Spent the long New Years weekend touring out of the Cascade Powder Cats yurt near Stevens Pass. The company has just this season opened up use of their yurt for non-guided parties and we were their first. Getting a ride in their snowcat up to the hut saved us eight miles of skinning uphill and let us bring along a few extras, like umpteen pounds of bbq pork and sausages for our dinners.
The weather was really cold, but clear, and the last storm had dumped a couple feet of powder for us to track up. Over the three days the wind took its toll on the upper slopes and windslabs messed up some of the most interesting terrain, but we farmed the wind sheltered slopes below the yurt and got in some nice touring.
Ryan runs a really nice operation at Cascade Powder Cats and its great that the Cascades have another hut to tour out of.
We were so grateful that the nighttime low temps didn’t get anywhere close to what we’d seen the night before….we both slept warm and soundly and were well rested when the alarm went off.
As this was our last night in the tent, we no longer had to worry about our tent or clothes smelling like food and attracting bears, so we fired up the stove right next to our tent and finally got to have breakfast and coffee in our sleeping bags instead of out in the cold. We broke camp and joined the string of headlamps working up the switchbacks about an hour before dawn.
After spending two weeks almost entirely above 10,000ft we were incredibly well acclimated for Whitney and climbing the 14,497ft peak felt more like a casual stroll at Snoqualmie Pass (3000 ft), especially now that our food bins were down to just a couple pounds of food. We hit Trail Crest about an hour after sunrise..this is the spot where the west side trail we’d been on joins up with the Whitney Portal trail that everyone else is on for climbing Whitney as just a weekend outing…from there we had two miles and a thousand feet of gain to reach Whitney’s summit.
If we’d been in the sun, we’d have been plenty warm, but the two mile traverse runs along the west side, and our hands were freezing. We’d brought thin fleece gloves which were perfect for everything up until now…fortunately a spare pair of wool socks works as a fine pair of mittens in a pinch, so we continued on to the summit happily wearing socks on our hands.
As we neared the summit, I looked back and saw a familiar figure, and I said to Becky ‘hey, is that Larry?’ …I don’t think Becky said anything, but man oh man did her pace speed up…I think she was determined to hit the top before the speed-demon Larry got there.
The summit cabin came into view and before we knew it we joined Beverly and a young man who was Larry’s son on the summit…Larry strolled up a few minutes later and we all basked in the sunshine of Whitney’s summit celebrating our various journeys to get there. Larry’s son had come up the more challenging mountaineers route that morning and brought along soda, beer, chips, and chocolate…we were happy to help them lighten their pack and ate far too many Pringles.
After spending close to an hour on the summit, Becky and I grabbed our packs and started down…the expected crowds coming from Whitney Portal were beginning to show up. The vast majority of the hikers looked like hell, going so slow and pressure breathing as we chatted and hopped over boulders…not everyone gets as much time as we had had to be acclimated.
We descended the hundred or so switchbacks blasted and carved into Whitney’s east slope and after a short lunch break we met up with Beverly again who we stuck with for the rest of the hike out. I think Becky was happy to have someone new to chat with and I was happy that she was apparently unaware of the wonderfully rapid pace that Beverly was setting. We pounded down the 6300ft to the trailhead by mid-afternoon and before even going to the car for a clean change of clothes we were at the Whitney Portal Store ordering cheeseburgers, fries, and cokes. Despite the pile of food being massive, it was devoured in an instant. We said goodbye to Beverly and headed for the car, which fortunately the bears had taken no interest in over the past two weeks.
A quick drive north on highway 395 brought us to Bishop where we found a motel and hit the pharmacy for all the toiletries we couldn’t leave in our car due to bears ripping into cars for anything that had a nice smell at the trailhead. I finally got to shave off my sad little beard and Becky spent a good half-hour scrubbing the dirt off her feet. By 8:00 we were starving again, so we headed to a nearby taqueria where we ate approximately ten pounds of tacos and tortas.
The next day we hit the Schatt's Bakery where we tried to curb our insatiable appetite and only eat a couple pastries each, then it was off to the coast….we reached the Redwoods by nightfall, camped, then drove home via the northern CA and OR coast the next day. After two weeks of sunny, mostly hot weather, driving along the gray, drizzly coast was quite the change and definitely signaled that we’d squeezed the last of summer out of this vacation and it was time for fall to begin.
