California

Betsy articulated our experiences volunteering at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore by recapping her daily journal entries on Sand Island; so I will pick it up from there (and leave it up to her as to whether or not she will blog about her own solo journey through a bunch of those itty-bitty, funny-shaped states on the east coast).

Thursday, July 9, 2015

I left Bayfield Wisconsin and drove to Winner, South Dakota; which is about 700 miles.

A minor highlight was, at the last minute, ignoring the advice of the lady at the Duluth information center and blowing straight through the heart of St. Paul on I-35E. I made great time and it was an easy drive.

Now, you might ask, why Winner, SD? The short answer is that it is near Valentine, Nebraska and the Niobrara National Scenic River; and it has a Holiday Inn Express (more about Valentine/Niobrara tomorrow).

Perhaps a better question is; why is there an HIE in the middle of nowhere on the South Dakota/Nebraska border? I think the answer might be pheasant hunting. Winner, SD is supposedly the pheasant hunting capital of the U.S. and, sure enough, not too far out of town I nearly hit one of those pretty green-headed things crossing the road.

Briefly, as I came into town, my imagination ran wild and I wondered if Dick Cheney had ever hunted here? Maybe he stayed at the HIE in Winner? Maybe he slept in the very same room where I slept?

“Has Vice-President Cheney slept here?” I thought about asking the clerk at the front desk.

But, I didn’t. It just seemed a little too far off the wall, even for me.

Speaking of which; before I go too far off the rails talking about Winner, South Dakota, I want to go back a few hours in the day to tell you about an odd encounter I had with a lady at a city park in Blue Earth, Minnesota. 

 As all my faithful blog readers already know Blue Earth is the home of the Jolly Green Giant statue that has been featured in this blog in years past. I can honestly say that, every time I have ever driven on I-90 in southwestern Minnesota, I have stopped and taken a photo at the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth. This trip, of course, was no exception.

So, I used the timer on my phone to take various photos that were all, to varying degrees, aimed straight up under the Giant’s (very short) green skirt. I have to report that nothing (and I mean nothing) of the Giant’s private parts were revealed in any of these photos because, apparently, there is nothing to reveal; which is, I must say (for a man of his size) startling.

At any rate, I had finished taking the photos and relaxed a bit at one of the picnic tables placed on the lush, green lawn around the statue when I (innocently) wandered over to the small tourist information booth situated in a corner of the park. The booth is, basically, one of those wooden storage sheds that you might find at a Home Depot. But it was staffed by a nice, 70ish lady selling Jolly Green Giant trinkets (spoiler alert; Betsy I bought you a present).

The nice lady quickly informed me that she had been watching me take my photos and she said she had never seen anyone do that before (i.e. putting the camera on the ground, looking straight up under the JGG’s skirt).

This I seriously doubted. Maybe it was her first day on the job?

At any rate, she then asked me where I was from.

Of course, I said Texas.

And then, armed only with that information and without any further prompting, this nice, 70ish lady immediately (I’m not making this up) launched into the following story.

Just a few days ago, she said, a young man that she often drinks coffee with at the local McDonalds walked into the Blue Earth public swimming pool wearing a bikini (you know, both the bottom and the top, she explained) and, after a dip in the pool, he proceeded to walk into the women’s dressing room where he used the facilities.

The police were called and the man (probably in his mid-20s, she guessed) was arrested.

Now, she says, the young man has threatened to sue the city.

“Maybe the city is going to sue him,” she said. Adding, plaintively (apparently thinking about their coffee-drinking sessions at McDonalds); ‘…he seemed so nice, so normal.’

Now, of course, what startled me about this story was not the odd details of a bikini-wearing-man using the women’s bathroom at the Blue Earth, Minnesota public swimming pool; nor that a woman whose job it was to sell trinkets depicting a giant green man dressed in a mini-skirt found it odd that a real man chose to go swimming in a bikini; but rather that her recounting of the tale to me seemed to be prompted by nothing more than my admission that I’m from Texas (although, conceivably, it’s possible that it may have had something to do with me taking photographs of myself looking up the Jolly Green Giant’s skirt).

I’ve been pondering on this odd encounter for some time now, with no clear resolution.

Friday, July 10, 2015

The Niobrara National Scenic River is definitely one of the more obscure of the 400-plus National Park Service units and, like most of the lower-profile parks, it is starved for resources, struggling just to maintain what it has.

Nebraska? Really?

On the way into Valentine I stopped at some scenic views and read the interp boards. In town I had a great discussion with the park’s “acting head of interpretation” (who very well may be the park’s only interp employee).

She said the majority of the park’s visitors are tubers who show up on Saturday’s in June and July and come there from cities like Omaha. Later I checked on MapQuest and found that Omaha is 300 miles from Valentine, which seems like a pretty long drive to go tubing.

From there I hammered it on to Denver where I met Tex for some great, local Colorado beer and food truck mac & cheese. We chattered away well into the evening and made plans for the weekend. 

Saturday, July 11, 2015

After a great breakfast (yes, Betsy, corned beef hash) and with great anticipation Tex and I headed off to the State Capitol area to soak in some of Colorado’s rich history. We wanted to “really get to know Colorado” and had visions of touring the state capitol and spending hours at the splendid new state history museum where the $14 ticket would ensure that we learned everything we needed to know about Colorado and its colorful past.

At least, that’s what I imagined. The reality was that Capitol building was closed up tighter than a drum (even though a confusing series of signs led us and several others circumnavigating the building from door to door in anticipation that the next one would surely be the one that was open).

Well, okay, we still had the shiny new $14-per-ticket history museum to look forward to, right?

Nope. What a disappointment. It might be a decent place to take a third-grade class for a field trip on a hot day if the school doesn’t have air conditioning but, basically, the museum sucked and we bailed after 30-40 minutes of trying to believe that I had not just flushed $28 down the toilet.

So we walked around the plazas in the area for a bit and had a pretty good experience taking in the Denver Museum of Art where it was (positively) free admission day but (on the downside) quite crowded. They have a couple of Thomas Hart Benton paintings on display and it was a nice museum.

Not too surprisingly, supper was at a brewpub.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

They say this was one of the best summers for Columbine in many years.

Tex picked out a hike for us in the mountains west of Denver that starts at a trailhead conveniently located just off I-70. After breakfast we zipped out there and Tex zipped off up the trail never to be seen again until he hiked back up the trail later in the day to walk down with me.

He climbed a 12er and, briefly, I thought I was going to climb a 13er but I got hung up in the talus and thin air and abandoned the quest several hundred vertical feet below the summit.

Soon enough we were back in the truck and headed back to Denver with, apparently, about 97 percent of the state. I-70 was backed up for miles and miles and it took us several hours to get back to Denver.

I dropped Tex at his apartment, went back to the motel and he joined me there later with a growler of beer and some Chinese food. After the repast we called Betsy/Mom and had a nice Facetime chat.

And then, all too soon, it was time to say goodbye. I will not see Tex again until Christmas and these partings don’t seem to be getting much easier (for me).

Monday, July 13, 2015

Remember yesterday when the eastbound lanes of I-70 were clogged up. Guess what, today it was the westbound lanes, and it didn’t really clear up much until I got past the Loveland Tunnel. After that there was more construction with periodic delays and then I made a long stop at the Costco in Eagle to stock up on provisions for the trailer. Just when I thought I was going to escape from Colorado, 30 miles east of Grand Junction, the speedometer, odometer and cruise control all went blank and stopped working, although the truck seemed to be running fine.

