This way to adventure.
They say everything tastes better in the woods.
In this case, “everything” is a grass-fed ribeye, dry-aged for twenty-one days and grilled over a campfire. And “they” is me. And they’re right.
We arrived at Mt. Whitney portal on a Saturday for our second summit attempt via the Mountaineer’s Route. Our first attempt, two years ago, ended at 14k feet when we were turned back by snow that we weren’t geared for. This would be different.
But it would start the same. Camping at the Whitney Portal. And, like last time, I provided dinner for our crew. Four ribeyes from the very same steer, brought to room temperature (is it still room temperature if you aren’t in a room?), salted liberally, and grilled over hardwoods.
To say I was excited about our next Whitney ascent would be an understatement. There are two ways up the Old Man, and we were taking the shorter, steeper, harder route. I’d been looking forward to this for months. I was far more physically fit than I was the first time. And I had a much lighter pack. I was ready to bag the highest peak in the continental U.S.
After our meal of ribeye and roasted new potatoes, I sat staring at the stars. Thinking about the next night, when I’d see them from a considerably closer vantage point – from 8500 at Whitney Portal to 10,500 at Lower Boy Scout Lake, our first campsite.
Zac, Rich, and Uriah
Zac and Rich, two of our foursome, wandered off to put a few things in our cars, leaving Uriah and I by the fire. As I watched the stars, I heard my dog over by our tents, rustling through some empty grocery bags, looking for scraps. “So annoying,” I thought.
Trouble is: I left my dog at home.
As soon as I realize that Basil is not, in fact, pawing through grocery bags, I flip on my headlamp and swivel it to our tents. There’s a huge black head, whuffing through an empty Whole Foods bag that must still smell faintly of steak/cheese/almond butter.
Dramatization.
The head turns, and looks straight at me. Big green eyes reflecting in the dark. Behind that head, a huge black body, maybe four feet tall. Couple hundred pounds. Definitely bigger than me.
“Uriah.”
“Yeah.”
“Bear.”
“Bullshit.”
He turns. “Wow.”
“He has a grocery bag. What do we do?”
“Nothing. It’s his, now.”
“Not that. I’m more concerned about not dying.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Do we hold still? Make some noise? Play dead?”
“I vote noise.”
Just then, the bear throws the grocery bag up in the air like a beagle caught playing with a slipper. He catches the bag, and races off across a nearby creek into the woods.
Uriah and I immediately sprint to the site he left behind. My pack is untouched, thankfully. I’m kinda OCD about not leaving anything that smells of anything in my bag. Uriah’s pack is also untouched. We seem to be good.
Then I notice some litter. An electrolyte kool-aid pack, torn in half, laying about four feet from our gear site.
We don’t litter.
I picked it up. “Uriah…”
“Yeah?”
I show him the trash. Then we find Rich’s pack. It is wet and sticky. Absolutely covered in sugar and bearspit and generalized biotic slime. The bear must have investigated it after he ate the dry kool-aid. Thankfully, it is otherwise undamaged.
Just as we’re looking it over, two big green eyes pop out of the darkness, about fifteen feet away.
Right there. (Bear not pictured)
I spin my headlamp that direction. Uriah does the same. Both of us freeze, standing over Rich’s sticky, nasty pack.
The bear begins to walk toward us.
“Noise now, Uriah?”
“Yes.”
Both of us train our headlamps on the bear’s eyes. Throw our hands over our heads. And shout the vilest insults about that bear’s mother we could think of. We shouted shit that’d make Don Rickles blush. We roar. We curse. We bang things. We didn’t throw anything, because we didn’t have anything to throw. But we would’ve. At fifteen feet, the bear could have bluff-charged and been on us in a second or two. We needed to convince him that’d be a bad idea.
Thankfully, we did. The bear loped off into the woods.
A few minutes later, Rich and Zac came back. Rich emptied his pack and washed it thoroughly in the stream, while I covered him at high volume with some of my best material. (“Hey, bear! Your mamma’s so fat she went to the movies and sat next to everybody! Your mamma’s so fat her belly button has an echo!”) Uriah, knot-genius, ran a bear line and we hung Rich’s pack overnight to dry.
Thankfully, we did not see the bear again.
Our tents. The bear was sniffing a pack on that rock.
Sunday, we went up the hill. Our packs were all ten pounds lighter than our previous attempt – except for Uriah, who still had a 46 pound pack for some reason.
Uriah on Thor.
We summitted Thor Peak (12,228). Zac and I used jerky made from the top round as our primary protein source for the entire journey (I provided Z with jerky, he proivded me with paleo trail mix and energy bars). Then, two days later, we finally summitted Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental U.S., at 14,508.
Summit.
On the way down, we got caught in a hailstorm at elevation, rushed back to our high camp at 11,400, and sat under an enormous rock, drinking Scotch that Uriah had brought up in a flask (there’s the extra weight!) as the sky broke open around us.
The Mt. Whitney Mountaineer’s Route is a classic of American mountaineering. We – quite literally – followed the footsteps of John Muir as he hiked to the roof of the country along a path that was (at that time) a creek and guesswork. There’s no better path in the High Sierras. There are few better paths, anywhere.
If you take the Mountaineer’s Route, make sure you prepare. The main trail up Whitney is somewhat forgiving – the Mountaineer’s Route is not. Do not take up an 80 pound pack. Do not go up without training. Do not go up with people you do not admire, respect, and trust – if it comes to it – with your life.
Do, however, bring good beef, good friends, and good scotch.
And, maybe, bear repellent.
