I landed in Las Vegas, promptly grabbed my gear bag and rental car, and lit out for California. It was a balmy 110 degrees in Vegas, but by the time I reached Furnace Creek in Death Valley it had risen to 121. I had spent a week here the previous year, hiking and scrambling during early March when temps were comfortably in the seventies and eighties, so this was a new experience for me. The only other time I had been to this park in the summer months was during mid-September, with a high of I believe 109. Let me tell you, 121 degrees is like being in an oven. I would have an opportunity years later to be here when temps hit 128, and the old adage about it being a “dry heat” only goes so far. Temps like this can kill you incredibly quickly, as the coroners in towns around Death Valley can attest.
About fours hours after leaving Vegas, the Sierra
Nevada came into view on the horizon. I was still many miles away
but even from this distance the mountain range looked very imposing. I could
even pick out Mt.
Whitney, which has a very
identifiable outline. Another 45 minutes put me in Lone Pine, the small town on
US 395 that is the gateway to Mt.
Whitney and where I would
be staying during this trip. Again, I had decided not to haul
backpacking/camping gear across the country this time, and would be dayhiking
the entire trip from a motel room base. At the time I thought that was just a perfect
idea, the old mountaineering acclimation saw being, “climb high, sleep low.”
I checked into the HISTORIC Dow Hotel, “historic” being
synonymous for old, tiny, and cramped. I’ve never seen a smaller hotel room in
my life, and I do have some degree of expertise in that department. The queen
bed took up almost the entire room, and the minuscule bathroom had a connecting
door to the next room. I had never seen that before, but fortunately it had a
lock on it. After a few minutes of reflecting on this incredibly depressing
room that I was privileged to pay $120/night for (and how I wished Marriott had
some presence – any presence – along
the 270 miles of US 395 between Ridgecrest and Reno, but sadly not), I accepted
the situation and reminded myself this room would only be used for grabbing
sleep between hikes. I stowed my gear and went out to explore.
Lone Pine is a very tiny town, and primarily exists as a
tourist destination. There is no industry and very little commercially that is
not tied to tourism for either Mt.
Whitney or the Western
film history of the town. The nearby Alabama Hills, at the foothills of the
Sierra, have been a popular location since the 1920s for Western films, and
much of the town (including the HISTORIC Dow Hotel) is dedicated to preserving
and promoting that history.
It took me less than 20 minutes to walk up and down the
length of the town, and I had it completely mapped out: several motels and
restaurants, a hiker’s hostel, a few souvenir shops, a handful of fast-food
joints, one very small grocery, a drug store, a couple of outfitters, a school,
a park, and a film history museum. That’s essentially Lone Pine, California in a nutshell.
Little did I know at the time that this town, and the surrounding Sierra
environs north to Yosemite, would become almost as familiar to me as Atlanta.
The next step was picking up that oh-so-dear permit to enter
the Whitney Zone. The congratulatory letter I had
received in April was not the actual permit. I would need to present myself at
the Eastern Sierra Inter-Agency Visitor’s Center (hereafter known as the
ESIAVC), present ID, and fill out some paperwork in order to obtain the actual
permit. The ESIAVC, which I had passed coming into town, was a couple of miles
down 395. I hopped in my car and headed there to get this step out of the way.
After about twenty minutes in line I made it to a ranger’s
desk and began the permitting process. I received a rather lengthy talk from
the ranger, with many a dire warning, and was then handed my actual paper
permit with the specifics of me and my itinerary detailed out. I also received
a color-coded tag to attach to my backpack. Tag colors correspond to days, and
any ranger on the trail would be able to tell at a glance that I was
legitimately in the Whitney
Zone without having to
stop me to check the permit itself. Then came the WAG bag and instructions . .
.
Let me pause here to cover a few stark realities of trail
life. There are no bathrooms in the mountains, generally speaking, outside of
the typical pit toilet at trailhead parking areas. When you gotta go, you just
do the best you can. There exists a universally-accepted protocol for going in
the woods to keep things as environmentally balanced as possible. It’s known as
the 100-foot rule: keep your bodily business at least 100 feet from the trail,
the campsite, or any water source. And solid waste should be buried cat-hole
style for best decomposition and lowest environmental impact. Once you’re
comfortable with this, it’s no big deal. Problems occur, though, when there is
no possibility of (1) burying your waste or (2) moving 100 feet off the trail.
In big mountains like the Sierra, once you’re above
timberline (roughly 11,000 feet) it’s all rock. No trees and no dirt. It’s
impossible to bury waste. Also, due to the steep and rocky nature of
trail-building at high elevation, you often can’t move even a couple of feet
off the trail without either wings or some serious rock scrambling. This
presents problems in adhering to the generally-accepted waste management
provisions of backcountry etiquette. These challenges are present above 10,000
feet on Mt. Whitney, but the biggest problem is really
volume. Whitney is without a doubt the most sought-after mountain in the US,
and I’ve detailed in Part 1 of this blog entry how the Forest Service has taken
extreme steps to manage the summer traffic on this mountain. Even with all the controls
in place, on a given summer weekend day there can be upwards of 200 people on
the mountain. And they all eventually gotta go in what is mostly a very
confined, narrow trail above 9,500 feet.
