PICTURES

Mount Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous United States, elevation 14,505 feet (4,421 meters). It is located at the boundary between California’s Inyo and Tulare counties. The western slope of the mountain lies within Sequoia National Park.

The climb to Mt. Whitney began about six months ago when I started training (or rather I focused on becoming fit). I read two books on climbing Mt. Whitney for middle-aged folks and found out that the author suggested it takes about one year. There were a couple of motivations for this climb. One was the reality of feeling old, the second was just wanting some good ole adventure. However, there was another bit of motivation and that was spurred on by a friend, Romina Avery. Our families have knows eachother for over 10 years. She has an overwhelming spirit of a natural adventurer and loves to work out no matter what she’s doing. Recently she experienced her second bout with breast cancer and fought it off, again, by undergoing radiation and having a hysterectomy earlier this year. After her first fight with cancer a few years ago, she said that she was going to climb Mt. Whitney. Her goal now was to climb Mt. Whitney as a two-time cancer survivor. Her faith in Jesus Christ showed strenght and humility before others. It was a blessing to climb with Romina.

The group was headed up by Danny Rossmango. Danny is one of the most unselfish persons I know. When one of the climbers, Rebecca, got altitude sickness, Danny insisted on carrying her pack. It was Danny who sacrificed his climb. On top of that, he left Romina, Josh and myself heat pads at the switchbacks before turning back. However, we did not see them (I wish we had). What a nice gesture! With Danny and Rebecca turning back at mid point of the switchbacks, that left Romina, Josh (who has an Abe Lincoln style beard sporting socks over his ears to keep warm) and I alone. I spent the day before getting to know Josh. He was one funny, witty all around great guy who happened to be a blessing to be around. We talked about his time serving in Iraq, moving to Los Angeles area, and hearing about his fiancee. Josh went back to his room, and I went up to the Portal to sleep in the car.

It was about 8:00 p.m. and I tried to get some quality sleep in my 4Runner (and tried not to think about bears), but sleeping in back of a car was not very comfy. I woke up feeling pretty refreshed at 2:00 a.m. and started to prepare. The four other climbers did not arrive until 3:00 a.m. Danny, Romina, and Rebecca left the Antelope Valley at 11:30 p.m. and were operating on very little or no sleep.

We were on the trail head at 3:15 a.m. The climb to the top of the tree line was without event, and we made good timing. It was dark and everyone was wearing their headlamps. Just before the Meadows at Trail Side, we saw the sun begin to rise. We could see lots of clouds hovering around us. From the Meadows to Trail Camp is where Rebecca was overcome by altitude sickness. Danny was monitoring her closely. We made it to Trail Camp and it was very cold. We had not expected it to be this cold, it was 20 degrees colder then I expected, so we were not prepared for what lay ahead. I wore four layers and the last one was my windbreaker. My hands were freezing. I just bought gloves (wind resistant, not cold resistant).

From Trail Camp and onto the switchbacks was not that difficult of a climb. The pain of climbing was overlaid by the feeling of freezing. About the midway point of the Switchbacks, Rebecca had to stop and Danny ushered her down to the Portal. This is where Josh took off ahead, leaving Romina and myself together (we didn’t see Josh until later when he was descending about a 1/4 of a mile from the summit as we were still ascending). While we were doing the Switchbacks, we discovered that our camelbaks (water) feed tubes were frozen. I was able to get it working by using a hand warmer and biting the tube to loosen the ice and then wacking it to make the ice fling. It froze again in a few minutes, so we were without water until we met up with Danny at the tree line on the way down.

Romina and I stayed close within eyesight. I knew that Romina hates the cold (a fact to anyone who knows her) and it was getting colder. She was very determined, but we struggled to make the summit. The last 1/4 mile was brutal. My guess was that is was about 15-19 degrees and the wind was blowing 35-45 mph. This was the hardest part. For me, my speech was a mess. I could not talk well, and I could not use my hands (in fact I have four fingers today that are still numb). We made it to the summit and ran into the hut. We tried to eat, but all our food was frozen. The hut was empty but within minutes about 10 people arrived. We were hoping to get enough body heat in the hut to make a difference but that failed. Romina was severly shaking and put on some rain gear, hoping it would help. I wanted to take several pictures of our feat but took very few. (I regret not taking more, but our health came before photography ). We needed to get off this mountian.

