A boy climbs a mtn and feels like a man

I only saw three airplanes fly by today, not even jets, just commercial planes way off in the evening sun. I saw no cars or even a road for one to be on, no powerlines or buildings to be powered. The Sierra is a wild and remote place. A far away that I have never been. An empty lonely place year around to be sure, but exceptionaly void of humans when there is this much snow around.
In mojave we walked out of town as a group of three, leaving Rainbow Brite at a goat farm and chasing after one Bojangles. When we left the comfortable confines of Tom’s hiker trailer park in Kennedy Meadows, we walked up into the Sierra as a group of four. Bojangles is a self employed construction company owner kind of guy from one of the Carolinas. He’s a little serious compaired to this group but keeps the same hiking schedule and has a vocabulary that is comparable with ours. The four of us headed into the biggest snow we have ever seen and proceeded to have our scalps peeled back by the amount of beauty in these mtns. Brown, golden and rainbow trout stacked up in lines in the winding snow creeks. Golden trout get their color from the spring streams we shwack accross; red stones, glowing clear water, black moss swaying like their tales. Frozen over lakes that hold a shade of blue nothing else can create. Everywhere snow. Huge piles of it, sometime dirt pokes out of the snow, only under the densest of trees. We navigate by peaks and rivers, leaving the trail alone on it’s imaginary contours. Postholes and big glicades, deep blue sky and no threatening clouds.
We blue blazed the beginning of the John Muir Trail over to a snow observation cabin and spent the night in the front lawn. The next morning we left camp with our tents standing and most of our belongings inside. In our packs only water, jackets, camera and snacks. We were headed off on a spur hike and were in for a big climb. In the foothills we walked past timberline lake and it’s unnamed drainage creek, gained a few more hundred feet through a big snow bowl and came out on a shoulder with a view of guitar lake. All the water up there was frozen only with snake like openings showing rushing blue water. The sun began to light the snow we walked on just as we turned 90degrees into the mtn and began a mixed assault of skree scrambling and snow climbing. Cutting the useless snowed-over switchbacks. As our day hike turned into a serious climb our group of four met up with the other group of four NoBo’s out here early in the Sierra. We turned into an 8 man team and blazed our own path up to the ridge that leads to Mt. Whitney. This being our second attempt at climbing a snowy mtn, we figured we had enough chops to climb the tallest peak in the contiguous 48. This being our second big climb the sheer cliffs next to snowed over trail didn’t seem so bad. The thousands of feet of exposure was only a unique perspective, no longer a sight to make my legs tremble. Even the effects of the elevation were minimal. I only stopped twice in all of the 4,000′ of gain. Whitney is undoubtedly a serious mtn and as I rounded over the dome and saw the hut on top I felt like I was a serious mtn climber.
The day couldn’t have been any better. Low clouds only way off in the expanse of the range, navy blue skys and again nearly no wind. Summitting on a perfect Friday meant that the crowd was there in some respects, but the snow made it so that the 30 people who shared the summit with me had atleast some business being up there. I timed my arrival with exacting precision. I dropped my pack, push up kissed the survey marker and trotted off to find solitude. Behind a large Wiley Coyote looking rock I dropped trou and dropped duece, way up there above everything else in the country. Someday everyone’s drinking water will have a little bit of me in it. Back with Cman and Bird we made summit photographs ate lunch and I made coffee. We spent a two hours on the summit before we closed the yardsale and headed back down the steep snowy trail. By the time we got back to the snow it was thigh deep postholing and the sound of rushing water underneath our snowy path. The creek that sepperated us from our camp had turned into a river and seemed quite angry about it. We forded the rushing water and made it back to camp drenched and exhausted.
Inside my tent that night I lay there with my headlamp on stairing at my hands and feet in disbelief of what I had just done. I had just climbed to 14,469′ and I didn’t have a single pain or injury, I didn’t even feel human. I fell asleep completely disassociated from my body.

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