Tahoe Matters Closed

   After a long and arduous road leaving North Tahoe to come home to Sacramento, I've finally closed the open business.  When all the harassment was heightening, I told my close colleagues that G_d would take care of things for me.  Indeed He did.
   My landlord finally sent me the check for the repairs that I did on his home after he made me go to small claims court twice---once for a venue challenge and once for the actual case.  I won because my dad's girlfriend instructed me to write two pleasant letters to the landlord requesting the funds and then filed a suit when he missed the deadlines.  The judge was also swayed by the repairs being safety and sewage related which must be done for occupancy of a renter.
    With great relief I can say that my ex-fiance sold his home and moved to Israel after he left me when my harassment from the administration of the high school in North Tahoe became so intense that I needed legal help.  Since we worshiped in the same place in Sacramento, I decided to do what Alanis Morissette would do per her song, "You Oughta Know." I stayed visible, made sure that he could hear my voice when I sang, and dressed more beautifully than before to remind him of the mess that he made by breaking up with me after 2.5 years, and 2 months before we were to get married.   My community was equally disturbed by what he did, so he had many cold shoulders and much restrained silence which hastened his quick and complete departure.
    Back at the high school in North Tahoe, they had an unprecedented 6 teachers leave the district and their seniority, including the math teacher that took over for me.  So out of the 3 math teachers, only the teacher who is retiring in 3-4 years remains.  That will be a bit hard to rebuild the upper division math classes from scratch!  The superintendent and district HR director involved in creating the poorly researched accusations made about me both resigned at the end of this year.  My 12-page rebuttal with my lawyer's stamp of approval to their accusations and the angry parents that liked me were the nail in their unplanned departure, I'm sure.  When I left the final meeting with this HR director I said, "I guess G_d wants me back home,"  to make sure that he knew that he'd attacked a holy woman.
    There is one more culprit though, who did not have a direct consequence---the principal.  She does have to explain why no one new wants to work for her.  She also has to rebuild her staff, but I think that G_d has something else planned for her---the normal thing that He does when people go out of their way to hurt me.  I'll just be waiting for it to happen.


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!

Mom Going Out With a Bang on the 4th of July!

    Tonight I drove around during the time that Mom died 12 years ago on the 4th of July, 10:30 pm, and listened to all the fireworks going off continually during the late evening hours.  One thing Sacramento does well is fireworks.  There are stands at almost every major street corner to sell them and illegal fireworks are easy to get.  My mom certainly heard all these fireworks as she passed to the world to come.  She went out quickly with a massive stroke and with a bang of exploding fireworks.  What a wonderful way to go!
     To commemorate her 12th year of leaving in such an auspicious way, I drove through the Murder corridor, the Howe Avenue corridor, where I knew that they would have the most awesome illegal fireworks, since I missed the 9 pm Cal Expo professional display.  The gangs did not let me down.  They are patriots.  Just like Nebuchadnezzar did some good in his life by returning the Jews from exile, these gangs made my 4th of July wonderful by shooting off illegal professional fireworks in their neighborhoods late into the night.  They kept moving them so as not to get caught which made driving around quite exiting---never knowing where they were going to stage the next round of high flyers.
     In Sacramento we don't just light off fireworks from 9 to 9:30 pm over some large body of water in a professional display with music.  We don't let a minute of night on the 4th of July going without a blast of celebration for our independence.  The only music we need is that of "the bombs bursting in air!"  Thank you Sacramento for blasting off the fireworks in celebration of our independence and gloriously sending off a beloved Daughter of the American Revolution, my mom, to the next world.  You are my hometown and my beloved true home.

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!

Kayaking Lake Natoma

     While kayaking regularly at Negro Bar on Lake Natoma I noticed that they were letting a lot of water out of Folsom Lake Dam last week.  This creates river-like conditions on Upper Lake Natoma and makes saying, "Hi!" to the Folsom Prison warden a challenge, so I took some videos.  I also took some videos on a slower water release day for comparison.  The final video is of the Upper Lagoon on Lake Natoma.  It's quite beautiful, but now that the water is lower, it's harder to access some areas of it.  There were a few mama's with their chicks which was adorable!

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!

Mt. Whitney Climb June 8th, 2015

          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.

           We drove the car to the trailhead, put food that we weren’t taking up the mountain into a bear locker, and started our trudge up the steep mountain trail.  Many people heading downhill passed us along the way.  At every opportunity, I’d ask them how the conditions were, and if they made it.  Most were successful, but we did run into two young women who said that they had gotten to cables and a cable was missing, but they still made it through.  It wasn’t until this one part of the trail just after that---which required ice axes to climb it---which made them give up.