I pulled over but was afraid to turn the engine off for fear I might get stuck there. So I googled the Grand Junction Ford dealer and drove into the dealership parking lot where I turned the ignition off and re-started the engine. Everything came back up in working order. So, with some trepidation, I continued the journey west into eastern Utah, one of the most remote stretches of interstate in the country.

Fortunately, ever since then everything with the truck has been fine, but it was a bit worrisome at the time.

From Fruita, Colorado (near the Utah border) to Green River, Utah – a stretch of more than 100 miles – there are no towns and no services. However, this is beautiful country with vast expanses of red rock stretching out as far as the eye can see.

About halfway between the two towns is a forlorn Utah visitor center/rest stop. It’s like a little oasis in the desert and there was a nice lady working the counter who helped me think through potential stopping points as I drove west. While I was there a Japanese guy walked in and asked the lady where he could find the nearest casino. Without a moment’s hesitation she said; “Nevada” (which, from there, is about 300 miles).

After the guy left I said to the lady that I didn’t think he was too familiar with Utah and she laughed, but when I inquired about where she lived and/or how far she had to drive to get to work she clammed up. I do wonder though where she lives because there appears to be no sign of anything other than red rock for 60 miles in any direction.

I motored on west without any particular destination in mind but when I reached the tiny town of Scipio near I-15 and stopped for gas I noticed the tidy-looking Scipio Hotel next door and decided that would be a good place to stop. I fully expected to walk in and find a nice, older Mormon couple running the place and was a bit startled when a young black guy appeared instead. What’s next, casinos?

The place was indeed as tidy inside as it appeared to be outside, the room was clean and cheap and I knocked back a couple of beers watching the sunset on I-15 through the window before getting a good night’s sleep.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

After a short connection via I-15 I was headed west again on U.S. 50, crossing into Nevada, up and over the mountains and down into the Great Basin. I had considered stopping over at Great Basin National Park near the state line, a very cool place that is home to Mt. Wheeler, a 13er that is, just barely, the second-highest point in the state. However, I had other mountains to climb and the trailer was waiting for me in Bishop, so I blew by the turnoff for the park and pressed on.

In Ely, Nevada I scoped out the KOA and the gasoline facilities that – on the return trip east with the trailer – will be my first night’s destination.

For 170 miles, from Ely to Tonapah, Nevada there is absolutely nothing. No structures of any kind, just high desert and mountains and two lanes of good asphalt.

Nevada is, I think, a beautiful place with some of the clearest air and skies anywhere in the lower 48 but, my goodness, it is a remote and almost scarily empty place. Miles and miles and miles of empty.

Between the two towns I saw, maybe, a half-dozen other vehicles. About halfway to Tonapah there is a “rest area” that has some picnic tables and nothing else. For me, of course it is no problem to simply pull over and pee whenever I feel the need. But I wonder what it must be like for the guy traveling from Ely to Tonopah with his mother-in-law?

This was second time this year that I’ve driven across a big chunk of this big state and I’ve observed that Nevada has, basically, two speed limits, 70 and 25. When you come to one of the rare towns it can be quite a shock when that 25 mph sign suddenly pops up. Surprisingly, out on the empty, remote stretches of highway there does not seem to be a lot of speeding. I kept it right on 70 most of the time and don’t recall anyone ever passing or coming up on me from behind. Of course, there is very little traffic.

I got into Bishop in plenty of time to check into the office at the Tri-County Fairgrounds, which “manages” the Bishop RV Park and then went to pick up the trailer at the very well-maintained and convenient storage facility where I had left it in April. Soon I was set up in my “prime” slot under the shade of a giant cottonwood tree (the only tree anywhere close to the “Park”).

Now, because I am so far behind with the blog, and I’ve been here nearly a month as I write this entry, I am going to insert a short summary here of my experiences at the “Park” and in Bishop, even though it’s out of sequential order.

As the name suggests this is a regional fairground that is used for county fairs, horse shows, FFA exhibits, etc. It also has some fairly extensive facilities for events, like dances, parties, meetings, etc. Apparently the biggest event of the year in Bishop is Mule Days, held in early September and so named because of the mule teams that hauled borax and other minerals out of the deserts to the east and south of here back in the day (does anyone else remember Ronald Reagan and the 20-mule team?).

The RV “Park” was, I assume, an afterthought amongst all these facilities and it may have been designed primarily to accommodate vendors and support staff at the big events (i.e. Mule Days), and maybe also for families participating in livestock shows and such. Renting spaces out to “tourists” like me definitely seems to have been an afterthought.

At any rate, the place is pretty stark with 40 RV slots jammed right on top of each other on what is, essentially, just one big gravel parking lot. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ve seen more than about five rigs parked here at one time since I’ve been here, so there has been plenty of room to spread out.

However, when I arrived the first day, there was a trailer parked in the slot right next to mine even though the only other rig in the entire place belonged to Holly, the campground host. That seemed weird.

Furthermore, the guy in that one trailer was not very friendly although his college-age grandson (who attends American University in WDC) was visiting and seemed to be a really great kid who was here for a few days to do some fishing with Grandpa.

Likewise, Holly the campground host was considerably less than friendly when I first met her.

Later I found out that Holly and Grandpa are friends and, in years past, Holly had occupied the shady slot under the cottonwood tree that I now have. Furthermore, Grandpa has cancer and has to go back and forth to his home on the western side of the Sierra for chemo treatments.

Afternoon shade from the giant cottonwood tree

A few days after I arrived Grandpa left and when he came back he moved his trailer down the row next to Holly. A week or so after that his trailer was gone and he has not been back since. Over time Holly has warmed up a bit and eventually told me the full story, and we’ve been on friendlier speaking terms since then.

One Friday I came back from several days out in the mountains to find a small trailer parked two slots over from me surrounded by tents and sun shelters with at least a half-dozen 20-somethings sitting around in lawn chairs drinking beer, talking loudly, playing music and appearing to be auditioning for guest slots on Duck Dynasty.

They were not very friendly but one of them told me they were in town for a wedding and that the reception was going to be held here at the fairgrounds the next day.

It turned out to be quite a party with lots of loud, drunken carousing and, around midnight, a fight broke out in the encampment next door. Soon the police squealed up with lights flashing and calmed things down but, soon after the cops left, the fight resumed. The cops came back again and, this time, things quieted down for good.

A few hours prior to that excitement, and not long after the wedding was over and the party was just beginning to ramp up, a pretty stiff wind blew down out of the mountains, caught some of the tents in the encampment and sailed one of them over the fence into the parking lot of the condo/apartments right behind me. One of the chubby Duck Dynasty girls in a short black dress that was several sizes too small for her was out in the wind and rain cussing and trying to pull the tent back across the fence. I had a pretty good time watching that.

There have been some other relatively loud weekend events on the grounds since then but, fortunately, no more Duck Dynasty wannabes, fights or police calls.

During the week it’s much quieter and the bathroom and shower facilities are kept pretty clean. So, overall, the place has worked out OK and has been adequate for my needs. Of course I’ve been out in the mountains about half the time and everything has, so far, been in good order when I’ve returned.

The location is very convenient; easy walking distance if I want, to the grocery store and the Forest Service permit office. So, all in all, I’ve been pretty happy with the place and I am very happy to have the shade of the cottonwood from the afternoon sun.

