State Of The Creation

Posts Tagged ‘Environment’

Continued From Prior Post…

Even going up in late September, there was still plenty of ice and snow on certain sections of the trail.  It was easy to see why they installed steel cables to hold on to on one section of the trail that is in shade almost all day long.  I stopped for a while to watch the CHP helicopter fly in and pick-up the sick hiker back at Trail Camp immediately below us on the trail.  You would think it is no big deal to fly a helicopter in to pick-up a sick hiker.  But the pilot appeared to have some difficulty navigating the wind currents and natural obstacles as he was coming in for a landing on a small patch of rock near the lake.  He circled quite a few times and was quite cautious in making his approach to this little spot tucked in between a number of high mountain peaks—including the highest one in the continental United States.

We made Trail Crest in reasonably good time and encountered a party.  Quite a few different groups were stopped at this point—resting, drinking, grabbing a bite to eat from their food supplies, snapping pictures in precarious locations, etc.  We did the same.  Trail Crest is a narrow spot on the trail that passes through a saddle in the mountain range with large drop-offs on each side of the trail.  It is also where the eastern border to Sequoia National Park crosses the trail.  Now, as we passed to the other side of the mountains we camped under the prior night, we could look down into the National Park for the first time and see the John Muir Trail make its way through the Park and up to this spot.  Instead of following that path, though, we were going to hike along the back edge of these enormous mountains and gradually pick our way along the trail to the summit of Mount Whitney—now only a little more than 2 miles away.

It was about this time that we lost one of our group.  As you may recall from an earlier post in this series, one of the guys I was hiking with had attempted to reach the summit of Whitney before, but was turned back due to circumstances beyond his control.  Reaching the summit was quite literally on his bucket list.  And a storm was due to blow through camp the next day, making another summit attempt much more difficult or impossible.  So, now that we were so close to our goal and circumstances seemed ideal, my friend sheepishly asked if we would mind him hiking on ahead of us—that we could catch-up with him at the summit.  Of course, we said that was fine and that was the last we saw of him until the summit.  A small grin emerged on his face as he took-off on pure adrenalin and we never saw him ahead of us on the trail until we reached the top.

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As luck would have it the next morning, day-hikers were the alarm clock for everyone.  As they start coming through Trail Camp just before sunrise on their way to the summit, they cannot seem to help but let out shouts to the rest of their group that they have reached the base of the 97 switchbacks, or that they can now see the summit they are hiking to, or that everyone should stop to filter some water out of the lake.  While I can appreciate their enthusiasm, they seem completely oblivious to the fact there are many of us just off the path still trying to sleep in our tents before we start our attack on the summit that day.  Or that we did not get the rest we wanted the prior evening due to an injured hiker stuck up higher on the mountain.

Before long, it seems like everyone in Trail Camp is stirring.  Most are cooking breakfast and are preparing to hike to the summit of Mount Whitney.  The lone Ranger on the mountain has emerged again and is assessing our ill hiker.  Apparently, the day-hiker is still struggling.  At some point during the night, where it got down into the 30’s with wind, it made sense to him to strip all of his clothing off and sleep on the floor of the tent he had been provided, with only a sleeping bag partially draped over him.  He also still could not answer certain basic questions about himself.

The Ranger was using his radio to make arrangements to have the nearest helicopter, which was owned and operated by the California Highway Patrol, set-down on a small flat pad next to the lake that runs along the side of Trail Camp.  The ill day-hiker was in no condition to hike down the mountain to secure needed medical attention.

Trail Camp slowly emptied out as all of our fellow mountaineers left their campsites with day-packs on their backs to reach the summit.  We actually wound-up being one of the last groups to leave the camp that morning, but that also gave us a nice clear trail to navigate without needing to pass or be passed by other hikers on the narrow path.  So we started up the 97 switchbacks to reach Trail Crest—the next major trail junction and landmark on our journey.

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With no helicopter coming in or gear available, the Ranger told us the day-hiker, suffering from H.A.C.E., was just going to have to ride out the night at Trail Camp.  Admittedly, while he was still weak, disoriented, and somewhat incoherent, the hiker no longer looked to be as close to collapse as he was higher up on the mountain.  He was not out of danger, but riding out the night on the mountain did not seem like a death sentence, at least not to me.