So the Inyo County National Forest Service has an ingenious
solution to this quandary posed by Mt.
Whitney: The WAG Bag!
Before being allowed to set foot on the trail, you are given 1 WAG Bag kit (the
acronym stands for Waste Alleviation Gelling), instructions for its use, and a
section pointed out in your permit that requires you to pack out all solid
waste from the Whitney
Zone. The purpose of the
WAG Bag is simple: spread out the main plastic layer, unload, sprinkle in the small
envelope of absorbent Poo Powder, finally packaging up the resultant concoction
and sealing it in the thoughtfully provided but inadequate zip-lock bag (you’ll
have a few extra zip-locks of your own for triple-bagging if you’re smart). You
then stow it in your pack and carry it with you the rest of the trip. Upon your
return to the trailhead you then dispose of it in the very clearly marked containers
there. Funny, you never see people dawdling around those WAG BAG ONLY
containers . . .
So, the gist being that to climb Mt.
Whitney you have to agree to carry your shit all the way out. To my knowledge
it’s the only trail in America
that mandates this practice rather than suggesting it. What could be more fun?!?
Notice I said “agree”, not actually execute. The harsh
reality is that the Mt.
Whitney trail in
summertime is sadly littered with these used WAG bags. It’s unsightly and
disgusting. Yes, the idea of carrying your poop around is unappealing for
everyone, but the alternative is much, much worse for this fragile alpine
environment. The rangers on Mt.
Whitney spend way too
much precious time collecting and hauling out these abandoned WAG bags that
self-centered assholes refuse to carry themselves after using them. Many, many
more go uncollected cause they’ve been “hidden” by the clever rule-breakers.
Then the heavy snows come in the winter, followed by the spring melt that
results in these stashed-away bags being cascaded down the mountain.
For what it’s worth, I try to be a good custodian of any
area I hike or climb in. Like I said, extra zip-lock bags for a good
triple-bagging is the easiest solution to this problem. If a ranger stops you
in the Whitney Zone and you can’t produce a permit and the issued WAG bag (used or
not), you’re cited and turned around for immediate descent. I believe the fine
is $350, and you don’t screw around with this since this is the Federal
government.
See, aren’t you glad that’s all cleared up? I know you were
dying to be enlightened on this subject! It is, however, a very real part of
the experience of climbing Mt.
Whitney, so at least
you’re not wondering any longer! Barb had no problems when she began to hike
Whitney. Bri on the other hand, well it took some convincing.
Having a permit (and that handy-dandy WAG Bag) in my
possession, I grabbed a burger at the Carl’s Jr. and headed back to the
HISTORIC Dow to crash. It had been a long travel day, especially with the three
hour time difference, and I needed to stay on a sleep schedule for getting up
very early every morning since I would need to be up at 2:00 a.m. on Whitney
Day for a 3:30 start. I went to bed about 7:30 local time, but it felt like
10:30 to me.
On the subject of that impending, uber-early Mountaineer’s
Start: the primary goal of launching a hike so ungodly early is to get you on
and then off your high-altitude destination before thunderstorms have a chance
to brew up. In big mountains a storm can form astonishingly quickly out of what
was a cloudless sky 30 minutes before. There are a number of absolutes in this
life, but near the top of that list is that you do NOT, under any
circumstances, want to be the highest thing around when lightning starts
crackling. And you damn sure don’t want to be the highest thing in the Lower 48,
which is what you are standing on Whitney’s summit. Lightning at these
elevations is very scary, and you want to be off the summit, and the ridge
leading to the summit, well before traditional summer t-storm time in the
mountains. That’s typically early afternoon, so you shoot for a summit no later
than 1:00 then backtrack to your necessary start time with your expected ascent
duration. For Whitney that usually means boots on the trail between 2:00 and
4:00 a.m.
My plan was to get in three acclimation hikes in the four
days leading up to my scheduled ascent of Whitney. Even though I had never been
bothered by altitude in the past, I knew very well that I needed to get my
lungs and blood used to the thin air above 10,000 feet. I had never gotten sick
at elevation, but I had most certainly felt like 90% of the strength had been
drained from me. I needed to fight through the acclimation process, pushing
higher each day and allowing my body to produce additional red blood cells that
would be needed to carry extra oxygen, especially above 12,000 feet.
