The month of May quickly became one
of the wettest months during our California drought and in US history! I had been planning on no snow on Mt. Whitney
in early June due to the lack of snow pack, but May’s storms planted 5 feet of
powder onto the tallest mountain in the continental US and temperatures at that
altitude rarely were above 32 degrees Fahrenheit to melt the snow. To make matters worse, warm storms were
predicted to hit a full week before and after our third-choice start date that
we won in the February Whitney lottery.
Fortunately, the weather predictions were showing our scheduled climb
date to be the one break between two major weather systems! Perhaps G_d would show us that He could
choose a better start date for our climb than I did.
Early the day before our climb, my son
and I drove off toward the eastern Sierra country---the 395 side of the Sierras. Sure, my son had driven to ski at Tahoe, but
he’d never seen jagged spires of granite that are so steep that no snow can
find a place to rest. He’d never seen
waterfalls that flow abundantly with fresh, cold, clear water. He’d only seen the waterfall stains of
Southern California, where the algae grows dark black/green and streaks the
cliffs that the waterfalls dribble over only in the Spring.
With each more rugged section of
Eastern Sierra range cloaked in storm clouds, my son would ask, “Is that Mt.
Whitney? Is that Mt. Whitney?” He was even
in a state of amazement as he saw Mono Lake for the first time, too.
We made a stop for gas and I found a
dark green hat with sides that cover the neck.
My son loved it and instantly started looking more like a back country
man. He could have even been mistaken
for a duck hunter!
Eventually we reached the south end
of Lone Pine and got to the Visitor Center on the outskirts of town. This center processes all the climbing
permits, so it’s a constant buzz of visitors.
No wonder they wanted it away from the regular town business parking.
A miniature replica of the section of Sierras that we were
climbing was nearby the rangers’ counters.
I took my son over and showed him where he was when he was
little---Kings Canyon---and how that was directly across from Mt. Whitney. When we walked around to the other side, I
showed him where Mt. Whitney was from the eastern side.
The eastern side had a very steep angle from the valley to
the peaks, like the Tetons. I remarked,
“It’s just going to be super steep, so no complaining.” A gentleman near me gave me a knowing
smile---mountaineers just find a way to make it to the top and grin and bear
it.
The rangers confirmed that we needed ice axes and
crampons. I’d brought the ice axes that
my dad and I had purchased for our failed attempt to make the summit of Mt.
Whitney 11 years ago. We still needed
crampons though. The only place in town
that had them, Elevation Sierra Adventure, had a long waiting list for walk-ins,
so we drove the hour to Bishop and rented crampons at Wilson’s Eastside Sports
and grabbed some pizza and lasagna at the Upper Crust nearby.
It was becoming dark when we arrived to the trailhead
campgrounds (8360 ft.) at the Mt. Whitney Portal trail. Blog rumor had it that this was a noisy
campground, but the noise was from the roaring creek near the little campsite
that we found, not all the bustling climbers starting their climbs at various
times in the morning. This campground
was the most convenient place to start our acclimation, since we both were
coming from sea level.
We rose with the light and found our first challenge,
lighting a match. Now I had put matches
into a small plastic bottle, so that they wouldn’t get wet from any sudden rain
showers. The only problem is that I
didn’t put a lighting surface in with these matches. The granite at the campground just took the
match tip material right off without any ignition on each match that I
tried. So I went begging for matches.
The first campsite with activity had a clean-cut, Caucasian,
yuppie couple in their late 30’s or early 40’s. I asked if they had any matches. The gentleman showed me his large box of
matches and said, “Do you have the scratch pad?”
“No. Can’t they work
on granite?”
“Maybe sandpaper, but not granite. If you don’t have a scratch pad, then I don’t
have any matches for you.”
I was aghast at his harshness. He was definitely an inhibitor and not an
enabler in regular life. I walked down
the road and saw some tatted-up, late-20-year olds of various ethnicities
packing up to leave. I walked up to
them and asked, “Hey, do you have a box of matches that I can have?”
