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White Mountain III, a long foretold return to WM by the original crew from White Mountain 2003 fame is on the calendar.  September 15-18, 2008 are the dates.  Aaron, Bonnie, Jarr, Lan, Vu, I and any others who want to roll are all on the roster this time around.  The first two trips were the definition of memorable events, thankfully in a largely good way.

The last time we did this was 2003, and it was so fun we did two of them.  Then we all went our seperate ways, trying to recover from the trauma that we all suffered at the hands of defeat that summer.

An interesting aspect of this trip is that there will be three professional photographers/videographers/wankers and then there’s me, so there’s apparently going to be way too many cameras here.  But, at the very least there should be good pictures everywhere, unlike when it’s only me and Gant, who’s pictures I never see anyway.  Though, you likely won’t be able to say anything stupid without it being caught on one or more cameras.  Since I put together the first WM03 movie and made everyone look like jackasses, I’m sure I’ll have to watch myself very carefully for the sequel.

Well, Lan has spearheaded this new attempt.  Within an hour of him sending out an invitation email there were dozens of emails flying this way and that.  I can’t wait for this, it’s just plain old White Mountain, but it’s beautiful to me.

Jarr and I went out to the WMRS to be guinea pigs for a couple of days and then we had a day off before the weekend was over. We decided to sleep on top of the peak on our day off, bad idea. That night the winds gusted up to 67 mph and averaged 35 or so, on the way home we were stuck in detours around the Socal wildfires for an extra three or four hours of traffic, and I got a flat.

It all started off so nicely though…

Thursday October 23, 2003

4:45 AM my alarm goes off and I take a quick shower then I’m off to pick up Jarr. We start the 5 hour drive up north and run into a small section of fire right off the 15N, driving through the smoke and haze was a bit odd but neither of us thought much about it at the time. This very same fire would cost us four hours on the way home, it’s a small price compared to what some have lost to the fires though. We arrived at the Owens Valley Laboratory and awaited the arrival of Dr. Gerald Dubowitz. While we were waiting, Jarr and I shot some basketball until the Doctor arrived (about 15 minutes later).

He packs his gear into the bed of the truck and we head up Silver Canyon to the Barcroft facility. We spent about 15 minutes there at twelve thousand feet, relaxing and getting just a bit lightheaded after having no time to acclimate to the altitude, and then we continued driving to the summit hut. This whole road is beyond the locked gate where everyone usually starts their hikes to White Mountain, so this is the first time I’ve gotten to drive it. It’s very tough shit, basically slick, thick slate rock the last mile or so uphill. Fun road though, would like to go up it in one of the old Willy’s jeeps though, that would be a blast. To update the scoreboard, I’ve now; dayhiked, backpacked, driven to and dayhiked in the snow to the top of this here mountain. The only things left on my scorecard are running the route up and down and finally at some point in the future snowboarding down it.

Anyway, we got to the summit and the doctor started his tests. He ultra-sounded our hearts, recorded a bunch of data and then we were done after a couple of hours. We head back down to the Barcroft facility thankfully. The fact that we had gone from sea level to fourteen thousand feet up with absolutely no acclimation was starting to wear on us all. When we got back down to the Barcroft we ate dinner, he ran some more tests and then we kind of fell asleep after a long, long day.

Friday

Breakfast was good, Matt and Paul up at Barcroft can fire up some good grub, that’s for sure. The good doctor ran some more tests on us this morning, then Jen showed up to be a 3rd guinea pig. We all headed up to the summit hut again for some more tests, today we are going to spend just about all day up there doing tests and hanging out. Since the doctor can only test one of us at a time and there are three of us total we each had quite a bit of time to kill up top. Thankfully as part of the research in the area WMRS has installed a wireless T1 repeater up there at the summit hut so we were able to browse the web from above 14 thousand feet. I believe it’s the highest internet access point in North America, coincidentally.

So outside of internet access and eating the goodies that the doc brought up we generally just chilled out on the summit talking to the people who hiked up that day.

