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.