This is a desert of course and the air is very dry. At night the temps drop into the 50s and, with fans running, the sleeping conditions are perfect. Blankets are needed every night. The morning sun does hit me hard and, when I am here during the day I do sometimes have to crank on the AC before noon. However, generally speaking, by early evening I am in full shade, the air has cooled and I can open the windows. It is usually quite pleasant to sit outside and drink a beer in the evening.

All things considered, the “Park” has worked out pretty well, the price is right, and there do not appear to have been any better options, at least that I have seen, around town.

I really like Bishop. It is a nice, tidy little town of modest but well-maintained houses and has a bustling main street with several outdoor shops and a barbershop that I’ve now used three times. There is also an excellent brewpub that I have (believe it or not) found the time to visit only twice since I arrive in July and one time when I was here in April.

Found on the bulletin board at the laundromat. Welcome to California.

The special “California-blend” gasoline is very pricy at over $4 per gallon but I do relatively little driving so that aspect has not been too painful.

The relationship between the Owens Valley here and Los Angeles – 270 miles southwest of here - is long, complicated and bitter, but very interesting. In a very significant way each has played a key role in shaping the modern-day version of the other.

Bishop sits at the north end of the OwensValley at about 5,500 feet elevation with the desert White Mountains to the east (along the Nevada border) and, of course, the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west.

The elevation drops as the valley goes south and spreads out into Death Valley National Park, where the elevation drops to below sea level at some points south and east of Lone Pine. 

U.S. 395 in the Owens Valley, a beautiful stretch of road.

U.S. 395 runs the length of the valley and, to the north of Bishop, to Reno, Nevada (about 200 miles from here).

In the early 1900s the mayor of Los Angeles, Frederick Eaton, came out here on a vacation trip and observed the snow-fed Owens River gushing through the valley floor with lots and lots of cold, clear mountain water. At the time Los Angeles was growing rapidly and facing a severe water shortage because it was dependent on some relatively small reservoirs built in the 19^th Century.

Eaton, a former Los Angeles city engineer sent his friend and former co-worker, the superintendent of the city water works, William Mulholland, out here to investigate what might be done to get some of this “excess” water from the Owens River over to LA. Together they came up with an elaborate plan to build a series of reservoirs and an aqueduct that would, in essence, divert the water in the Owens River over/around the mountains and down to LA.

The LA Aqueduct just west of Lone Pine

 The city began buying up land for the water rights and today owns either the land out right or the water rights to more than 300,000 acres in the Owens Valley giving LA ownership of more than 90 percent of the flow of the river which has, essentially, disappeared into the aqueduct. As a result the land from Bishop all the way to Lone Pine, once described as “a little Switzerland” is now uninhabited desert scrub. Bishop is, by far, the largest city for at least a hundred miles in any direction.

There has been a century-long legal battle over all of this but, essentially, LA has won the war.

At several places to the south, when I drive up into the mountains – say up to Whitney Portal – the road crosses over the aqueduct, which is basically just a big concrete channel.

Because there are very few roads that cross the Sierra – and most of those are closed in the winter – Bishop is very isolated, especially in the winter.

Why I’m here; The California 14ers

After climbing Colorado’s 58 14,000-foot mountains in 2012 it seemed logical for me to ask; “how many 14ers are there in the Lower 48 states?”

The short answer is 75. The somewhat longer answer is that there are 53 14ers in Colorado that meet the USGS standard of a 300-foot elevation change from the closest, taller neighbor. I refer to these as the “official official” Colorado 14ers. There are also five widely-accepted, historically-named mountains in Colorado that do not meet the USGS standard for a separate peak. I call these the Colorado “official unofficial” 14ers. So 53 plus five equals 58.

Counting 14ers in the remainder of the Lower 48 is similarly convoluted.

Washington has two “official official” 14ers; Mt. Rainier and a pesky little thing that sits out on the shoulder of Mt. Rainier (an indication of the massiveness of Mt. Rainier) called Liberty Cap. I reached the summit of Mt. Rainier in 2006. Liberty Cap is better known as a feature on one of the classic climbing routes to the summit of Mt. Rainier, but it has also become infamous as the scene of several fatal accidents, including six climbers who “vanished” while climbing there last year. So, no immediate plans to try that.

My focus this summer is on California, which has 12 “official official” 14ers and three “official unofficial” 14ers, for a total of 15. Thirteen of these mountains are lined up south to north in a 100-mile stretch of the Sierra Nevada; roughly speaking from west of Lone Pine on the south to west of Bishop on the north.

This stretch of mountains includes all three of California’s “official unofficial” 14ers and 10 of the state’s 12 “official official” 14ers. The 14^th California 14er is White Mountain Peak, which is about 25 miles east of Bishop in the White Mountains near the Nevada border and the 15^th California 14er is Mt. Shasta, which is a dormant volcano (as is Mt. Rainier) in the Cascade Mountain Range near the Oregon border.

My goal in coming out here this summer was to climb as many of the California 14ers as possible but at this writing it seems certain that I will not bag all 15 of them in the roughly one month that I allotted for this adventure. These California 14ers are a pesky bunch; much more difficult overall (though, fortunately, less numerous) than their Colorado counterparts.

Also, the information about summit routes for the California 14ers is more opaque and less ubiquitous than for Colorado.

Because of this relative paucity of information, the long approaches just to get to the peaks and the tough, sometimes technical climbing required to reach many of the summits I’ve come to accept the fact that this is going to be a multi-year effort that will not be completed in 2015.

I have, however, been chipping away at them and the following is a blow-by-blow account of my efforts in that regard.

White Mountain Peak, July 15, 2015; U.S. 14er #61

The day after I arrived in Bishop I set out for the summit of White Mountain Peak, which is an easy hike, on a good trail (a road actually), with less than 3,000-feet of elevation gain from the trailhead.

It was a clear, sunny day with no threat of storms so I didn’t think much about my late start, figuring that I would simply do some high altitude hiking and turn around when the sun dictated.

Of course, that’s not what happened. After starting out late in the morning I missed the turn on a twisty mountain road and nearly ended up in Nevada before I figured that out.

Once I got turned around and straightened out I started uphill on a winding, twisting, narrow paved road for about half of the 25 miles or so to the trailhead, where the pavement ends and the road becomes more of a slow-speed mountain jeep trail.

Eventually I got to a parking area where several other vehicles were parked at a locked gate and I started out hiking on the remainder of the trail/road that runs all the way to a bunker-like summit house. Along the way the trail/road passes a research station staffed by the University of California.

I’m not sure what they are studying but I noticed that they have a pen of sheep near the quarters; which made me think of several Aggie jokes (e.g. Texas A&M, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous, etc.). 

Of course, once I set out on the road to the summit there was no turning back. And I felt pretty strong when I got there. But as I started back downhill, now the last hiker on the mountain, I began to fade and the shadows began to lengthen.

In the fading light it was good to finally see the truck (alone now in the parking area at the trailhead). The drive home in the dark was long, a seemingly endless series of hairpin turns that had not seemed quite as hairy on the way up.

Mt.Langley, July 21, 2015; U.S. 14er #62

Rainfall turned this fairly routine hike into a multi-day adventure. If I was well-acclimated it probably could have been done in a long day hike, but I wasn’t so I backpacked a little over six miles from the trailhead to a beautiful series of lakes known as the Cottonwood Lakes (why this name I’m not sure because there are very few trees and none of them are cottonwoods).

Not long after I arrived in the afternoon it started raining and it didn’t stop until about the same time the next day. So I camped there (at about 11,000 feet) a second night and waited for the weather to clear, which it did in spectacular fashion.