After we got back, we read that Cliff Mass, local Seattle weather guru, had officially declared this the worst summer in Seattle since 1980. Upon hearing that declaration we were extra happy to have had the opportunity to spend two weeks basking in the (mostly) warm California sunshine.
Making sock puppets at 13,000ft
Closing in on Whitney’s summit
Views out to the east…our car is down there somewhere…
We made it!
Beverly, Pete, Becky, and Larry
View to the south
Guitar Lake, our camp the night before, is in the lower right
Only a hundred switchbacks to go.
Almost at Whitney Portal
All done! now where's the burger stand?
Whitney Portal Store cheeseburgers are really, really good…
Apparently my backpack straps plus two weeks of grime makes a frowny face on the back of my t-shirt
We stayed in the tent a bit longer than usual this morning…we had hoped to wait till the sun hit the tent and warmed things up, but we finally gave up around 7am and got the stove going for morning coffee. After yesterday’s big day, we were finally going to have an easy day…just needed to drop a bit, climb over the Bighorn Plateau, and then amble up to Guitar Lake at the base of Mt.Whitney.
We both hiked with down jackets on until the sun was up to full strength. Even with the sun, the constant wind and being above 11,000ft much of the day kept temps a little on the cool side…usually that would be a blessing, but after the frigid night, all I was thinking about was just how cold it was going to be camping at 11,500 ft on Whitney at Guitar Lake.
The Bighorn Plateau was another favorite spot for both Becky and me…just a another huge barren area with views that went out in all directions. Becky even got to get up close to a friendly marmot and take a bunch of photos.
By early afternoon we’d climbed up to Guitar Lake and had nothing else to do but relax….we napped, read, and now that we were finally so close to the end, I stopped rationing my food, and tore into the 8oz of salami I’d been carrying for the past 200 miles. We gorged ourselves on pasta with extra olive oil and chunks of salami for dinner…I was hoping if I got an extra thousand calories in my stomach, I might have a hotter internal furnace while sleeping in my one-pound sleeping bag and might be a bit more comfy.
While hanging out at camp, we met one of our tent neighbors, Beverly, she’d been out for 24 days, hiking the JMT solo. She had met some of the same folks as us, including Larry who we hoped to see on the summit of Whitney the next day.
We sacked out early and set the alarm for 4:30…we originally wanted to be on the summit of Whitney for sunrise, but with temps being as cold as they were, we figured with our limited clothing waiting to hit the top after the sun was up might be more comfortable.
Our bodies regularly amazed us on this trip…despite feeling beat up every evening, we’d rise the next day, stretch things out, get the packs on and roll right into another 10-11 hour day. Even after yesterdays rough day, we were up before dawn, felt fresh and ready for more miles.
The tent interior was covered in frost when we woke up…we’d both washed socks the night before and hung them on our clothesline in the tent, but the temps got so cold and the extra moisture from the wet socks just ended up building a thick layer of frost in the tent. As was the usual routine, we let the tent freeze while eating breakfast, we shook out as much frost as possible and packed it up. Our laundry was safety pinned on our packs and we knew we’d have our spare socks dry by mid-afternoon.
As usual, our first hour of hiking was done all bundled up as if it was winter, and then once the sun was on us, the frost around the trail melted away and we were back to shorts. We were up over Glen Pass (11,978ft) before 9am and fortunately this time the descent was on a nicely graded, smooth trail that we flew down.
Our plan was to make today a short day and just get to the base of Forester Pass (13,200ft), as we didn’t think two passes in a single day was feasible for us, but we made good time up Bubb’s Creek Canyon towards Forester and found ourselves at our planned campsite by 1pm. Amazingly, we both felt great, and the temperature was about ten degrees cooler that day, so we decided to just keep on going.
We took a short break at treeline and filtered more water, and I unpacked the tent, letting it dry in the afternoon sun…then it was time to head for Forester. As we climbed towards the pass, a nearby forest fire started pumping smoke into the valley…our views began to be slightly obscured and I’m sure it didn’t help that we were huffing and puffing so much smoky air, but we were encouraged when we met another hiker going the other way who said the smoke hadn’t made it over Forester into the valley we were headed towards.
The fire wasn’t particularly big, but the smoke was starting to produce its own clouds which weren’t too far away. Back in college, I’d worked on some really big fires that produced so much smoke that they’d generate their own storm clouds and lightning…I think my pace quickened over Forester out of a little paranoia of not wanting to be so far above treeline if/when this fire started to do the same.
