Happy Independence Day everyone! Tina and I are back at Ridgecrest gearing up for the next phase of our trip. More about that in my next post, but meanwhile I'm overdue with the recap of last week's adventures.
As you may recall, last Monday evening I "released" Tina at Horseshoe Meadows so that she could climb back up to the PCT at Trail Pass to spend the night above 10,000 and re-establish her high altitude acclimatization. I walked out with her to the first stream crossing. The stream looked to be a small thing, I measured it at only 5 feet wide -- but it was flowing rapidly and I measured it at 4 feet deep! Luckily a log had been placed across this creek but over the next couple days water crossings became a huge issue for Tina. Keep in mind that all this water is fresh snow melt too -- at about 35 degrees!
Tuesday Tina hiked through beautiful territory but towards the end of the day she came to Rock Creek -- her first truly difficult ford. At the very edge of the creek she was in just thigh deep but the current was raging so much she couldn't get her poles planted. From there the creek got much deeper and faster -- clearly a no go. After escaping that she eventually found a fallen log to cross on. Usually she just walks across on those but the current was moving at dizzying speed and that proved impossible. Crawling didn't work either since her pack kept trying to come over the top of her head and flop one way or another. She wound up having to straddle it and very slowly inch her way across -- and as you can see from the picture above -- that was not a simple operation!
The fine scenery continued on Wednesday but it was a bit of a bleak day. For starters, there were too many miles to reach Whitney, climb, and descend in just one day -- and that was before Tina had to take a 3 mile detour to get around another rough stream crossing. Second, there were often scary clouds and the forecast spelled treacherous summit conditions through the night (winds to 60s, temps in the 20s). Topping it off, Tina met two pairs of hikers coming the other way and both pair had said that they'd tried to climb Whitney but had given up. A pair of boys had given up out of route finding difficulties and the other, a young couple, had just given up entirely (on the PCT) out of a combination of route finding problems, water crossing fears, and weariness of dealing with snow. Not exactly the cheer-up one would hope for! We decided that Tina would hunker down just prior to the Whitney snow and we'd evaluate things again in the morning.
By Thursday morning the front had passed through and Tina woke to stellar weather. She decided to proceed with her Whitney summit attempt with me providing navigational assistance via GeoPro if needed. After a bunch of snow walking and later a bunch of steep snow climbing, some bouldering, and a few intense route finding moments, Tina made it to Trail Crest a bit after 2pm -- that's where the eastern and western approach trails meet before following a ridge up to Whitney. There she found a fair many hikers who'd come up the eastern approach. After a bit of chatting they all dropped their packs and raced for the summit which was another 2 miles and 1000 feet up -- a long ways you'd think but I could tell from Tina's messages that she and the others essentially floated up that last bit driven by their excitement and joy. Awesome stuff! :)
By the time summit festivities had concluded (almost 5pm) it was much too late to safely navigate the top of the eastern approach trail and so Tina elected to set up camp at 13,500 feet just a couple hundred yards down from Trail Crest. Most other days of the year that would unthinkable but that particular night the forecast was flawless and so Tina camped up there in wonderful conditions with incredible views of the mountains and stars -- a perfect way to end the day. The only fly in the ointment was that her stove malfunctioned and so she was unable to use it to melt snow for water (she used the remaining sun instead) or cook herself a nice dinner.
Consequently, Tina thought it might be a good idea to see a few people go down before she attempted it herself! :-} .. but the people just kept coming, and coming, and coming .. most arrived completely exhausted, took a good long rest, and then headed for the summit after dumping their packs as Tina had done the previous evening. But nobody was going down! So Tina sat there on the rocks above the chute watching all of the slow struggles unfold and, as it turns out, her face was being absolutely cooked by the sun while she did that.
Finally after hours of people coming up some started to head down and after a bit Tina followed. It took her almost two hours to navigate her way down to tamer snow and she said it was some of the most harrowing "hiking" she has ever done. Even though she was equipped with crampons (Katoola KTS) her feet slipped completely out from her many times and she was saved by hanging onto her carefully-anchored ice axe. Somewhere down the slope she lost one of her trekking poles and a water bottle. She saw them go but there was no way she could get to them. Her remaining pole she bent during one of the falls and so now we're looking at getting her third set for the hike. :-}
In any case, she did make it down and reported that the eastern slopes of the mountain were fabulously beautiful. While transiting the chute her face progressed from merely burned to completely fried and so now she's peeling even up inside her nostrils!
When I met her at Whitney Portal a bit after 6pm, her statement was that yesterday (Thursday) she had been overjoyed to have summited the mountain but that today (Friday) she was overjoyed simply to have survived and be alive!
/David
p.s. I sat on the Portal trail for a good bit and intereviewed most of the returning hikers / climbers. Comparing my numbers with Tina's counts at Trail Crest I concluded that less than 60% of those attempting the climb that day succeeded.