After all the tests were done we headed down to Barcroft again. I hiked up to the radio telescope for some sunset pictures and got back in time for some good dinner style grub. When dinner and cleanup were done I played some ping pong with Matt, Jarr played pool with Paul and then Jen, Matt, me and the doctor played some cut throat ping pong. After running around the table awhile at twelve thousand feet we got tired and after the doc ran some more tests we just relaxed.

Saturday

Early start today, we packed up all our gear and goods, got some breakfast, the doctor ran the last of his tests at the Barcroft facility and we were done. We said our goodbyes, and then Jarr and I started our hike to the peak. It was a pretty easy hike for us; we made it up there in less than three hours with our packs on. Once we got to the top it was about 2pm and we had another four hours to kill before the sun went down. I brought a football, but Jarr had a bit of a headache so instead of playing catch we just read the summit log entries. Eventually a group came up and I got to play catch with one of them for awhile.

As afternoon wore on we decided to setup our tents. The hardest part of this was finding a level soft spot that was big enough for our tents, there was about no room available and it was nearly impossible to stake down anything up there. Eventually we got them setup, and then when the sun started to set we deployed the tripods/cameras for the sunset light show.

It started getting windy as the sun went down, as is normal in desert areas. Then it started getting really windy as is usual in exposed areas at fourteen thousand feet. It was a terribly ugly wind; it howled and screamed all night long. I don’t think either of us got any decent sleep up there, the winds averaged about 35 miles an hour and gusted up to 60 or so (thanks to the weather station at the summit we know exactly how crappy it was, graphs are at the bottom of this document).

The tents took a horrific beating all night long due to the wind, and because I’m dumb I set mine up where it was rubbing on rocks all night. All that abrasion added a couple of unnecessary holes to my rain fly; hopefully some duck tape (Story of duck tape) will take care of that in a jiffy. Eventually that horribly cold, horrifically windy night ended with a sunrise. The wind didn’t end, and the cold was slow in going away but at least we were able to get out of the tents and walk around after the sun was up.

Sunday

We packed up quickly, hiked back to the truck even quicker and were done in less than two hours. About an hour into the drive, my front right tire went flat so we changed that thing out in about fifteen minutes. I needed new tires before snow season anyway, so this will ensure that I don’t delay that purchase. After this, we hit the Owens River, GOD that was COLD water. It felt good though; we both took two swings into the river and then continued the long drive back home…

… the drive went so well until we were almost home. After driving about four of the five hours we heard on the radio that the route home was closed due to the fires, since we had been out of the area all weekend and heard no news this was a shocking piece of info, over the last few days it seemed like the entire southern California landmass had ignited. That last hour of driving we had left had just doubled. Then we realized that everyone from Vegas would be using our detour route too. That last hour just turned into three extra hours of driving. What a load of crap.

White Mtn Sumt (WMRS) California

MEAN WIND SPEED

MAXIMUM WIND GUST

For the next few days Jarr and I will be taking part in a high altitude physiology study.  The doctor doing the testing seems really cool, he’s even promised to pass along some movie loops/jpg’s of our heart/lungs.  Should be interesting to find out, well anything.

We should be done with the studies by Saturday afternoon, which means we have Saturday night to do whatever.  Jarr and I decided to hike to the top of the research station facility and camp on top of the peak at 14,246ft.  Should be colder than shit, so I was unpacking some of my snowboarding gear for the trip - baclava, thick winter gloves and since this is about the first time I’d opened my snowboard bag since last season ended so violently (see movie 11megs) it brought back a lot of good memories, the smells of my bag (probably needs to be aired out) just made me think of the long day trips to Mammoth, and the crappy conditions at the SoCal resorts.  It made me wonder what new stuff this year’s snowboarding will bring.

Aside from my new crash helmet that is.

Thursday, October 9th, 2003

After work let out, Eric and I drove to Jarr’s house to pick him up. Jarr threw his gear in the car, he also brought some much appreciated drinks and snacks for the drive and we were off. The plan was to drive up to Grandview campground that night, sleep in or around the car and wake up early on Friday to drive another hour or so north to the Mammoth Lakes ranger station, pick up a permit and get to the trailhead for some backpacking fun. As we got to the town of Big Pine, where the turnoff for Grandview is, we were hungry and realized there is nothing to eat in Big Pine. So we decide to keep traveling up the road to the biggest town in the Owens Valley; Bishop to grab some food.

