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.

We awoke in Grandview campground, in the White Mountains.  I’ve sung it’s praises enough previously, but it really is nice.  The only plans we had were to drive up and see the Bristlecone pines and then drive out to the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley to camp that night.  So, there was no rush as Gant and Holly matched wits that morning over the squared circle in an intense game of checkers as Jared and I packed our trash.

We eventually got to going and encountered a barricade saying the road was closed.  I personally wanted to see the Patriarch grove, rather than the Schulman grove so we went around the barricade and made some progress on the road despite the warnings.  There were snow patches that were manageable thanks to some hard work, but we eventually hit a dead end and had to return to the lower Schulman grove.  I’ve still, to this day not done the entire Methusulah trail hike and we started that but there was a bit too much snow to follow it easily so we took the old cabin trail back to the truck.

After that we filled the gas tank and Jared and I took a quick dip in the Owens.  Much to my dismay, the old rope swings have been torn down and now it’s just a jump in from shore.  Holly and Gant decided that a cool, refreshing dip in the river was not on their agenda and instead stayed stinky and sweaty throughout the remainder of the trip.

We eventually got to the Eureka dunes (Second highest dunes in the US, after some shit in Colorado that has a homoerotic name).  Jared played up my fear of snakes by throwing a belt at me, well done my good sir.  Then we got there and everyone was all depressed or something because it was hot, in Death Valley, in May.  I wanted to hike to the top of the dunes but no one wanted to.  So we played catch instead.

After playing catch, I went for a little hike into the wilderness.  Much like the baby jebus did when he was in his 30’s if I remember right.

Gant and Holly stayed up late into the night cooking some crazy concoctions.  Jared and I brought some meat, some skewers and were done cooking, eating and asleep before those two kids were done cooking.  I can’t say I don’t appreciate a good warm meal, but honestly hunger is the best sauce, sleep is the best dessert.  The faster I can get my food, the happier I am personally.  Plus cleanup and dishes and all that tomfoolery is just not my cup o’ tea I suppose.  But, to each their own.

Saturday broke bright and beautiful.  Convict lake is ringed by big bold mountains that were just glowing that morning.  We had a quick and easy breakfast and were on our way even further north to the Mountain Warfare Training Center for the race.
We stopped in Bridgeport, we saw the Walker river and we arrived at the base.  If there’s one thing that draws me back to the Marine Corps it’s this place.  In all the United States, this is where the USMC chose to put their cold weather survival school and mountain warfare training.  The place is like a forgotten fairytale for me, bits of magical memories and challenges.  It has always held my heart.

Well, we got there with plenty of time to spare so we wandered a bit and took some photos.  Unfortunately, based on my training and experience I’ll never see the photos, since the were taken with Gant’s camera.  But, I’m sure they turned out nice.  The crowd looked to be in pretty good shape overall, this was going to be a tough race based on who and what I was seeing on the starting line.  Gant got his IBS under control in one of the plethora of porta-potties they had as the start clock counted down to race time.

When we started the first thing I noticed is that the first two miles is a damn brutal uphill.  More and more people started walking and eventually I had to give in as well and walked.  Starting off at about 6,800 feet and running up another 800 feet was rougher than I thought it would be.  At about the 2 mile mark we hit the first two obstacles in the race; a 5 foot wall and a tire course (like in football).  Honest to god when I was approaching the wall I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to get over it.  I was hurting after that hill climb.  At the edges of the wall there are hay bales for the shorter people to use to help get over the wall, I was so damn tempted to hop on one of them, but I wasn’t sure if Gant or Jared could see me so I played it safe and went over the wall, if only barely.

Right after that is about 15 or 20 feet of tires to run through which at that point was plenty.  Sure it could have been longer, or have another section of tires to make it even tougher but that was good enough for me.  The good news was that the uphill was basically over.  We ran less than a mile after that and hit the first tunnel crawl, and there’s a technique for these.  You use your hands as skid pads, like a snowmobile and your feet just run while your hands slide across the tunnel.

Two miles later and we get to the hay bale climb, Jared said he got dizzy on this one becaue he went up too fast.  Right after that is the low crawl.  Nothing to this one but to get down on your belly and slide across the silt.  Another mile and half or so of nice long downhills later and you’re at the finish line looking like you just got beat up by a gang of tree huggers.

Here are the Mountain Warfare Training Challenge Race results.  So for next year I need to drop 11 minutes on my run and I’m going to do it.  Either that or the three of us join in the team category and take an easy 2nd or 3rd place finish.  Either way, I’m getting one of those sweet medals that Gant has a habit of wearing around.