Whoa! That's not rain?

 

Army Pass

July 21 dawned clear and cool with a pretty (and welcome) blue sky. I hiked on a pretty good trail up through Army Pass (not to be confused with New Army Pass) that took me to about 12,000 feet and then turned north and followed a good trail that winds its way up, up, up the relatively gentle south slope of Mt. Langley. As I went higher and higher the rain from the day before had fallen as snow and, pretty soon, I was hiking on fresh, trackless snow.

There is nothing cooler than being out on a trail making the first tracks in fresh snow. Essentially I had, or felt like I had, the entire mountain to myself. At the summit the mountain drops off steeply, almost vertically, for thousands of feet on the north side and offers up great views of Mt. Whitney and the Owens Valley to the north and east.

So it was a pretty easy, very pretty hike that yielded some awesome views.

Looking north at Mt. Whitney from the Langley summit.

As I hiked back I encountered lots of people on their way up but I still felt like I had had the mountain to myself.

I got back to my campsite and packed up my tent and gear and hiked out, which seemed a lot longer than when I hiked in two days earlier.

As I slogged along down the trail the weather deteriorated. About a mile from the trailhead, where the truck was parked, a light rain began to fall. I thought I was getting closer to the truck than I really was and, instead of stopping and getting out my rain gear, covering my pack, etc. I decided to press on. Bad idea.

Awww Hail!

Wet, cold & happy to be in the truck.

It started to rain harder. Then there was a crack of lightening and a sonic-boom-like clap of thunder that seemed to be centered about 10 feet above my head. Then it started to rain even harder. Meanwhile, the temperature was plummeting, diving into the low 40s. And then it started to hail.

By the time I reached the trailhead I was soaked and shivering. I threw the pack in the back, jumped in the truck, pulled off my wet clothes, fired up the heater and wrapped myself in a blanket.

Mt.Russell, July 25, 2015; U.S. 14er #63

Mt. Whitney, from the summit of Mt. Russell.

Mt. Russell is a close neighbor of Mt. Whitney, essentially sharing a ridge with the big mountain that comes down off the north side of Whitney and angles slightly to the east to form Mt. Russell. From the summit of Mt. Russell you can look over (and up) to see the people standing atop Whitney’s flat summit.

Mt. Russell, from the summit of Mt. Whitney.

Mt. Russell is not flat. Mt. Russell is, in fact, a pretty dicey, difficult mountain that, if it was in Colorado, would easily rank among the 10 most difficult; perhaps even in the top five.

Adding to the complications of climbing Mt. Russell is the fact that it falls in the special Whitney Zone for permitting and those permits can only be issued at the interagency visitor center two miles south of Lone Pine, which is 60 miles south of Bishop.

However, it is an easy, pretty, pleasant drive and on one of the trips I stopped to visit the Manzanar National Historic Site where thousands of Japanese-Americans were interred during World War II.

It's an exceptionally well-done, modern museum housed in one of the few remaining structures at the site (Colorado History Museum take note); a sobering reminder of the often paper-thin line between freedom and fear.

Oh yeah, and by the way (not that anybody is counting) but it was my 249th National Park Service Unit visited.

When I got the permit for Mt. Langley I had only to walk two blocks over to the office here in Bishop to get it, and there was relatively little concern that the quota would be filled and I would not get the permit.

However, going into the Whitney Zone is another matter and it took a few trips down there for me to get a good handle on the permit process.

I spent Wednesday, July 22 drying out from the Mt. Langley trip and on Thursday morning drove to the permit office south of Lone Pine in time for the 11 a.m. lottery drawing. At 11 a ranger came out with a box full of numbers and the crowd of wannabe hikers drew numbers from the box. We were then called up to the permit desk in the order of the draw. A lot of these people were after permits to hike the main trail to Mt. Whitney or, possibly, to camp at one of the lakes along the trail.

However I was after an even more restrictive permit to hike up the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek on something called the Mountaineers Route that John Muir used to climb Mt. Whitney in 1872. I think there are 10 of these permits issued each day and I’m pretty sure I got the last one for Friday, July 24.

So, with the permit in hand, I drove back to Bishop and got myself packed up and then drove back down to Lone Pine the next day, Friday, and then up to the crowded trailhead at Whitney Portal where, miraculously, I found a prime parking spot. Whitney portal is so popular that cars and trucks park on the shoulder of the steep approach road below the trailhead for at least a half-mile and I was really glad to be able to snag a nice, flat space in the parking lot

I took that as a positive sign. Another positive sign was the bomber weather, a cloudless blue sky.

The Mountaineers Trail starts out on the excellent, well-maintained Mt. Whitney Trail but, after one mile, it breaks off into a steep, loose trail that roughly follows the creek; crossing back and forth through the creek (no bridges), often through thick vegetation.

At one of the creek crossings I met two 30ish guys who were heading up the trail to do technical climbs of Whitney. One was a geology professor at San Diego State and the other a patent attorney in Ames, Iowa (his wife is in grad school at Iowa State). They had both grown up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and we bonded when I told them about our volunteering at Apostle Islands, and that my son was in law school.

We hiked together through a series of steep rocky ledges and it was great to have their company through this tricky section of the trail. We parted ways and I proceeded on to set up camp at Upper Boy Scout Lake, which is basically at the foot of Mt. Russell at about 12,000 feet.

The next day I climbed Mt. Russell which starts off with a very long, very steep, loose and rocky slog to a saddle at about 13,000 feet. 

Halfway up the ridge, looking back to the saddle.

The route to the summit then follows a long, spine-like ridge to the summit that is very exposed with lots of Class 3/4 features. There were several pretty sketchy parts with no clearly discernible “good option” but eventually I made it to the mountain’s east summit, which is not The Summit. The real summit is the west summit which requires another quarter mile or so of rocky climbing to reach. However, when I looked over at the real summit from the east summit I saw two guys there who had just arrived via a more technical roped climb.

 

A Real Climber standing on the Real Summit

They descended back down the ridge via the route that I had taken up, so we crossed paths. Eventually I made it to the real (west) summit where I shot the following video with a GoPro camera. (Note: I have corrected the privacy settings on this video and you should be able to view it now, if you could not earlier).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQThtCYOEbU&feature=youtu.be

I retraced my steps back down the ridge, where I crossed paths with two climbers headed up, and then slipped and slid my way back down the long, loose scree slope to my campsite, arriving there in the late afternoon and plenty tired.

Mt.Whitney, July 26, 2015;

Mt. Muir, July 26, 2015: U.S. 14er #64

The next morning I left at sunrise and continued up the Mountaineers Route to Iceberg Lake where I ran into the two guys from Wisconsin, who were camped there. They had made a technical climb of Whitney the day before and descended back to their camp at Iceberg Lake via the Mountaineers Route, which at that point is a long, steep, rocky gully that eventually takes the up-bound climber from Iceberg Lake all the way to Whitney’s huge, gently-sloping summit cap. The two ex-Wisconsinites gave me some good tips about climbing the gully and eventually I made it up to the summit cap and then on to the main Mt. Whitney Trail, which was crowded with day hikers. Soon I was at the actual summit and looking across at Mt. Russell, where I had been standing just less than 24 hours earlier.

In the gully, looking down on Iceberg Lake

Maybe a quarter of the way up the gully.

Nearing the top of the gully.