Bishop is less than ½ hour away from Big Pine so we get there pretty quickly and ate dinner in the coldest Jack in the Box in the world; the thermometer on my watch was reading low in the low 70’s inside that damn restaurant, so we ate quickly and got out of there into the (relatively) warm outdoors. At this point I think we all realized that it would be stupid to drive south again to the original plan’s campsite, since we needed to go north in the morning anyway. So, we figure we can find some desolate area to park the car in and sleep somewhere between Bishop and Mammoth Lakes. The good news is we were right. We turned off the 395 (highway we’d been on since leaving southern California) onto a little highway with a church on it and no streetlights. We found a dirt road a few miles down, located a good place to stash the car and slept soundly until morning came.

Friday

We woke up before sunrise, there were big gravel loading trucks driving up and down the dirt road that we had slept nearby which worked as a very effective alarm clock. After some oatmeal we got back on the road and were at the ranger station by 7:30am, but they didn’t open until 8 and the only ranger there was a fat little prick who wouldn’t issue a permit until they were open. So we took the time to fill up the gas tank, Eric bought a beanie from the Von’s in town before the strike started and we got back to the station right at 8am for our permit. With permit in hand, we got back on the 395 and continued north to Silver Lake and the Rush Creek Trailhead.

When we stepped off on the hike, my pack was just over forty pounds and I think the other two had about equivalent pack weights, though I’m not sure. The first three miles of the hike are intensely steep, without any letup at all; there were few flat spots though we took advantage of each and every one of them. The trailhead starts at about 7000 feet, and by the end of those three miles you are at about 10,000 feet. This works out to an average 19% uphill grade, which was a killer. Up to this point we had passed Lake Agnew, Gem Lake and through Spooky Meadow, into the Ansel Adams Wilderness where we then broke for lunch at a stream where we thought we were at the end of the tough part, HAH.

At this point, Eric and Jarr were both starting to form blisters on their feet. Eric because he hasn’t worn boots in years and Jarr because he had on some socks that didn’t agree with him apparently. Eric starts cutting up some moleskin for Jarr, I relax in my Sling-light and try to figure out why I’m out here hauling all this stupidly heavy gear up a mountain that really could care less about me. We’ve taken a lot of breaks on the way up this point, and this one is the longest of the bunch at about 20 minutes, that uphill really did drain a lot of energy from the batteries.

After lunch we continued on the path, eventually realizing that the INSANE uphill was over and now we are only dealing with terribly crazy uphill/downhill slopes for the next four miles, though once Thousand Island Lake and Banner came into view, it made it all this exertion worthwhile. Along the way we did pass the Clark Lakes, and through some gorgeous Yosemite-esque granite/tree combinations (side note, this area used to be part of Yosemite, but was wanted by the mining companies around the turn of the century, so it was removed from the park by Congress. I don’t mind it at all though, it’s nowhere near as crowded as Yosemite is, matter of fact we had only seen one other person so far today).

So, it’s getting onto about 3pm now and we’ve been hiking for a solid six hours at this point. We are at the East end of the lake; we are planning on camping at the West end, so we still have about two miles to go. Eric’s feet are hurting bad, since he didn’t put any moleskin on his blister points, Jarr’s blisters are doing better but they still hurt and I’m just kinda tired. We take a break at a nice point near the lake, Eric falls asleep on a rock, Jarr walks on a rock path out to one of the islands and after taking some pictures, I followed him out there. We soaked our feet in the cold lake water and relaxed for awhile. Realizing that we only had a few hours of sunlight left, we picked up our packs again and moved on, looking for a campsite.

