When my mountaineering friends from Ireland suggested we climb Whitney
together when they came to visit, I agreed on one condition - My Husband had to
come with me. I guessed the camping element would put him off, he'd say
"no" and I'd explain that I couldn't go with him etc etc. We still
had to "win" a permit in the permit lottery. I guessed the whole deal
would flop, and they'd find a marathon or triathlon to do with another crazy-fit
mutual friend who lives here too.
To get some perspective on how fit these guys are compared to us, let me put
it this way. The visiting mountaineers are like Wonder Woman and Superman, the
mutual friend and her fitness fanatic family are
The Incredibles (without Jack Jack -
unless you include their dog who also goes running with them!) By comparison, My
Husband and I are the Flintstones - and I'm not even Wilma or Betty, oh no -
I'm Fred and he's Barney!
But I never win raffles and things like that, so I was quietly confident
that we'd be grand - there'd be a road trip to somewhere nice and we'd have a
great time, as it's impossible to not have a blast with those guys.
Mrs. Incredible applied for the permit back in February and waited for the
results. I completely forgot about it and was pretty engrossed in organizing my
Irish Book tour for March to November,
starting around Easter. I was actually in Ireland when she sent me an email.
We'd won the lottery and gotten the damn permit!
I hoped at this stage that My Husband would still say no, but to my shock
(and horror) he said, "Sure why not?"
There were lots of reasons why not, but ultimately, I had no excuses...I had
committed to it, and if I say I'm going to do something, I do it (or at least
give it my best shot!)
We were set for Whitney at the end of July 2015 with 13 weeks to train for
it from pretty much a standstill! So I found a
12 week training plan, printed it out
and put it on the wall. I need to do the "crossing off "thing to
inspire me. We had a week to stand and look at the plan before we began...
Then we started the training together...
There are so many elements to Whitney...
There's the
distance - 22 mile round trip.
There's the
elevation gain. You start at about 8000 feet (2400m) and
need to gain 6500 feet (2000m)
There's the
camping. We got a permit to camp two nights halfway up.
There's the
carrying all your food and gear for 2 nights/3 days. We'd
never hiked with heavy packs before but now we needed to buy the right kind of
pack and get used to "mountain food".
There's the lack of
plumbing. We needed to filter the water that we'd
get from streams and lakes.
There's the lack of
plumbing (part 2). There were no toilet
facilities on the mountain so we'd have to pack out our solid waste - yes, that
meant carrying our poo out in a bag!
And finally there's the
lack of oxygen... Mt Whitney is 14,505 feet
(4,421 m) high. We'd be hiking higher than a Cessna airplane can fly. It's the
highest mountain on continental USA (lower 48 States) and the air is pretty
thin up there. Altitude sickness was the big unknown. You can train and prepare
for everything else, but not that...at least, not in the time frame (3 days)
available to us.
Training for distance was fine - we followed our chart - ticked off our
training schedule and basically had sore muscles for a solid three month
period. At one point I wondered was it better to not train and just suffer the
once! I hated the runs that had been scheduled. I learned to use the step
machine while ironing and critiquing for my writing group - training is just so
time consuming and hell, I have a life!
But My Husband and I found that we enjoyed the hikes, having hiked smaller
easier hikes a lot, we liked expanding on this. It brought us closer too and we
found we worked well as a team. The Incredibles were training too. The kids, 11
and 8, were getting some experience with backpacking and we kept up with their
progress on social media, engrossed as we were on our own schedule.
It was hard to find high enough hills locally, but we did have a couple of
hikes that had elevation gains of 3000-4000 feet. Since in any one day on
Whitney we'd have no more than 4000 feet, we were happy to consider that as a
good yardstick.
On April 26th we began with a loop of our local park clocking up an easy 3
miles and 630ft elevation gain.
 |
| Looking at our house from Santa Teresa Park. |
As the weeks went on we donned packs, filled
them with heavy stuff from our cupboards (the cans of soda exploded so we
switched to bags of rice) and increased our hike length and elevation
accumulation. By May 23rd we'd hiked the longest trail we'd ever hiked - El
Sombroso - 11.8 miles and 3,083
ft.
 |
| Mt Umhamum as seen from El Sombroso peak. |
It was half the distance of the Whitney Trail and nearly half the total
elevation we would need...we were making progress.
