5/22/14 -- The long way from Lone Pine to Yosemite

Dear Colby,

Well Emily and I were not successful at summiting Whitney yesterday. The storm that turned us around on the mountain is also detouring our drive from Lone Pine to Yosemite. It dumped enough to close pretty much all the northern passes through the Sierras. Think an I-70 closure. It turned our 3.5 hour drive into a boring 6 hour drive.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise to us considering we woke up to a drizzling snowing mess. Wanting to get off the mountain as quick as possible, we chose to delay breakfast until the visitor center in Lone Pine, which is at the bottom of the valley. We hoped it would be dry. It wasn’t. Putting away the tent was a struggle. Both our hands were wet and numb, making cramming the soaking wet fly into the bag nearly impossible. We drove down off the mountain with the heat blasting.

At the visitor center, we returned our pretty much clean bear canister. It checked out. There we learned all passes were closed and we would have to drive down to Bakersfield, south of the storm and the Sierras. We also learned that the gas station in Lone Pine was our only option at $4.39/gallon cash. Many stations here have a dumb policy of charging $0.10 less/gallon for cash transactions. I get that credit card fees are high, but it isn’t like I’m only buying $3 worth of gas. Enough about that.

Emily and I hastily made tea and an omelet on the picnic table in the entrance to the visitor center since it was somewhat sheltered from the wind. It was not sheltered form the confounded stares of tourists. At this point we were too cold and hungry to care. We put $20 in at the much overpriced Chevron, where to her delight, Emily discovered free coffee. I chose not to mention this was covered by the mark up.

As we drove south to go north, Emily remarked about a plane towing a glider. It was actually a B-2 in formation, but I was glad she pointed it out. We had heard many flyovers in the past few days so it was nice to see the planes. On the drive into Bakersfield we encountered heavy rain and a plethora of Joshua trees and windmills. The Mormon settlers thought that the Yucca looked like the Biblical Joshua guiding his flock. Can you see it?

Joshua trees

A wind farm

We topped off the tank in Bakersfield. I discovered “movies in your mind” a sort of audio book for truckers, with somewhat risqué covers on the boxes. We didn’t purchase any.  As we finally drove north with the Sierras to the east, the sky cleared. We passed numerous orchards growing grapes, cherries, oranges, and many other fruits. Sierra Gold almonds were quite popular. We passed the massive Halo Clementine boxing plant. Quite regularly, we saw signs concerning the lack of water, both billboards saying “No water = no jobs” and large dust devils.

A dust devil

Once outside of Fresno, the road narrowed and began to wind as we headed towards Yosemite. Emily really wanted to rent jet skis on Bass Lake, but we had Giant Sequoias to see. With the road becoming more winding, Emily took over driving duties to minimize carsickness. A few unwanted drops of rain hit the windshield before we stopped to take a picture by the sign.

Our first stop inside the park was the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. We were definitely in Yosemite, the parking lot was a zoo! It was funny to hear tourists complain about the altitude of 5000’ when we had just returned from about twice that high. One man determined the age of a giant downed tree to be about 200 years old after counting 57 rings and getting to well less than a quarter of the radius. We stopped to take pictures by the Grizzly Giant, the largest Sequoia in the park and jumping pictures within the California tunnel tree. We chose to take a slightly longer loop back and managed to avoid the crowds.

In the sequoia grove

Two grizzly giants

Jumping in a tree!

Tree hugger...

As we drove into the campground, we were warned specifically about speeding and bear proof food storage along with fire safety and hammock use. Emily took the speeding warning to heart and we poked to the campsite. We decided to attempt a campfire. I’m not sure this was worth the effort of fanning the fire to burn a few damp sticks. Emily used the hammer to remove the charred bark from a large stump. Once dry, this burned quite well. If only we had a hatchet. We managed a few s’mores, so I’d still call it a success.

Aidan...

The campsite!

Making dinner.  YUM!

I hope things are going well for you. We will have to go on some weekend adventures in Colorado while I hunt for jobs. Hopefully I find one, but not too quickly.

Take care,

Aidan

5/21/14 -- Mt. Whitney: Day 2

Dear Baruch,

Today can best be described as an adventure that you would have loved!  Of course you know that probably means that it scared me a little bit, and you would be right.  But we did make it out safely, all fingers and toes accounted for.

Aidan and I began the day at nearly 12,000 ft., camped on Mt. Whitney under nearly a foot of snow.  We had gone to bed a little worried that 1) the tent might blow away and 2) we might freeze, but thankfully when morning came we had avoided both of those predicaments.  At 6:00 am the sun was shining and the clouds looked to be parting, giving us hope for a possible summit of Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48. 