Along the way we passed one that looked pretty good, it had a fire ring and was near the tree line so there would be some deadfall to burn, plus it wasn’t too close to the trail we were on. The only problem with it is that it was too far away from the base of Banner, where we’d be starting our summit attempt the next morning. So, dead tired, we continued walking towards the West end of the lake and the base of Banner. I had been told there would be quite a few really nice sites in this area, but as worn out as we were, we just didn’t have the energy to get off the trail and look for them, and we just kept on the trail and tried to find something close to it. Eventually, we did find one, it wasn’t anything special, the tents would need to be erected about 2 feet from the trail that people walked on and there was no fire ring, but it was good enough right then so we setup camp. Thankfully we had still only seen one person, a day hiker named Derek who had turned around a couple miles back.

After camp was setup and all the basic chores like gathering water and scrounging some wood were done we started on dinner. Eric couldn’t figure out how to use his can opener, so he had to open his canned food with a knife, while Jarr and I just had dehydrated meals for dinner. The sun set pretty early behind the ridge to our west, but the sky stayed bright for awhile and then the full moon rose which encouraged us to stay up and just relax before trying to fall asleep. The night didn’t get quite as cold as I would have expected for mid-October Sierra highlands, when we hit the tents at around 9 or 10 it was still in the low 40’s or high 30’s. Sitting there, staring up at Banner was quite inspiring; its glaciers glowed in the moonlight, and it’s reflection in Thousand Island Lake was as clear as a mirror. I wanted to make a mental tattoo of this image; I never want to forget how beautiful it was out there.

Saturday

Sometime around 2am I heard footsteps outside the tent. Neither of the other two guys heard it, and I guess Jarr had a little trouble falling asleep after that, sorry Jarr. We never did see it or find any tracks from it, but the footsteps sounded pretty small anyway. We were up with sunrise though a couple hours later, cooked up some quick oatmeal and put together our summit packs with some food, warm clothes and miscellaneous other things that might come in handy and stepped off. Our first goal was North Glacier Pass, the total distance to the peak was about 4 miles and this pass led to Catherine Lake, which was about the halfway point of the hike. From there we would skirt the lake’s south side and travel up to the left of the glacier along the talus field to the saddle between Ritter and Banner, where we would find a route to the top of Banner. By all accounts, a relatively technical day-hike with a lot of rock jumping, we were looking forward to a fun day, at least I was.

We start off good and strong, Jarr and Eric both still have their blisters, but moleskin and duct-tape keep them largely in check. The route up to glacier pass is a huge talus field, there is really no right way up, but I’m sure there are a lot of wrong ways. The rocks are all stable though, so we didn’t have too much to worry about as we jumped from one to the next. This didn’t take too long, once we got to the pass; we saw Catherine Lake, which is a gorgeous alpine lake and is actually quite unnerving to look at. Within feet of the edge of the lake, it drops nearly straight down into some very, very deep and cold water. For some reason, deep water has always made me a bit uncomfortable. I can swim almost all day long, but if I can’t see the bottom of a body of water I don’t like to be near it. Whatever though, it was sunny, a little chilly, we were halfway up the mountain and doing well on time, life is good.

Here comes the tough part. After finding a way up and over to the pass we would take to the Ritter/Banner saddle we start climbing along a very steep talus slope above the glacier. The main problem here is that the talus is unstable, so when trying to take your next step you don’t know if the rock you are stepping onto is solid or if it will slide right down to the glacier. It took us almost 3 hours to travel about one mile, and if you’ve never heard that god awful low frequency rumble that an avalanche, no matter how small, produces, I hope you never do. The source of the sound is nearly impossible to locate, at least it is for me, but it’s something that raises the hairs on your neck in a very primal way. As we approached the saddle that would take us to Banner peak itself, we were still good on time. I had set a turnaround time of no later than 2pm for the summit attempt, to ensure we had plenty of daylight to get back to camp. We still had over an hour left before this deadline and less than a thousand feet of elevation to go.

We were tired though, it was mentally exhausting up to this point, fear does that to you. Jarr and Eric had a couple close calls on the way up to this point and the rock hopping had put a lot of pressure and pain on their blisters. I noticed that my pants had a small tear in them from something I don’t really remember hitting along the way and we decided that today wasn’t going to be the day we hit the summit, so we turned around.