“Sure! Do you need any
firewood? We have some extra of that,
too,” they happily offered.
I was so grateful to these young people and eagerly accepted
the matches, but declined the firewood, since we were climbing in a no fire
zone and added, “G_d bless you!”
My new MSR Reactor stove was amazing! It easily lit and the screen turned bright
orange in seconds, and heated up the water in the canister in 3-5 minutes with
no hassles like the old fashion hiking stoves.
Wow, the struggles in trying to cook food this generation will never
know!
My son made a tea of his own special blend, and I made a
caramel mocha coffee using Ghirardelli instant caramel cocoa and Starbucks
instant coffee. I forgot the oatmeal, so
we ate some breakfast bars and called it a meal. It was nice to have such a simple breakfast
and be close to the bathrooms, so we could wash our cups, fill up the wide-mouthed
water bottles, and make that one last pit stop hoping for a bowel movement before
our journey up the mountain, so we wouldn’t have to carry one down the mountain
with us in a human waste bag.
Next came the packing of the backpacks once the sleeping bags
and tent were packed. The many straps
that I found came in handy for cinching on the sleeping pads like a horse’s
saddle. I did have many little webbing
straps that I’d tied together during our drive using water knots, just in case
we needed any more straps. The new REI
tent had clips which made it easy to attach to a backpack. So many modern luxuries!
The funniest thing was watching my 6’-3”son put on a 45-pound
backpack for the first time in his life.
He had a look of complaint and was just about to utter his disapproval
about carrying his backpack up the mountain, when he saw me---all of 5’-3”---
put my 45-pound backpack on, too. His
lips sealed.
My son agilely hopped the boulders
with his heavy backpack and balanced his way across the one-log bridge that
spanned a 50 foot wide stream. I was
amazed at his lack of fear of falling into the stream. He was amazed at the surging waterfalls
filled with snow melt that appeared here and there along our journey. The meadow streams just below Outpost Camp
were so clear and beautiful in the bright sunlight that my son had to video the
beauty of the water flowing over the amber-colored pebbles.
We stopped to have lunch at Outpost Camp (10,500 ft.). We had some tuna fish in a package and corn
tortillas to make some tasty wraps. The
old bathroom at this camp was now gone, so when I found a good spot, it had the
stench of being a good spot for many others before
me. Used paper was tucked under boulders
poorly, and I was greatly saddened by our negative impact in this pristine
place.
The trail steeply rose above Outpost Camp. The weight of my backpack was getting the
best of me and fatigue was setting in deeply.
My steps were getting uncoordinated, and I couldn’t see the difference
between a trail and a dry creek anymore.
I delegated the leading to my son when I realized that I was making some
poor choices.
Once I put the nasty 45 pound backpack back onto my back, I
realized how hard it was going to be to make it to Trail Camp. My legs were getting exhausted and my mind
was starting to go. Exhaustion was
endangering me though my will was strong!
Fortunately, my son had studied mountain climbing before our trip, since
he’d never backpacked before. He knew
that it was a matter of one loose rock before I got seriously hurt.
As he led me up the hill leading
above Mirror Lake, he found the most perfect solution! There on the side of the cliff was 3
sheltered campsites with the last few trees at the edge of the tree line at
11,000 feet. People before us had built
a granite wall on the far campsite that had two trees sheltering it. It was the sweetest campsite ever! The current campers were packing up from a
successful climb and told us that we should pitch our tent where there’s was,
since it was so sheltered from the wind. 
We just picked up my tent which had
its poles already set up and walked it over to the new site. My new REI tent just nestled right in there
perfectly. Hikers on the distant trail
saw the tent as I was napping and remarked, “Sweet campsite!” It was so much better than the treeless
campsites of Trail Camp where everyone is huddled together and there is no
privacy. We even had a little bathroom
on the other side of the trees. You just
had to be careful not to slip off the cliff!
