going to drag Lloyd into this.  He was afraid that if he didn't go, I would just do it myself.  He was not going to let that happen.  However, he thought we would need to bring someone who had more experience than we had.  

Our pal, Chuck H., from the Flex days, had also been hired at UPS.  He was a bona fide hiker and camper, very fit and knowledgeable.  We convinced him to join us.  

Lloyd commuted to Louisville from Orlando to go to work.  He had a crash pad there and usually came a day early, so as not to be fatigued when he flew.  He often tried to get some of the old Flex gang, who had come to UPS and moved to Louisville, together for dinner, when it worked out for him.  On one of those occasions, Lloyd and I were talking about our big, planned expedition and the wife of our pal, Bobby Z. heard us and said she thought Bob would like to join us.  Cool.  The more the merrier, as far as I am concerned.

Bob and I needed to buy some camping equipment, so we went to Quest Outdoors (love that name and their motto, "Climb Every Mountain"), to buy our stuff.  When we were there, we saw another UPS pal, Snake, and told him what was up.  He said he would like to join us also.  The problem was, by that time, I had obtained a permit for 5 and my brother Kevin had been considering going.  We did not have an opening, unless Kevin dropped out.  Snake was on standby.

I pressed Kevin to make a decision and he eventually decided to drop out, he had a knee that was surgically repaired when he was a teenager.  So, 5 UPS pilots, 4 of whom were former Florida Express, were going to attempt the reach the summit of the highest mountain in the United States, excluding Alaska.

There are several ways to do that.  The most common and shortest way is to hike the 11 mile Mount Whitney Trail, from Whitney Portal.  That is the way we were going to do it.  The next choice was to decide how many days we would take to do it.  Our original plan was to take 3 day.  The first day we would hike 6.3 miles to Trail Camp, at 12,000 feet.  Then we would camp, leave our gear there, except what we needed for a day hike, go to the summit and then return to spend another night at Trail Camp, before returning to the Portal.

Some people do this hike in one day, but we were going to be cautious and not push our luck.  Since this hike begins at 8,300 feet at Whitney Portal and climbs to 14,500 feet, we had to respect the thin air and the challenges it presents to the human body.  None of us had ever been that high on a hike and did not know how it would effect our bodies.

I had been reading The Whitney Portal Store Message Board.  There was a story about a group of young guys form San Diego, who were all marathon runners and very fit.  They drove to the Portal, spent part of the night sleeping in the car and started up the mountain at a fast pace.  At about 10,000 feet, one of the guys began to have a headache and feel a little nauseated.  He pressed on.  By the time he got to 12,000 feet, he was really falling behind his pals and became almost knee walking sick.  His friends had to abandon their hike and help him back to a lower elevation.  He recovered, but he was the one guy in the group who could not handle the rapid change to thinner air.  You never know who it will be or when it will happen.

High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) are conditions that occur rarely to people who ascend to 14,500 feet or more, but they do occur.  If the ascent is made too rapidly, they can occur more easily.  I had been doing lots of research, including reading about attempts to climb Mount Everest.  Whitney is only half the elevation of Everest, but it must be taken seriously.  Everest climbers spend lots of time and energy acclimatizing to the thin air of high elevation.  The base camp for Everest is at around 18,000 feet.   In preparation, climbers go up to higher camps and return several times.  Into Thin Air is a book by Jon Krakauer about the disastrous 1996 Everest climbing season and discusses all the issues.  There has been a movie made, which was based on the book.  It is not nearly as informative as the book, for someone preparing a high elevation hike.  One of the important issues revealed in both the book and the movie, is the wisdom of knowing when it it appropriate to begin descending, even though you have not reached the summit.

With every member of our expedition being active airline pilots, I was a little less concerned, because we all spend lots of time at high cabin altitudes in our pressurized jets, but never as high as 10,000 feet and never exerting as much energy as a hike at those altitudes.

Lloyd, Bob and I arrived in Ontario California a day early.  We were able to ride the company jumpseats there, Lloyd and Chuck from Orlando and Bob and I from Louisville.  Snake would arrive early in the morning of the day we would drive to Lone Pine CA.  Lone Pine is the single traffic light town on Highway 395 just east of our objective.  We rented a minivan and I drove to Lone Pine.  

