When I realized there was a cache (Peek-A-Boo: Mt. Whitney) on the top of the highest peak in the contiguous United States, I knew that one day I would return to the 14,497 foot peak of Mt. Whitney for the sake of cache. I’d already made three attempts at the summit.
Twice I had to abandon the quest. My first defeat arrived when I was 12 years old and on my first backpacking trip with my dad and sister. This was back in the day when jeans, cotton tees, and fiber-filled parkas from Sears were the common recreational outdoors wear. We got caught the middle of the traditional Labor Day weekend storm. Two and a half miles from the peak, we had to turn around at Trail Crest due to the hammering sleet, return to Trail Camp and crawl under a boulder for shelter.
I conquered the mountain in the early 1980s, when summiting the peak in one day became a popular alternative to the traditional heavy-loaded backpack trip. A second defeat followed eight years later, while backpacking and attempting the summit from the west. My backpacking partner started getting altitude sickness, so we retreated, again just below Trail Crest.
So, what would be the twist to summiting for sake of cache? How could I make the journey a different experience?
Challenging the trail by full-moon light and watching the sunrise from this grand highpoint piqued my interest. I just had to find someone with the same, perhaps crazy, interest to accompany me on a midnight stroll of 11 miles and over 6100 feet elevation gain.
I had already met my to-be-summiting-partner a year ago while caching in the eastern Sierra. The Salmon of Doubt cache introduced bthomas and myself several miles from any paved road. Ben was slowly caching his way from the Bay area down to Big Pine before heading up to bag the virtual at the top of White Mountain.
He told me about the two open-gate days a year at Barcroft Station, making the seven mile hike to the summit only five miles. It seemed like a reasonable opportunity to be able to shave four miles off high altitude hiking.
That’s when the idea of bagging two 14,000-foot peaks back to back came to me. Why waste the acclimization time? Ben and I spent a day caching before he set off for White Top and I returned to SoCal, with seeds planted for a double 14er summit in 2004.
This year’s full moons and Barcroft’s open gate days didn’t coincide, so I had to choose between a full moon hike and summiting only Whitney, or forfeiting a summit sunrise for two 14ers in a row. The latter won.
Earlier in the year I queried bthomas about his interest in accompanying me on the journey and he quickly agreed. Labor Day weekend was the target date, and that alone had me quite anxious, as in my experience, the holiday weekend is typically a storm weekend on Whitney.
Additionally, I allowed the permit lottery to pass me by and figured we would just take our chances on getting an unreserved day-permit for Whitney after returning from White. The week prior to our trip, our plans became solid. We would meet in Mammoth Saturday morning, spend the day caching our way to Big Pine then up to the Ancient Bristlecone Forest, summit White Mountain on Sunday, drive to Lone Pine Sunday afternoon and hope for a Whitney permit for Monday.
In the meantime, Ben had secured a Whitney reservation for Tuesday as a back-up. While driving to Mammoth Friday afternoon, a last minute phone call to the Mt. Whitney Ranger Station gifted me with the ability to change our Tuesday reservation to Monday. Since Monday was the preferred day by both Ben, and myself, I changed the reservation.
Our Saturday meeting went as planned and we leisurely cached our way south and then up through the ancient ones and white, rocky soil that gives name to the White Mountain Range. We briefly visited the Schulman Grove, and then drove the 12 miles of dirt road to Patriarch Grove.
By then it was time to give our bums a rest and stretch our legs. A brief walk through the grove had us marveling at the oldest living trees in the world, many over 4000 years old.
Before setting up camp in the largest tundra south of Alaska, Ben convinced me take a side trip down to Eva Belle mine ... it was my first class in real four wheeling. I was at the wheel as Ben confidently gave suggestions on how to navigate large rocks and buckets.
The road down to the mine was definitely a Class 3 road, requiring high clearance. Woohoo, I was really “off-roading.” I say that with excitement now, but I guarantee you my knuckles were white for the entire trip.
We explored the drafty miners’ hut and searched for the mine entrance. The best we could do was to find what appeared to be an entrance that had been covered by a rockslide. We returned to the stark roadside pullout we called our camping spot and both prepared our vehicles for our night at 11,200 feet.