And, you had to be comfortable with a pica keeping you company.
After we got all our pads and sleeping bags out in the tent,
I got the climbing harnesses out. My son
tried on his, but it was a child’s size and now he was a man! So I gave him my climbing harness to take
with him up the mountain. The thought of
water knots came back to me and why I learned how to make them during my
mountaineering lessons in the late 1970’s.
We made our own swamis, 5-point harnesses, out of webbing. I took the webbing that I’d used to strap the
sleeping bags onto the backpack and quickly made a swami with water knots
around myself and remarked, “My mountaineering instructor would be so proud of
me that I remembered how to make a swami after all this time [35 years]!”
My fabulous son gathered water from Mirror Lake and brought
it back up to our camp, since we did not have any rushing water, just a few
seepages from the fissures in the granite along the cliff. He even made a lentil soup in the MSR
cylinder. I was too tired to catch him
before he made something that didn’t require just adding water. Once I realized that he had been using a lot
of fuel to reduce the lentil soup to be drier for our corn wraps, I suggested
that we just have lentil soup and dip our wraps into it. That worked out well. We still had dishes to wash and only a little
water left for our midnight climb.
So my son learned a new lesson, you bring only “just add
water” instant food and wash the dishes far from the tent, so the animals don’t
rummage around the tent, and use as little water as possible. I still put the dishes into the bear
canister, just in case they weren’t washed well enough and smelled of
food. We still had one more water bottle
for the climb and could fill the other up once we got to Trail Camp. That was a relief to him, since he avoided a
second trip to Mirror Lake to collect water.
We went to sleep around 6pm with a plan to wake up at
midnight and start the climb. My nose
barely let any air into my lungs which made me worry about suffocating. We were at 11,000 feet, so I shouldn’t have
been suffering any altitude affects, especially on Diamox. I was also so eager to finally conquer this
mountain that I could barely sleep! As
midnight approached, I kept asking my son for the time. Finally, he told me that he wouldn’t be telling
me the time anymore. I just didn’t want
to miss making it to the top of Mt. Whitney again!
When his phone alarm finally went off, I was up and ready to
go! The MSR Reactor got the water
boiling in about a minute, and I served my son some of his homemade tea while
he was still in the tent. I sipped my
caramel mocha coffee and savored the thought that we were going to get to the
top of this mountain today! We had our
breakfast bars, rinsed our cups out, put them back into the bear canister, and tied
the MSR reactor to a tree branch, in case it smelled of food from the lentil
soup of the night before. I didn’t want
my MSR stove being knocked by a hungry animal down the cliff by accident.
We lightened our backpacks of everything, but crampons, ice
axes, down jackets, Cliff bars, the water filter, water bottles, climbing
harnesses and rope, and ponchos. We put
our helmets and head lamps on, our Gortex shells over our long underwear, and
our waterproof pants on for glissading down and armed ourselves with one
walking pole each. We got all the folds
out of our socks and put our wool gloves on.
Then Tate lead the way and we marched up the steep trail over stone
bridges crossing over roaring streams from the melting snows with the black of
night surrounding our head lamp light.
At one of our every-hour stops for snacks and water, I told
my son to turn off his head lamp and look at the stars. Awe took over him. He hadn’t seen the Milky Way since Machu
Picchu in Peru. The stars are always so
amazing at high altitudes! The sliver of
moon lit up the mountains, and as our eyes adjusted we could see a lot of
contours of this alpine drainage that we were climbing up.
After turning our head lamps back on, we continued our
seemingly endless journey up steep switchbacks.
Finally, we passed the meadow and arrived to Trail Camp (12,000 ft.) in
the dark. The first water that we saw,
my son put the water filter into it. As
I moved closer to the water, I could see the water swarming with those little
red swimming parasites. Fortunately, the
filter kept them out of our water which we needed desperately.
We could see other people using head lamps along the
switchbacks at 13,000 ft. that climbed to Trail Crest where the trail moves
behind the mountain. There were two main
parties of light up there. The highest
one stopped for a while. They must have
been taking their snack break.