When we arrived we could see that the top of the great eastern wall of the Sierras was obscured by a dark cloud base and rain.  We went to the hotel at which we planned to sleep when we returned after the hike.  (I forgot to give them my credit card and there will be more about that later.)  Our plan was to eat a meal in town and drive up the 13 mile road to Whitney Portal, while hoping that the rain would stop before we got there.

 

We drove west through the amazing Alabama Hills and began to climb across an open area, with the impressive Sierra wall before us.  It was hard to see how we would be able to drive up there.  It was not yet apparent that there was a huge switchback to the right, then back to the left, before the road entered the canyon that led to the Portal.

The cloud base was about 9 or 10 thousand feet above us, near the tops of the highest mountains.  Suddenly, a two pronged bolt of lightening came down from the clouds directly in front of us and struck the ground on either side of the road.  The lightening looked like the two bowed legs of a giant cowboy.  The exclamations we all made highlighted the impression this event made on 5 highly experienced airline pilots and military veterans.  The visual is burned in my memory-10,000 feet of lightening bolt.

As we recovered from our surprise, we began to see the switchback.  Upon arriving at the base, we turned right and began to encounter rain.  On this northbound leg, the road was in pretty good shape.  As we made the 180 degree left turn to the south, we began to see that huge rocks had been washed down off the side of the mountain, creating an obstacle course for the heavily loaded minivan.  Swinging left and right, we avoided all but a few smaller rocks and were concerned that the road would be closed at some point.  It was not.

We found the Whitney Portal Store, parked the van and went in to do some last minute shopping and wait out the storm.  I had reserved a large campground, big enough to park the van and have room for our tents.  We drove the short distance after the rain stopped a few hour later.  There was a small Class C camper next to us.  We set up our tents, started a fire, prepared dinner and told lies and war stories.  We planned our departure time and went to sleep.

Lloyd and I had identical Sierra Design 2 man tents.  Bob would share mine, Chuck was with Lloyd and Snake had a little bivvy, that would have made me claustrophobic.  You had to be horizontal, no sitting up in that tent.  In the morning, we decided to share the weight of the 2 tents.  Bob carried part of mine and Chuck carried part of Lloyd's.  This would prove to be a major mistake. 

I should have known better.  On our previous hike together, the San Gorgonio Death March, we learned that Lloyd hikes much faster than I do, especially climbing at high elevations.  On this day, it would be proven that Bob, Chuck and Snake hiked even faster than Lloyd.

I had read 3 books about hiking the Mount Whitney Trail.  I was literally aware of all the landmarks on the climb and remembered most of them, at least when my brain was not fuzzed out by the thin air.  Even with that, there were some psychological challenges I was not prepared for.  

For the first several miles of the hike, there are several spots from which the summit is visible, if you know what to look for.

As you look up this chute, you are seeing the use trail that leads to the base of the East Face of Mount Whitney, which is climbed by real mountain climbers, as well as the Mountaineers Route which was pioneered by the famous John Muir.  The problem is that when you see it, you have to crane your neck, looking WAY UP THERE.  It seems unbelievable that you will ever make it.  However, it is just like many other struggles in life.  When you have your lofty goals, you deal with what is immediately in front of you.  You take one step at a time.  This was going to be lots of steps, at high elevation.  

Lloyd kind of waited for me occasionally, much as he had done on the Death March.  The other guys were long gone.  I remember meeting a couple nice young guys, who we were doing the tortoise and hare thing with.  As we were climbing a set of the many, many stone steps, one of them taught me a technique I have always remembered. He said it would save energy to place the entire sole of the foot on the step, from heel to toe and use the big muscles of the upper leg to push up, as opposed to just placing the ball of the foot on the step, which requires the use of the muscles of the lower leg.  The latter can be very tiring on a long climb.

After passing the beginning of the use trail to the East Face, we traversed to the southwest and followed Lone Pine Creek.  Therefore, there is water available at almost all times.  Also, the view of the summit is blocked and the thoughts of how high and long this climb will be goes to the back of your mind.  After several trail switchbacks, we come to a place where a log bridge was built to keep our feet dry as we walk up Lone Pine Creek in a relatively level section.