          As we marched upward we arrived at the fork where the mountaineers trail is to the right and the Portal trail is a bunch of boulders arranged in hopping distance across the stream on the left.  This is where I made a wrong choice of trails during my first attempt.  11 years ago I had thought the stream with rock hopping boulders was a water-gathering access.  Bummer!

            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.

            We stopped at Mirror Lake to take a breather or should I say to drop my backpack off my back from standing position!  My back was happy to be free of my backpack for a moment at least.  Some European hikers informed us that we couldn’t camp there, as if we hadn’t planned to keep going.  I was just enjoying all the trout that were swimming in the crystal clear water near the shore.  I had no intent of camping anywhere but at Trail Camp.  I was going to be properly acclimatized this time!  I was determined to avoid cerebral edema by taking my Diamox 3 times a day and making camp twice at high elevations before the actual summit day.

           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.

           “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 9^th 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!

           My slow speed was frustrating to me and my son, since we are both used to barreling down a mountain on skiis.  I just knew that there was a point of no stopping should I glissade too fast and there was no flat spot to regain control before the rocks.  Finally, my son passed me up and glided safely to the bottom.  I tried to do the same, but my arms just couldn’t get the rhythm of gliding with a little braking.  I kept braking too hard, because I was too nervous about the rocks.

           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.

           

          It had rained through the night, but everything was dry under the rain gear.  At least it was sunny and dry once the sun did rise after we did.  We had caramel mocha coffee and specially blended tea with Cliff Bars, and then we packed up, and headed down the steep, wet trail.   I had a dry cough as we made our way down the mountain. The granite was a tad slippery which made the downhill and stream rock-hopping more of a challenge.  Our walking poles saved us from slipping to the ground many times.  The high steps which had been a pain in the thighs to climb up were more of a pain on the knees to climb down.

            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!

My First Match Making

    Five years ago I left my corporate, mogul husband.  I left the life of a corporate vice president's wife.  I left the fast lane of wealth.  I left the women who had dreams of taking my place, finding out that they had only been his pawns.  I left the parties where I was to uplift all the employees by finding something real and wonderful about each one and conveying it to them in front of their spouses.
    During these last five years I've built different relationships with men.  Some dating friendships I found that I didn't want a man who had many things that owned him and his cash flow.  I didn't want the famous surfer who had a girlfriend and many girls on the side and was always worried about creditors coming after him in the night.  I didn't want the orthodox man who followed all the rules and had no relationship to G_d and never felt real loss.
    Over these years the one thing that I learned is that I don't know how to pick a man for me, so I got a Jewish match maker.  Finally my first match came in and what type of man was it?  It was a more successful version of my ex-husband of 23 years.  Thoughts of how easy that life would be for me to slip into once again.  Maybe since the man was orthodox, I wouldn't have the problem of all the emotional affairs with other women that I had with my first husband.  My corporate mogul brothers would again have a brother-in-law with which to talk business.  My father would be at peace that my beautiful life was reset to where it was originally broken.
    Right after I received my first match before our Holy Days, my oldest brother crushed me with his secret ---he can't be in the sun right now, because his skin cancer came back, so he couldn't climb Mt. Whitney with my son and me after all.  I promised my brother that I'd climb Whitney again with him, since it's on his bucket list.   I also told him that he couldn't die, because he was the only sibling that I liked.  What would I do without him?
    During our Holy Days of Shavuot I prayed often for my brother and the thought came to me about my climbing group for Mt. Whitney:  "Maybe I can give my brother's spot to this new match?  Wouldn't that be an amazing first date---climbing Mt. Whitney together.  Did G_d arrange this, since I had gotten the third spot for my mystery man?"
    When he called, he had a charming voice.  I was very pleased and spoke in my best voice.  He continued, "I don't normally do this, but I'm calling to tell you that there was a mistake.  I had declined you for geographical reasons, but they sent the match to you any way.  When I saw that you'd accepted it already, I wanted to call you and tell you what had happened."
     I could see my stoic face angled in a distant mirror quickly lose its hope and smile and I replied, "How honorable of you."
     "Well, I wish you well."
     "And I you."
     In a whirlwind I dashed to the laboratory to get my annual blood draw to see if I'd gotten cancer and if my ex-fiance gave me any sexual diseases.  I thought about how awful that would have been if I'd gotten involved with this new man, since he was a widower and his wife probably died from what I've prevented in myself---breast and ovarian cancer.  What if I finally succumb to my BRCA 1 gene mutation and get cancer somewhere else?  So far G_d has kept all cancer from me, but how long do I have?  A year or 50 years?  Only G_d knows how long He will keep me here, but I'd hate to make a man a widower twice.  Any way, I was not a match for him.
    Why did he think a phone call was more kind?  Now I've heard his pleasant voice and his care toward my feelings.  Now I've suffered more loss.  This was a kind and honorable version of my ex-husband.  This new man will never know how much of a match that we really are.  Most men make such decisions based on geography, but special people like me are rare.  One day one man will realize that I'm worth the distance and uncertainty for the loving moments and adventures that we'll have together.  I will have to trust that G_d will find him soon for me.