We made breakfast of oatmeal in the Jet Boil after struggling for a while to get the thing lit in the cold and snow.  We ate quickly and packed our bags for the crazy, but maybe possible, attempt.  Aidan and I each strapped a pair of micro-spikes to our feet for additional traction on the snow and ice, our substitute for the suggested crampons, and we stared out on our war.

It seemed to be relatively easy going at first.  The 8-10 in. of snow that had accumulated through the night had drifted considerably and made the going slow in the morning.  When climbing over snow on a boulder field, it is difficult to predict when your footing might suddenly give way…  Eventually we reached a snow-covered slope and we started going up again.  I made a direct line to the top, finally thankful to have an excuse to ignore all of the crazy switchbacks California likes to impose on their trails.  Eventually we did end up back on what seemed to be the trail, and we continued upwards towards the top of the pass.  We knew the most difficult section of the trail was coming up soon.  We hoped that once over the pass (if we made it that far) the trail would easily work it’s way up the west side of the peak.  The view from the east was stunning, though clearly impossible to scale the cliffs to the summit from there.

The summit comes in view! (to the right)

We traversed across a slope towards a safety rail that I hoped would give us some stability, but when we finally made it there I realized that the snowdrifts had almost entirely buried the rail.  The 4 ft. tall posts barely reached my ankle in places, and the steep slope and rocky cliffs below us made each step all the more nerve-wracking.  Not far beyond that, I decided that this adventure might be getting a little too treacherous for me.  Aidan thankfully didn’t pressure me too hard to continue, and we begrudgingly turned around with the new goal of reaching the car.  We retraced our footsteps through the snow back to our tent, and packed up our belongings for the long trek down. 

Navigating the "safety" rail

The trail just sort of ends...

Someday...

Enjoying the snow!

Notice the clouds starting to roll back in...

This is where the story gets interesting.  At this point snow covered most of the already difficult to distinguish trail through the rocks.  We were wary of staying too high on the cliffs for too long, and missing the switchback down (as we had seen two French women do the day before and had to help find their way back), and so we worked our way down quickly, guessing at where the trail might be.  We ended up with the opposite mistake.  Instead of at the top wondering how to get down, we ended up below the trail wondering how to get up.  Thankfully we had a map with us so we could figure out where we were, and we had a pretty good guess where the trail might be.  We crossed a stream a couple times before we were able to find a section that looked like it could be a promising scramble to the top.  Aidan lead the way, and I followed, occasionally passing my backpack up to him so I had more control to climb some of the more difficult sections.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, as soon as we began down the mountain the weather moved back in and it started to snow, with visibility dropping significantly.  With only a 200 ft. (maybe) scope in any direction, we were struggling to understand where we might be in relation to the trail.  That could be difficult to find on a clear day.  Anyway, long story short we made it up the cliffs and lo and behold the trail appeared before us!  I have never in my life been so excited to see footprints in the snow.  I had been beginning to worry that Aidan and I might be forced to spend another night, this time lost, on Mt. Whitney.  Neither of us wanted to have to resort to our emergency instant mashed potato mix for dinner, so it was a relief to find a safe way down.

The rest of the hike consisted of plodding though the snow, as we descended the remaining 3000 ft.  As we got lower the accumulated snow thinned, through the snow falling from the sky never seemed to let up.  Eventually we began to pass other hikers just beginning their journey up the mountain.  We smiled at them and wished them lick, thankful that we were heading off and would soon be dry and warm again.  The California permit system is dumb, and we entered a lottery 3 months ago to try to climb the mountain.  We were awarded a specific day, and regardless of the weather it was our only chance to climb.  I’m sure all of the people hiking up as we were coming down were cursing the storm and the luck that it would fall on their day as well.

About half way down

Getting close!

Towards the bottom of the trail the snow began to turn to rain, or some sort of wet frozen crap falling from the sky.  We didn’t really care though, we were just happy to be close to the car.  We finished around mid-afternoon and drove the short distance to our campsite to set up the already soaking wet tent in the rain again.  We changed into dry clothes and stopped at the Whitney Portal store where they had a hamburger deal with everything on it and fries for $10.  Aidan and I each got one and we took our time easting inside to avoid having to go back out in the rain.  A group of 8 hikers from a college in southern California joined our table and provided some endless entertainment as we ate our burgers, completely exhausted.

As Aidan and I left the store to go back to our campsite we saw a group of 14 hikers that had been going up when we passed them on the trail coming back out, giving up after only a couple hours in the storm.  I don’t blame them, the weather sucks.  Still shivering we ended up spending the rest of the day hanging out in the car.  At one point the rain/snow/sleet did let up enough and we got started building a fire, but then the weather picked back up again and we surrendered to the tent for the night.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a nice day, I really don’t want to pack up the tent again while it is still precipitating.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my recount of the hike.  It is a beautiful mountain, but strapped under the rules of California unlike the freedom the mountains in Alaska exhibit.  Hopefully we can go on some more adventures at home this summer.  I hope you are staying safe fighting fires! 