You’ll notice on those results that the good Dr. Gant did finish third in his category.  Of course he did this with his usual flair for faggotry beforehand by saying, “I’ve only run once in the last 3 months” “My leprosy is really acting up today I don’t think I’m going to do very well” “I am a huge fan of Matt Damon’s body (of work)” and other such nonsense.  Then after all this crap he’s spouted like a fountain of feces he goes and dominates.  Seriously though, congrats to him.

We hit up lunch in the pickel chalet and what a view that is out the window.  If for nothing else, you should do the race to eat here and see the sights.  After all the racers were done we went to the PX and got some souvenirs.  We waited around for the raffle and again, Gant dominated by winning a bag of goodies.  Much to the dismay of all the little childrens waiting to win raffle prizes, he took it.  So now he has a child’s size MWTC sweatshirt and a calculator and some crayons I think.

On the way south for our next night of camping we stopped by Bodie.  It’s a ghost town in a state of arrested decay as I understand it and was neat to see.  We hiked and looked around for awhile.  Gant didn’t disturb any of the remains of the town as he’s a good steward of California’s cultural heritage of course.

After all this was done we left and headed down to get our campsite and dinner.  We wound up cooking up some sausages in the community park in Bishop due to daylight constraints, but it was good nonetheless.  We then continued on to Grandview campground up in the White Mountains.

Bridgeport, CA.  MWTC

There were four of us and a truck bed full of gear leaving Gorman.  Truck being one of the key words in that sentence with gas prices being well above $4 a gallon for the entirety of the trip.  This was a big trip including five days of camping from the Sierra Nevada to Death Valley and excursions ranging from sand dune climbing to hiking around the remains of what used to be the second largest city in California.  We played catch in hundred degree plus temperatures and found a secret canyon in Death Valley with a plethora of petroglyphs.  The trip was based around going to run the Mountain Warfare Training Challenge 10k in Bridgeport, CA.

We left Gorman at a pretty decent hour on Friday.  We drove to Bishop and stopped by Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light gallery then ate dinner at the mexican food place just behind it.  After dinner we continued north, Gant has some buddies who are camphosts up at Convict Lake in the Sierra Nevada.  They had arranged to have one of their nicest sites available for us to use the night before the race.  We pulled in, found our spot and setup camp.  Convict Lake was a really nice campground, though it’s obviously popular and overpopulated for my tastes in general.

We went for a little dinner digestion hike around the lake until we were blocked by snow on the path and then called it a night.

Gant has had some stupid ideas in his time, but a recent one is a real winner; he wants to run a marathon in Death Valley. Yeah, that sounds great. It gets better though, after the marathon, he wants to spend a couple of days in DV hiking and peakbagging. I’m sure that the next stage of his plan is to propose we do the entire trip in wetsuits or with no water, or maybe even both.

In other stupid idea news, an idea I floated on this website here in ‘03 is about to start coming together. I have crew who is willing to accompany, enable and document the potentially retarded plan to make a first descent on a certain mountain here in California. This mountain wouldn’t be hard to figure out for any long time reader here, it’s a high mountain, remote and during the winter is extremely difficult to get to.

Those that have volunteered their time for the Winter of ‘09 trip include an up and coming new media specialist to document it for posterity (and comedy in all likelihood). One other person who will be the sherpa of the trip, carrying the heavy loads up high for glory and contributing witty commentary to the documentary like a young John Madden and then one other person who may or may not make the descent attempt with me, but who will nonetheless add the comedy section to the film.

I’m not going into specifics, about where and what or anything like that because as the time draws nigh, I don’t want any unscrupulous charlatans to steal this idea from me. In all likelihood, this will be the highest mountain ever descended on snowboard in California and I want to be the first to do it.

I’m also looking for sponsors, so fork over some cash, cheapasses.

Thirty degrees and windy.

There were five people invited to White Mountain, October of ‘07. This was a short lived tradition I had to hit WM every October to celebrate my birthday. It has always been cold up in the highlands in October, but I do personally enjoy the cold so it has always been fine by me. Of the four invitees, two showed up. Of the two who couldn’t make it, one actually let me know ahead of time. The other one just ignored the entire situation, and as a matter of fact on our summit day was fawning over himself, as usual. Of the three of us who were there, none made the peak.

We knew it would be cold, we knew there would be snow on the ground and we knew that Scott had never been higher than Telescope peak at 11,049 feet. This hike would be starting higher than that. Scott’s been training hard for this trip for a while now, while Jared and I are still up at a pretty good level after getting ready for the triathlon last week.

