The agony and the ecstacy

June 17

I woke as early as I could for the climb up Whitney, although the diminished tent population told me I was still "late" to leave camp at 6 am. The morning was chilly but very crisp and clear; the perfect weather for the gallery of visual delights that awaited me.
First of these was Timberline lake. It's name is obvious and appropriate, as it still held trees along its shores. While cold, the air was also perfectly still, making the lake a mirror to double the majesty around it.

Timberline Lake just after dawn, the valley approach to Whitney behind.

After the lake, the trail climbs up through a rocky valley with sheer walls. Spires dotted these walls, sentinels to my passage. Moonscapes are beautiful. Desolation and cold are the only things a body can expect in terms of creature comforts up here, but the eye and mind remain drawn. It is because we do not belong here, I thought. It is because we love that which is most different from ourselves or our tamed home environs. And this is really admirable in us, in humans. As egotistical as we are, we also revere that which is most hostile to our species.

The valley approach to Whitney

Such happy musings were suddenly and thoroughly tested as the trail, now close to the summit ridge, was joined by the Whitney Portal trail. This trail is the popular route up Whitney. Not only can you use it to do Whitney as a day hike from your car, it is also the first step in the perennially overcrowded John Muir Trail. Suddenly there were hundreds of people, loud and boisterous about their upcoming or just completed "conquest" of Whitney. Hiking up to the summit, I saw a lot of people who were spending their day as actors in their own personal movie about mountaineering: Fully teched out in steel crampons, over-the-calf gaiters, ice axes, and glacier goggles, they seemed to be searching for a perilous glacier to overcome. None obliged them. The trail passed through only a couple of short, scant, nontechnical snowfields. The air rang with the sound of people dulling their crampons on rock. At least their REI dividend will be fat, I thought.
The summit brought new personalities. The guy in full camo with a Rambo knife on his hip. He, appropriately, skulked around furtively and only ever seemed to look at things through the corners of his eyes. But it was in vain; for all his stealth, I could still totally see him. A gaggle of paunched middle-agers high fived and congratulated each other on their time. For them, this was a race course. There's a hut on the summit, and I peaked in to find like 20 people huddled in there, looking shell-shocked and seeking shelter from all the sun and beauty outside.

Muir would be barfing into his beard over this

It was just gross, and such a repudiation of my happy thoughts on the way up. People were not here to revere a hostile world, they were here to conquer it. Or worse: They used it as a backdrop for their own personal ego narrative. 

Yeah, well, no one insisted you be here, Arno. I hustled myself back down the mountain, each step lessening my burden of doubt about the human condition. I guess the most important thing was to glimpse some piece of why I like desolate places. And anyway, there was food to eat, spring water to drink, a clear sky. It was a fine day.

I passed through Crabtree, picking up gear I had stashed there, and hiked down to Wright Creek. In addition to food, water, and sun, there were trout. I whiled away the last of the light catching trout, with great success this time. I caught two big enough to eat, and was therefore presented with the problem of how to cook them. No fires allowed up here, and no skillet... So I boiled them. Not exactly a delicacy, but it was fresh meat.