Batting .500...Highpointing, July, 2001

Batting .500...Mt. Whitney Report and Boundary Peak SNAFU

Saturday, 30 June 2001

This year, our highpointing trip would take us west, to Mt. Whitney, the highpoint of California (and of the lower 48 states), and to Boundary Peak, the Nevada highpoint. Flying from St. Louis to Reno was a bit choppy but otherwise uneventful, and we drove down to Mammoth Lakes for some acclimation.

Mt. Ritter and Banner Peak from U.S. Hwy. 395

We made a brief stop south of Lee Vining to take a quick look at "our" mountain. Mt. Ritter is still there, lurking behind the slightly shorter Banner Peak and visible if you know the right valley near the Shell station several miles south of Lee Vining.

Sunday, 1 July 2001

Sunday, we headed south from Mammoth and meandered around the Benton Crossing Road and a bit north on CA 120 to the Forest Service roads which lead up to Sawmill Meadows, the trailhead for Glass Mountain. Glass Mountain is a mixed mound of obsidian and pumice which rises to about 11,000' just to the north of Lake Crowley. A good use trail leads to its summit, but we were running short of time that afternoon and settled for a subsidiary hump from which to shoot a few photos and admire the view, which included our second destination for the trip, Boundary Peak.

Boundary Peak is the second-highest peak on the horizon in the shot below. Nearby (and taller) Mt. Montgomery is on the California side of the line, which roughly bisects the ridgeline between Boundary and Montgomery.

On the way down, we spotted the wildflowers in the right-hand photo below. I'm not enough of a Sierra botanist to identify them, but anything hardy enough to make a living on the obsidian and pumice of Glass Mountain certainly earns my respect!

Click on the photo above for a 360-degree panorama of the upper part of Glass Mountain, shot from a subsidiary peak. You need a Java-enabled browser and patience to download a 400k file, so if you're on a dial-up line, be prepared to wait.

Monday, 2 July 2001

We got up and headed south on 395 to Lone Pine, arriving well ahead of the 10 a.m. cutoff. Picking up the Whitney Trail permit involves the inevitable lecture about bears and trail etiquette, and it was 11:30 by the time we made our way to Whitney Portal and started hiking.

Looking back down at the valley from the trail below Outpost camp shows that we had already gained considerable altitude by car and by foot. As is evident from the shadows on the valley walls, the clouds were already building over Mt. Whitney and we were pelted by rain even before we reached Outpost Camp.

By the time we reached Outpost Camp at about 10,000', the rain was heavy and there was a fair amount of thunder echoing around the rock walls above us. We hunkered down at Outpost Camp for about 45 minutes, at which point the rain began to subside and we resumed our hike in only light showers, arriving at Trail Camp (12,000') about 6:30 that evening.

The weather cooperated with our setting up camp and cooking dinner. With plans to get up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, we went to bag promptly after dinner!

Tuesday, 3 July 2001


Tuesday morning dawned with clouds on the horizon dropping virga. Not a particularly encouraging sight, but we hastily ate breakfast and were on the trail before 5:30. From just above Trail Camp, the vista opens up along the ridge which runs from the Needles to Mt. Whitney, proper. We could see what lay in store...sort of...
	About one third through the "98 Switchbacks" section, you come to the "Cables". This is a spot with significant exposure where the trail narrows and hikers are protected by these cables and iron posts. There had been considerable traffic on the Mt. Whitney message board the previous week about whether this stretch was "melted out" or not. As is clear, it had melted out, if only recently. The snowbank to Nathan's left was still across the trail through most of June, and some people were spooked at this point and turned around. For my money, the slope of the granite below the cables was such that a traverse on the downhill side, hanging onto the cables, would have been quite doable. In any event, there was a narrow but clear trail between the cables and the remaining snow, so it was a non-issue for us.
	Approaching Trail Crest, the vertical extent of the east face of Mt. Whitney is very apparent. The summit hut is not yet visible, but the gentler western slope up toward the summit is quite apparent. Arriving at Trail Crest (13,777'), the vista opens out to the west, as well, where the western side of the ridge drops off to a series of lakes and distant peaks.

Looking back to the east, the immediate slopes up which the 98 switchbacks brought you are apparent. A bit longer view shows the town of Lone Pine in the distance, with the valley up which the main trail leads spread out before you.

Trail Crest is marked with a sign that makes a convenient leaning post for hikers weary of the seemingly interminable switchbacks. The good news is, it is less than 1,000 vertical feet from here to the summit. The bad news is, you have to go down nearly 200 feet before you start the final push to the hut, summit log and benchmarks.