The trek down the mountain was a bit scary. There is one part of the trail that has large rocks and they were now covered in snow creating very slippery conditions for us hikers. We managed not to hurt ourselves. At the junction of the Crabtree Ranger Station trail split (I do not know the name of the trail), I had to stop to relieve myself. I told Romina I would catch up with her. She was still freezing and moved quickly down the switchbacks to get to the bottom. When I finally saw her, she was jogging! I had to jog in areas before I could catch up to her. She got toe cramps and had to stop. I finally caught up with her. We ate some frozen food; I had an apple, Romina had an orange. We continued down to the Meadow where we met the Ranger. He was coming up to warn the Trail Camp of a severe incoming storm. We trotted down the trail, until we met up with Danny who was climbing back up to meet us (isn’t he a saint!). We were looking down at Mirror Lake when we met him. He had water that was not frozen and more hand warmers. From there, we walked back down to Whitney Portal without any problems.

Overall the trip took:

3:15 to 11:45 to climb up (8:30 hours).

12:00 to 6:15 to climb down (6:15 hours).

On Friday I climbed my first 14,000 ft hike. I climbed White Mountain Peak, located outside of Bishop, California. I went to sleep near 11:00 pm and got three hours of sleep, the alarm went off at 2:00am and I was on the road at 3:00 with a full tank of gas. I drove four hours and was at the trail-head at 7:15. The hike would take me 3-1/2 hours to reach summit. I did not have time to acclimate. I left the house at 2,000 drove to 11,200 and climb to 14,252 in just a few hours. I felt fine on the way up. I had no issues. On the way down, I got back down a mile and half and there is this little climb, it kicked my butt. I was spent. I now had a headache, I think it was not having enough sleep. I do not believe it was from the altitude because It went away after eating in Lone Pine (8,000 ft). My right foot was blistering, I had added mole skin on the way up, but the issue was the mole skin was rubbing against my little toe. After the hike I looked at the toe and all the skin was missing (ouch). I band-aided it and band-aided the toe next to the other toe to keep them from rubbing. I also got some wind burn. I was glad that I brought my wind breaker. The wind was cold and blowing.

I finished the hike. It was 3-1/2 up and 3 hours down.

I planned a hike last Saturday in the San Gabriel’s, but my hip flared up, so I rescheduled to make the hike the following Friday (August 31, 2007). See Pictures.

I left the house at 5:00 and was on the Manzanita trail at 6:10 am and it was warm for early morning, but the whole hike seem to cool off as I went. The first leg up to Vincent Gap was nice and easy. I saw one large buck deer and many squirrels and lizards. I stopped at Vincent Gap to eat a little and started my accent to the top of Baden-Powell. I really did not have a hard time, either because I am in better shape or for this hike I used my trekking poles. I saw the only humans (two) on this trail for the whole day.

Panorama of Baden-PowellClick to enlarge

I eat some more at the top and took the trail to Islip Saddle. This was a nice trail and the scenery was open (it is on the ridge). Couple of miles and came to a sign that mentioned two “right” directions, one to Mt. Troop and the other to Little Jimmy Campground, but there was a fork in the trail it was to Dawson Saddle (as I learned and was not on the sign). This was a great little trail developed and maintained by the Boy Scouts, but the problem was it dumped me out at Dawson Saddle on the closed section of the Angeles Crest Highway. I was not lost, but not wanted to be. The highway is completed resurfaced. I had to walk down ACH for some 5.5 miles. I walked into Islip Saddle and found the trail head back to South Fork (this is the same spot for the PCT). This trail is poorly maintained and is about 5.1 miles long.

As I hiked down this trail I could hear thunder. At about two miles in it started to rain with lightning and thunder. I continued because it was light. As I walked that all changed. It began to rain so hard and was pelting me with pea size hail. Here is the problem, should I continue and risk being exposed to be stuck my lightning or find shelter and risk washed out trails and mud slides? What I decided was I wanted off the mountain, so I continued and monitored the lightning. When I would see a flash I would count seconds (each second is 1,000 ft of sound), I could determine how close the strikes were. When they were less than three thousand feet I either continued if larger trees around the trail or took some shelter. I confess I was not sure of the right answer. I do know that I was soaked and my IPod, phone and camera were at risk. My GPS unit is weather proof (water tight), so stayed out. I also saw two does and a baby (that four deer for the day, never seen any before).

Rainbow before the strom, Click to enlarge

Overall it was twenty four and 1/2 miles (11.5 hours) and I did not die on this hike. I did get some new blisters (common for me), even though I stopped three different times to add mole skin (before I left the house I added duct tape). After the drive home of one hour, I was stiff and will most likely be stiff for a day or so.

See the trip on Motionbased.

Click to expand

This morning I set out at 5:00am and starting walking. I walked for 22 miles. this is the longest I have ever walked. I picked it, because it is the distance of the hike of Mt Whitney.  I got a (some) blisters on the first half on my heals. They were nothing compared to the blisters on the balls of my feet and behind the big toe. I am hurting, ouch!

Talking to my friend Danny Rossmango he has picked up the permits to climb Mt. Whitney for our hike on September 20th. That is about five weeks away.