Betsy and I climbed Mt. Whitney via the snow-filled main trail in June, 1986 and Tex and I slept in the small summit house the night of July 24/25, 2007 at the end of our 200-plus mile hike of the John Muir Trail. Tex and I reached the top of the mountain by hiking up a trail on the west side of the mountain from Guitar Lake. Thus, here I was on the summit of Mt. Whitney for the third time, eight years and one day after the last climb and more than 29 years after the first ascent, having arrived there each time by a different route.

A welcome site.

Eight years earlier Tex and I spent the night here.

More than 29 years earlier, Betsy and I stood on this marker.

From there I hiked down the main trail about two miles and located the relatively obscure Mt. Muir, which is just a few hundred yards off the main trail but unknown, unseen and unnoticed by the vast majority of Whitney climbers (including, twice before, me).

It took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to ascend a short talus slope and I arrived at the solid rock summit block of Mt. Muir. I had read that the summit block climb was rated as Class 3 rock climbing “if you pick your route carefully” but it looked to me a lot more like Class 4. I studied it a good bit and tried a few options but could not find a better way than a route which required grabbing a solid rock projection, hanging on for dear life and leaning out and backwards to be able to step around the projection. Later, in talking to several people that have climbed Mt. Muir, I was reassured that this really was the “easiest” way to climb the summit block and that they too thought it was more than Class 3. Once past the projection I climbed up onto the large, sloping rock that forms the summit which, fortunately, has some small, solid conglomerate rock “knobs” that I was able to use to push and pull myself up to the top of the mountain. No, I did not stand up. Looking down to the west I could see the day hikers on the trail below. Looking down to the east it is straight drop of about 3,000 feet.

Class 3?

Fortunately, some solid knobs on the summit block.

A cool summit, but I did not "hang around" too long.

It was a pretty cool summit but I was very happy to get off of it and then maneuver back around the projection and get back down to the more horizontal talus slope and, soon, back to the main trail.

At that point I had a decision to make and it was not really a very hard decision. To get back to my tent at Boy Scout Lake I would have to hike back up the main trail to the Whitney Summit (about two miles with about 1,000 feet of total elevation gain) and then descend the long steep gully to Iceberg Lake and then hike from there down to my tent at Upper Boy Scout Lake (which is not terribly difficult, but not easy either). Or I could hike down the main Whitney Trail (about 9 miles) with the rest of the day hikers, get in the truck, drive to Lone Pine, eat a Big Mac, drive back to Bishop, take a shower and sleep in my own bed. Of course that would mean having to drive back to Whitney Portal the next day and hike back up the Mountaineers Route to Upper Boy Scout Lake to retrieve my tent.

I chose the later option, and I’m glad I did. Oddly though, that means that even though I have ascended Mt. Whitney by three different routes I have descended each time via the main trail to Whitney Portal.

As I was hiking back up to the lake the next day to retrieve my gear I encountered the Wisconsin guys on their way down. With the tent and my other gear packed up I hiked back down the Mountaineers Route, much of the way in the company of a super nice 27-year-old guy who was taking a few days off between jobs. He had climbed Whitney via the Mountaineers Route as a day hike (which is easy to do) and I’m pretty sure he slowed up and hiked down with me just to be nice (and, maybe, because I looked like a tottering old man who might need some help). It didn’t matter though because it was great to have the company.

However, before I met him and not long after I had started down the trail I slipped on some loose scree that was on top of a flat slab of rock. My feet shot out from under me and I womped down on my pack. As this was happening I noticed a projectile whiz past my head and sail out into the thick alders growing in a wet area below the slab.

The projectile turned out to be the garmin mapping device that I carried with me on every Colorado climb three years ago. I beat around the bushes for a few minutes looking for it, but it was a lost cause.

I slipped, fell and lost the Garmin in the alder at the bottom of this slab.

My gear has taken a beating out here in California. The first night at Upper Boy Scout Lake my air mattress sprung a leak. On another trip I lost my UV protection head/neck scarf that I often wear under my helmet.

After all of that, I rested, re-grouped and re-supplied on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Split Mountain/Red Lake, July 30/31, 2015

I drove down to Big Pine, about 20 miles south of Bishop, and then about 15 miles out a rough (but not terrible) desert “road” to the “trail head” for the Red Lake “Trail”.

By Colorado standards this road was easy, mainly because it was relatively flat. But, of course, if the road is relatively flat that means you don’t gain much elevation. As a result the five-mile Red Lake “Trail” has to gain more than 5,000 feet of elevation to get to the lake. And it is not an improved or maintained trail. Basically it’s a use trail that is very steep, often sandy and frequently crosses and re-crosses a creek that requires beating through dense “vegetation tunnels” of willow and alder.

Even though there was rain in the forecast (but less than 50 percent!) and it was overcast I started off up the trail. A little over halfway it started to rain. With my previous experience in mind I did not mess around and immediately stopped and pulled out all of the rain gear.

As I went up, up, up it continued to rain, rain, rain; but fortunately not too hard. Finally I reached Red Lake and set my tent up as a light rain continued to fall.

I filtered plenty of water and then dived into the tent around 6 p.m. and did not re-emerge until 6 a.m. the next day (I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about how I pee without getting out of the tent but I will tell you that I am very careful about which water bottle I drink from).

I’d come up with the bright idea of buying one of those rotisserie chickens they sell at the grocery store and plucking the meat off and putting it in a zip lock bag. Man was it good. I heated water for soup on my little stove under the vestibule of the tent and drank soup and ate chicken and read a book on my Nook. I was warm and dry and happy as a clam.

But the next morning when I poked my head out of the tent and looked up, up, up at the brooding face of Split Mountain stuck in the clouds above me I said; “no I don’t think so” and packed up and hiked back down to the truck.

Basically, it was a long grueling backpack for nothing.

I was the only vehicle in the parking area at the trail head when I left and I certainly did not see anyone else out on the trail or camped at the lake. However, on the way down I passed a couple hiking up and the guy asked me if I would be on the lookout for a pair of sunglasses he had dropped. He also asked if that was my truck parked at the trailhead. I said sure to both questions and told him that, if I found the sunglasses, I would put them somewhere on his vehicle. He seemed to acknowledge all of this and I didn’t think much about it at the time.

So I continued on down the trail. The clouds had parted a bit and I had put my sunglasses on. Then it clouded back up and I stopped to take the sunglasses off and put them in my pocket. As I was doing this I happened to look down at the ground and, lo and behold, laying right there at my feet, bigger than Dallas, was a pair of sunglasses.

So I picked them up carried them on down the trail thinking how happy and surprised the guy would be to find them when he got back. Eventually I came to a point where the trail emerges from the canyon and the hiker can look down 1,000 feet or so to see the parking area far below.

And, of course, there was the tiny white dot of my truck. But, oddly, it was the only vehicle I saw. Where was this guy’s car? I thought well, maybe its tucked away somewhere (even though there are not many places to hide a vehicle in the short desert scrub) or, maybe he parked it a ways down the road because he did not want to drive the last portion of the road?

But when I got down there and when I drove out there was no sign anywhere of another vehicle.

It was all very strange but, even though I didn’t bag the summit of Split Mountain I did get a new pair of sunglasses!

As close as I got to Split Mountain.

 

The white spec is my truck. Where is their vehicle?