Early the next morning I made the drive up the dramatic Horseshoe Meadow Road,
rising from Lone Pine at 3,500 feet to Horseshoe Meadow at 10,000 feet. The
trailhead at Horseshoe Meadow launches two different trails that meander up to
the Sierra crest and down into the backcountry. On this first day I had decided
to take the Cottonwood Lakes trail for a 4-mile stretch to a series of
alpine lakes near Army
Pass. This would be about
a 1000-foot gain to 11,000 feet elevation. A nice first hike at altitude to
begin getting used to the thin air, but nothing really demanding.
Tucker and I started out immediately cussing the soft, beach
sand-like trail that leaves Horseshoe Meadow, pounded into pumice by years of
horse traffic. Horseshoe Meadow is, amazingly enough despite the name, also an
equestrian base. There is a substantial amount of pack activity on the trail,
both for leisure riders and for pack station operators who re-supply
backcountry through-hikers. It takes way more energy to walk in this stuff than
on a normal hard-packed trail, and I was feeling it right off the bat.
Oh wait – did I not introduce Tucker? My bad. Tucker is one
of Brianne’s stuffed animals – a doe-eyed little puppy, to be exact. The year
before, when I was making my first solo trip to Death
Valley, Bri handed Tucker to me to take along as a stand-in for
her since she couldn’t go. The idea was that whenever I went on a trip that
Brianne couldn’t, Tucker should be in/on my pack so that I would know my little
girl was with me in spirit. Awwwwww . . .
Anyway, Tucker was attached to the outside of my pack by a
carabiner, bouncing merrily along while I did all the work. The way this
relationship works is that Tucker gets all the blame whenever I’m ticked off
about something on the trail, since he’s just along for the ride and
contributes zip. He’s my verbal punching bag, and it shouldn’t take too much
imagination to visualize me swearing some nicely-rhymed epithets with his name.
Ten thousand feet is awfully high to begin a first
acclimation hike, and I felt extremely sluggish from the outset. The sandy soil
just made things worse. A lot of adjectives could be used to describe this
first hike, but “fun” or “enjoyable” would not be in that mix. It hurt. It was
hot. It was tiring. My 15-pound pack felt like 30 at this elevation. The sand
was really pissing me off and I got a mild headache at about 10,500 feet. But
as the saying goes, “A bad day in the mountains is better than a good day at
work!” Check back with me later about that . . .
I managed to reach the Cottonwood Lakes
after about four miles, dropped my pack, and had a bit of lunch. It was only
about 9:30 a.m., but it was lunch to me after getting up at 3:30. I enjoyed the
scenery at 11,200 feet for a while, beat back my headache with Tylenol, and
then returned to the trailhead. Downhill felt really, really good. It should
have been an easy 8-mile roundtrip hike with only 1000 feet of gain, but I felt
completely knackered when I got to the car. I reevaluated the wisdom of
launching off a first-day hike from 10,000 feet, which was clearly the issue,
and decided the worst was out of the way. Tomorrow’s hike, taking the Cottonwood Pass trail out of this same 10,000-foot
trailhead, should be much easier.
I returned to the hotel for a shower and a nap, then decided
to make the drive up to the Whitney Portal to get a look at the trailhead and
the Portal Store. The Whitney
Portal Road rises 5000 feet above Lone Pine,
snaking its way to the Portal in a way that is almost as dramatic as the nearby
Horseshoe Meadow Road.
You should not drive either of these roads if heights or the absence of
guardrails makes you nervous. Me, though – I’ve gone out of my way for years to
seek out the most terrifying, dangerous roads in America. I find it exhilarating and
fun. As terrifying mountain roads in America go, these two are somewhat mild.
Terrifying Road Rewind: the scariest road I’ve ever driven
is in southern Utah,
and is appropriately named Hell’s Backbone. It’s a dirt/gravel US Forest road
that ultimately follows a narrow ridgeline between two mountains for twelve
miles. It’s just wide enough for one car comfortably. There are no guardrails
or shoulder, and on each side there’s a precipitous 3000-foot drop. If
there should by chance be an oncoming vehicle, one of you has to carefully – very carefully – back up to a spot where
it’s remotely conceivable two cars can pass without one going over. There
aren’t many spots along the twelve miles where this is feasible. The road
really doesn’t go anywhere, and anyone on it is usually there for the fun of
it. Now that’s a mountain
road! The Mt.
Evans Road in the Colorado Rockies is a close
second in my book. It’s paved all the way to 14,100 feet, but has some serious
pucker factor. It appears guardrails and shoulders are considered extra-curricular
in Colorado. If
Hell’s Backbone is a “9” on the Terrifying Roads scale (always leaving room for
something scarier), these two Sierra roads out of Lone Pine rate somewhere
around a “6” in my book – enough to keep you on your toes, but not a blood
pressure-spiking, acrophobic nightmare.
Anyway, I was settled in Lone Pine and had successfully
completed my first acclimation hike. I was now going to spend the rest of the
day checking out the subject of my trip – Mt. Whitney
and the Whitney Portal.
Part 3 coming soon.
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