Climbing California's White Mountain Peak

The White Mountains lie on the border between central California and Nevada. Unlike the Sierras, the White Mountains are "desert peaks" that receive little rain and thus have no tall trees, glaciers, or running water. But they also have the third-highest mountain in California: White Mountain Peak at 14,246 feet. And it's the easiest-to-climb "fourteener" in California and possibly the entire United States. To get to the trailhead, take Highway 395 north to Big Pine, California, and then head east on Highway 168 for about 13 miles until you reach the turn-off for White Mountain Road. From there, it is about 27 miles to the trailhead. The first 9.5 miles are paved, and then the road turns to graded gravel and gets very steep. I have made it in a 2WD passenger car, but a high clearance 4WD vehicle is a better idea.

What makes White Mountain Peak such a terrific first fourteener is because it is a completely non-technical climb the entire way. White Mountain Peak is the site of the University of California's Barcroft Station for high altitude research, and a smooth, level trail leads all the way to the summit. There are no steep drop-offs or dangerous slopes anywhere along the trail, and no specialized climbing gear is needed. In fact, some people have even ridden their bicycles to the summit. However, it is a physically demanding climb. The round trip from the trailhead is slightly over 14 miles, and the reduced oxygen content at the elevation makes altitude sickness a real possibility-----I can personally attest to that. Cold temperatures are common even in summer, as are thunderstorms and snowstorms. It's a good idea to be starting your descent from the mountain no later than 2:00 pm to avoid getting caught in a storm.

The trailhead is a flat, open area just over 12,000 feet in elevation. Public access to the graded dirt road ends at a locked gate; only personnel at the Barcroft Station have the key to the gate. Climbers spending the night to acclimate just pull off the road and set up camp. Below is a photo I took of the trailhead at sunset; the red Jeep Grand Cherokee at far left was my car and where I spent the night before I climbed. The views from the trailhead are spectacular. You can see from the Sierras into the Owens valley into Nevada. On the night I took this photo, I and my fellow climbers/campers were entertained by a big lightning show from a thunderstom that seemed parked over Tonopah, Nevada:


I chose a day in mid-August with a nearly full moon to climb, as I wanted to start before sunrise and use the moon for illumination. It was a good plan, as I was jolted awake around 4:00 am by the rising moon and was on my way to the summit by 4:30. As you can see in the photo above, the graded road is wide and was easy to follow in the moonlight. In fact, there was an almost mystical quality to the first part of the climb-----I was the only person on the trail, and it was completely silent with no wind----I could hear my heart beating hard from the exertion. The wide graded road leads two miles to Barcroft Station, whose lights could be seen soon after starting the trail. After Barcroft Station, the trail narrows considerably and becomes more rocky, although it is still well-marked and was no problem to follow in the moonlight. Dawn started to break shortly after passing Barcroft Station, and White Mountain Peak was a beautiful sight in the early light:


The upper reaches of the summit trail have been described as "lunar," and I agree. There are no trees or bushes of any sort, and only a few small sprigs of grass try to push up from between the rocks. The photo below shows both the desolation of the upper trail and how the summit region starts to loom impressively over you once you climb past 13,000 feet; the final push to the summit is made by climbing the slope at the right:


This is how the summit looks as you ascend the final slope. If you look carefully in the photo below, you can see a tiny building slightly left of center. That's a building at the summit housing instruments recording temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure, and other data:


And here's a look down the slope. This photo exaggerates its steepness; it's nowhere as steep (or scary) as the photo leads you to believe. Your biggest danger-----as you might expect from all those rocks-----is a sprained ankle:


Here's a look at the summit. I had it all to myself that morning, so I had to use my pack (the red object at right next to the summit cairn) as a stand-in for me in the summit photo:


Of course, I signed the summit register. The ammo box containing the register also contained some water, food, matches, and other emergency supplies. (Yes, that's a condom in the blue wrapper at left!):


Here's the view you get from the summit as you look south toward the Sierra Nevada range and Owens Valley; this is a crummy photo that doesn't do justice to what your eye sees:


And here is the view as you look north toward Bishop and Mammoth Lakes; you can clearly the see the irrigated areas near Bishop that are used for growing hay for livestock:


White Mountain Peak is the only mountain where I came down with a full-blown case of altitude sickness. I arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 pm the day before my climb, but I started my trip from San Diego. Going directly from sea level to 12,000 feet turned out to be a big mistake. Even though I did everything you're supposed to do to help acclimate-----drank lots of water, took aspirin (to thin the blood), and rested by reading and listening to music-----I was still a little light-headed when I set out for the summit for the next morning. On my descent, I was dizzy, had a splitting headache and nausea, and my vision was like looking at the world through toliet paper tubes. I was in seriously bad shape by the the time I reached my Jeep. Fortunately, the symptoms began to improve as I drove down from trailhead, and I was okay by the time I reached Big Pine. My advice to anyone contemplating this climb would be not to attempt it without spending a night at some place like the Sierra View campground (at 8000 feet) on the road to the trailhead. It's just too difficult to acclimate to 12,000 feet without an intermediate stop.

Climbing California's Telescope Peak

I can easily remember how I spent July 4, 1995. I spent it climbing Telescope Peak, the highest mounain in Death Valley National Park at an elevation of 11049 feet (3368 meters). It overlooks the lowest point in the western hemisphere, Badwater, on the floor of Death Valley at a "de-elevation" of -282 feet below sea level.

The summit climb begins from the Mahogany Flat trailhead at 8133 feet and it's a round trip of 14 miles to the summit and back. Because of its elevation, the mountain gets a good bit of snow-----it is a very spectacular sight from the floor of Death Valley in winter-----and the best time for climbing is between early June to late October. As always, it's best to begin a climb around sunrise and you want to be starting your descent by early afternoon in case a thunderstorm blows in.

Here's a shot from the beginning of the summit trail looking back toward Death Valley. While the trail is narrow, it's well maintained and no special climbing gear is needed:

When you start on the trail, Telescope Peak is hidden behind the ridges of Bennett Peak (9980 feet). But about a mile into the climb, its summit pops into view behind Bennett. It's the mountain at left with the snow patches on it. The summit trail goes to the right in the photo below, gains the ridgeline of Bennett Peak in the foreground, and continues left toward Telescope Peak:


After traversing Bennett Peak, the summit trail crosses a wide saddle between the mountains known as Arcane Meadows. Telescope Peak now looms impressively in front of you. The summit trail winds up the left ridge of the photo below:

One thing I loved about the summit of Telescope Peak is that it was a small one-----maybe 10x10 feet------instead of the broader summit plateaus often found in the Sierras. You have a real sensation of "flying through space" from the summit, especially when the wind was blowing. This is a view looking back down the trail from the summit. If you look carefully, you can make out the summit trail at the lower left. And, yes, that's a patch of snow in the center of the photo. It was mindblowing to be able to grab a handful of snow and cool myself off, knowing that on the floor of Death Valley the temperature was over 110 degrees!

Here's a view down into Death Valley from the summit. As an added bonus, you also get to see my shadow as I take the photo!

Here's another summit photo, this time looking toward the north. I was attempting to get a photo of the Sierras and Mount Whitney, but the camera recorded only the desert "heat haze." However, I could see the Sierras and Mount Whitney with my eye, meaning I was able to see both the highest and lowest points in the 48 contiguous states from the summit of Telescope Peak:

Like most other notable mountains, Telescope Peak has a summit log which is kept in a waterproof metal "ammo box" container wedged between some rocks. Below is a photo of the log; I added my signature and a few words about my climb to it. I understand the Sierra Club collects summit logs from California mountains periodically and they are forwarded to the University of California-Berkeley's main university library. I suppose that means some future student doing a term paper on Telescope Peak might one day quote my words of wisdom in his/her paper!