As luck would have it, I must have been suffering a bit from hypoxia, as the only shot I took from the back side of the ridge was too blurry to even bother with a thumbnail. I can see the summit hut, but only because I know which blur is which. Approaching 14,000', our pace slowed considerably and it took us the better part of two hours to go from Trail Crest to the Smithsonian hut at the summit.

36° 34.721' N, 118° 17.466' W, and we arrived at the top of the forty-eight conterminous states! It had taken from 05:30 until 10:20 to do the 4.5 miles and 2,500'. As is evident from the clouds in both the hut photo and the shot of us, the weather was rapidly closing in on us, so we wasted no time in signing the summit log, taking our summit photos, and making a 360-degree panorama. (caution! It is a 675k file and will take a while to load if you click on the link!)

Being a state highpoint, I had to wear my Highpointers Club t-shirt, of course! Nathan's green t-shirt is his "Class-B" (read "casual") shirt from his Scout troop, which he claims has now been higher than anyone else's Class B shirt, save in an airplane. (That's a fairly safe bet, given that the troop is based near our home in St. Louis and we're about the only ones associated with it who are foolish enough to traipse all the way up Mt. Whitney just to say we've been there.)

After returning to camp, the weather settled down, for a while at least. It actually cleared off long enough that we prepared and ate dinner under (mostly) blue skies. The calm illustrated by our campsite was to be short-lived, however. At Trail Camp, sunset is early, but by 7 p.m., the clouds had gathered and it once again began to rain. The rain continued fairly steadily all night, pausing once or twice for an hour or so, and finally stopped about 7 a.m. the next morning.

Ours was a fairly typical site at Trail Camp, with a pan of packed sand surrounded by rock wind walls erected by previous campers. A little care in selecting the particular spot meant that our site drained away from the tent, instead of into it. As a result, we remained dry through the night's precipitation. Others in neighboring sites were not so lucky and spent a miserable night sleeping in puddles. Click here for a 688k-byte 360-degree panorama from our campsite at Trail Camp.

Wednesday, July 4, 2001

Once the rain stopped, we got up, ate a quick breakfast and packed up everything in just the state it was, wet and all. The day promised only intermittent breaks in the weather, so we took the first opportunity to break camp and head back to civilization. As it turned out, we managed to avoid all but a few drops of rain on our way back to Whitney Portal, but the skies behind us quickly darkened, and the thunder started even earlier than it had the day before. We clearly had picked the only good day that week to summit.

Three hours later, we were happy to see that our efforts at cleaning out the car had made it quite unappetizing to the Portal bears. The Portal store collected its due as we bought "I climbed Mt. Whitney" shirts. Once back to Lone Pine, we stopped at the ranger station to pick up the pewter benchmark pins to commemorate our accomplishment. In a fit of overconfidence, I bought the benchmark pins for Boundary Peak, as well. Having noted a Burger King in one of the towns between Lone Pine and Mammoth, Nathan insisted on a fast food fix for lunch, and I was not inclined to disagree.

As we drove back north, we were able to watch the development of truly spectacular thunderstorms both over the Whitney complex and the whole span of the Sierra from there to Mammoth. Our arrival in Mammoth was greeted by hail, lightning and, at the motel, darkness...the power was off, and showed no signs of coming back on in the near future.

Thursday, July 5, 2001

Thursday morning, still no power at the motel. We meandered around Mammoth, drove up to Minaret Summit for a closer look at Mt. Ritter, and generally goofed off, figuring we had earned a day off by virtue of our 21-mile, 12,000-gross-vertical-foot adventure of the preceding days. Mark Wallace and his son Andrew showed up in anticipation of the morrow's trip over to Boundary Peak.

Friday, July 6, 2001

The day dawned with mixed sun and clouds. Mark Wallace, Andrew, Alex Sapozhnikov and Scott Benson joined us and we meandered across the back roads north of Crowley Lake and to the thriving metropolis of Benton, California. There, we picked up U.S. Highway 6 and crossed into Nevada. 2.5 miles west of the CA/NV line, the ruins of Jaime's Ranch, a former house of ill repute, appeared on our left and we turned right onto the Queen Canyon Road, intending to drive as close as feasible to the Kennedy Point Saddle, our jumping-off point for the Boundary Peak climb.

Hmmm...that's odd...I press on the gas, and the engine revs as if the transmission were in neutral. No telltale signs of leaking fluid, no error messages from the Subaru computerized transmission controller. Huh? Play with the shifter...maybe it just popped out of gear. No such luck. Same results in any gear. Let it sit a couple of minutes...try one more time...still no go.