The Ranger brought up an extra sleeping bag from a stash further down the mountain and one of the guys helping had volunteered his tent.  They continued to work on fluids and nutrition while everything was put in place.  The Ranger and the day-hiker’s two friends would hike part-way down the mountain to a crude shelter and the rest of us would be in Trail Camp for the remainder of the night.

I slept fairly soundly the rest of the night—probably due to the major interruption of heading up the mountain in the middle of the night to try and help the sick hiker.  Occasionally, the wind would blow through camp and make it sound like someone was walking right by my tent in the middle of the night.  That took a little to get used to.  When I got up in the middle of the night to take care of a bodily function, I also enjoyed the unbelievable view of the stars you get from high altitudes in remote locations.  It is almost as if you can touch them.  I love that!

And, as far as I knew, our injured day-hiker was resting comfortably a few tents away from me.

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Upon arriving at the scene, it did not look good.  One of the guys, who went up to help, had put his jacket on the struggling hiker to try and keep him warm.  They were also trying to get fluids into him, and give him bites of an energy bar, all while also trying to move him down the trail.  The trail is so narrow, at this point, we had to move single file.  One good Samaritan was in front, trying to hold the guy up by his arms and keep him from falling forward, while the other guy was in back, trying to hold him up by his waste and not let him tip backwards.

Every step required huge effort and, periodically, our distressed hiker would just collapse in a heap on the trail, despite the efforts of these two men.  His motor skills were so diminished, and he was so weak, that every step forward was difficult, but it had to be done.  He was too heavy to be carried and the trail too treacherous to even attempt it without special equipment, which was not immediately available.  His mental capacity and ability to communicate was also severely diminished.  It took a lot of focused attention just to keep him from lapsing into unconsciousness, which we think he did from time to time for short periods.

I could now see more clearly the urgency of the situation.  I became the gear carrier and an additional light on the trail while my friend, the ER Nurse, stepped in to relieve the guy who had been helping at the back of the procession, who then quickly went back down the mountain to determine the status of alerting the authorities to the emergency. We continued to struggle to get this largely incoherent and nearly unconscious man down the trail of switchbacks to Trail Camp.  The hope was that a helicopter would come and pick him up to take him to the nearest hospital for needed treatment.  Alternatively, we hoped the Ranger had been located and he had the necessary equipment (and perhaps personnel) to allow carrying the sick man down to Whitney Portal on the trail.

It was slow going, but we finally got to Trail Camp, which is situated at about 12,000 feet—not an ideal altitude for someone suffering from H.A.C.E.  The Ranger had not yet been located.  Some of the guys had been able to get word out that there was a hiker in trouble on the mountain, but had not received any confirmation on what the authorities were going to do.  As the options were being considered, the only Ranger on the mountain finally arrived.  He was quick to indicate that a helicopter was not coming in at night and the only real choice was to try and ride out the night at Trail Camp.

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Their day-hiking friend actually started exhibiting signs of altitude sickness before lunch on the mountain just above our campsite.  They decided to push on, though.  To make matters worse, they said they were having to remind him to drink water along the way and had run out of food much earlier in the day.  They made the summit, but by the time they made it back to Trail Crest where the John Muir Trail comes over the mountain from Sequoia National Park, their friend was not doing well at all and sat down to rest.

Instead of getting some renewed energy with the rest, his condition continued to deteriorate.  It got to the point where he did not know his name or where he was from or what he did for a living and was on the verge of collapsing.  The first two guys who sprinted up the mountain to help in the dark were experienced mountaineers.  These guys recounted experiences climbing in Nepal and on other much higher peaks.  They quickly relayed down that the hiker in trouble had High Altitude Cerebral Edema (H.A.C.E.) and wanted that information relayed to the Ranger and to any reachable emergency personnel.

H.A.C.E. is a potentially fatal medical condition that can happen when climbing at high altitudes—especially if the symptoms are not quickly spotted and mitigating measures put in place.  I was vaguely familiar with it from documentaries I had watched on mountain climbing and from some basic first aid research I had done for the trip.  My friend, the ER Nurse, was familiar enough with it to know it was life threatening and we had to get this guy to lower altitude and take some other steps or he would die.