My training is coming alone, it has been 17-18 weeks (-30 lbs). I have done more the half dozen hikes and walk work (30-40 miles, a week). I have recently completed one of three parts that match the one hike of Whitney in three indivdual hikes.

1. Same Elevation Gain (hike Baldy Visitor Center to top of Mt. Antonio (6,000 ft gain). – August 4th.
2. Same distance as Mt. Whitney (22 miles). On August 11th, I plan to walk around town on a 22 mile walk from the house to Palmdale Ave and back home (first image below). If my feet survive this distance (I have never walked this distance), then I plan to hike from South Fork Camp to Vincent Gap, up to Baden-Powell over to Islip Saddle back down to South Fork. This is almost 22 miles of hiking on August 25th (second image below).
3. Altitude check. Climb White Mountain Peak (14,246 ft). This is my test for elevation. It is a bit shorter than Mt. Whitney, and only 3,000 gain.  This is planned for September 8th.

This will cover all three parts of hiking Mt. Whitney which will happen September 20th!

 August 11th walk

  August 25th hike

I hiked with Michael Sbihli from church and his friend Jon.  We drove down to Upland leaving our house at 5:30am to make it on the trail at 7:30. At about 2.5 miles on the trail we met a wonderful young married couple that they were from Greg Laurie’s church and come to find out, the wife had played in Worship with my worship leader Dwayne Clark. We spent the rest of the hike with this couple. TJ the husband talked to me during the middle (hardest) part. That was nice, because I could take the focus off the hiking and making it seem not so hard and long.

This was a long day. About 10 hours of hiking. My hips were talking to me, but did their job.

 Motionbase results of the climb. Some results in spots did not work well for the GPS due to high brush.

I set out to Hike Mt Antonio on Saturday. I had to drive down the 14 freeway to the 210 freeway and exit in Upland. This makes for a long day. I did this hike on my own, but there were hundreds of people on the trail. It was a warm day (90 degrees) but breezy. The trail was up and back was a little over nine miles. This is my first time on Mt Baldy, I was not sure what to do, but I observed others, and asked this lady for help. She mentioned that the trail (Baldy Bowl) I asked about, was after the first turn after the San Antonio Falls.

This trail is to most direct to the top and the steepest. It was very pretty, at about the half way point is the Ski Hut, were most folks stop to eat lunch. It was very hard hike, it has a vertical gain of 3800′ in four miles.

This is the first time I used my hiking poles. They were some help on the going up, but clearly saved me coming down. My knees were talking to me, I would have been a mess without them.

Motion Based Results

Photographs

Today’s hike was the hardest to date. I was blessed to not have to do it alone. I mentioned at our Care Group at church that I was hiking, two lovely young ladies (in their 20’s) said they loved to hike, so we got a group together. The group was large, so I did not bring my dog, but the group was made up of Lea, her brother Lane, his friend Matt, and Jill from church. This was a hot day to walk, but the GPS stated we did 13 miles (motionbased stated higher). We left a car for the ride home at Vincent Gap, and started the hike at South Fork Camp on the Manzanita Trail. The first leg was 5.5 miles. The trail stopped at Vincent Gap and we continued the normal 4 mile hike up Baden-Powell and the 4 miles down. It was a hard climb my hips were hurting, they did not want to lift up my leg, and the heat was real factor. Total altitude gain was just under a mile for the hike.

Photo of us on top of Baden-Powell (coming soon)

Google Earth Image of the hike

When I was hiking on Sunday, I took my eyes off the trail to get out the way of up coming hikers. When I did that, I tripped over a rock and fell on my right knee. I got up quickly to show that I was not really hurt and got back on task to finish the hike. When I got home, I cleaned up the knee. It is mostly scrapes, but since a lot of nerve ending are on the skin, it really hurt for two days. Today, I do not notice it unless something brushes up against it, like my dogs tail trumping on it. The knee looks worst today as it is scabbed and has a red around each cut.

I had not planned to climb this one until June 26th, but I learned that the Angeles Crest Highway from the Wrightwood side is closed at Vincent Gulch Divide when on my way today’s hike.

Highlights:
Panoramic views from summit, unusual limber pine forest
Near: Wrightwood, CA
Scenery: Very pretty
Distance: 8 miles round trip
Elevation Gain: 2800 ft
Hike Time: 3.5 hours
Difficulty: Strenuous
Trail Condition: Well maintained trail
HikeType: Out and Back
Summary: This is a strenuous hike up to the 9,400 foot peak of Mount Baden-Powell. The hike, up 41 switchbacks, takes you through an amazing range of vegetation. Along the way you will see Oaks, Jeffery Pines, Sugar Pines, Incense Cedar, Lodgepole Pines, White Fir, and near the summit the knarled Limber Pines. The views from the summit are breathtaking, looking over the Mojave desert and Southern Sierra.

Photography