09/06/04 Report: "Part VI"

Anyone who has planned an "alpine start," a pre-dawn
departure, knows how difficult it is to get to sleep. 
And so I was awake at about midnight when the Crabtree
ranger, Rob, came into our camp and woke up one of the
clients to ask where Jan and I were. He woke me up
and asked if we had seen a solo hiker coming down the
trail any time that evening.  Apparently he had gotten
a call about an elderly man suffering from hypothermia
at Trail Crest, elevation 13,100 feet.  I said we
hadn’t seen anyone and he sighed, thanking me and
heading on up the trail.  He was in for a long night. 
At two my alarm clock sounded and Jan and I got up and
started making coffee by the pale light of our
headlamps.  The full moon hung in the western sky. 
The clients were roused and began to get their things
together for the summit push.  The noise of our
preparation also roused a camper sleeping nearby and
he approached our camp saying, "Not all of us are
planning a 3:00am start.  Keep it down." We were all
puzzled because we recognized him as the guy we met
the day before who was announcing to anyone along the
trail that he was going to "pull the moonlight
assault."

So we quietly filed out of camp and headed up into
the massive glacial cirque.  No one talked.  Granite
and moonlight go well together and we were surrounded
by it.  The trail makes about a dozen switchbacks up
and up and meets up with the main Whitney trail that
comes from the east at Trail Crest. There was a
couple sitting in the rocks there, huddled in their
sleeping bags.  They were really cold. The
temperature with wind chill was around 10 degrees. 



We stopped and put on all our clothes.  I was wishing I
had brought gloves.  Now we were heading north along
the crest itself.  The sky was beginning to brighten a
bit and when we reached the first “window,” a notch in
the crest where it is possible to look down to the
east and see the town of Lone Pine 10,000 feet below
in the Owens Valley, dawn was in progress.  I tried to
take a picture but my camera was frozen.  Because of
the altitude we had to walk so slowly that it was hard
to stay warm.  Eventually we made our way up to the
summit plateau. The sun was just coming up but its
rays did little to warm us.  Because of the early hour
we had the whole place to ourselves.  To the east
Nevada stretched away in range after range of barren
ridge, disappearing into haze.   The view to the north
was the most impressive.  Mt. Russell is the first
peak to the north and has an impressive feature on its
southern flank called the Fish Hook Arete.  Then Mt.
Williamson and then a bunch of other peaks that I have
yet to discover the names of.   

I believe most of California’s 14,000 foot peaks are visible from
Whitney.  Most of the group was getting cold and had
retreated to the summit shelter, a low building built
of stone and mortar with a tin roof.  Ranger Rob was
in there, sitting in his sleeping bag and brewing tea.
He had found no sign of the hypothermic man, and had
arrived at the summit about the time we left camp.  On
the way down we saw our friend who had complained
about our early morning noise. I asked him what had
happened to his moonlight assault and he mumbled
something about his son sleeping in. The traffic
coming up the trail at this hour was staggering. 
Literally dozens of hikers passed us; short, tall,
warm, cold, happy, sad, young, old, international,
experienced, first-timers.  It was a very diverse
crowd.  Many do the climb in one long day, a
round-trip of 22 miles and a vertical gain of, I
think, 6000 feet.  Some people start the John Muir
Trail here, climb Whitney on the second day and then
continue northward on the west side of the crest,
heading for Yosemite. The dozens of backpacks stacked
at Trail Crest belonged to these types of people.  The
packs are left there while their owners climb the peak
without the extra weight and then pick them up as they
drop down the west side. 

 

We all arrived safely back at our camp by 11am and
took naps until about 2:30.  Then we packed up and
headed slowly down to our campsite for that night,
three miles distant. This camp was located in Lower
Crabtree Meadow and is off the beaten path. Therefore
it was a peaceful and solitary evening that was spent
at the edge of that lovely meadow. Five deer came out
of the trees at dusk and grazed intently until dark. 
All the clients were in their tents early and Jan and
I watched the light fade and the stars begin to shine.




Go to the final installment

(All photos: TB)