June 2017
I wake up to a tapestry of stars. Jeremy, always industrious in the morning, is already moving around outside the tent. I perceive a tiny orange glow through the tent fabric, and hear the familiar hiss of our stove, closely followed by the loud clunk of the bear box. Soon, we’re eating Mountain House meals in big, hurried bites, pressing the warm plastic bags against our chests.
We’re on the move before the sun. The air is warm and the going is not too hard. The twin beams of our headlamps scurry quickly up the dirt trail as we pant in the thinner air. The trailhead for Mount Whitney is at 8,200 feet, and I’m feeling it already. As a Seattle-based climber, I don’t get much exposure to altitude. In fact, we’re already higher than the summit of 99% of the peaks in Washington.
We crest 9,500 feet as the horizon pinkens. The day dawns golden in a corner of deep, blue sky, and soon the air around us is tinged in rich morning light.
The trail is busy, with many teams joining us for an alpine start. Already, a young couple is making their way down. The guy is drenched, and they explain that he fell in a creek higher up. They warn us the log bridge’s beams are broken and covered in an invisible veneer of verglas. We thank them and move on, soon reaching 10,000 feet. I make fun of the couple turning back several times, joking to Jeremy that they’re soft and only using his fall in the creek as an excuse to turn back.
As it turns out, Karma is often swift and unforgiving. We reach the log bridge and, forgetting all about the verglas, I confidently step over the broken beam. My boot immediately bounces off the log and I twist in the air, landing in the creek with a sonorous splash. I haul myself out in record time and can only inspect the damage: I’m soaked from the waist down.
Well, I can’t use this as an excuse, now can I?
I strip just about everything off below the waist: my gaiters, my pants, my socks, my liners, and my boots. It’s all drenched in frigid water, and I’m shivering in the cold, bitter air. I wring everything a hundred times, twisting each garment until my arms hurt, squeezing out every drop of water I can, until they only retain an unleaking, wet heaviness, their color visibly deepened. I put everything back on and continue to shiver. It’s probably going to be a pretty miserable climb, but I can manage.
We set off again and Jeremy, who has mercifully refrained from mocking me too much (he’ll save that for after the climb), leads the way up and around the creek, and discovers a place where it runs thinner and we can traverse by stepping on rocks. Unfortunately, it’s a little too late for me.
Soon after the crossing, we encounter the snowline, a big white tongue lolling onto the next switchback. We take off our packs and don crampons, helmets, and ice axes. As we start kicking steps up the snow, I wonder how cold it’ll be high up. For all my bravado, I’m getting pretty darn cold in my damp clothing.
November 2019
I wake up in the high desert of Alabama Hills. Jeremy and I get out of the tent and into the dusty, peak-studded landscape. Peerless and omnipresent, the sharp triangle of Mount Whitney glistens higher than all of them. At 14,505 feet, it is unequaled in height within the contiguous United States. If you want to climb higher, you have to go to Alaska or try another country. As such, reaching the summit is a coveted feat, though not a particularly hard mountaineering endeavor. It’ll be a cold, long slog at altitude, but little more. At least, we hope it’ll be that easy.
We break down camp quickly, eager to collect our permits and eat breakfast. The day is bright and frozen, stuck in a tug-o-war between Fall and Winter. We pick up our permits at the ranger station, eat a monstrous breakfast, and rent a bear canister. Then, we find a small, dusty pullout in the long, boulder-speckled hills outside of town. We go through all our gear, packing no technical gear, but lots of cold weather equipment. For my part, I bring a single-wall, mountaineering tent, a sleeping bag rated to -20 degrees, and a 700-fill down jacket. It’s going to be freezing up there, and I want to sleep comfortably.
We leave the car at the trailhead, stash our spare food in the bear boxes, and start the long hike up. We’re planning on sleeping at the 10K camp, or possibly the 12.5K camp if we’re feeling spry.
I turn on a podcast as we slowly plod uphill, huffing and puffing under our heavy packs. It’s “Alpinist,” and David Roberts is reading from his essay, “Death and Climbing.” He’s one of my favorite writers, and he’s been facing a serious cancer over the past few years. In this essay, Roberts discusses how alpinists justify continuing to climb in the wake of their friends dying in the mountains. I listen intently, feeling the gravity and fatigue in Roberts’ voice, and also the enduring wonder and thirst for knowledge.
Before I know it, we’ve hiked past the first set of switchbacks, over the infamous log bridge (the beam is now fixed), and past the small plateau where the snowline began last time. We make the 10K camp in just two hours, and since we’re feeling good, we push on to the higher camp.
The next 2,500 feet are long, and my legs are burning by the time we wander into camp around four in the afternoon. Camp is a generous term: three dozen bivy sites next to a small lake. We pick an empty platform and put my Assault 2 up, unfurling sleeping bags, pads, and pillows. We then go down to the lake to melt water. First we have to break the ice at the surface of the lake by tossing a large rock into it. We then boil pot after pot of water, enough for both of us to eat two dehydrated meals, drink a liter, and have two one-liter bottles filled with hot water. The latter, buried in our sleeping bags, will keep up warm throughout the night and will serve as drinking water for the climb the next day.
The sun sets completely and the light withdraws behind frigid peaks. Below, in this amphitheater of granite built for giants, we tiny mortal slither into our tents. Night has arrived, and the colossal emptiness of the cirque is filled with cold.
The alarm is set for an alpine start. We settle down into our sleeping bags, knowing we only have a few precious hours of rest.
