Climbing the Mountain

I stumbled through the snow, following an apparently endless trail. It was mid-afternoon, sunny and bright, but the harsh, steady wind, completely unobstructed here above the tree line, now made it bitterly cold. As I walked along the barren ridge, the snow gave way to talus, the loose, jumbled rock that covers the slopes of mountains like the one I was attempting to ascend.

I would like to say that my mind was filled with profound thoughts as I neared the summit of this great mountain, but I can't really remember thinking anything. I knew I was suffering from hypoxia. In the thin air at this elevation my brain was not getting enough oxygen, and I knew I was in trouble. The feeling was very similar to being drunk. My coordination was faltering, as evidenced by my frequent loss of footing on the loose rocks, and I couldn't think straight. I only knew that if I stopped, if I laid down to rest as I longed to do, I would not wake up the next morning to find my body had returned to normal (with perhaps a slight hangover), I would in fact get colder and colder, slip into unconsciousness, and maybe even die before help arrived to get me down off the mountain.

With this single pervasive thought, I'm in trouble, I must keep walking, I was driven forward. I no longer enjoyed the magnificent view all around me. I no longer took any photographs. In fact, I didn't even look up from the rocks on the trail in front of me. I plodded forward like an automaton, every remaining bit of brain power devoted to lifting my right leg, moving it forward a bit, setting it down, then doing the same with my left. One foot in front of the other.

Why didn't I turn around and begin the descent back to the warmth, the thicker air, the shelter of the leeside of the mountain? After seven hours of hiking and climbing, I was about 12 miles away from (and 2,000 meters above) our base camp, with roughly (I had thought) a mile to go to the summit. Turning around at this point would not save me much time, and my goal seemed so close. Despite the bitter cold, despite the relentless wind, despite (or perhaps because of) the hypoxia, I stumbled onward.

Even though almost all of the vertical ascent was behind me, these last couple of miles of winding, gently rising trail along the ridge were by far the most difficult part of the climb. One foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. After an eight hour drive the previous day, a cold night camped at 2,600 meters to help become acclimated to the thin air, and seven hours of hiking that morning, scrambling and climbing up this damn mountain, this is what it had come down to.

Mt. Whitney

Just when I thought I was about to either collapse or freeze solid, the gradual bend I was rounding revealed the object of my quest: the summit lay just a few hundred meters ahead! With renewed energy I pressed on toward my goal. In my haste, I somehow lost the trail, and ended up scrambling the last hundred meters or so up a steep slope of rather unforgiving talus. But by this point I would not be detered. Still feeling light-headed, weak and hungry, with fingers frostbitten and face numb, I finally reached the top.

Now I paused to look around. The range of the Sierra Nevadas stretched off into the distance to the North and to the South. I looked down on so many majestic peaks from the tallest of them all. To the West, I had a new perspective on the beautiful peaks and valleys of Sequoia National Park. To the East, Owens Valley, bathed in sunshine and warmth, cut lengthwise by Highway 395, the road home. I only spent five or ten minutes on the summit, shivering, but before I began the 13 mile trek back to base camp, I allowed myself the luxury of one long last view. I had done it. I had climbed Mount Whitney.