...or maybe a hiking boot full of rocks. I haven’t quite decided yet. So… here we go.. can you hear the commentator yet?
DINGDINGDING “In this coorrrnnnneeerrrr…. Weighing in at several thousand tons… MT WHITNEY…
And in this corner… weighing in at a combined weight of less then 300 lbs… Chris and BOOOOBBBBBIIIIEEEEEEE…..”
On Friday the 5th I had called up to the permit office to get some day hike permits for Mom, the kids and I for the first weekend of October. (That story later). After I secured the permits I called Mom at work to let her know she needed to make sure that day was cleared for work and she asked if I had inquired as to overnight permits for September. I told her no and that I’d call the permit office back. I had been calling almost daily from the time we’d gotten back from our July trip to see if there were any overnighters left and every time I called the very nice people there, very patiently explained to me that No.. there are no overnight permits until October… However, Mom and I were determined to give it another shot this year. So… I called the permit office back and the same guy answered the phone.. I asked “are there” and he said “two for the 14th.. do you want them”… I had to bite my tongue to prevent the word “duh” from escaping my lips. I kindly said yes and provided (for the second time in 5 minutes) all of the pertinent information. Called Mom back at work.. asked her how much she loved me… and very promptly realized that we had a buttload of stuff to do… and a week to do it in!!!!
I contacted a friend who very very very very kindly offered the loan of some of his lighter weight equipment (What a GODSEND!!!). He also advised me to stop eating and start running (I laughed at him and said something along the lines of not likely). He and I spent a lot of time discussing the finer points of packing light.. he told me to leave the makeup and high heels behind… I asked him how the heck I’m supposed to catch a husband out on the trail without the finer things in life??? He laughed… guess he thought I was joking!
The week went entirely to fast as I made reservations and vacation requests and childcare arrangements. And finally Friday the 12th got here and it was time to drive up North. Mom and I loaded the car… bid everyone fair well and hit the road. Stopping for gas in Kramers Junction I realized I had grabbed the wrong contact solution so grabbed a bottle of visine at the gas station. BIG MISTAKE!!! After an uneventful drive we checked into the Hostel, discovered that our roommates for the night were a couple from Belgium… we discussed the best place to do a little quick acclimating was and hit the hay.
Saturday 9-13-08: We got up at a decent hour (sort of)… and got ready for our day. I put my contacts in and instantly my eyes started burning and tearing. We got our daypacks together and drove down to the Visitor Center to pick up our permits. My handkerchief is soaked with tears by this time and the Ranger asks if I’m ok. I start fanning myself with a brochure I’d picked up… wiping tears and sniffling.. telling the poor girl how happy I was to be there… again… with my Mom for round two with the mountain. She looked at me as if she was totally falling for it. I had to let her off the hook after a couple of minutes and tell her it was just my contacts bothering me. I think her name was Jean… terrific person… lots of good information and personality. She helped us decide that we’d be going up to Horseshoe Meadows to acclimate.
We go back into Lone Pine for breakfast and to stop at the store to get me some real contact solution (yes… am still crying)… after eating we head up the road to Horseshoe Meadows. As we drove upwards (ever freakin’ upwards) Mom pointed out some para-sailers and hang-gliders. (I would like to take a moment to point out how cruel and unfair it is for a passenger to point out something to a driver while they’re driving and say “Oh Look at that”!!!! How the heck can the driver “look at that” and still stay on the silly road???) Anyways…. We finally got to a spot in the road where I could see all the awesome people up there sailing around like eagles on the thermals. Oh if only….
Ok.. Horseshoe Meadows… we took the New Army Pass/Cottonwood Lakes trail back past the Golden Trout Camp. It was a trail very reminiscent of what we’d find here in our local mountains and was actually a very pretty trail. However, if you’ve never been on it before there seems to be no real trail markers. You just start walking and if you’re not familiar with the area there isn’t anything to mark the trail distance until you get to the juncture. So… we set a turnaround time, hit that time and started back. Near as we can figure we ended up hiking almost 7 miles on our “warm-up acclimate” hike. The horse traffic from the pack station has really worn the trail down and Mom and I decided it was almost as bad as walking on the loose sand of a beach. Very hard on the legs. Back to the Hostel to get the rest of our stuff together and do the final pack/repack for our hike. We had the room to ourselves and don’t think either of us slept very well.