These switchbacks were as far as I got during the last
attempt to climb to the summit of Mt. Whitney.
My head started pounding with each step until I could not deny my
cerebral edema any more. This time my
son and I were taking three Diamox a day, so the cerebral edema shouldn’t be
keeping us from our mission---to get to the summit of Mt. Whitney.
Higher and higher we climbed into the night. As we were entrenched into the slippery
switchbacks at 13,000 feet, we carefully stepped through all the water from the
melting snow that had filled the trail.
It was so cold at night that this water had frozen over and made us slip
when we didn’t step carefully.
Fortunately, it wasn’t so cold that we had to put on our down jackets
when we stopped for snacks and water.
Our long underwear tops and Gortex jackets were enough.
A strong, buff man in his late 20’s came down the switchbacks
toward us.
“Aren’t you going the wrong way?” I asked incredulously.
“Aren’t you going the wrong way?” I asked incredulously.
“It was too much for me!”
My son and I looked at each other and our eyes asked, “What
could have possibly turned him around?”
We didn’t want to ponder this and psyche ourselves out of success, so we
carried on. Soon the trail was
completely covered with snow. So we
stopped and put on our crampons and got our ice axes out and walking poles
stored. The infamous cables quickly
appeared on the trail. I didn’t notice
any missing cable as reported to us, and the trail was more than 6 inches
wide. It was at least 12 inches wide
along this cliff. It was a good thing
that it was dark, so we couldn’t see downward, over the cliff easily.
Once we gingerly got through the cables the combination of
snow and melting snow made an ice wall on the next part of the trail. Now I understood what had turned the two
young ladies back and the young man. Ice
climbing with an ice ax was a must in this section. It was a good thing that I learned how to ice
climb on an Alaskan glacier with three 25-year-old, fighter pilots a few years
back! My son led the way up the first
section of ice climbing. He was hesitant
on the second section, so I climbed up first and lodged my ice ax into the
mountain and gave him the strap to use to pull himself up to the next part of
the trail.
We did have the most awesome break
where we watched the sun rise while we were at 13,500 feet. There is truly nothing like climbing
through the night and seeing the sun rise at high elevations! You see the whole horizon light up in a band
of crimson red topped with yellow just before the sun peeks out.
After that it was just a matter of getting enough oxygen to
climb upwards. My son tried to lay down, but I instructed him like my Tanzanian guide instructed me, "You never lay down at high altitude or you will get sick!"We did have intermittent snow on the trail. Just when I gave in to my son’s wishes to take his crampons off, we’d get to a new hairy section of trail with snow and a steep drop off. I was in disbelief at the climbers coming from Guitar Lake. They were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and just wearing sneakers, not even hiking boots to climb up the snow patches along the trail.
At 9:15 am on June 9th we
finally made it to the top of Mt. Whitney (14,508 feet)! My son and I looked over the jagged edge of
the cliff in amazement at what was no longer hidden. A glacial lake was directly below the cliff
face of Mt. Whitney. We’d climbed up the
sloping, weathered side of Mt. Whitney. We posed for our pictures and then did
the traditional, “Hi Mom (Grandma)!” picture.
I love this tradition of waving to my mom who’s in the world to come.
The horizon to the west started
filling with dark clouds. The predicted afternoon
thunder storm was moving toward its position, so my son and I signed the little
paper tablet in the cabin at the top of the mountain (the cabin was shelter for
people caught in thunder storms), and started heading back to our sweet
campsite. This was easier said than
done. Our legs were exhausted and we’d
been climbing this mountain for 8 ¼ hours and needed sleep! We had spent all our energy on making it to
the top with no consideration of getting back down the perilous trail randomly
covered in snow along the edge of cliffs.
For the top section we kept our crampons on, but my son
wanted to use his walking pole instead of his ice ax. He’s 6’-3”, and the ice ax did not telescope
to his elbow like the walking pole does.