North Palisade, August 4, 2015; U.S. 14er #65

Starlight Peak, August 5, 2015; U.S. 14er #66

Thunderbolt Peak, August 5, 2015; U.S. 14er #67

Polemonium Peak, August 6, 2015; U.S. 14er #68

After a good bit of hemming and hawing I decided to use a guide service based in Bishop to help me climb the three difficult “official unofficial” 14ers that lie to the west of Bishop in an area of the Sierra Nevada known as the Palisades. The “easiest” routes to two of these mountains, Starlight Peak and Thunderbolt Peak, have ratings in the 5s, which means technical as in ropes, belays, etc. The third “official unofficial” 14er is Polemonium Peak, which is rated as a Class 4 but is in reality a low Class 5 with serious, serious exposure. And, finally, there is the “easier” North Palisade (an “official official” 14er) with a Class 4 rating that should be, at least, a low Class 5.

The odds of me climbing any of these mountains without professional assistance (and living to tell about it) are somewhere less than zero. All of my hemming and hawing about whether or not to use a guide was a delusional fantasy. The cold reality I now know is; no guide, no summits.

But, as so often seems to happen with these things, there were angels on my shoulder.

On May 27, my parents’ wedding day, I got the sixth and final slot in a group trip that the other five climbers had booked months earlier and, as a result, had one of the best, most-rewarding experiences of my life. The weather was perfect, the guides were great, the other five “clients” were awesome; and I bagged all four summits.

But it took every drop of gas I had in the tank to do it and I’m still in recovery mode nearly a week later.

This was the fourth time I’ve used a guide service (Mt. Rainier and the high points of Wyoming and Montana, which are 13ers, are the others) and from that experience I knew that it was a bit of a crapshoot because of the many unknowns and potential pitfalls that can come from the others in the group; primarily that they do not have the skills/stamina/moxie to make the climb and, thus, screw it up for the others in the group.

Fortunately, the one guy in this group that could have been the weak link was exceptionally accommodating, the guides were wonderfully flexible and, as it turned out, the number five ranked guy in the group was me. To put it more bluntly, the biggest threat to the group’s success was me.

While that really pisses me off, facts are facts.

So, with those introductory comments, let’s get started with the story of my climbs in the mountains often referred to, collectively as The Palisades.

The guides were Tristan, Zach and Trevor; all of them based in Bishop and working for Sierra Mountaineering International.

It was never clear to me that one of them was the “head guide” but they worked beautifully - and seemingly effortlessly - together as a team. In fact I thought to myself that a business consultant could make a small fortune by using these three guys to teach effective team-based management skills.

Tristan is what you might imagine a mountain guide to be; a mid-30s, single, good-looking, friendly guy with a quick and easy smile; low key but clearly in control without ever seeming to try to be.

Zach was edgier and smiled less. Also probably in his mid-30s and thin to the point of being gaunt, Zach is married and has two kids.

Trevor is 40 and looks to be about 25. He wears his hair in a short pony-tail and his handsome face is locked in a permanent, pleasant, peaceful, Zen-like trance. He is what you might think of as the “Classic Californian”; very, very laid back; very, very mellow.

All of these guys were about 5-10 or so, weighed maybe 150 pounds max and had zero body fat.

Yet they effortlessly carried massive packs with climbing and camping gear and could ascend vertical space in minutes that would take me hours. Basically, they were animals.

While I was struggling to find my toothbrush or my lunch they seemed to magically know where every piece of gear was and have it in hand at the precise moment it was needed.

Bottom line, the guides were awesome.

(Other than me) the weak link among the six clients was Christopher, a sort of pudgy computer science professor from Delaware. I gave him a ride from Bishop to the trailhead where he recounted several mountaineering experiences where he had to turn back because of altitude sickness, two of them on Mt. Whitney, one of California’s three “easy” 14ers. Uh oh, I thought, this guy is going to slow us down and screw up the trip.

And, indeed, on the pack in to our base camp (a fairly difficult 12-mile hike with about 5,000 feet of elevation gain with 40-50 pound backpacks) Christopher fell behind. However, he made it; and the next day it was announced that he would remain in camp while the rest of us climbed.

Base Camp in Palisade Basin on the west side of The Palisade Mountain group.

This was, of course, the best possible thing that could have happened because he was not on the climb of North Palisade to, probably, slow the rest of us down and jeopardize our chances of reaching the summit. Also, that meant that there was now a 3-to-5 guide-to-client ratio for North Pal climb.

This was all well and good but, at the time, it had not yet fully dawned on me that the slowest guy in the group was now me. This fact began to gradually (grudgingly?) sink in over the next three days and, correspondingly, my focus narrowed. I was the weak link and the only thing I needed to be worrying about was me. In an odd, uncomfortable sort of a way it was liberating.

So, if I was number five I suppose the number four guy was Corey, a 40ish father of two and a former Peace Corps volunteer who works as a quality control and FDA compliance manager in a large, Bay Area pharmaceutical manufacturer. While less overt about it than me, Corey is also a peak-bagger trying to reach the summits of the 15 California 14ers and making descent progress at it.

And finally, what really made the trip so much fun and so successful were the three “Santa Clara Boys”; unabashed peak baggers and co-workers at the Santa Clara County Roads & Airports Department. (Santa Clara County is situated on the southern end of San Francisco Bay and encompasses the county seat San Jose, Silicon Valley, Cupertino, Stanford University, etc.).

On Monday morning (August 3) the three of them rumbled up to the parking lot behind the guide office in downtown Bishop in Karl’s Texas-sized, crew-cab, diesel pickup truck that is about the same size as a small aircraft carrier. From the moment they piled out of that mongo truck to the time that I waved goodbye to them five days later the other two Santa Clara Boys, Mike and Albert, never stopped talking.

On the summit of Polemonium with (top to bottom) Albert, Mike & Karl.

Karl, a surveyor for the county, was much quieter and would end up being my climbing partner. In his mid-40s, short and stocky with a wife and two young kids Karl loves to fish and loves to drink beer and I liked him from the moment I met him. However, I severely underestimated his strength and stamina. I’ve got a hunch he’s doing something in his spare time besides fishing and drinking beer.

But the show-stoppers were the talkative odd couple of Albert (playing the role of Felix Unger) and Mike (in the role of Oscar Madison).

In his mid-50s Albert is a project manager for the county and, nominally at least, Mike’s boss. On the hike in Albert was chattering to one of the guides and I heard him use the word “plethora” at least three times in the span of about a minute. Albert loved giving flowery motivational speeches to the group, worried out loud about small details and lavished praise on the guides and the other group members. He was detail-oriented to a fault, but a great team player.

And then there was Mike; also in his mid-50s, a master craftsman, a world traveler, a singer/songwriter, a masterful story teller, a former contractor and now an inspector on the county’s road and bridge projects.

Talk about a piece of work.

I am not even going to begin to try to recount everything I learned from Mike about his personal life (as interesting and titillating as those details would be) but, for an example of his story-telling ability and wide-ranging interests, I’m going to recap one of the wonderfully-told tales that he regaled us with at supper one night.