We dined on salami, cheese, green beans and such, then celebrated my birthday with berry pie I had picked up at The Stove in Mammoth earlier in the day.
Our alarms went off before dawn on Sunday, allowing a glimpse of the rising sun over the Nevada hills. After packing up, we drove the three miles to Barcroft Gate, then the additional two miles to the research station.
We'd both been at altitude for less than 36 hours when we started the hike at the Barcroft Station (12,400 ft). There began our trek across the remote lunar landscape to the third highest peak in California. The stunning view of the eastern Sierras spans at least from Olancha peak to the south to north of Yosemite.
For being the easiest peak of California's 14ers to get to, the altitude had its way with me. Despite taking Diamox, hydrating well and car camping at elevation, I developed a tad of altitude sickness starting at about 13,500 feet. The headache and nausea made the final ascent up the east face of the mountain slow and tedious. Two posing herds of bighorn sheep were a pleasant diversion as we climbed the switchbacks. I reached the peak in three hours 25 minutes, a few minutes behind Ben.
A cloudless day and with nothing but the eastern Sierra to the west and Nevada hills to the east, the views were astonishing. After a half hour respite on the summit, we headed on down. To my recollection, this is the first peak that has taken me longer to descend than ascend ... by 25 minutes. I 'spose that was the effect of altitude sickness and the l-o-n-g uphill at the end of the hike before a final descent to the station.
For any lowlander, tackling any 14er means being prepared to summit or NOT to summit based on the body’s response to the lack of oxygen. Both exhausted, and me not feeling all that well, Ben and I started considering alternative plans for baggin’ Whitney the following day. Instead, we cached in Eureka Valley and Bama hills, and obtained a permit for Whitney for Tuesday.
The day on White provided the needed acclimatization for Whitney, and the day of rest refueled our spirits and muscles. After a few winks under the stars in the Alabama Hills, we began our ascent of Whitney at 0345 Tuesday morning.
Our headlamps fell right in line with the steady trickle of bouncing white lights of ambitious peak baggers. Navigating five stream crossings in the dark added a bit of fun and challenge to the otherwise solid trail. We approached Outpost Camp as the horizon to the east blazed orange. Rising above Outpost Camp around 0600, we turned off our headlamps as natural light slowly turned the night to dawn.
As Warton's Throne came into full view above Mirror Lake, the rising sun cast its alpine glow on the towering rock faces. We finished off the last of the 97 switchbacks up to Trail Crest -13,480'- 6.5 hours after committing to taking our bodies to the land of little oxygen.
After resting for several minutes we started on the final 2.5 miles journey to the summit. I sure don't remember those last miles being as tough as they were. It was on this last stretch where I had to answer repeatedly to my quads asking - Where's my oxygen ... I’m not going to move unless you gimme more oxygen.
My slug pace quickly turned to glacial speed as the ascent to the summit steepened and oxygen became scarcer. I rejoiced in the fact, though, that my head was not throbbing and nausea was not to felt. I had finally acclimatized.
Finally, nine hours after leaving the portal, and just over 48 hours from being atop another 14er, we were at the number one 14er in the lower U.S. It was another incredibly gorgeous day without a cloud in site from sunrise to sunset.
The rate of ascent is nothing to brag about, and we didn't take the shorter, more technically difficult mountaineer's route, but we made it. We found all the benchmarks, the virtual and traditional caches at the top, refueled, reoxygenated, shared celebrations with others, chatted with the summit marmot and started on our 11 mile journey back to our cars at 2:00 p.m.
Regardless of whether I’m walking, running, or riding, I HATE uphill, and I don’t do uphill well. In other words, I don’t have very good low gears. But, my high gears are rockin'. We were back at the trailhead in less than five hours, for a 15-hour RT time. We settled into our respective cars, grabbed a cache on the way down the Whitney Portal Road, and then said our goodbyes as we each headed home in order to be at work on Wednesday morning.
It was satisfying to improve my Whitney summit stats to 50/50, and even nicer to experience a new and far different peak in White Mountain. The caches were both an inspiration and bonus.