California's Cirque Peak

By the standards of the Sierra Nevada range, Cirque Peak is a modest mountain of 12,990 feet. But it offers some great views from the summit. Below is a view of it from the Chicken Spring Lake region of the Horseshoe Meadow trail. You can clearly see the timberline on the left (western) slope of the mountain, and the right slope is the steeper eastern face of the mountain. Cirque Peak is located south of Lone Pine, CA, and trail to it begins at the end of Horseshoe Meadow Road:

In my Sierra climbs, I have usually taken the western slopes because they are less steep and easier to climb. Cirque Peak was one that I decided to ascend via the eastern face. I first became interested in climbing Cirque when I hiked the Horseshoe Meadow trail and stopped at Chicken Spring Lake to rest, and noted the pass leading to the saddle (that's the big patch of snow atop the ridge in the photo below) and summit of Cirque Peak. Below is a photo I took; the pass is the smooth vertical slope in the middle leading to the saddle and Cirque Peak is to the right. I took this in early June when there was still a good bit of snow in the Sierras, but I vowed to return six weeks later and attempt the climb from Chicken Spring Lake:

While the pass up from Chicken Spring Lake looks smooth in the photo above, it's actually very rocky and has a slope of about 40-45 degrees. I took the photo below after gaining the saddle and beginning my ascent to the summit plateau of Cirque. Chicken Spring Lake looks different from this perspective! The climb up the pass required no rope or technical skills, but I did have to take several rest breaks atop boulders while asking myself, why the hell am I doing this??

The views from the summit plateau are among the best in the Sierras. Here is the view to the northeast toward the Cottonwood Lakes area:

The view below is directly to the north and shows the summit of Mount Langley. At 14,009 feet, Mount Langley is the southernmost "fourteener" in the United States:

Since this was a solo climb in mid-week and I had the entire mountain to myself, there was no one to take a summit photo of me. I had to be content with photographing my boot-clad foot jutting skyward:

A descent down the eastern face without a rope seemed more risky than I wanted to try solo, so I opted to take the more gentle western slope back down to the Horseshoe Meadow trail. I was lucky enough to find the footprints of earlier climbers and just followed them back down to the trail. All in all, Cirque Peak was a great climb: terrific views, a beautiful day, plenty of quiet and solitude, and natural beauty everywhere.

Hiking Up To Kearsarge Pass, California

Kearsarge Pass isn't a mountain; instead, it's the easiest way to cross from the eastern face of the Sierras into Kings Canyon National Park. And while it's not a mountain climb, it lies at 11,811 feet-----taller than any point in Oregon, for example, or east of the Mississippi-----and makes a terrific Alpine experience. It's just like a mountain climb but without sharp vertical drops!

Kearsarge Pass is reached via the Onion Valley trailhead west from Independence, CA. The road to Onion Valley is paved and provides spectacular views of the Sierras along the way, like the one below:





The trail begins at an elevation of 9192 feet and takes about 6.5 miles to reach Kearsarge Pass. At its start, the trail is lightly forested but the trees really thin out as elevation is gained. At least they offer shade at the start and you pass some beautiful mountain lakes as you ascend. Here's a view down toward Heart Lake from the trail. If you look carefully, you can see the shape that gives it its name:





Pothole Lake is at about 10,500 feet and is at timberline, the point where it's too high to sustain tree growth. The photo below looks back at Pothole Lake from the trail, and you can clearly see where the trees fade out and give way to jumbled chunks of granite. Yes, that's real snow even though I did this trail in the last week of July:



As you can guess from the photo above, the remainder of the trail involves carefully stepping over and around large rocks as you ascend a sloping plateau toward the pass. Along the way you are treated to spectacular views of mountains such as University Peak and Mount Brewer along with glacial moraines (bowl-shaped excavations created by glacier movement) on their sides. A little more huffing and puffing, and you top at out at 11,811 feet; here I am next to the marking sign. The mountain behind me is University Peak (13,632 feet):



That sign also marks the boundary of Kings Canyon National Park, and those few feet I walked past the other side of the sign mark my only visit to that particular national park (it has been deliberately kept relatively inaccessible except to foot or horse traffic). The trails continues over the pass and down into the park, where it joins the John Muir Trail at about 10,350 feet and descends to the canyon floor. At least Kings Canyon looks pretty from Kearsarge Pass:



From Kearsarge Pass you get a good view of the Kearsarge Pinnacles, a series of rocky spires along the ridge line from the pass to University Peak. As the photo below shows, the pinnacles are actually very unstable rock piles instead of the solid rock they seem from a distance. Needless to say, climbing any of these is a task only for experienced rock climbers with the right equipment:



Blogging about my mountain climbs has been difficult for me because I realize I will never climb again; I really loved roaming the Sierras and Cascades in summer and I hate to think I have lost that part of my life forever. But at least I charged up into those hills when I was able to and have a load of memories (and photos) to console me. Thinking about that, I have some advice to offer anyone reading this: tomorrow is not promised to you; if there is something you really want to do, do it today!