The condensed version goes like this. One day Mike and a buddy decided to go bow-hunting for hogs in Hawaii. As they were hiking into the rain forest on a trail they encountered a beautiful woman (a prominent feature in many of Mike’s stories). So they asked her where she was going. She said she was hiking into the forest to hook up with her boyfriend, who lived in the forest. When Mike and his buddy got to the end of the trail, where the forest meets the beach, the beautiful woman re-appeared from the forest with the boyfriend who, it turned out, was living in the forest to tend to the hundreds of marijuana plants that he was cultivating there on an elaborate “farm”. The boyfriend/farmer was fascinated that Mike and his buddy had come all the way to Hawaii from California to shoot hogs with a bow and arrow. However, instead of hogs the boyfriend encouraged them to shoot a wild goat, which he said he would butcher and cook and use the skin to make drums which they could play at a party where they would eat the goat. Mike and his friend demurred. However, early the next morning, the boyfriend/farmer appeared at the door to Mike’s tent, awakened him and his buddy and pointed out a goat standing some 20 yards away. Still in their underwear, Mike and his buddy crawled out of the tent, got their bows and each shot an arrow at the goat. Both arrows hit the goat in the chest, dropping it dead in its tracks. That night the local “farmers” threw a wild party on the beach for Mike and his buddy with beer, liquor, pot, cabrito, beautiful women and lots of drum music. When Mike got home his wife asked him about the trip and he told her; “It was great, we didn’t see any hogs but we hiked on a trail in the forest and camped near the beach.”

In addition to being the zany, odd couple (Mike and Albert) were also very strong, very fit, very competent climbers that have spent a good deal of time rock-climbing, rappelling, etc. in Pinnacles National Park. Karl is not as refined a climber but is very competent and strong as a bull. Corey is probably about like me but 15-20 years younger.

Basically, all five of us are peak baggers; trying to reach the summits of the California 14ers but under no delusions that we are real “mountaineers”, like our guides.

After the long hike in were able to set up our base camp in Palisade Basin before dark. The guides cooked supper and breakfast the next morning and we were soon en route to one of California’s largest, most famous and most formidable peaks – North Palisade – just as the sun was coming up on Tuesday, August 4.

The boulders.

It took us more than hour to wind our way through and over piles of Volkswagen-sized boulders to reach a long, steep, loose, brutal gully that we laboriously climbed for several hours to reach the famous U-notch that separates North Pal from one of its subsidiaries, the official unofficial Polemonium Peak.

The gully.

From there, with roped protection provided by the guides, we ascended the final 1,000 feet or so of elevation by climbing a series of ledges, cracks, chimneys and small gullies that I would never have been able to find, much less climb, on my own. This route to the summit was used by Joseph LeConte and two others to make the first known ascent of North Pal in 1903. LeConte is one of the most famous mountaineers in Sierra history and the route we used is known today as the LeConte Route.

When LeConte climbed the mountain in 1903 it did not have a formal name, but the locals were calling it Dusy Peak, after a local rancher. The story goes that not too long after that first ascent LeConte wrote in a letter: "I have called the peak merely the North Palisade. Put Dusy's name on some less imposing mass, and give us a name to be handed down through all time."

I’m not sure it is what LeConte intended, but ever since the mountain has been called North Palisade. According to Wikipedia there is a proposal afoot to rename the peak "Brower Palisade", in honor of environmentalist David Brower, but that idea has apparently drawn substantial opposition. Now, more than a century after LeConte bestowed the mountain with its placeholder name, it continues to be called North Palisade or, more commonly, North Pal.

Polemenium is named for a flower common to the area. During the first known ascent of Thunderbolt a close call with lightening left climber Jules Eichhorn shaken and gave the mountain its name. Starlight is, well, just called Starlight for no particular reason. All three of these peaks are "subsidiary" peaks of North Pal, with "prominences" ranging from 80 feet to 223 feet; well under the USGS standard of 300 feet needed to qualify as an "official official" mountain. 

Nonetheless, the three peaks are among the most-coveted summits in the Sierra.

If the guides had a system for choosing climbing partners for a rope team it wasn’t obvious and I ended up being the odd man out and climbed alone with the Zen-like guide Trevor on the ascent of North Pal.

The summit!

All that remains of the once-formidable Palisade Glacier.

 

North Pal, from the summit of Polemenium.

The eight of us reunited on the summit, ate some lunch, took some photos and rappelled a good portion of the way back to the U-notch by mid-afternoon where the group held an important conference in a biting wind to make a key decision; to go for Polemonium Peak from there – which would mean getting back to camp after dark - or to go back to camp and give ourselves some rest and a better chance at making the long, difficult traverse between Starlight and Thunderbolt the next day.

Although it would almost certainly mean that we would not be able to bag the fifth 14er in the Palisades, Mt. Sill, and would require us to re-climb the gully to the U-notch on Thursday to bag Polemonium, the group chose to go back to camp.

Rappelling back to the U-notch.

The knee-pounding, grinding, hours-long descent down the gully followed by the one-hour hop across the boulder field got us back to camp perhaps an hour or two before sunset and, by then, I think there was universal agreement we had made a good choice in foregoing Polemenium. But if there wasn’t 100 percent consensus about it then, there would be by the same time the next day when we needed every ounce of energy we had to reach the summit of Starlight Peak, make the difficult but exhilarating traverse to Thunderbolt Peak, and then descend down a wicked gully that made the gully to the U-notch look “easy”.

Even though we could not see the peaks themselves from our camp we were, essentially, camped directly below Starlight and Thunderbolt so it did not take long to reach and begin to climb the gully leading to the west face of Starlight and its famous “Milk Bottle” summit.

The view looking east from our Base Camp in Palisade Basin.

An incredibly important factor in all of this is that Corey, on a previous guided trip, had reached the summit of Starlight. Thus his primary focus for the trip was North Pal, which we had just climbed the day before, and Thunderbolt. Meanwhile, Christopher was feeling better and getting acclimated. And, finally, Corey and the guide Trevor knew one another from two previous trips together. The jist of all of this is that Trevor guided Christopher and Corey up to Thunderbolt while the other four clients (the Santa Clara Boys and me) and two guides (Tristan and Zach) climbed to Starlight, traversed to Thunderbolt and descended back to camp.

With just two rope teams on the traverse we were able to move faster and we needed every minute of the day to do it.

When we reached the Starlight summit we looked across the quarter-mile or so to the Thunderbolt summit and saw three helmets. Trevor, Christopher and Corey had all reached the summit of Thunderbolt at about the same time that the six of us had reached the summit of Starlight.

Although the distance is short the traverse between these two peaks is daunting and involves a lot of Class 5, roped climbing, airy exposure and the final scaling of the two most difficult, unique and knee-quivering 14er summits in the lower 48.

With some help (and a lot of security) from a top rope provided by my guide Tristan I was able to touch both summits and stood arms raised atop Thunderbolt. I’m going to let the video tell the story of the final climbs to the top of these two unique summits.

https://youtu.be/mC_ZJCsPgfI

 

Topping Starlight's "Milk Bottle".

Standing atop Thunderbolt.

As a crow flies the distance between them is short but, for we humans, the task of getting from one peak to the next is considerably more difficult.

We had to rappel down hundreds of vertical feet and re-climb some fairly complex rock to gain the Thunderbolt summit.

The following photo does a good job of demonstrating the magnitude of the task. At the very bottom of the photo the blue and orange specs are Albert and Mike. In the upper center of the photo the blue jacket is Zach who has free-climbed the rock face to establish a belay station.

Tristan explains the move, but Karl looks skeptical.

From there it was back down yet another long, steep, loose, punishing, gully. And it was here that it became unequivocally obvious to me that I was the slowest guy in the group. I slipped and fell once. I kicked rocks loose on the climbers below me (one of mountaineering’s biggest sins). And Tristan began to hover close behind me, fearing I might fall and kill myself. It was humbling to be the weak link.

Finally, mercifully it ended not too long after the sun had set. Trevor had a steaming pot of gumbo ready for us and I ate and drank as much as I could before, basically, collapsing into my sleeping bag.