Then we attempted Murietta Falls - a "butt kicker" as
described by the trail book, leaving from Del Valle Lake along the Ohlone
Trail. We had 20lb packs and started off strong, but the steep descent of 500ft
into a valley and ascent up the other side broke our spirits. We'd not been
mentally prepared to descent mid-hike, and we worried that we'd run out of
steam to make the 500ft ascent on the way home. So we turned back, a 1.5
miles short of our goal.
 |
| The turn around point on way to Murietta Falls. |
Two weeks later, we struck out for Mt Sizer in Henry Coe with 35lb packs and
did the full loop - a whooping 15 miles and 4200 ft accumulated
elevation.
 |
| Mt Sizer hike. |
Yes, we'd arrived back at the car in pitch darkness, hearts pumping because
we let ourselves worry about mountain lion attacks, falling down steep ravines
and axe murderers - things that rarely happen but just might in the dark -
well, maybe not the axe murderers, but we do watch too much TV!
Yes, we were nearly crippled the following day with aching legs, backs, arms
... well, everything, but we knew that as far as distance and elevation gain
went, we were well on course for Mt Whitney. We just had to figure out the
camping, the food, and the plumbing!
The hikes that followed that were fun and easily knocked off the list -
Mission Peak,
 |
| Me pointing at Mission peak summit were we'd just visited. |
Mount Montara,
 |
| View from Mt Montara, near Pacifica, CA |
and a few blasts around Santa Teresa Park.
We decided to return to Henry Coe to practice backpacking. We only hiked far
enough to find a campsite (1 mile!) and set up camp with a gorgeous view.
 |
| Campsite at Henry Coe |
There
were toilets too - so the plumbing was sorted out...or was it!
The pit toilet (called a long drop in some places) hadn't been used in a while
and there were spiders everywhere. They'd strung their webs right across the
opening of the toilet. We found big sticks and put on our head lamps. As I
looked down the toilet, the light bounced on something in the pit, in a flash
of horror, I thought it was a toddler standing down there about three feet
tall. (I do read far too much Stephen King!) I forced myself to look and saw
that it was a tower of turds! What with the drought and the ultra dry
conditions, waste moisture was being wicked away immediately but the poops were
landing roughly in the same spot each time and staying there without a cesspit
to slough about in. The turd tower was building up like a stalagmite in a
limestone cave, except this was a stalagshite!
Over the weeks we'd been experimenting with the freeze dried food packs and
had selected our favorites. My Husband had thrown himself into the tech side of
the project buying a Garmin, a personal locator beacon and most importantly a
Jet Boil stove. This thing can boil water in a matter of minutes and it proved
to be amazing.
 |
| The Jetboil |
To filter water, he got us a gravity fed micro fiber filter but
all the springs in Henry Coe had dried up so we practiced using the tanked-in
water they provided.
Everything worked like clockwork, except for the sleeping bit - our foam
mats were not soft enough and we couldn't get comfortable. We didn't sleep a
wink and got up just before sunrise, packed up camp and headed for home.
After some research we decide to buy some ultra light backpacking thermarests.
Our pack's weights were at their limit. We didn't want to carry any more than
35lbs. The thermarests were pricey but still less expensive than a night in a
hotel. My Husband, not a fan of camping, refused to go backpacking just to try
out our new sleep system, so we decided to put the tent up at home for one
night. Embarrassed to be seen by our neighbors emerging bedraggled in the
morning, we put the tent up on the bedroom floor.
We needed to make a pillow too. It reminded me of that scene in Apollo 13
when the guy says "You need to make this work with this using that."
Only using what we were bringing, we shoved our spare clothes (there was very
little to spare actually) and our puffa jackets into the stuff bags from our
sleeping bags. The new mattresses worked well and by 1am we were both sound
asleep in our tent on our bedroom floor. I awoke at 5am needing to pee. Getting
out of the tent, I woke up My Husband. Since the purpose of the experiment was
to determine if we could go to sleep on those mattresses and we'd proved that
we could, we decided mission accomplished - it was okay to sleep in our own bed
again. It didn't take us long to scramble into the real bed!
Two days later we attempted Murietta Falls again. And failed! My Husband
wasn't feeling well. He'd developed a rash or been bitten by something on his
hip. We suspected a spider bite... the wee monster had seemed to chow down, walk
about and then chomp a little more. So my husband was feeling weak and sore, and
we turned back, this time only one mile short of the falls.
 |
| The turnaround point for the 2nd Murietta Falls attempt |
Would we ever make
it up to the Falls and was this an omen for the Mount Whitney Hike in less than
three weeks?
To be continued....
Byddi Lee
