Mt Whitney and Mt Muir November 20th - 23rd, 2008 Cold weather success on Whitney and Muir. Those present: Adrian Crane, Deborah Steinberg, Ray Kablanow, Derek Castle, Carey Gregg and Rudolphe Jourdaine.
Derek Castle, Ray Kablanow, Deborah Steinberg & Adrian Crane on the Summit of Whitney As it turned out, our weather was wonderful, although quite cold, with temperatures dropping to the mid teens overnight. If we were lucky enough to be climbing with the sun upon us, the temperature would climb to around 50 degrees. To stay warm, you had to keep moving, and our breaks were necessarily brief.
Since we knew we were going to
attempt
We set off towards the northeast side of
the mountain following mostly good trail, and Deb had the feeling that this was
all going along much too easily. Adrian must have been feeling bored, because eventually
we came to a large rocky bluff that we had to either climb up and over (the “macho
route”), or climb down toward a trail along the valley floor (the “wienie route”).
Naturally Deb wanted to take the “wienie route”, but Adrian decided we should climb
up the icy rocks and around scary ledges of the bluff. Once over the bluff we arrived
at the foot of the mountaineers route, a steep snow gully below “the notch” of the mountain. Once our crampons were
on securely, we roped up together and slogged up the mountain for nearly an hour
and a half. Once at the top of the ridge we stopped to rest briefly, but realized
we were so cold that stopping for long was not an option. Adrian on the endless snowclimb of the mountaineers gully
We crossed the Sierra crest to the west side and traversed west then south, where
eventually we joined up with the traditional walk-up Whitney trail and hiked the
last quarter mile to the summit
itself at 14,495 ft. We brought two mementos to the top to drop into the
summit box for City Of Hope: Adrian brought a photo in memory of
his brother Christopher, and Deborah brought a penny in honor of
Harriette Kirschen. As we signed the summit log we realized that we were the first
group that day to reach the top of Whitney. We found out later that we were also
the only group climbing the mountaineering route to reach the summit that day. Unfortunately,
once Deb reached the summit she was “done” and had absolutely no motivation to climb
Muir Peak. It took a lot of cajoling from Adrian, Derek, and Ray and more than a
few Oreos to convince her that climbing Muir today would save her a trip up the
mountain another day. Fortunately the trail for Muir was a mere mile down the trail
from Whitney’s summit, and only 500 vertical feet of climbing above the trail. Derek
was pretty tired at this point, and decided to wait for us where we left the trail.
Muir, at 14,150 ft is less well known than its more famous neighbor but was a quick
exciting scramble to the top. We did actually have to rope up at the end for a small
section of Class 4 climbing, but it was a rather fun peak. With Whitney and Muir
behind us, our California 14er total came to 5 down, 10 to go! Once we had climbed
down the summit rocks and descended the talus back to the trail it was 4 pm, and
time was critical. Adrian was worried that we would be climbing the more
Deborah on Whitney plateau precarious traverses across Whitney in the dark if went back the way we came, so he decided we should travel down the traditional Whitney trail to a point where we could cut across cross-country to our base camp. When we arrived at Trail Crest it was almost 5 pm, and Adrian, Derek, and Ray took a look at our route in the last of the daylight. From our high viewpoint we could see that the section where we would be traveling cross-country, that looked so plausible on the map, looked a lot less feasible when we saw how steep an intervening ridge appeared to be and knowing we would be trekking with headlamps in the dark. Our only remaining safe option was to trek down the traditional Whitney trail 9 miles in the dark all the way to our vehicle at Whitney Portal. The switchbacks from Trail Crest descended 2000 very icy feet to the Trail Camp area and then we continued by headlight along the snowed over trail. Eventually as our altitude lessened the snow cover became less, and apart from icy patches to catch the unwary once we had removed our crampons, the trail was mostly good. We arrived at our van at 10 pm exhausted. Unfortunately we had no sleeping bags, and Carey and Rudolphe were still at base camp wondering what had happened to us. Lucky for us, Ray’s Sportmobile does not need to run all night to run the heater, so we had no problem keeping warm, but we had not been able to reach Carey by radio since the Whitney summit, and we still needed to retrieve our gear at base camp. So the next morning we set out once again along the mountaineering route toward Carey and Rudolphe. Carey had the good sense to hike up to a promontory where amazingly he was able to reach us by radio at about 7:30 am. Relief was evident in his voice as we told him what had happened, and that we would be arriving there soon. By the time we reached camp at 10:20 am, Carey and Rudolphe had packed up most of the gear, so in about 30 minutes we were once again traveling down the mountain with our packs toward the van. The ice and snow that we had had easily trekked on uphill was feeling a little more treacherous going downhill and Deborah’s crampons were in the van. Lucky for her, on the way up, Derek had found a pair of crampons on the trail. We arrived back at our vehicle at Whitney Portal at 2pm, feeling fortunate that all had gone so well. On the drive back we discussed our strategies for climbing the rest of the California 14ers. Adrian Crane and Deborah Steinberg | ||