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!

What Was the Trigger to My Tears?

    For weeks now I've been coming home from a happy day at work with all my rambunctious teenage men and women learning, having fun, confiding in me, and asking me questions about my life. But, once I walk through the doors of my beautifully renovated home, my mood turns to dread and sadness.  Tears start running down my cheeks, and I wonder how am I going to carry on this summer with no students, if I'm only happy when I'm teaching?   Why is it that I cannot stand to be alone now---after living alone with no problem in Tahoe for 5 months with only occasional visits from my fiance?

    With everything G_d weaves our divine providence into a chess game which unfolds suddenly when it is our time to remember and realize.  Last week was the start of the end of this game.  A teacher brought up the Rolling Stones magazine article that was fabricated about rape on college campuses.  It was the first time that I'd heard of it.  I blurted, "Why did they have to fabricate that story when there are so many real cases?"  The teacher prodded me until I explained that I was raped in college and not by some stranger, but by my best male friend from my mechanical engineering classes.

    When I returned home that day I sobbed more than usual.  I'd seen on the TV college panels pledging to do better for rape victims in college and maintain their dignity.  That was such an amazingly progressive step versus my day and age in the 1980's when women's sexual escapades were made public in court and in front of their families in order to prove that the woman was a slut and was asking for it.  We didn't report the rapes, because reporting it victimized us even more.

    Today a student asked me if I ever wanted to kill someone.  I quickly replied, "Yes, my best male friend in college for stocking me for four years."  They inferred what happened after the stocking was finished.  

    Again I returned home and sobbed, but what made my sobbing worse was that my daughter who's a nurse had texted me telling me that my crying when I was alone was not post traumatic stress from my fiance breaking up with me so cruelly in a text while I was sleeping the night before I met with lawyers to save my teaching career, I was just suffering from depression.  She asked, "If it was post traumatic stress, what was the trigger?  I hadn't been shot at like she had been."  

    Actually, I have been in a school shooting, but I let that go, since it was a small thing in my life.  After some thought I realized G_d's unfolding story line.  When I was near my daughter's age, I had begged my parents to let me live alone in a studio at UC Berkeley during my senior year of college.  My parents were very against it, but I really wanted to be away from my sorority.  They had started to officially tell me who my friends could be and no one can do that.  Little did I know that my best male friend had been stocking me for four years and was waiting for an opportunity to be alone with me without room mates.  

     One night, burned painfully into my memory, I let my best male friend into my studio and knew something was horribly wrong once I shut the door.  All my senses told me of his intent. He acted like a cat with a trapped mouse.  The phone rang and my synchronized swimming team member's voice was on the line.  I wanted to scream to her, "Please call the police!  Help me!"  but my best male friend hadn't made any moves yet, so how could I tell my team mate what was going to happen.      

    After I hung up I opened my drawer of silverware and looked at my knives.  A big knife was close to me and I wanted to grab it and kill him before he raped me, but G_d gave me a deafening understanding, "Thou shall not kill."  So I closed the drawer and walked into the other room and what was to happen happened. He said afterwards, "I couldn't imagine life 20 years from now knowing that I hadn't made love to you."

     I didn't tell anyone for years, especially my parents.  They would have made me move back into the sorority.  I did go to counseling when the flashbacks came a year later.  For ten years after college I was always fearful that he'd find me again.  I changed my name when I married just to make it difficult for him to track me, I moved far away from Berkeley, I never lived alone, and I moved often.

    Now my nest is empty, my kids are gone, my name is changed back to my maiden name, and I live utterly alone once again in my hometown, easy to find.  My fiance is long gone and with someone else.  Now I know the source of my tears when I enter my home alone.  It's all connected to that time 31 years ago.  The only other time that I was utterly alone.  However, now I have humane weapons stashed everywhere that don't kill, but allow me to leave safely---just as I have for 31 years.  Now I also know G_d very well and His angels surround me and protect me.


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!

To the Victims of the Nepal Earthquake and Mt. Everest

     My heart goes out to the victims of the Nepal earthquake, especially those that died doing what they loved and were drawn to do---climb the highest mountain in the world knowing it's a killer, Mt. Everest. It is such a reminder of the danger of our addiction to climbing high mountains. Two died while I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, no one died when I climbed Mt. Shasta, and let's hope that no one will die the day we climb Mt. Whitney. Because I love my children and want to see my grandchildren and my daughter told me the statistics of high altitude female climbers getting more heart attacks in their mid 50's, this will be the last high mountain for me. Hopefully, I'll get her climbed this time. 


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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!


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!