For me the ice ax was the same high as my walking pole, so it made no
difference. I also liked the security of
the ice ax. It would secure me to the
snow should I slip and help me climb through the snow.
Finally, the snow cleared for the most part along the crest,
so we took our crampons off and stowed them to our back packs. Then one more snow-covered section appeared
which wrapped around a turn with a steep drop off. I instructed my son to dig his heels in, but
he was too inexperienced and didn’t have instinctive mountain footing like
me. He slipped and started heading over
the edge and stammered his legs in sheer preservation and angled his
uncontrolled body toward the trail to the left and mountainside. I couldn’t believe that my son almost went
off a cliff right before my eyes!
He turned towards me as I carefully stepped through this icy
section in complete control and met him safely around the turn. Realizing that both he and I had exhausted
legs, I felt that the best way down was glissading, though that’s one of the
two ways people die on Mt. Whitney:
glissading into rocks or being hit by thunder storms. As we passed the Trail Crest sign (13,600 ft.),
we started to look for glissading shoots that were clear of rocks. One descending climber had told us that there
was a great one that he had taken down the mountain. So we looked and looked
for it.
Finally, we saw a shoot that was revealing some rocks in it
near the top. It was 1000 feet down to
the bottom and there wasn’t a great way to reduce your speed should you get out
of control before the snow ended and the rocks began. As I stood at the top of the shoot analyzing
it, some other climbers came down the trail, “So you’re going to do Mr. Toad’s
Wild Ride?” I guess we were! I couldn’t face coming down the ice face that
we had climbed up during the night.
Forcefully I dug my ice ax into the mountain and made steps
with my feet as I descended this steep snow field. I couldn’t slip at the top, because there
were too many rocks to avoid. I needed
to get my son and I down about 20 feet where we could position ourselves away
from the rocks. Every five feet I’d make
a block with my ice ax and boots and let my son slide into me. We even transversed the snow to move to a
different shoot which was completely clear of rocks. It also looked like this man that was
standing at the bottom of the shoot had used this shoot. He just kept staring at us as we carefully
moved to the shoot.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember which direction to hold me
ice ax or whether I should keep my strap on my wrist. I did remember how to hold the whole ice ax
diagonally across my body and use it for braking. The ax side worked best as a break and I used
the pick side for leverage as my other hand held the shaft of the ice ax. My arms weren’t as strong as they were when I
glissaded 2500 feet down Mt. Shasta or this section was just a whole lot
steeper than Mt. Shasta!
Snow packed onto my bare skin on my back and into my boots
continually while I glissaded, so by the time I made it safely to the bottom,
my wool socks and gloves and my polypropylene long underwear top were
soaked. They still kept me somewhat
warm, because that’s the glory of those materials! We also discovered that the man that was
watching us come down was a doctor who had just had his arm dislocated, because
his ice ax stopped him, but he didn’t stop until his leash pulled on his arm. He must have been going very fast from the top
to have so much force pull on his arm!
At least he was able to stop before the rocks, so he was only injured
and not killed.
We found a trail back to Trail Camp and found the doctor’s
friends who were bringing a pain killing shot to him, since no one was able to
put his arm back into its socket. We had
no idea how this doctor and his friends were going to get all his gear and
their gear down the mountain! At least
he didn’t have to be airlifted out. My
son remembered well being airlifted without consent to a hospital. They had charged us $30,000 for the ride, and
our insurance did not cover it. So we
did not call 911 for this injured mountaineer.
We just got the doctor his friends for help.
As
we neared Trail Camp we ran into the Europeans that told us that we couldn’t
camp at Mirror Lake when I was overly tired and had to let my backpack drop to
the ground to be free of it. They
confirmed that this was the right trail to Trail Camp. Once we got to the lake, we tried to refill our
water bottles, but the filter had been clogged by the little red animals in the
bog the last time that we refilled the water bottles. After asking a few people if they had extra
water and finding none, we risked drinking the water from the fast-flowing
stream in the meadow right below Trail Camp.