Jared drove us all to Grandview, it was dark and freezing by the time we got there. I started the fire, Jared setup his rarely used 6 man tent and realized that zipper on the door wouldn’t zip closed. Scott, meanwhile was trying to put on more layers than a polar bear. After the three of us were done with our respective tasks we started cooking. Scott had rigged up a nice little contraption made of tape and sticks to roast his food on. At 10pm it was 34 degrees and dropping. The tent door wouldn’t close and we had a long, cold way to go until the sun was up again.

Dawn eventually came, with Scott not sleeping much, but Jared and I putting down some good Z’s with the new cots. After warming up by the fire and a light breakfast we made our way to the trailhead and prepared for the hike.

There are essentially four uphills on the way to the peak. The first one is short and steep, and starts as soon as you get out of the truck and continues for about a mile. The second one is shorter and steeper, the third one is long and slow and the fourth and final one is very steep and sort of short. We ran across our first substantial patches of snow on the second uphill and took a nice long break at the telescope. The temps were in the forties so it didn’t feel too bad when we were hiking, but during breaks we would get cold very quick.

As we continued on the air got thinner and the snow got thicker. Still nothing that would really impede our progress, but it was there. We were above 12,000 feet and Scott’s first time up high was getting tough. Jared was cruising right along and passed us up. Along came another herd of Bighorn sheep and Scott made a very mature decision to turn around. Scott sat down while we waited for Jared to come back.

So, we hiked back; tired, hungry and cold. Scott’s new high point is about 13,100 feet or so. When we got back to the truck, we decided to bypass Scott’s promise of cooking up some steak fajitas in order to get down to town and get some food, as fast as possible. After the food, we also decided to stay in a hotel with a working door.

Good trip, good fun.

Album of pictures from trip

No CF card present

So, Jared, Gant and I had a plan to go up to White mountain and do some high elevation training prior to the Triathlon at the end of the month. Gant couldn’t make it for various reasons unfortunately. So it was just Jared and I this time.

We got up to WM relatively quickly, about 4 hours from my house and went up to about 11,000 feet to Patriarch grove. Going from 3,000 feet at home to over 11,000 feet within hours is a tough transition. But we needed to acclimate for the next day, so we had to do it. At Patriarch we went for a small warmup hike and then ran 3 miles. Lungs just can’t process enough oxygen at that elevation to maintain much cardiovascular activity, and 3 miles was about my limit at that point.

I tried to take a picture, and got the dreaded, “No CF card present” message. I forgot to bring any storage for my camera, absolute moron. So, we went down to Bishop, through the Silver Canyon shortcut, which is a notoriously tough road. I’ve been up it once and never wanted to go that way again. Now we are going down it to get to town before everything closes. I wound up with one flat and high blood pressure by the time we got to town. The only flash cards I could find were 256 megs, which hold about 25 pictures on my camera and cost 20 bucks. GREAT.

After this we went down to Grandview campground, which is at around 8,300 feet to setup camp. Grandview is one of my favorite places to camp. It’s a large, underpopulated campground, each of the campsites have quite a bit of privacy, there’s absolutely no light pollution, and it’s pretty high in elevation so there’s less atmosphere to look through at the stars. It’s a beautiful place to go to look at the sky. This place generally has a few amatuer astronomers scattered about because of how great a place it is. By amatuer I mean guys with telescopes that are bigger than Andre the Giant. They need ladders to climb up and look into the eyepieces. Amatuer might not be the right word for these guys, I’ve never seen telescopes this big and every time I go up there, there’s always one or two setup.

So, we setup camp, lit a little fire and had some kielbasa. Since car camping has no weight issues, we both brought inflatable mattresses, Jared’s was a queen sized one, mine was a twin. Lord I wish I could bring that thing backpacking. In the morning we suited up and got to the trailhead with our mountain bikes. We started at 11,000 feet again and had about 7 or 8 miles of riding ahead of us to get to the top of the mountain at 14,000 feet.

As usual this is a very tough ride. I did it a few years ago, and it’s not any easier now. We both made it with bikes to the top, both completely exhausted. We took some pictures and bailed before Jared felt too naseaus. I saw for the second time ever on White a large herd of big horned sheep.

I also returned to the Bristlecone pines for some more pictures before leaving the next day.

Album

Gant, Vu and I went up with Dr. Dubowitz for some high altitude doctor crap.

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.