We were heading up the mountain with a splint and basic first aid supplies – none of which would be helpful in the case of a hiker with H.A.C.E.  So, we quickly ran back to our campsite and regrouped.  We dropped off the useless first aid gear.  We also prepared ourselves for a worst case possibility of needing to help this guy all the way back down the mountain to Whitney Portal through the cold of the night.  We grabbed more layers of clothing, gloves, water, and a few energy bars and hoped for the best.  If we spent the night helping get this guy off the mountain, we would also likely need to adjust our plans to attack the Mount Whitney summit the next day.

Once we were regrouped, we headed up the trail to see what we would find and how we could help.  Others in camp were busy trying to get messages out to the authorities and determine where the nearest ranger would likely be.

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It was my first night camping on Mount Whitney.  We had successfully beat the sunset to Trail Camp and would be making our attempt to reach the summit the next day by hiking with just day packs from our camp to the summit and back.  I had drifted off into a peaceful sleep in my tent when I was startled awake by shouting voices.  Within a few seconds, I could tell the voices were coming from high on the mountain looming over our campsite.

These were shouts of distress—calls for help.  They were yelling for someone to go and get the ranger (wherever he was) for a hiker on the trail who needed help.  Immediately, there was stirring in Trail Camp as people tried to decide on the best course of action.  I was hiking with an Emergency Room Nurse so he and I decided to head up the trail with some first aid supplies to see if we could help.

We were only a hundred yards or so from camp when we met two guys coming down the trail.  They turned out to be the injured hiker’s friends who came down the mountain looking for more help as soon as the first two guys from our camp reached them to lend a hand.  They were exhausted and had been trying to get their friend down off the highest point of the mountain for half the day now and things had been getting worse all afternoon.

These guys were day hikers from southern California.  They were part of a running club who had done some special altitude training, much like we did, to get ready for their assault on Mount Whitney.  They actually started hiking at Whitney Portal when we were waking up in Sacramento that morning.  They reached the summit about the same time we were beginning our hike at Whitney Portal.  But now, well after dark, they were still high up on the mountain, a long way from their car, without the clothing or supplies to be on the mountain any longer.

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It was fascinating to see the two different groups using this trail on the mountain.  The backpackers were all settled in for the night and were having dinner.  In fact, some were already asleep, with plans to start for the summit before the sun was even up the next morning.  On the other hand, the day-hikers, with light packs, had hours more hiking to do in the dark.

Mount Whitney is the tallest peak in the continental United States.  If you are in good shape and plan well, you can actually get from the trailhead at Whitney Portal all the way to the summit and back to the trailhead in a day.  The typical approach seems to be to start at Whitney Portal around 2:30am with a day pack, extra layers of clothing, water filter, and food.  That will put you at Trail Camp just as the sun is rising.  Then you attack the 97 switchbacks and traverse to the summit by midday and then reverse it, which usually goes a bit quicker.

This means many day-hikers on Mount Whitney are doing the first and last parts of their hike in the dark—depending upon the time of year when they are doing it.  It also means they are heading through Trail Camp at sunrise and close to sunset—often stopping to filter some water out of the nearby lake.

Unfortunately, many of the people who attempt to do Mount Whitney as a day-hike are not prepared for it and do not respond well to variables presented to them during their journey.  This is the reason we continued to see lights coming down the mountain trail above our camp long after the sun set—day-hikers not prepared to spend the night on the mountain, who were fatigued and still had hours of hiking in front of them with limited or depleted supplies.  There is very little margin for error when attempting to ascend Mount Whitney as a day-hike and yet many of the day-hikers we saw did not appear to have prepared well for that reality.

As I fell asleep that night, I continued to hear the footsteps of behind schedule day-hikers passing by the camp on the nearby trail.  It seemed like I had not been asleep long when I was suddenly startled awake by shouts for help from one of those hikers high up on the mountain above our camp.

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The sun had now set and there was just the dusk light that is left right after the sun dips below the horizon.  There was also some reflected light coming from some nearby mountain faces that still had a view of the sun.  My campsite was set for the night and I was ready to cook some dinner.  Unfortunately, now I was beginning to run scenarios through my head of what to do.  The two friends I was on the mountain with had not yet arrived at camp.

Did one of them get injured below?  Did they decide they could not make it all the way to Trail Camp and elected to set-up camp for the night lower on the mountain?  Should I just camp here without them for the night or should I head back down the mountain in search of them?  If I headed down the mountain, should I bring all my gear since there was a chance I could be going all the way back to the trailhead and would need to set-up camp down there?  Or should I just bring a day pack because it would be easier and I could move much more quickly up and down the mountain?