After a couple hours of climbing though we were leaving the smoke behind and were standing at Forester Pass looking south at clear blue sky. This was another pass where the trail was blasted into the mountainside and one would otherwise need ropes to get to this spot. Forester was another place I’d daydreamed about and spent lots of time on GoogleEarth looking at…it definitely lived up to my expectations…such a massive, high, barren place punctuated with deep blue lakes.
We kept plodding away downhill looking for a reasonable place to camp out of the wind…we weren’t going to make it to treeline by dark, but we found a nice spot next to a car sized boulder that provided plenty of wind protection. As the sun set though, the temperature sunk like a stone…most of the nights the outside temperature had dropped below freezing but in our tent the temperatures rarely went below the high 30’s. In the middle of the night I woke up and checked the temp, it was 25 degrees in our tent, not good for those with 45 degree rated sleeping bags. Becky slept better/warmer than I did, and I got through the evening wearing all my clothes inside my sleeping bag, but it wasn’t a restful night.
I got up before sunrise and snapped a few shots of big peaks of Kings Canyon in the dim morning light and then we packed up and headed for Pinchot Pass. We’d seen a couple coyotes in the days before but last night we were awoken by the howls of a pack of coyotes nearby…so cool!
Pinchot was a12,130ft pass and by now we were pretty well acclimated, so keeping a steady pace and chatting while at altitude was surprisingly easy. Unfortunately after Pinchot we had one of our biggest descents, 3600ft down, and to make matters worse it wasn’t even a smooth dirt trail, most of the elevation loss was stepping down huge stone steps which looked like they’d been made for someone ten feet tall.
By the time we reached the suspension bridge over Woods Creek and were done descending, our feet and knees were aching and sun was cooking us. We found a patch of shade, refilled our water, gave our feet a soak in the creek and then slowly started making our way up the 2000’ towards Rae Lakes.
This was probably the toughest afternoon for both of us, the hammering we’d taken on the descent, combined with the heat from being at such a low elevation, and the late afternoon climb really did a number on us. I’d suggested to Becky that we did not have to beat ourselves up with the fifteen day timeline and could add in a day to slow things down, but this was met with a strong resistance I couldn’t quite understand. Once we finally reached camp and had dinner we figured out that her worries about an extra day were from a fear of running out of food…she had rationed out her supplies very accurately and didn’t have any reserves. Her anxiety went away completely though when I dumped out my bear bin and showed that between the four extra bars, a full pound of Halva, a half pound of salami, and a few other odds and ends, I was carrying more than enough food for both of us to stay out an extra day or two.
We finished the day with our usual routine of stretching, icing our legs in the nearby lake, playing some cards, reading, and then sacking out by about 9pm.
After spending all afternoon the day before pounding out the miles through LeConte Canyon we were eager to get back into the alpine. We broke camp and were on the trail by the usual 6:30am heading for Mather Pass. Within a few miles we started the 4000’ climb towards Mather Pass (12,100ft). We laced back and forth on the ‘Golden Staircase’, an impressive set of switchbacks that ascended the steep head of Palisade Creek Canyon and were rewarded with Palisade Lake at the top. We couldn’t pass up taking a break at the sandy beach and turquoise blue water, so we had our mid-morning snack while cooling off our legs in the frigid water.
After an hour of lounging in the water and grassy meadows, we tossed the packs on and ground out the final 2000’ to the top of Mather. Towards the top of Mather the views really opened up and we found ourselves again in a massive open bowl with ancient glacier moraines and small, deep blue colored tarns.
At the top of Mather we could see south all the way to Pinchot, our next pass…some speedy hikers knock out both Mather and Pinchot in the same day, but we were just hoping to get to the base of the pass by sunset. We had some leftover bacon from dinner the night before, so our usual lunch of peanut butter and honey tortillas were supplemented with dried bananas and bacon…maybe it only tastes good when being out in the woods for a long time, but we thought they were great.
Down from Mather there were more impressively carved switchbacks into what would otherwise be a 4th class scramble over terrible rock, and then we were out into the flats of another huge plateau that a glacier had carved out thousands of years ago.
We made quick time and were at the base of climb to Pinchot by late afternoon. We rallied and knocked off a small 800’ climb to get back above treeline so we’d have some nice views that evening…it was well worth the effort. We passed by a ranger station just before finding camp and got an updated weather forecast…clear weather through the end of our trip…what a relief to hear that!
Today was our last mandatory 4000’ day, so we felt happy that we’d only have 3000’' climbs in the days ahead.