At the end of that, we pass the cut off to Lone Pine Lake.  We would not be visiting this beautiful spot.  I did make it up there several years later.  I will show some of our photos in a later blog.  Not far from there, we pass a sign that announces our entry into the Whitney Zone, which was created to protect the environment there and requires a permit to enter.

This trail is 11 miles from the Portal to the summit.  The Google Map in the hyper link above shows a little less, but represents the horizontal distance, without regard to the vertical measurement.  Therefore the actual distance covered is like the hypotenuse of a right triangle.  (I was pretty good at plane geometry in high school and this is all I remember)  As we climbed to 10,000 feet, the trail leveled for a little distance, until we passed Long Horn Meadow and Outpost Camp.  Outpost camp was a primitive campsite, except for the presence of a solar outhouse.  WTF is a solar outhouse, you may be inclined to ask.  I know I was.

It is an environmentalist wet dream attempt to process human poop, using solar panels, in the hope that people could poop in the building, without introducing any of their urine.  Even our resident environmental whacko, Snake realized how difficult it is to "relax down there" enough to do a 2, without allowing a 1.  At any rate, the system was out of service, probably because of the introduction of liquid, that was inevitable.  The solar outhouse at Outpost Camp was closed.  There was another at our Trail Camp, our destination for the day.

Climb, climb, climb, steps, steps, steps, waterbars, waterbars, waterbars, rocks, rocks, rocks.  Another small respite at Trailside Meadow, before the final climb to Trail Camp, at 12,000 feet and 6.3 miles up the trail.  This is where Lloyd and I were when we first encountered the rain of the day.  This was before I began to remember times, so that I could calculate my speed in miles per hour, but I'm betting it was not much faster than 1mph, with my backpacking load.

Just before reaching the level, rocky spot that is known as Trail Camp, we could see Consultation Lake off the trail to the south.  I always get a kick out of hearing people mispronounce that name.  Thank you Sisters Of St. Joseph for making me a nerd about things like that.  By that time, it was raining like hell.  Actually, we were walking into it and our much faster pals, who mercilessly left us in the dust, had been standing there in the cool ambient air, getting drenched, with only part of each of the 2 man, Sierra Design tents.  Ha!

Seriously it was not a pleasant situation.  They had scouted out good spots for us to set up our tents.  As I pulled my share of my tent and Bob pulled out his share, I heard Snake say, "I don't want to seem melodramatic, but this may be a survival situation".  I said, "I don't think you are being melodramatic, it is a survival situation".  My hands were shaking from my much briefer exposure to the cold, wet conditions and it was hard to articulate the process necessary to set up the tent.  Hypothermia was a real possibility.

Long story short, we got the tents up, got inside, changed into dry clothes and the rain stopped early enough for us to pump some water from the nearby pond and prepare our evening meal.  We heard what I thought was a jet flying over.  Snake was the first to realize it was a giant rock slide from the wall to the southwest of Consultation Lake.

As Lloyd and I were on the final struggle to Trail Camp, the other 3 guys had been talking to other people there.  Some of them had tried going up the next section of trail, known as the 99 Switchbacks and decided to retreat in the face of the storm.  As they climbed into colder air, there was ice forming at a difficult section known as the Cables.  No one came out and said it, but I could sense that my pals were in the early stages of deciding to turn back for the trailhead in the morning, instead of pressing on to the summit.  I was very disappointed, even though I knew that I was the slowest hiker.  I had learned my lesson from reading Into Thin Air and from my own Death March experience.  I would turn back if that was what the group decided, but I would have great regrets for not "going and taking a look at it".  Pilots can relate to that quote.

As I often say, darkness comes early to the east side of a mountain.  As my spirit was at its lowest, Chuck pulled out a flask of Scotch, passed it around and said, "Take a swig of this, get in your sleeping bag and go to sleep.  Set your alarms for 4 AM.  We are going to the summit tomorrow morning".  I love that guy.  At Florida Express, he was a good friend, who was known for quietly and efficiently getting the job done, unlike some of the shit magnets we had there.  He literally made this trip for me in that 1 minute, inspirational speech.  The other guys would have to have exposed their pussiness to argue with that.