Unfortunately, downclimbing loose talus is just about as difficult as climbing up it and we were tired from a couple long days so we took it relatively slow and safe. On the way down, Jarr and I found a hole in the glacier. We threw some rocks into there to try to figure out how deep it was and to hear the splash when the rock hit the water underneath. I figure (entirely un-scientifically) that the glacier is probably about 10 feet thick, where we were at. When we hit Catherine Lake we took nearly a half hour break just enjoying the view and the afternoon sun’s warmth at about 11,000 feet as our nerves relaxed. Along the way down we were discussing moving our camp a couple miles back towards the trailhead; this would save us time and mileage on the trip back to the car on Sunday which would put us home earlier, plus we might be able to find something with a fire ring. At some point I lost my gloves on the way back to camp, which wasn’t too smart of me. Thankfully the nights weren’t too cold out there, or my hands would not have liked me very much.

After the long hike down, we were back. It had been a terribly exhausting day and to be honest all I wanted to do is sit down and relax for a few hours, this was not to be though, because these other two clowns wanted to move camp, damn them. Jarr and I are pretty fast at tearing down a camp by now; I still have a little advantage in tent takedown time though. Because Eric’s blisters were slowing him down so much he just packed his gear and started to gimp walk out of there as soon as he was done, without waiting for Jarr and me. Once Jarr and I were packed up we followed him, I think this little hike was the toughest portion of the weekend personally, I don’t really know why as it was just a mile or two tops. By the time I caught up to Eric he had found a site, but it wasn’t as good as we were hoping for and I wasn’t about to settle for a mediocre site after busting my ass to find something newer and better. I dropped my pack and moved up the trail, no more than ten minutes of walking later I luckily stumbled into this godsend of a site. It had two fire pits, two tent areas; it was secluded and looked out over Thousand Island Lake right to Banner Peak. It was perfect; we setup camp there, grubbed on some dinner and relaxed around the fire for a couple hours before going to sleep.

Sunday

We set are alarms and woke up at about 5:45am, packed up camp and hiked back to the car. We slogged out to this point after seven hours of hiking on Friday, on Sunday, even as tired as we were we made it back to the car in just over four hours. At the trailhead we cleaned ourselves up a bit, and started the long drive back to Orange County. We didn’t stop at the rope swing off the 168 because there were a bunch of cars already there and it looked a bit crowded, we decided it would be too much of a hassle. That sucked, that rope swing is one of my favorite things to do after a weekend, the Owens River water is refreshingly chilly, but not so cold that you don’t want to jump in. It washes off some of the dirt, stink, grime and oil from a trip and wakes me up for the drive home. What a shame it was crowded.

Epilogue

Overall though, it was a good trip. None of us had seen this section of the Sierra, and we were all amazed with how beautiful it was. There was no one to be seen, except a group of three Marines from Bridgeport rappelling down Banner, a couple other campers around the lake on Saturday and the day-hiker on Friday. We got close to the peak, and found a perfect campsite for the next trip out there, who’s interested?

Album of most of the pics from this trip

Friday September 19, 2003

Jarr, Lan and I are leaving Orange County for Inyo County and the White Mountains; it’s about 8:30 pm when we get on the road. The drive up was largely uneventful, except for the blown up 18 wheeler on the side of the road outside of Adelanto. We arrived at Sierra View around 2:00 am, Lan and Jarr both used the last bathroom – I use that term loosely, that we would see for the next two days. Standing around in the cold, dark, lonely night I realized I don’t really like standing around alone on dark and cold nights in the middle of nowhere. As soon as they came back, we continued driving in Jarr’s Saturn on the relatively well maintained dirt road leading to the locked Barcroft gate and arrived right around 3am, woke up quite a few of the people who had arrived before us and were sleeping comfortably with our headlights and we decided to sleep in the car – it was about 40 degrees outside.

Saturday

So, three hours later it’s 6am and we are awake but tired. I notice that Jarr is sleeping outside now, and sometime during the night Lan had tried sleeping outside as well but retreated into the car again at some point. Since we didn’t have a really tight schedule for the day it didn’t matter really what time we left the car, we fell back asleep for another two hours. Upon awaking for the second time that morning, we fire up breakfast and make some final adjustments on our packs, looked up the steep incline that was the start of the hike and began.