We may have Giardia now, but we were dying of thirst after 13.5 hours of
climbing. I’m still watching for
symptoms. So far I just have stinky
bowel movements. I usually lose my
appetite and get cold sweats, too, from Giardia.
The approaching thunderstorm had
arrived, but just sprinkled on us. It
was still more than I could bare. I
remembered the mountaineering movie about hypothermia and how these hikers just
kept going in the light mist and didn’t put their rain gear on. I was already soaked from the glissading and
now the temperatures were dropping.
Shivers started and I knew that I was in trouble. My speech started to slur as I uttered
hysterically to my son, “I just want to be back to camp. I’m so cold!
I’m shivering!”
He insisted that I put on his down
coat, since mine had gotten wet by the water filter. He must have done a lot of studying about
mountaineering before the Mt. Whitney attempt to know so much about hypothermia. He knew exactly what to do! He had just never had the experience of
actually backpacking.
After I put the down hood over my
head and started feeling my body warm up the inside of the down, I felt
better. I knew that I would make it back
to our sweet camp site. We kept hiking
down and down, passed the rock bridges that crossed the roaring streams that we
could only hear when we climbed through the night before. We passed other people camping along the
trail and finally found our sweet campsite on the cliff overlooking Mirror Lake
at 3:30pm! It was such a welcome site.
Immediately,
I started boiling all of the water that we had collected from the rapidly
flowing stream. My MSR Reactor stove
started boiling the water in minutes, and we were warming up with hot caramel
cocoa and Cliff bars. While my son had
to use the human waste bag for the first time in his life, I battened down the
backpacks in their rain covers, agreed to wake up at 4am to hike out in order to return our rental crampons
in Bishop on time, and pulled my wool hat over my eyes and went to sleep by
4pm. The only thing that interrupted my
sleep was our camp pica, Picachu, trying to get into the bear canister, but it
ran away when I rattled the tent.
As
we descended I showed my son the other lake where my dad and I camped, Lone
Pine Lake (10,000 ft.). Camping is not
permitted there, but the rangers 11 years ago felt so badly that they had mismarked
the Mountaineers Trail which we accidentally took instead of the Portal Trail,
that they let us stay at the lake to compensate us. It was a wonderful compensation!
A
deer greeted us along the trail as we hiked alone down to the bottom. I finally had time to take pictures of the
wildflowers now that my mission to climb Mt. Whitney was almost complete. The red snow flower was glorious to see once
more! As the hours passed, more and more
people climbing Mt. Whitney greeted us.
We gave them our version of conditions and wished them luck, as we were
wished. Finally, we made it to the
car,
got our food out of the bear vault that we didn’t carry up Mt. Whitney, changed
into our street shoes, and headed to Bishop to return our rental crampons.
The morning was gloriously sunny, we
were glorious by having climbed Mt. Whitney successfully, and our love for each
other was glorious, because together we had accomplished our mission with all
the unexpected
challenges around each turn.
My son likened climbing Mt. Whitney to a video game: once you finished one challenge, there’s a
new challenge around the corner! He also
said, “This was the hardest challenge that I’ve ever had, and yet it is the
most rewarding, beautiful, and glorious accomplishment!” We will be forever changed now that we have
conquered Mt. Whitney.
As we arrived in Bishop, I was
greeted by the middle-aged, peanut gallery of men singing out to me as I
passed, “Cadillac!” The rental company
was upset by me being an hour late to return the crampons. I explained with my teeth gritted in a
ladylike voice, “I got up at 4am and didn’t even have breakfast to get these crampons
back to you on time.”
The young man in his late 20’s acquiesced and said, “Well,
this time I’ll let you turn them in late.”
There won’t be a next time, I thought!
