Goal for the day: Get a burger at Whitney Portal (8,352 feet) and other perks of civilization!

One last night on the trail in the wilderness. Simple, right?

Wrong.

It had been a long night with me only getting short bursts of sleep.

The wind that had blown through Trail Camp the previous evening had continued pretty much throughout the entire night.

Up until then, my earplugs had apparently kept me from waking up during thunderstorms and rain showers during previous nights on the trail. My tent had kept me dry and safe from thunder, lightning, and rain.

But while I couldn’t hear the wind, my tent could feel it. So I was woken up many times during the night by the tent shifting and flapping in the wind. The wind barrier that someone had constructed at the campsite I had chosen didn’t keep me sheltered enough. If I had known that the wind would last all night, I would have found a more sheltered location or forced myself to descend to Outpost camp.

Once, the pole for my tent came apart when the wind stretched the tent. Fortunately, it didn’t break, but I did have to scramble to reconnect the segments and put the pole back into the eyelets to keep my tent upright. It was good that there wasn’t any rain, or that would have soaked me and at least some of my gear. I’m glad that I used some paracord when I set up my tent the night before to anchor the back to some big rocks, since that seemed to help keep at least part of the tent more stable.

Then, the rain fly for my tent started flapping wildly in the wind. Scrambling to re-secure it, I found that several of the loops that connect the corners to the tent stakes had snapped and I couldn’t just reattach them to the stakes.

So I performed a traditional Sierra Nevada Mountain repair: I set some big rocks on top of the edges to hold it in place.

I could have tried to use my spare paracord to tie the corners to the tent stakes, but that would have taken time and with the strong wind blowing the tent around I didn’t want to spend a lot of time outside the tent in case the wind blew it away since it wouldn’t have my weight inside to hold it down. The rocks served me well for the rest of the night.

What a last night on the trail.

Probably the worse night I had EVER had on any of my backpacking trips. The rain storm climbing Mt Meru in Tanzania was close, but I wasn’t in a tent when I had that fun.

Of course, I usually have the luxury of checking the weather report before I go on a trek and postponing it if the weather looks like it’ll be really bad. That wasn’t really an option on a 25 day trek. You had to live with what Mother Nature gave you. You could still get pissed and swear a lot, though. 🙂

If I had decided to stop at the JMT/Mt Whitney Trial junction and camp in the bivvy sites, that could have been trouble. If the wind was as fierce and lasted as long as it did at Trial Camp, I could have been in real trouble. The bivvy sites are totally exposed and don’t have much protection against wind or the elements. So, at least not camping there had been a good decision.

Before dawn, at least I had the joy of seeing some clear skies full of stars hanging over Mt Whitney and the eastern sky.

Except for a haze hanging down over Lone Pine to the east, there was no smoke or haze up at Trail camp! Fantastic!

The only thing to do was to climb back up to the summit to see it with completely clear skies!

That was the lack of oxygen to my brain talking again. 🙂

Then I was rewarded for stopping at Trail Camp: The sunrise was great! I enjoyed the goodbye gift from the trail. Thanks. I needed that.

After the sunrise, a marmot came to help me pack up. He wasn’t much help. 🙂

I packed a little differently. I intended to throw away a number of things as soon as got the the trailhead, so I did organize my pack to make it easy to dispose of those items without a lot of unpacking and repacking.

Starting down, I confirmed that the trail from Trail Camp down to Outpost camp was a challenge on fresh legs. On tired legs the previous afternoon? It would have been hell on Earth. Wait… The previous evening, Trail Camp seemed very much like red brimstone and the strong wind… maybe I stayed in hell on my last night after all. 🙂

And FINISHED!!!! It’s amazing after 211 miles (plus 11 to get to Whitney Portal and probably another 20 or so for various side hikes and diversions) that I was able to smile.

Oh, I guess you can’t tell that I was smiling through the mask… Here you go.

Wow.

What a trek. I didn’t know if I could do it when I started it and did consider aborting several times during it (although not as often as I might have thought when I started). I didn’t know how long it would take me and I feel that doing it in 25 days was pretty good for a 54 year old fat dude. 🙂

I started in Yosemite with a 42 pound backpack. The scale at the Whitney Trailhead said it was 36 pounds. So, no water and almost no food was still 36 pounds. I have to work on lightening my pack somehow in the future. But I’m probably spoiled by the ultralight gear you can by these days. It might have weighed 90 pounds in the previous millennium.