The plan was pretty simple; hike out about 5 miles on Saturday, setup camp somewhere, sleep for the night and awake on Sunday for a nice early and easy summit bid then hike back to the car with much lighter packs. This trip would allow Jarr some time to check out his new gear – tent, sleeping bag, pack. The slow pace of the hike would hopefully allow Lan a little more time to acclimate to the higher altitudes – the hike starts at just above 11,000 feet and ends at 14,246 feet and I just wanted to get out and backpack; it had been a pretty weenie summer for me.

So, we begin with much courage and joy in our hearts, it was just about 10am and the sky was as completely clean of clouds. In the Owens valley, about 7,000 feet below us the temperatures would reach into the 90’s during the day. At our elevation the temperature wouldn’t climb above 70, though it felt warmer than that because of the effort involved in carrying 40+ pound packs for miles in that high and dry environment. About 3 miles into the hike we reached the telescope on the ridge above the Barcroft station. Here we took a nice little break and talked with one of the egghead astronomers who was setting the observatory up for winter use. He said that Barcroft would be manned all winter long, which is an interesting piece of info for me this winter; I’d like to do a true winter ascent of the peak, and possibly sneak in the first snowboard descent of White Mountain as well. If there is someone at the station this winter that slightly increases the safety factor of a trip like that, since the Sierra View gate is usually closed and locked in November, it would be roundabout a fifty mile round trip to the peak and back. We’ll see where that plan goes…if you are reading this and interested, let me know.

… back to our story. After the telescope, we hiked another mile or so and plopped down for a lunch break just before the second big uphill stretch of land. At this point we had been traveling for 3 and a half hours and had covered just less than four miles. We fired up the stove, and boiled water for our Mountain House dehydrated meals and ate as we saw the first batches of people coming down from the peak for the day. After eating, with warm, full bellies and a friendly sun above I fell asleep in my chair, Lan dozed off on his Therm-A-Rest and Jarr walked around the area. After about a half hour of this, we got back on the trail and slowly hiked up the long, very long, incline that leads to the saddle before the peak.

This is where Lan really started to lag behind. He started feeling a headache, and his feet were just starting to hurt here. He has new boots, very nice Asolo 95’s, like Jarr, but neither of them has much experience hauling heavy loads on foot, so their feet were just sore I think. We ran into a few more people coming down off the peak, those early birds that we had woken up with our arrival at the gate earlier in the morning. Thankfully they didn’t really know we were the ones who had blazed into camp with headlights on and exhaust growling out of that 4 cylinder mice eating monster of a Saturn. As we finally trudged to the top of this ridge, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the Silver state, Nevada. From our height of almost 13,000 feet we were looking down on damn near the entire state. No mountains high enough to block our views for long, no lush green areas or snow capped peaks like looking to the Sierra Nevada range to our west. It’s really quite desolate, and beautiful in its own way though.

So, as Lan caught up to us it was just about 4pm and we had a couple more hours of sunlight left. We were looking into the final summit uphill, and a small valley (saddle) in between where we were and where the final push starts. God that’s a steep uphill, steep, short and ugly to be honest, I don’t know who or why people would want to go up there. Figuring we could make it through the saddle and possibly make it to a campsite I had in mind about half the way up on the mountain we moved on. Lan’s feet were really hurting though and his headache wasn’t going away so the pace wasn’t too spectacular. As we got to the bottom of the saddle and started going up it was clear that we wouldn’t make it to the higher campsite I had in mind so we started searching around for a spot suitably flat, rock free and hopefully a nice view where we could setup camp. What we wound up with was a rocky, slightly slanted campsite with a great view instead. After clearing out the sharpest of the rocks we setup tents and made dinner, again Mountain House meals.

The sun dropped behind White Mountain and the temperatures quickly dropped. While the sun was shining down on us, the temps were in the 60’s, no more than half an hour after it had fell behind the mountain the temps dropped down to the 40’s and kept dropping. At this point, Lan and Jarr wisely decided to go to sleep, neither of them seemed interested in playing catch with the Nerf football I brought and there wasn’t too much else to do. Asleep they went. I waited around, I kind of wanted to see the stars come out that night – it was clear, cold and we were miles from any ambient lights so the night sky should put on quite the show. But as the sun really set and it began to get a little colder, darker and lonelier I remembered that I didn’t really like being cold, dark and lonely so I went to my tent to fall asleep too.