Luckily, as I was weighing the pros and cons of the various courses of action, my two friends appeared on the trail next to my camp site.  They had elected to rest at a lake lower on the trail earlier in the afternoon and that was the reason for the later arrival.  Now, if they hurried, they could get their camp sites set-up with the last little bits of daylight and have dinner.

We could all feel the temperature dropping quickly as the sunlight disappeared and our body temperatures dropped after an afternoon of strenuous hiking.  We were adding layers of clothes as we heated up our freeze-dried dinners.  The weather forecast for Mount Whitney we had looked at the prior day indicated temperatures would likely drop below freezing in the middle of the night.

While we were all settling in for the night, having hot meals, laying out sleeping bags in our tents, an adding layers of clothes, there were still day-hikers walking by our campsite on the trail.  They were going to hike down in the dark what we had just spent the afternoon climbing.

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After rounding one of those corners on the trail where I was greeted with the sight of far more mountain to conquer before I could set my pack down, I actually started stopping people coming down the trail and asking them what was ahead.  My pace was slowing down and my body was telling me it was time to stop.  But I completely forgot how much these feelings of physical fatigue can be influenced by my mind.

I struggled to get the last couple of miles up the trail and I knew we were racing the sun to the camp site for the night.  If I did not want to be setting up camp in the dark, I had to keep moving.  And so I did.  One step after another up the mountain with my pack filled with gear and supplies.  Little did I know my two friends I was on the mountain with were still a ways behind me.

I was actually focused on trying to stay ahead of them since I had injured my knee slightly on one of our training hikes and was concerned, if it flared-up, I was really going to slow us down.  So I tried to stay ahead and move at the best clip I could so there would be some margin, if I needed it, to not hold up my group.

When I finally dragged myself into the designated Trail Camp for backpackers under the summit of Mount Whitney, I suddenly had a burst of energy.  I quickly set-up my tent and camp site, hiked over to a nearby lake and filtered some drinking water to replenish my supplies, and was sitting and resting as the sun was setting.  That is when I realized that the burst of energy I had just experienced was probably more mental than physical.  If I had kept a better mental attitude during the last couple of miles I hiked that day, they probably would have been more enjoyable and I would have covered the ground more quickly.

But now that I was resting, watching the sun set next to my tent and starting to think about cooking some dinner, I started to wonder what had happened to my two friends.  We left Whitney Portal together and kept one another in sight during the first couple of miles.  And we all had the same goal of getting camp set-up before the sun set.  Had something happened to them?  Did I need to go back down the mountain looking for them?

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After much planning and preparation, our three-day adventure on Mount Whitney was truly under way now as we lifted ourselves and our fully-loaded (actually, overloaded, as it would turn out) backpacks up the steep mountain trail above Whitney Portal.  And, for a guy who had never done this particular mountain trail before, it turned out like a lot of them do.  Every time I thought I was almost there, I would come around a corner to see a whole lot more mountain that needed to be conquered before I would reach the camping site for the night.

Different people attack strenuous climbs with packs in different ways.  Some take it very slow and steady.  Some take frequent breaks.  Some try and keep their bodies right at the limit the whole way.  Some prefer to do surges of quick attacks and progress followed by short rests.  Ultimately, though, it is about finding the rhythm where your body functions most efficiently and, for each person, that is a little different.

I read an old book earlier this year called Seven Summits, about the quest of two men to be the first to climb to the top of the tallest peak on each of the seven continents within one year.  It is a fascinating tale if you ever get a chance to read it.  But one of the things these men discovered was that when your body is operating at its limits at altitudes far beyond what it is accustomed to, it is imperative to get into some kind of a breathing and stepping rhythm to be successful.

Mount Whitney was nowhere near tall enough to necessitate such an approach, yet it was clear to me that each person in our party, and some of the other people I was able to observe on the mountain, had their own preferred rhythm.  Those who did not were struggling severely, but some of that could have also been attributable to biting off more than they could chew.

For me, it is all about momentum.  If I stop for too long or take my pack off my back and rest, I am usually worse off for the rest.  I am better off continuing to move than to truly rest.  That does not mean I do not stop to catch my breath during strenuous portions of the climb and let my heart rate settle a bit, but I try to keep those breaks short, never take my pack off, and then continue moving.  I still forget how much of this type of climbing is also psychological.

To be continued….