Sunday 9-14-08: Time to hit the trail. We grab breakfast at McyD’s and drive towards the Portal. I inform my beautiful Mommy that if our pack weights aren’t down significantly I’m going to cry, scream, throw things out of my pack, and cry more. Not necessarily in that order. Parking lot, decent spot, put the “smelly bag” in the bear locker… final check of the car… mark start time on our paper and hit the scales. I hang my pack… 31 LBS… Mom hangs hers… 31 LBS… WOOOHHHOOOOO… we managed to loose a combined 22 lbs off our packs since our July trip!!! We’re stoked and both feeling pretty good. We head up the trail and are very quickly wondering “What the heck were we thinking???” Didn’t we just do this? Didn’t it just kick our butts? The first creek crossing is how many MILES in??? Half a mile?? BS!!!! It’s takes us a few minutes but we finally make our pace. We are shooting for a mile an hour on our uphill ascent to Trail Camp. Mom has a printout in her pack and a pen and we’re marking times at significant trail markers. Between Bighorn Park and Mirror Lake we run into a group of guys taking a break on the side of the trail. We realize that the “trip leaders” shoe is disintegrating (I really am starting to see a pattern here)…. He has already rigged his shoe and is hoping that it is going to work.. but his hiking mates gladly accept some of our duct tape “on his behalf.. just in case”. We end up hopscotching the trail with them for the better part of the day. We talk to many other hikers and hear a couple of stories. I think this is my favorite part of this whole backpacking/hiking thing… the people you meet on the trail. There is a couple who tell us that the cable section is pretty nasty with ice… some guy had tried to push past this couple and ended up biffing it, tearing the daylights out of his elbow.
Mom and I arrive in Trail Camp feeling very good about ourselves with plenty of time left to pitch camp, cook dinner (Mountain House Beef Stew… yummy!!!!) and just chill out. I am coherent, awake, functional and actually remember EVERY part of the upwards hike this time!!! Final ascent time for Sunday: 9 hours…. 1 hour shorter then it took in July. Figuring in rest times, chat sessions, potty breaks, and other excuses to stop along the way… we figure it averages to just a little over our mile an hour. Woohoo! Go us!!!
Monday 9-15-08: We get up a little later then Mom wanted (about 6:30) and get breakfast on, as much as I love oatmeal… I must be honest and say it tasted like crap (but my Mommy threatened to spank me if I didn’t finish all my breakfast… so I choked it down). Filter water for the trip and talk to a couple of dayhikers who are on their way through, and then secure our camp for the day. Mom and I start our own ascent of the switchers and the going is kind of slow. Mom tells me to go ahead and we discuss briefly not separating. As open as the switchers are it’s very easy to see either her below me or me above her so I go ahead a bit. I stop every now and again… she catches up… we talk for a minute and we move more. About switcher 24 or so we stop to discuss our plan of attack. Mom had checked the weather forecast before we left and knew that weather was supposed to be moving in for Tuesday. After talking with a couple of day hikers who confirmed that the weather report was still holding true, we decided to re-evaluate what we were going to do. We agree that we don’t want to run the risk of getting stuck on the granite section between Trail Camp and Mirror Lake in the rain. The rocks will be slippery and increase the chance of us getting hurt (bad juju). So we decide to set a turn around time instead of place. Figuring that, if nothing else, we can stop at Outpost Camp for the night. Just so long as we don’t get stuck Tuesday in the rain, on the granite hump. So.. figuring time.. distance… endurance.. and the rate at which we tend to move… we set our turn around time for a solid 1500. After our discussion we continue to move and hit the cable section. Ohhhhh so not good.
The trail is almost completely frozen over, except for the granite rocks directly underneath of the cables. Looking at this and thinking about the story the couple told us from the day before… the pushy guy is lucky he didn’t take a long ride down. We very carefully pick our way up, stopping to take pictures of the beautiful icicles and frozen flows coming out of the cracks in the rock. Then we reach the very last section of cable where the poles lean way our over the granite slab. My arms are not long enough to reach the chain anymore so I let go and very very very carefully pick my way past. I get just past them and turn around to see how Mom is doing and she’s not moving anymore. I stand there quietly, letting her make her own decision and she looks up at me and says “Uncle”. That one word is all it takes and I know we’ve reached our summit for this particular trip. The safety line has been crossed and the trail is no longer comfortable, so we turn around and head back to camp.