You are in my prayers. 

Your friend,

Emily 

5/20/14 -- Mt. Whitney: Day 1

Dear Hayden and Hannah,

Emily and I are still doing well, 13 days into our road trip.  Even when times get stressful we work things out.  When problems come up, we work together to fix them.  When I snore, she pokes me.  When she talks about tie-dying underwear or corn races, I just reply “oh my gosh, you are so weird.”  We are figuring it out!  Anyway, we are currently working through a bit of an unrelated predicament.

Let me back up.  Our day started at 4:00am in the Whitney Portal campground.  We hoped that an early start would allow us to summit, or at least reach our campsite before the storm everyone had been warning us about hit.  We accomplished the latter.  After a breakfast of scrambled eggs with peppers and onions, we packed up camp and drove a few minutes to the trailhead.  At the trailhead, there was a hanging scale where we weighed our packs: Aidan with 35 lbs, and Emily with 31 lbs.  Not a bad split.  I should’ve carried more, but I have a 40L pack and Emily has a 50L.

There are so many possibilities with this picture...

A beautiful morning!

The trailhead starts around 8360 ft.; quite low for the tallest peak in the lower 48.  Besides being the tallest, Whitney is also known for its switchbacks.  They start right away.  The trail was incredibly established!  Each stream had well placed rocks on which to step.  Higher up, cement had been used to reinforce what could’ve been loose blocks.

Hiking in the Sierras is different than in the Rockies.  Besides the trail maintenance/development, the permit system is much more rigorous.  We applies for the permit back in early March, so we had no way of knowing about the impending storm months out.  Had this been Colorado, we would’ve hiked in last night and summited this morning to avoid the storm.  With a one-night permit, this is not possible. 

What started out as a beautiful blue-sky morning at 6:00 am when we began hiking, soon turned into a growing mess of clouds to the east in the valley.  The clouds didn’t hang around the peaks, but the accumulating mass of dark clouds moved west, the opposite direction I’d expect at home.

By 10:00 am, we had reached a cluster of campsites near Consultation Lake, above tree line at about 11,920 ft.  The sky was very grey at this point and beginning to obscure the ring of peaks above.  We talked with a family leaving, deterred by the possibility of storm and perceived need for crampons and ice ax to reach the ridge.  (We had micro-spikes and one trekking pole each).  We took their site and set up our tent on the eastern side of a wall of rocks.  Emily thought we should be on the other side, but the father insisted the wind was off the mountain (from the west) the night before.  Emily was right, but we didn’t know it at the time.  As Emily put on tights inside the tent, the storm fully reached us.  The decision was made to wait out the storm and I quickly joined her inside. 

Ominous clouds in the east

It is now late in the evening.  We have been curled up in sleeping bags since 10:00 am and the snow shows no signs of letting up.  Each time we grudgingly leave the semi-frigid confines of the tent to go to the bathroom, the snow reaches further up our boots.  So far, it has been calm with little wind.  We passed the first few hours making up for the sleep we lost this morning.  The next few were spent writing postcards and letters.  Even within the comfort of our sleeping bags, warmth eludes us.  I am becoming nervous that the winds will pick up over night and the temperature will drop even lower.

Home sweet home

For dinner, we had Honey Lime Chicken and Thai Chicken freeze dried meals from Natural High.  Emily and I would agree, the Thai Chicken doesn’t need repeating and the Honey Lime Chicken was much much better.  Lighting the Jet Boil in the snow was a story in and of itself.  I hope Troy and I gave you guys one with the electric starter.  I went through 10 matches of a 32 match box before Emily called our to ask if I needed help.  When I responded that I’d been unsuccessful with half a box she quickly came to the rescue.  Of course, we were able to get it lit with the first match when we worked together.  We both were very aware that another similar struggle could leave us without a fire.

Dinner!

Even if all we have done is lie around for the majority of the day, I think Emily and I are both stressed.  We are both a little scared of the cold night to come, not knowing if the snow will end.  We have enough food for breakfast and lunch tomorrow, with instant cheesy potatoes as an emergency dinner, so we should be fine.  I am hesitant to rely on melting snow for water given my luck with lighting the Jet Boil, but thankfully Emily brought her filter so assuming we can find open water, that won’t be an issue.  At this point, I have little confidence in our chances of summiting, and am more concerned with getting us back safely. 

I hope you two have the opportunity to explore together some of the parks Emily and I have visited.  They are truly awe-inspiring.  Almost every day we marvel at God’s creation.  It has been an amazing adventure.

Hopefully we can keep warm through the night and return to share some amazing stories.  Emily would really like to meet you both.

Take care,

Aidan.