Which reminds me to mention that, even though I brought and set up a small, lightweight tent; I slept outside all four nights that we spent in the base camp in Palisade Basin. It’s pretty cool to wake in the middle of the night and look up to see the Milky Way, or to have to duck your head into the bag to “turn off” the bright light of the rising moon. I strategically (actually, accidentally) placed my bag on the west side of a large boulder which shielded me from the moon’s light for a few hours longer than if I was out in the open.

I got a good night’s sleep and felt refreshed the next morning but that new-found friend that I’ve discovered out here in California, nagging doubt, paid me another visit and I wondered if I had another peak, Polemonium, in me. Fortunately, no one suggested otherwise and I decided to give it a go and placed myself at the front of the line as we re-crossed the same boulder field and re-climbed that same long, steep, loose gully to the U-notch between North Pal and Polemonium where we had held our important conference two days earlier. By going to the front of the line I was basically forcing the group into my pace. I was slow, but I was steady. And as we moved on up the hill I got into a rhythm, gained confidence and felt better (relatively speaking).

It also helped that Polemonium is a comparatively short and fairly straightforward climb from the U-notch to the summit. So we had plenty of time and the weather, as previously mentioned, was perfect although, off and on over the entire time we were there, smoke from the fires to the north and west would drift into the valley and sift up toward us; sometimes to the point that we could smell and even taste it.

The climbing route to the summit of Polemonium is, I think, rated as a low Class 5 and is not considered particularly difficult but it does have some massive, massive exposure. There is one spot in particular that requires stepping out onto a small ledge large enough for one foot, then reaching around a protruding rock to find a good-but-not-perfect hand-hold and then leaning out and slightly back to maneuver around the rocky projection. We had been doing stuff like this, or more difficult, for two days, However, this particular move on Polemonium takes place above a spine-tingling vertical drop of, perhaps 2,000 feet. It is, as they say, quite airy.

Unfortunately I did not bring the GoPro camera that day and did not get a very good photo of this spot, but it was memorable.

Speaking of which, this might be a good place to briefly explain how Tristan, Karl and I worked together as a rope team.

When we would get to a climbing area/feature where Tristan felt that roped protection was necessary he would take the rope and free-climb the route to establish a belay station using a solid piece of rock; sometimes with the rope on the rock itself or, sometimes, utilizing a sling.

Depending on the route issues Tristan would place “protection” along the way using cams and blocks that can be wedged into cracks in the rock and then be attached to the rope with a clip. Once he established the belay station he would call down to me “on belay” and I would yell back “climbing” and he would reply “climb on”. At that point Tristan is protecting both me and Karl from a fatal fall with the belay on the solid rock above us. Karl and I were roped together and locked into the rope with carabineers that are also attached to harnesses that we wore around our waists and legs.

From that point until we reach Tristan and the safety of his belay station it was very important that Karl and I work together to keep as much slack as possible out of the rope between us. For no particular reason I was in the middle between Tristan and Karl. Thus, if Karl were to fall the rope and his weight would pull on me. The more slack in the rope, the harder the pull would be if he fell. Fortunately, that never happened but it behooved both of us to keep the slack out of the rope. Obviously, we had to do that in such a way that I was at a comfortable stopping point but not so far along that I would pull the rope too tightly on Karl, potentially jerking him off of his perch below me.

If Tristan had placed protection along the route then, when I reached the protection device I would unclip the protection from the rope on my side of the knot and move it to Karl’s side. Thus, if Karl fell, the rope would pull me back into the protection against the rock and the bulk of Karl’s weight would be held by the protection. All of this was backed up, of course, by the belay station that Tristan was manning above us.

So, at any rate, as the three of us stood there on a small ledge on the side of Polemonium Tristan explained that the first move was “not that difficult, but a little airy” and then he stepped out, unprotected, over the 2,000-foot chasm to demonstrate and make the climb up to establish the belay station while Kark and I stood on the ledge and stared at that first step.

It was fun climbing and I really enjoyed Polemonium. Soon enough we had joined Zach, Mike and Albert on the relatively flat, but fairly small summit. Not too long after that Trevor and Corey joined us and it got a bit crowded. But that did not last long.

From there the guides (again, collaboratively and seemingly without any effort) organized a three-station lowering scheme in which the five clients were belayed and/or lowered from the summit all the way back down to the notch, sort of like an elevator.

Then it was slip-and-slide time back down that same gully and then back across the same boulder field. Soon enough (actually it seemed like forever) we were back in camp and the guides were cooking some killer tacos complete with salsa, cheese, and guacamole stuffed on a giant corn tortilla. It was my favorite meal of the trip and I pounded down two of the large tacos.

Tristan then broke out a thermos of a Kentucky distilled product and we toasted our success.

I’m pretty sure everybody in the group was very happy with the trip, Christopher with his one summit and two days of sitting around the base camp by himself never complained. Corey seemed quite pleased with the three summits he gained and the Santa Clara Boys and I were downright ecstatic with our collective bagging of the four most difficult 14ers in the lower 48.

The hike out on Friday August 7 was not easy and started out by having to regain 500 vertical feet or so to cross Thunderbolt Pass and then pick our way through boulders and talus, with a fair amount of ups and downs, before getting back on the main trail near Bishop Pass.

The main trail is very scenic, well-maintained and quite popular. From the South Lake trailhead, where we parked our vehicles, the main trail goes up and over Bishop Pass and down into LeConte Canyon where it intersects the Pacific Crest Trail/John Muir Trail that is running along the Middle Fork of the Kings River in the heart of Kings Canyon National Park. It’s also the primary and most popular way to reach the PCT/JMT in the 250-plus-mile stretch between Kennedy Meadows and Yosemite NP. So, it gets a lot of traffic.

Trees! We're getting lower!!

Of course, the further we hiked back down the trail the more people we saw and it was a bit of a shock to see other people, much less day hikers, old people, kids and dogs - and trees!

That reminds me to mention that we did encounter three other people while we were climbing and/or at our base camp. One evening a strange couple; an older white guy and a younger Asian woman came into our camp and chatted up the guides for intel about climbing North Pal. They left and came back 20 minutes or so later to try to hire one of the guides to take them up the mountain (which, of course, they could not do).

The third person we met was a scrawny little guy who appeared suddenly on the summit of North Pal. He was climbing alone and had no ropes, was wearing shorts and carried only a small backpack. He said he was traversing the ridge, from Polemonium, to North Pal, to Starlight, to Thunderbolt. Basically he was doing in one day what it took us three days and three guides to accomplish.

One of the lessons I’ve learned out in the mountains over the years is to never underestimate anyone, nor to overestimate yourself.

That lesson was certainly reinforced on this trip.

With Mike & Zach & plenty of sunscreen.

On the final day (Friday, August 7) Tristan and Christopher left the base camp before the rest of us even got up so that Christopher would have more time to hike out. But apparently he did quite well and they were at the parking lot waiting us for us when we hiked in.

Soon enough we were all back in “Greater Bishop” drinking beer and eating hamburgers at the funky but widely acclaimed (with good reason) Burger Barn. True to form, Mike stepped to the front of the line, handed over his credit card and paid for everything. And, sitting around the table as we ate and toasted our success, Albert gave a flowery speech praising the guides, and all of us, for our great accomplishments.

OMG, what a great trip.

Left to Right: Trevor, Corey, Tristan, Christopher, Mike, Karl and Albert.

Front L-R Tristan & Mike; Back L-R Zach, Dave, Christopher, Karl, Albert, Corey, Trevor.