Warning: Mindless post-trek ramblings below.

At the trailhead, I threw away the garbage I had accumulated ever since Charlotte Lake, my half dead water filter, my squeeze bottle (it had started to leak, probably from all the squeezing I had to do to get water through my filter), my empty Gatorade bottle, my used TP (ick), unused food, my half used gas canister, and other things I did not intend to use again or were damaged during the trek.

The one thing I would NEVER throw out was my repaired trekking pole! Never.

It had served me better than I ever could have hoped. While I don’t think I would have aborted the whole trek due to the broken pole, the fact that the repaired pole held up to all the abuse I put it through for the 14 days and 134 miles after it broke is something to remember. While I’ll never use it on a hike again, I will put it into my hiking pole collection alongside my Mt Fuji branded hiking sticks and all my retired hiking sticks that I have added hiking medallions onto in order to track my conquests over the past decade.

And my backpack has probably done it’s last trek as well. The large tears in the fabric, the belt pouch I had to cut off and replace before the hike began, the straps that are held on with staples, and other abuse I have subjected it to over the past 6 years has finally earned it an honorable retirement. I’ll keep it as a memento of all the great places it has taken me.

Then I used the first sit down bathroom I had access to since day 8. It was a pit toilet, but after emerging from the wilderness it was wonderful.

Then I had to go get a Diet Coke from the Portal Store.

And they only had PEPSI! What the hell was the past 222+ miles for if I couldn’t get an ice cold Diet Coke at the end!! The horror!! 🙂

I drank the Diet Pepsi anyway. 🙂 Desperate times call for desperate measures. Ick.

I placed an order for a double BBQ cheeseburger and fries, then went shopping for JMT swag.

T-Shirt, hat, car decals, pins, handkerchief, and a few other things. No ice cream. It wasn’t that hot that day (at least at the Portal), so I didn’t really feel like ice cream.

The T-shirt quickly replaced my hiking T-shirt and the stench around me dropped by half. The hat was used to replace my dirty sun hat and also cover my dirty and oily hair that my sun hat usually covered on the trail. 🙂

As I waited for and then ate my burger, I confronted another problem: I could not get cell phone reception.

I tried in various locations around the Portal, even down the road a bit where it overlooked the canyon and Lone Pine. But there was nothing. I know there used to be coverage in select spots at the Portal (at least with my old iPhone 6 and 7). And I had briefly gotten a signal on my iPhone XR on the last switchback before getting to the trailhead. I wasn’t going to climb back up there, though. 🙂

Even the store clerk couldn’t get anything on his phone and he said he could usually get reception up there. My attempts to get him to let me use their land line were not successful. 🙁

Not only was I looking to get a hotel room for the night, I had a bunch of bus schedules and other things to check on.

And most importantly, I had to get down to Lone Pine from the Portal. Hiking another 11+ miles wasn’t an option after what I just had completed.

Under normal circumstances, I could have hitched down to the town. Most hikers were usually pretty good about helping other hikers.

These were not normal times. Getting a ride in a stranger’s car in a pandemic was likely to be hard, if not impossible.

My original plan this year was to call for one of the shuttle services to pick me up, but without cell service that wasn’t possible.

I tried sending the two services a message using my Inreach in hopes that it would get a response.

The store clerk offered to give me a ride when he got off work after 3pm (for $30). That was a little later than I’d hopped (it was about 1pm), but it was better than nothing.

While I waited, I got another Diet Pepsi and some root beer (to get rid of the taste of the Pepsi 🙂 ). I also walked down to the overflow lot (the best place to catch as many cars headed down to Lone Pine) and sat by the road and stuck my thumb out anytime a car went by. It might get me to Lone Pine faster while I waited for the clerk to finish work. I wore my mask to hopefully reassure people that I was taking proper precautions.

A little after 2pm, a saint stopped. He had to search for his own mask first, but he would give me a ride down to Lone Pine.

THANK YOU!