June 2017
I’m still cold, and we’re not making much progress. The snow conditions are bad; mushy, slippery tracks have slowed our progress to a crawl. Still, after five hours of laborious effort, we’re toiling away around 12,000 feet, having left most of the gigantic valley behind us. We can see the regular switchback route covered in snow, and faint tracks criss-crossing over the long, broad snow-chute climbers use to ascend to Trail Crest this time of year.
Most of the other climbers attempting a one-day push have dropped off at this point. We know of one pair of young, tall guys pushing on somewhere above us. Other than that, we abandon the one other group still in contention a good mile from the chute. They have decided to head down because one of them is complaining of fatigue and moving too slowly to make it in a reasonable time.
He and me both. I’m moving like a mollusk, my crampons dragging against each little snag of hard snow. The altitude is getting to me. I feel like I’m expanding gigantic amounts of energy, and yet getting nowhere. The start of the chute should be getting closer, but every time I pick up my head to see how far we’ve come, it still seems a long way away. Jeremy is still moving well, about fifty feet ahead of me.
I sigh and push myself up off of my ice axe. I take a step, and then another step. And then another, until I fall back into my cadence. I decide to start counting steps. I’ll count in groups of a hundred, and every hundred I’ll take a short break. Once I’ve done three of four counts, we should be at the bottom of the chute.
But I’m wrong. Each count to a hundred seems to ebb into an eternity, and it’s eight counts, not three or four, that see me to the bottom of the chutes. Jeremy leads the way again, and I follow him, kicking his footsteps deeper into the mountainside. It’s hard labor. We’re almost at 13,000 feet, and I am breathing raggedly. I decide to count steps again. The summit is still so far away. Another hundred steps. I lean on my ice axe and breathe heavily. Ahead of me, Jeremy is slowing down. Below me, far, far below, the two specks of the other pair of climbers inches back down the valley. Smart decision. I take another step. And another.
...96, 97, 98, 99, and 100. I lean heavily on my ice axe again. Jeremy and I talk. We decide to take a break and discuss our options. I get some food and water in me. It’s late, almost noon. We’re still over two miles from the summit, with over 1,500 feet to go. We’re exhausted, it’s late, and the snow is mushy and will only slow us down further. Jeremy feels a bit better from drinking and eating, but I still feel awful. I tell him we should pull the plug. He doesn't argue. He knows I’ve had it.
We shake hands and take pictures at our high point, and then we make a solemn serment: we will come back one day, the two of us, and finish this thing. The words are spoken and branded into my brain - the pact is made.
I take off my crampons and sweep off in a tumultuous glissade, my whole body gliding swiftly towards the valley and its thicker air.
November 2019
We rise before the sun. The mouth of the tent is black, littered with dozens of constellations. We get the stove and cook right outside the tent, warm and cozy in our sleeping bags. Outside, the cold of November awaits us. We see headlamps floating by as we gulp down our breakfast mush. People are heading to the summit already. Time to follow them. We zip up the tent, shoulder our smaller day-packs, and set off down the trail. It’s easier with a lighter pack, but every step takes us to a higher altitude, and soon I am huffing and puffing away. Jeremy is a more conscientious pace-setter - I let him take the lead and settle into his rhythm. I turn on another podcast and continue to plod away in the dark.
Soon, we switch our headlamps us as a beautiful, golden disk rises over the horizon, bathing the dusty rock trail with dirty, morning light. My eyes settle to the new view, one in which the gargantuan valley is no longer black and empty, but filled with white, California granite and deep blue sky.
We continue up the switchbacks, turning and turning up the mountain flank, until I’ve long lost count of each turn in the trail. Finally, we see the sky open up as we go up the last switchback and reach Trail Crest. It’s breathtaking. On the other side of the ridge is a landscape of equal grandeur and magnificence as the one behind us: brown and white mountains towering out of the flat, dusty plateau at 6,000 feet. In between each ripple of mountains, flat, dark lakes sprawl out in dark shimmers.
We take a short break and then cross over to the other side of the ridge and into this new side of the mountain. Now the view is to our left, and we marvel at the Gothic castles of peaks on the west side of the mountain. From within that desertic wildness, the John Muir Trail scrawls its way out and up the mountainside, finishing on the summit of Mount Whitney. We reach 14,000 feet and take a break. We will summit now - it’s inevitable. The sky is clear of clouds and the weather is fine. There’s not a breath of wind. It sinks in slowly, but it sinks in: we’re going to bag the big bastard.
We’re happy now, and we take our time getting up the last section. It no longer feels like hard work to move at these altitudes, but like the simple, organic currency of upward progress, and one that I pay without grudge. It’s clean, beautiful, honest work, this struggle against gravity and into the thinner air, and more than that it makes us happy.
Near the summit, we see a poor puppy in a down-suit made for dogs. He whimpers miserably, his padded feet rubbing against the granite. He seems to be in some pain, but unfortunately it’s not our place to relieve the poor pooch of its imbecile of an owner. We go on and reach the small hut built on the summit plateau. It’s tiny, with rough, uncomfortable benches, but looks like it would provide adequate shelter in case of a lightning storm. The latter are quite common in the Sierra Nevada, so the hut is equipped with a lightning rod. Still, not a place I’d want to spend the night.
We sign the register and take the last few steps onto the tippy-top. It’s a great place to be. Jeremy and I hug it out, our pact fulfilled. Around us, a whirlwind of valleys wallpapered with clean, white granite give way to the enormous, desertic plains below, speckled with lakes of a blue so deep their surfaces almost look black.
I stand there for a long time and take in the views. I’m not sure there’s a lesson in this summit. We don’t always learn something. Sometimes, it’s just good to go back and finish what you started.