I tried to count the 99 Switchbacks while climbing them on a later trip.  The crazy thing is that I got a different count on the way down that day.  Whatever, I never got more than 97, but I guess 99 sounds better.  Regardless, they are a bitch.  Once again, the psychological entered the picture.  When the sun finally began to appear in the east, we could once again see the summit.  That means that every time we got to the north end of one of the switchbacks, we saw pretty much the same thing as we had just seen a few minutes before.  It never got closer.  Back and forth, back and forth we went.  The other guys just took off and disappeared.  Lloyd laid back a little and would shout down encouragement from several switchbacks above, but eventually, he got summit fever and I told him to press on.  I told him may not be able to go all the way. 

 

I was not feeling well.  I had taken Diamox, a drug that is supposed to help with altitude sickness.  On subsequent trips, I learned that it was not necessary.  I never got sick or had a headache.  I was just slow and had to rest frequently.  I did not sleep well and don't know if it was because of the drug, the thin air, the tight quarters in the tent or the midnight pee breaks we semi-geezers had to take.

I finally made it to the cables.  This is a place where the switchbacks bend around to face more to the north than the east.  It is narrow, there is a rock wall to the left and a deadly fall to the right.  The trail has rocks that are difficult to walk over and around and there is water seeping out of the wall that freezes on the trail that has been notched into the wall.  The cables are thin posts that have been sunk into the rock, with a thin cable running along the trail for a short distance.  Frankly, I think it would be quite easy to slip under the cable and fall to your death.  The cables are next to useless.  I can say this with confidence, because I have read on the Whitney Portal Store Message Board, that this exact thing has occurred.

 

I learned later that one of the faster guys had sat down here and was going to call it a day, until one of the others teased him into pressing on.  I will let you guess who those two were.

Being left behind, and seeing how much higher and farther I had to go, were tough.  I worked my way up the trail by setting short term goals.  I will go to that rock.  I will go to that next switchback.  It was tough when I had to stop to catch my breath before I got to one of those short term goals, but I decided to go to the top of the switchbacks, known as Trail Crest and wait for my friends to return.  Trail Crest is where you go over the summit at a pass, to the back, western side of the divide.  It is at about 13,700 feet.  I was really feeling like crap, but I was about to learn an important lesson.

The view from Trail Crest was breath taking, to both sides.  I could look back to Trail Camp and see the little pond from which we filtered our water and a tiny rectangular building that was difficult to see.  That was the solar out house, which was also closed. 

We all had eaten breakfast and done our morning necessities.  Snake came back describing how nice and warm it felt to pick his up with the little plastic bags we had gotten at the ranger station.  Consultation Lake was to the right. 

I found a little rock ledge at Trail Crest, that was just the right height for me to sit on, as I enjoyed the views.  I began to eat a Clif Bar and drink some water and Gatorade and suddenly, I began to feel better.  This taught me that we can loose our appetite and sense of thirst at high elevations and therefore should plan to eat and drink at regular intervals, not wait until we are hungry and thirsty.

I was going to press on for another half mile, to the point where the John Muir Trail climbed up the western side of the ridge, to join the Mount Whitney Trail and continue to the summit.  I knew that this would be a descent.  I didn't know that is was steep and rocky and practically required a butt slide going down and a hands and feet scramble on the way back up.  I did it in short time and when I got to the JMT, I felt well enough to press on.  My thought was to go until one of the other guys passed on the way down and then turn back with them.  I knew I would be faster going down.  

Snake was the first I encountered and my brief discussion with him encouraged me to press on a little longer.  The trail on the back side of the ridge is like nothing I have ever seen.