He had tried to day hike Whitney that day, but was unable to summit. It’s a shame, because the weather looked great that day. It figures the day after *MY* trip to the summit it would be nice. 🙂

I gave him some advice on acclimatization, Dimox, and other things that I have done to prepare for my treks. But I had never tried to day hike Mt Whitney before, so I couldn’t give him a lot of help on that.

Maybe I will try to day hike it someday, but I don’t feel a particular need to do it.

Down in Lone Pine, I started by finding a hotel to stay at that night. There STILL wasn’t cell service down in Lone Pine, so something had to be wrong. So I couldn’t look online for a room.

So I did something I had never considered: Walking into a hotel and asking if they had a room for the night. How analog. 🙂

Having secured a room after a long trek, I would have normally jumped into the shower for an hour and scraped the dirt off my body.

But since it was late in the afternoon, I decided to take care of something else first before the stores may close: Souvenir shopping.

I didn’t know if I’d have time in the morning and I have found some unique items in the past at the little shops in Lone Pine. I did find another John Muir T-Shirt, but not much else. It was worth a shot.

I also grabbed a liter bottle of Diet Coke. At long last. Ahhhhhhhhh… 🙂

Then it was time to strip down and jump into the shower. I was appalled, but not surprised at how much dirt swirled down the drain as I ran the soap, wash cloth, and old rusty rake over my filthy body to try and get the dirt off.

I had to shampoo my hair at least 3 times and add conditioner to get it to feel clean.

Ahhhhhhhhh…

Despite scrubbing fairly hard, I couldn’t quite get my finger or toe nails completely clean, but they were better than when I got into the shower.

I also brushed my teeth since I didn’t bother that morning at camp. 🙂

Drying myself, I was pleased that the towel wasn’t filthy when I was done. I thought for sure there would still be dirt that I’d have to take another shower later to get off. Maybe I hadn’t been as dirty as I thought?

No, I was probably dirtier.

I should have bought some deodorant at the grocery store, but it wasn’t like I was planning on doing anything that would make me sweat any ‘month’ soon.

Then I had to work on getting back to Yosemite to get my Jeep and go home. Cell coverage was still not working and the hotel clerk said that it was out for everyone all day. That explained why I couldn’t get a signal at the Portal. Not sure how I got the brief signal while on the trail, but maybe that came from a different cell tower (maybe in Independence)?

But the hotel had this newfangled thing called WIFI. 🙂

And my cell phone apparently could make calls over WIFI. Well, what will they think of next?

Oh, WIFI meant Internet access too! So I researched the bus schedules and checked for any changes due to COVID-19.

The bus from Lone Pine to Lee Vining left at 6am. Naturally, I’d like to sleep in a bit later than that. 🙂

But they also had capacity limits due to COVID-19 and I couldn’t make a reservation to guarantee a seat within 24 hours.

And if I got that bus to Lee Vining, then I had to catch a YARTS bus to get into Yosemite and down to the Valley.

YARTS has a 48-hour reservation window and the same capacity limits to encourage social distancing. So, even if I can get on the bus from Lone Pine I might end up getting stranded in Lee Vining.

And no Uber or Lift (or even regular taxis) on this side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (trust me I checked). Maybe in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes, but not in these small towns.

And the shuttle services wanted $500 to $600 for a ride from Lone Pine to the Valley. Plus only one of them could schedule me for noon the next day.

I’d have to take my chances on the buses.

I hadn’t thought that I’d have dinner after the big burger at the Portal, but I got the urge for more hot meat that wasn’t re-hydrated. So I went out and got some (takeout) spareribs from the Mt Whitney Restaurant across the street. Ahhhhhhh…

After dealing with some emails to let people know I was alive and had access to flush toilets now, I slipped into bed before 8pm.

Ahhhhh… bedsheets.

7 miles hiked, 4:45 hours, 550 feet climbed

Highlights:
• Wind throughout the night threatened to blow me away, but I survived
• Glorious sunrise at Trail Camp!
• Burger at Whitney Portal!
• Diet Coke in Lone Pine!
• Long, hot shower!
• Pork Ribs for Dinner!
• Daily Goal Achieved!!
• Trek Goal Achieved!!!
• Goal for the Year Achieved!!!!