We meet a dayhiker just at the western edge of Trail Camp who says his wife has packed to many sandwiches for him to carry and would we please do him the honor of eating one of them for him. We happily oblige and oh BOY was that sandwich good!!!! We break down camp, pack our stuff up and head down the trail.
During the climb on the switchers I had started developing a mild, base of the skull headache, and now it seems to be intensifying. We’re heading downwards and as we come over the hump above Trailside Meadow my stomach kicks in to full blah mode… Mom asks how I’m doing (something about me looking green around the gills) and I say “just get me below treeline”… it’s very slow going and I have to stop a lot. I think, in the long and short of it… it was about 5% altitude and 95% dehydration. Drinking water makes my stomach churn… but I force myself to anyways. We make it down to Outpost camp and stop for a rest. We sit there in the nice shade of the trees, my head and stomach are feeling better… but I do a quick study of the backsides of my eyelids. After just a couple of minutes Mom tells me to get off my lazy duff and we get back on the road. Around the southeast side of Bighorn Park there is a Doe and her two fawns and we stop for a couple of minutes so Momma can take pictures. How beautiful!!!!
Nothing very exciting on the rest of the trail down. The guy with the tore up shoe (who managed to summit with his buddies) and one of his buddies reappear behind us and we hike together for awhile bantering back and forth. It makes for some fun hiking time. They soon pass us and Mom and I are on our own for the rest of the hike. Daylight is fading, we are limping along, and starting to worry about making it off the trail before sundown. We both know where our headlamps are hidden in our packs and double check to make sure they are easily accessible. Eventually the sound of the Portal Store’s generator comes into earshot and we hold onto that sound, knowing that as long as we can hear it that 1) we’re close and 2) we can still get a burger. Oh… did I forget to mention that my hiking poles have been telling me “BURGER BURGER” since about Mirror Lake?
So… we get to the trailhead (WOOHOO go US!!!) just as we loose the last of the light. We hobble our tired way towards the store and I see a rather (I think) familiar looking vehicle. Peeking inside we are greeted by our favorite California Moose. Our own personal cheering party!! Laura scoops our packs off of us like their filled with feathers or something and gives us both big hugs. We greet the dayhikers sitting there at the table (by the way.. they had passed us going up and coming down.. talk about being lapped!)… and order our food. After visiting with Laura, Doug, Earlene and all the rest of the crew Mom and I head down to the Hostel.
Tuesday: Just a quick note for Tuesday… I woke up and the first thing I did was looked out the window to see what the weather was doing. The clouds flowing over the peaks and ridges were SCAREY!!! Huge, puffy, pewter gray masses building up and preparing to skewer themselves upon the needles and granite spires in Whitney and her surrounding towers. We took some pictures before driving home… and boy are we both glad we made it down before that moved in. We would have been STRESSED!
Lessons learned:
1. Each step is one step further then I’ve ever been… I know I said this before, but let me explain this one. Even though I had traveled the trail between portal and Trail camp only a couple of months ago… there were new things that I hadn’t seen before with each new step. Less water here… more flowers there… oh look at the deer!!!! Also, having been on the trail before gave me more familiarity with it and less of a need to watch my feet with every step!
2. Visine does not a good substitute make. I will NEVER make that mistake again… although if I’d known it was that easy to give an Oscar worthy performance I would have done so YEARS ago… ‘cause then I’d be rich.. wouldn’t have to work.. and could hike whenever I wanted to!!!!
3. I may not be able to find a husband at 12,000+ feet… but making new friends is fun! So.. here’s a shout out to those that I know made it… Roman from San Bernardino, Mark from Fort Lauderdale, Martin, Stuart and all your crew from “a little of everywhere”… the girl with the Woodstock Earrings and her crew… the British man who was doing his first non-winter summit attempt… Congratulations to all of you and it was great meeting you. And to the 90 ½ old gentleman… Sir.. I hope you got the comb you wanted.. and I hope you made your summit.
Here are my pictures... more when Momma gets hers all uploaded and organized!!!
OMG you slay me.
