Sunday morning, August 1990; Trail Junction – Whitney Summit – Whitney Portal
Our lack of water makes me think giving Peter half a liter was a bad idea, but I have no regrets. We have less than 1 1/2 liters and will probably be down to just more than 1 by departure time. This morning it looks like we’ll be rolling by 9:30. Dad says he feels weak. Hopefully he’ll improve once we start. The valley below us looks sandblasted – white rock infrequently laced with tan dirt, rare green vegetation, and of course, the lakes. There is so much white that even the forests beyond look thin. What a moonscape!
The slope we camped on is strewn with flat boulders jumbled every which way. We can see tiny patches of snow, widely separated. Already something like 25 people have gone up from the trail junction to Whitney summit, though none from the same direction we came up from. They seem shallow, these day-hikers or overnighters, and many of them carry what look like ski poles. For balance? They seem trendy. I like hardcore backpackers more. Dad and I both definitely smell now, and there is no water for toothbrushes. I think we’ll be down by 6 PM. Dad and I both noticed more hair loss than usual last night.
Sunday night
The last 1000′ to Whitney summit was tough. It took 2 hours and a lot of heavy breathing. We had slightly more than 1 liter of water and took most of it up along with Dad’s little green bag. We left our packs at the trail junction. There were about 20 festive people at the summit, lots of picture taking, and much oohing and aahing over the cabin shelter there, which had been struck by lightning within the last two weeks, killing at least one person who’d taken shelter inside.
The panoramic view was a real spectacle, especially to the north and east, which dropped about 2000′ straight down. The Guitar Lake valley seemed tiny, the jagged Kaweah ridge dominated the view to the west, and we could see a lot of unexpected snow and water to the east, with the town of Lone Pine sitting far below and a good distance beyond. The summit was a nearly level jumble of the same kind of solid, flat boulders we’d seen at our campsite last night, gradually sloping up to the precipitous east face where all the people were clustered. On the trail register under “Suggestions” I wrote that the rocks should be rearranged to make the mountain higher. Several geodetic survey markers were on the summit, as well as a plaque put up in 1930 telling us that Mt. Whitney was 14,496.81′ high. People gravitated towards the highest mark to briefly be the tallest person in the lower 48, myself included.
On the way down I noticed the rough trail more – it wasn’t at all the superhighway of a trail Dad said he’d expected. Halfway down to the trail junction we met someone who said there were people keeping the marmots away from the packs left there, and since ours had been the only ones there when we’d left them, I ran ahead to see. When I got there I found our packs in good shape and five people in various stages of indecision about where they wanted to go after climbing Whitney, all of them backpackers. We’d already met one of them at the summit, where he’d been lamenting that he’d forgotten to take any film on his just-completed first summit trip. None of the backpackers had more than 1/2 liter of water and the consensus was that they could bum some from day-hikers. On the first attempt any of them made at this, the only one I saw, they were successful. One of the backpackers was an Englishman who commented that marmots were nothing like their equivalent in the Alps – neither cute nor particularly friendly. Ground squirrels, however, he affectionately called “cheeky little bastards”. Aside from a few ground squirrels and marmots, plus a group of six ubiquitous crows and several acquisitive little brown birds with purplish-magenta underfeathers, I saw no other non-insect wildlife anywhere near the summit.
When Dad rejoined me we grumblingly put our packs back on and climbed the 300′ back up to Trail Crest – which took a lot out of Dad – then started the long switch-backed descent towards Trail Camp, Outpost Camp, and eventually Whitney Portal. We’d been warned by the Crabtree Meadow ranger that no water on the east side of Whitney could be trusted to be free of Giardia bacteria, so we hoped at each landmark to find the faucets we hadn’t seen since our first night at Bearpaw Meadow. We found none, of course.
At about 11,500’, I stopped to get a liter of water from the stream flowing beside the trail, boiled it twice as long as usual, then cooled it and drank half immediately, leaving the rest to Dad. When we reached Outpost Camp at 10,900′ he suggested that I hurry down to let Mom know we were OK as early as possible, so I motored and was down 1:10 later, at 6:40. On the last section, I picked up quite a train of people, seven or so, who fell in line behind me as I went and kept up, by and large. It was very strange.
Uncle Paul and his young son Pauly greeted me at the bottom – Mom hadn’t come. They had cold drinks and BEER and ham sandwiches and brownies and different shoes for us, and I ate and drank food and drink I hadn’t tasted in a very long time and was immensely happy. Paul said I looked ready for another week in the mountains when I first got down, but after that first beer I got very sleepy and heard no more such comments. Unfortunately, Paul hadn’t brought towels or Band-Aids, though the generous proprietor of the small store at the head of the parking lot gave me two much appreciated Band-Aids. I was too afraid of getting athlete’s foot to want to use their showers, though I needed one badly.
We took some more pictures when Dad arrived, then we cleaned up as best we could and began the drive down to Lone Pine to drop off our wilderness permit at the ranger station there. We stopped the car on the way down, after the sun had set, to admire the silhouette of the elusive Whitney summit. You can only see it if you are directly to its east or west, except for a few narrow windows between lesser surrounding peaks. The summit looked very small from here, though the arc of the highest few hundred feet seemed to strain upwards like a living thing. The moon shone pale violet again in the darkening sky.
Backpacking With Family 
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