So, onward and upward I went.  I gave up about 500 feet of my climb to Trail Crest when I went to the JMT junction.  From there I began to regain it.  You can see from many of the photos that there are several smaller peaks along the ridge south of Whitney.  They and the spaces between them are called the Needles and The Windows.  The trail passes at the bottom of several of these windows and it is possible to look down a very long way to what lies below the ridge.  It is important to be very careful with your footing back there.  There are some places where a stumble could lead to a long fall before you would ever hit something.  Eventually the trail arrives at a place to the west of the summit and turns east for the final climb.  There are huge boulders strewn all over the back side of the mountain.  As I passed Lloyd, he warned me about a place where there had been a rock slide that blocked the trail, requiring a hands and feet scramble for about a hundred yards.  

Soon I could see the top of the Stone Hut at the summit.  It was built by the Smithsonian Institution in 1909.

There is a sign in book at the hut and I have a picture somewhere of myself standing there, but Snake lost it.  I walked to the East Face, not too close, and looked down.  I took some other photos and knew that my friends would be waiting at Trail Camp, so I headed down.  With gravity on my side, I could move much faster, but I still had to be careful not to fall.  Descending has its own problems.  If you fall forward, the angle is greater and the injuries would be greater.  It is possible for your feet to slide out from under you on certain types of surfaces.  For some reason, descending for a long time is painful to the knees.  That is probably because your upper body is constantly trying to fall forward and you are holding it back.  Your feet can get jammed forward into your boots, if you don't retighten your strings and you can damage toe nails.  People have lost toe nails because of this.

The feeling of accomplishment, the return to thicker air, the ease with which you move, compared to the climb and seeing all the spectacular views from the other side are all exhilarating.  Upon arriving at the John Muir Trail, I was faced with the prospects of making the half mile, 500 foot scramble back up to Trail Crest.  After 2 miles of descending, my body was shocked at the necessity to climb again.  I noticed this rebellion at a couple other short climbs on the way down.  The muscles that had gotten me to the summit did not want to climb again until after some considerable rest.

When I got to Trail Camp, the guys had packed their camping gear and decided to go down to Whitney Portal, instead of spending another night sleeping at 12,000 feet.  We still had lots of daylight and of course, were prepared to hike in the dark also.  The last few miles were in the dark and the store was closed.  We drove the 13 miles back to Lone Pine and discovered that since I had forgotten to give my credit card info to the hotel, we did not have rooms.  We drove to another little hotel and they had some vacancies.  We also discovered that our bodies had stiffened so much on the short ride, that it was hard to move.  Showers, dinner and a good night's sleep made us good as new. 

This was in September of 1999. 

Died And Went To Heaven

"Died and went to heaven", "in hog heaven", these were things my old first sergeant said all the time.  He usually applied it to a situation in which someone had come upon a pretty good deal.  That is how I would describe becoming a captain on Boeing 757s and 767s at UPS.  

I remember when those airplanes first came on the scene, it was around the time I started being an airline pilot at Pacific Express.  I was flying old, beat up BAC 1-11s and these newer planes were way off my scope at the time.  I was hearing things about what they did and it was like science fiction to me.  Now nearly 15 years later, I was flying them.  

At first, there was one domicile for these planes at UPS.  That means all the pilots on that plane were on one bid.  The domestic and international flying was all done by that domicile.  Later, the company would split off all the international flying to another bidding domicile and later there would be another in Ontario CA and one in Miami, for Latin America flying.  When I started flying them and the 767 was brought onboard, I was able to bid some trans Pacific flights to Narita, the Tokyo international airport.  I had done this before on the classic 747s. 

The new planes, with their glass cockpits and flight management systems made the work much easier. I wasn't too worried about having 2 fewer engines, because the engines on these jets were much more reliable.  I had been involved in about 3 engine shutdowns inflight on the Whale.  The good thing was that you could proceed to your destination on 3 engines on a 4 engine airplane.  If you lost an engine on a twin, you had to land at the nearest suitable airport.  In nearly 15 years flying the 75/76 and a year on the 747-400, I never had to shut down an engine.  In 4 years on the DC-8 as an engineer, I never shut down one of the CFM 56 engines they had been retrofitted for.  The newer turbo fan engines were becoming very reliable.

As I said before, income was increasing and eventually, I was making much more than I had ever made before.  Except for the challenges of working for UPS and flying mostly at night, this was becoming the career of my dreams.  I was in hog heaven.  Ol' Top would have agreed.