Our final mountaineering activity was breakfast. Jack’s Restaurant had just what we wanted for
our first civilized meal---fresh orange juice, omelets, and hash browns. It tasted fabulous, but was so much food for
our shrunken stomachs that had only eaten Cliff Bars for days. The oily food felt great on my weathered
lips, too. Hopefully, the orange juice
would chase away my dry cough, too.
At the restaurant I changed out of my dirty mountaineering clothes
that I’d been wearing for over 2 days and into wonderfully-smelling clean
clothes. We got into the car, and then the clouds burst into drenching
rain. Thank you G_d for holding the rain
back for us during our climb!
We did get pulled over by a policeman on the 395 near Mammoth
Mountain. I was going 80 mph in the
pouring rain which made the policeman drive across the median onto my side of
the highway. Even though I slowed to 65
mph, he pulled us over due to my son’s expired tags. The policeman congratulated us on climbing
Mt. Whitney after he found out where we were driving from and saw my backpack
in the back seat of the car and my son’s in the trunk.
The policeman asked me, “When was the last time that you got
a speeding ticket?”
I honestly couldn’t remember the year I got pulled over in my
993 Porsche with my daughter and me in matching Porsche caps---maybe 10
years. I replied, “I can’t remember.”
He asked, “How long
ago did you move from the address on your license?”
I thought about my ex-fiancé’s address being on my license
and knew that G_d really wanted me to forget him and start over. “It’s been about a year,” I answered knowing
that it was long overdue. It was time
for me to move on and set up a permanent camp, residence, at the home that I
own, instead of moving constantly.
He went back to his car for about 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe that I was getting a
speeding ticket in California for 80 mph when I wasn’t in a speed trap! As time ticked by my son, and I chatted. I tried to maintain my mountain high---despite
this policeman. In all fairness, he
probably knew that most mountaineers die driving home after a climb, as I
knew. Finally, the policeman came back
with no speeding ticket and two “fix it” tickets. He wanted me to change my address to the
correct one, and he wanted my son to get the DMV his correct auto insurance
which was holding up his tags from being issued by the DMV. Phew!
We got out of a speeding ticket!
Though it was pouring rain, we headed through Tioga Pass to
see Yosemite. Apparently, I never had
taken my children there. I took them
with their camp fire group to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park, but I’d
never shown them Yosemite. I thought to
myself, “What a horrible Mountain Mama, not to have shown my children one of
the main places where I grew up!” With
life we must just seize the moments, and I wasn’t quite ready to be away from
the most beautiful part of the Sierras after our amazing climb, so I paid the
$30 to just drive through beautiful Yosemite and then made our way home.
Over the passing days, my cough got worse and my lungs were
very sensitive. My Netti pot was
clearing my sinuses, but my lungs felt very odd and super sensitive. A few days later my ankles swelled up for the
first time in my 52 years. I called my
dad, who was a retired doctor and former mountain climber and said, “Dad, I
think that I got a mild case of pulmonary edema from climbing Mt.
Whitney!” He confirmed that I did, even
though I took Diamox 3 times a day and acclimatized well before the climb above
12,000 feet. It appears that my body
just can no longer handle higher altitudes---even with altitude medicine!
Unfortunately, Mt. Whitney will be my last mountain over
12,000 feet that I climb. I’m too
sensitive to high altitude anymore. At
least I’ve climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Shasta, and now Mt. Whitney. G_d made my last climb extra fun by packing
the snow onto Mt. Whitney, so I could use all my technical knowledge gained by
high altitude mountain guides from Tanzania, Alaska, and California. On my last climb I became a guide to my son and
helped him learn how to safely go up this beautiful and dangerous icon for
mountaineers! I can retire from high
altitude mountain climbing knowing that I climbed until my body couldn’t climb
any higher any more, and I taught my son how to carry on our family’s
mountaineering tradition!
Remember to climb high as long as you safely can!
P.S. To my blog readers: If you want to support a struggling math/engineering teacher and author, please buy my first book, "The Romance of Kilimanjaro," soon to be followed by my second book at: https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781613464960 Thank You!
