Crabtree Meadow – Trail Junction
We are up before 8 AM on Day 7 and are nearly able to break camp very early – it looks like we’ll be out by 9:30, but I take a long time boiling more water in the morning and Dad takes a long time washing his feet. We are ready to go by 10:15 but the ranger shows up then and chats with us. I get to talk in a very shallow way about neurotransmitters with him – he is doubtless as pleased as I am to show how much neat stuff he knows, and he also tells me that the Forest Service is having difficulty finding front-country rangers. They drive around in cars and act like rent-a-cops and get paid squat, but evidently you must put in your front-country time if you want to be a back-country ranger. I like the man a lot, which is very pleasant considering the evil private-toilet-related thoughts I’d had the previous evening. We are on the trail by 10:45.
Dad is not strong today and we struggle up the 800′ to Guitar Lake where we have lunch and Dad gets a nosebleed. I worry that we will not make Trail Crest by nightfall.
We climb together to the next little lake at 11,600′, watching a couple of kids recede upwards, and I offer a repeat of Day 2, when I’d climbed to where we wanted to go, then gone back and brought Dad’s pack up, too. I have lots of fun charging uphill and leaving the two kids in my dust. The charge is also nice because I haven’t really had much of a chance to challenge myself against the mountains. My shirt gets pretty wet from sweat, and I reach the trail junction at 13,400′ 1 1/2 hours later.
I meet Peter at the trail junction and give him half a liter of our water, as he is nearly out. Then I charge downhill to meet Dad, who has come 2/3 of the way up by this time. We camp 100’ below the trail junction, on a slope overlooking Guitar Lake and the Hitchcock Lakes, with a monster vertically-seamed bluff as a backdrop. Because even Guitar Lake is above the treeline, judging distance below is difficult and the valley seems smaller than it is. Dad is in bed by 7PM and I stay up to write this. About the time I finish writing up Day 6, the sun goes gently down behind some 13,000+’ peak or other – perhaps slightly higher than we are – on the other side of the Kern river in a red, smoggy-looking sky Dad brought to my attention some time ago, suggesting that it was red because of a fire. We find out later that he is right. The red in the sky goes up higher than we are, and it is hazier to the north. The lakes far below are green, barely rippling jewels until the light fades, though a part of one not in the shadow of the bluffs still throws the post-sunset sky’s violet glow back at me. The sky straight above us today is a deeper blue than usual – the air is so thin up here that the black of outer space is not so obscured. The quarter moon to the southwest is also violet and I wonder how many stars I would see if I stayed up tonight. It is so cold now that I think I won’t find out.
I measured our progress today by comparing my height with the heights of peaks or shoulders in the valley. 12,700′, 13,100′, each fell below me, revealing even taller peaks beyond. I can see for a long way now, though not so well as two hours ago when the haze was less. A first star has appeared overhead, yellow-red and unwinking, but my legs are beginning to shiver and I think it’s time to go in. A glider flew over Whitney today! I have forgotten what my science fiction dream was about.
Backpacking With Family 