Sunday

For some odd reason, we were all awake around 2am and had a little conversation about nothing. Then we all fell quiet, and struggled to sleep on the slanted, slippery slope we were on. A Therm-A-rest and sleeping bag really are quite slick, we all noticed ourselves slipping down to the bottom of our tents at various points through the night. I don’t think any of us managed to get any good sleep for the second night in a row, though I would say I was personally more comfortable in my tent than I was in Jarr’s car. At about 5:40 or so, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep and it was pointless to try. Looking outside I saw the eastern horizon smudged with sun, I had about 40 minutes before it was due to come up and it was cold as ass out there. I decided to get dressed in my tent, slowly. After about 15 minutes, I was ready to leave the relative warmth and watch the sunrise. As I was sitting out there waiting for the sun to come up and bring me some warmth, I realized that I need thicker pants – I’ll try to take care of that before the next trip.

So Jarr gets up about twenty minutes later as the sky gets brighter not a bit warmer yet, just brighter. Looking forward to a very long day – hitting the peak, packing camp, hiking back to the car and hopefully getting back to OC at a reasonable time we fired up the stove to cook some breakfast and Jarr woke Lan up. I came to the realization that I need to pressurize my stove a bit more at elevation. I was used to priming it, then giving it an additional 5 or so pumps and letting it take care of the rest. After attempting to boil the water and failing after about 10 minutes I gave it 10 more pumps and the water was boiling in less than 5 minutes. I’ll make a note of that on the fuel canister before the next trip so I can’t possibly forget again.

It was just after 7am; we were fed and had our camelbaks packed for the 1 and a quarter mile hike to the peak, we set off. Lan said he was feeling better than he was last night, Jarr seemed to be doing well and I felt good too. Our daypacks were unbelievably light compared to the loads we were hauling yesterday so everything was looking good for the day. Within fifteen minutes of stepping off, Lan realized he wouldn’t be able to make it to the summit within a reasonable amount of time. I’m glad he was able to recognize this early; it probably saved a lot of time and potential trouble later in the day. He went back to camp to pack his stuff and start heading back to the car. Since he was moving quite a bit slower than Jarr and I, I figured that we would catch up to him pretty quickly after we hit the summit. I’m sure that with a little more training, hydration and possibly time Lan will be able to make the summit next time though.

At this point, Jarr and I started hauling ass up the final mile of the trail. The sun was starting to warm us up and we made very good time to the peak, just about an hour to get up there. We spent about half an hour up top, enjoying the view, reading some of the older summit log entries and just relaxing. One of these days, I’m going to go up there with enough time to just sit down and read every single one of them. Jarr added his entry, I added mine, and we took some pictures and looked for Lan. From the summit we could see our campsite and by the time we started down the hill Lan was packed up and on his way back, hiking up the saddle’s southwest side. Jarr and I ran, fast all the way down the hill to our camp. It took a bit less than twenty minutes to get down that hill after slogging up it for about an hour.

Now we have to go about 6 miles back to the car. We got to camp just after 9am and started to pack it all up. We were on our way back, packs just a little bit lighter than they were on the trip out here by 9:45. We called Lan on the radio and figured out where he was, started walking and caught up to him just over an hour later on the uphill heading back to the telescope. From this point back to the car is just over 3 miles and for the most part we stayed together for this final hour of hiking. On the way back we ran into the biggest rabbit we’ve ever seen, this thing must have weighed in at 30lbs or so, it was just massive.

Driving home we of course stopped at the rope swing by the bridge over the Owens river and jumped in to wash off the stink and sweat of the last day and a half. We rolled back into OC at around 6:00pm and that was that. Good trip overall, I think Jarr learned a little about his gear and how to use it more effectively, and hopefully Lan learned the need for conditioning. I learned being dark, cold and lonely is not cool.