We discussed the situation and options with Mark and the guys. The alternatives out here seemed pretty bleak. The good news is, I could let the car roll to a spot in the road where there is plenty of room for a tow truck to manuever and fetch it. The bad news is, if we leave it there, spend Friday and Saturday climbing Boundary Peak, Nathan and I will have no guarantee of being able to connect with Hertz and get ourselves back to Reno in time for our late-morning flight home on Sunday. I elect to punt. Mark ferries me back to Benton, where there is a phone from which I call Hertz and get the retrieval/replacement wheels into motion. We then fetch all of our gear out of the busted Subie and Mark takes us back to Mammoth. At least I know I can get from Mammoth to Reno if I have to, with or without a replacement car from Hertz. Mark then hightails it back to catch up with the rest of the crew to do Boundary Peak. Mark, I owe you big time for all of this extra driving...hope I can make it up to you some day!

About 6 p.m., a guy shows up from Hertz with a replacement Subaru. I give him explicit directions on where to find the broken-down car and even offer to accompany him over so he is sure to find it. He mumbles something about having never been to this area before, but steadfastly refuses my offer to show him the way to the car. What's that old line about hindsight being 20/20? Read on...

Saturday, July 7, 2001

8 a.m. on Saturday morning, I get a call from the Hertz office in Reno. The genius they hired to deliver the replacement and pick up the broken car couldn't find the car! Worse yet, he got stuck trying to do so and had to get himself towed out! The gal from Hertz was civil but a little cool on the phone, until I explained to her that no, the car wasn't "off-road" and that it was left in a spot specifically chosen to make it easy for someone to fetch it. She said that there would be someone from Lee Vining calling me shortly to get directions on where the car was.

Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, a guy from the service station in Lee Vining calls me. It takes all of 5 minutes to explain where the car is. As soon as I mention "Jaime's Ranch", he knows exactly where I mean. Whew. At least this guy is familiar with the area. One minor problem: He doesn't have a key to the broken car. No problem. In a fit of prescience, I had kept my key to the busted Subie since the first retriever did have the second key from Hertz. I tell the Lee Vining towtruck guy that I'll meet him at the diner in Benton, so Nathan and I finish packing up, check out of the motel and head over to Benton. The towtruck driver shows up about 15 minutes after we do. He is sure he can find the car, but this time, I'm taking no chances and drive over to the Queen Canyon Road with him. He follows me to where the car is, neatly turns his truck around in the 50-foot-wide graded and packed gravel flats where we had left the car and says, more or less, "so what was the other guy's problem?"

Then he tells me to look on the side of the road about 100 yards back as I drive out. Sure enough, in a spot where the road was just one lane wide, with an embankment uphill and a deep ditch downhill, there are marks where the first retriever had given up, tried to turn around where he shouldn't have, and got stuck. Just ahead of him as he drove in, there was a slight rise, but enough to obscure the Subie as it was sitting forlornly waiting for help. If the first guy had driven only 100 or 200 feet farther up the road, he would have seen the car and had all the room in the world in which to turn around. At least the guy from Lee Vining agreed that I was not "off road" and that my directions had been accurate, so the failure to find the car wasn't my fault.

As we drove back down to Benton, we could see the clouds closing down to about 10,000' along the Boundary/Montgomery ridge. Mark and the others certainly wouldn't be seeing much up in that soup, so maybe it was just as well that we got shut down by car troubles.

Nathan and I stopped in Lee Vining for lunch as we drove back to Reno. As luck would have it, we were just pulling out of the restaurant parking lot when the towtruck pulled up with the Subie on its hook. Well, at least the broken car was back to a main highway from where Hertz could presumeably fetch it. By the time we got back to Reno, the gal at Hertz was gone for the day.

Sunday, July 8, 2001

I took time Sunday morning to call Hertz and talked to the same gal there. When I explained what had happened, she was noncommittal, but seemed not to be inclined to press the point about having been on an improved gravel road. (Read the fine print in a rental contract sometime. It will be enlightening!) I told her to be sure to talk to the guy from Lee Vining if there were any questions, since he had seen exactly what happened and would confirm that the car was left in a spot conducive to getting a towtruck up to it.

The flights back to St. Louis was uneventful, so we arrived home in good order. American Airlines even managed to get our luggage to St. Louis on the same plane.

One for two...batting .500, in baseball terminology. Frustrated by a broken car, but at least we did the harder peak in good order. Having to come back to do Boundary Peak isn't the worst thing, since I figure we'll be back to Mammoth one of these years when Nathan decides he wants to climb our eponymous peak a few miles to the west of there. Besides, it will be another good excuse to come back out to the Sierra, which is feeling more and more like my home away from home.

Alan Ritter, 14 August 2001