Lassen Peak In California

Lassen Peak is located over 200 miles north of the San Francisco Bay region, up where California starts turning into Baja Oregon. I had always wanted to visit it since I was a kid and came across a book with a photo of it taken during its 1915 eruption. The sight of the huge mushroom cloud of ash from its summit----looking very much like an atom bomb cloud----made a big impression on me. And in 1999 I finally visited, and climbed, Lassen.

Lassen Peak is not that high (only 10,457 feet) nor is it a technically challenging climb. What makes it interesting is that it is the southernmost Cascade volcano and was active from 1914 to 1920, with 1915 being the peak year. The highlight then was a violent, Mount St. Helens-style blast, complete with a searing pyroclastic flow toward the north. Fortunately, the area was unpopulated and there was no loss of life. Lassen Peak is now part of Lassen Volcanic National Park, a region of steam vents, lava flows, boiling mud pits, and cinder cones. It's a miniature version of Yellowstone.

Even though I climbed Lassen in the last week of July, there was still a lot of snow in the high country of the park, as this photo of Helen Lake shows:



















Lassen Peak itself had a few snow patches, as you can see in the photo below taken from the road to the summit trailhead. Like all Cascade volcanoes, it has a bluish-gray color (unlike the black color of Hawaiian volcanoes). That's because the magma source for them is the subduction of part of the Pacific plate under the North American plate; Lassen Peak is literally made from melted and recycled sections of the floor of the Pacific Ocean. The lava is light and crumbly, more like sand than rock:



















The climb itself was uneventful, with the trail to the summit being a little less than three miles. There were a few snowy patches that made me wish I had brought my ice ax and crampons----especially on the descent-----but slow, careful steps (and a blessedly light day pack) let me make it without any real problems. The summit high point is some congealed lava extruded from the main vent; here I am atop that lava:



















I took the photo below looking down from the summit rocks; note one of my boots in the lower part of the photo:


















Here's a summit view looking toward the west. The nice person at the left took the summit photo of me, and I took one for her. The summit area was a popular place to be that morning, as I counted 15 people during the 20 minutes I was at the top.


















Here's a view toward the north; you can see Mount Shasta about 50 miles away. I later drove up to the town of Mount Shasta for a "recon" of the mountain (sadly, I never attempted to climb it). The town of Mount Shasta is full of weirdass New Age types (much like Sedona, AZ) and I'll have to post about my visit there in the future:


















Even if you're not interested in climbing the mountain, the park has a lot of interesting stuff to see, like the steam vents below. It's obvious a lot of activity is still going on underground, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if there is a future volcanic eruption in the area:

The Last Climb

In July of 2003, I climbed my last mountain (although I didn't realize it at the time). My target then was Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in Nevada at 13084 feet. It is located in east-central Nevada along the Utah border and is inside Great Basin National Park. This is a very isolated park; I took Interstate 15 east out of Las Vegas about 30 miles until I exited off onto Highway 93 north. From there, it was about 200 very lonely miles to Wheeler Peak.

Here is a view of Wheeler Peak from my "campsite," which was the back of my 4Runner at roughly 5800 feet. I didn't attempt to climb that steep face on the left; instead, I took the more gentle slope up the right side. The total distance from the trailhead at about 8000 feet was a little over 16 miles roundtrip.


















Even though I climbed in summer, there were still some snowy patches on the summit route, as the photo below shows. I was lucky they were few and not troublesome, as I did not bring along my ice ax and crampons.

And here is me on the summit! I had the mountain all to myself that morning except for another climber, a guy I estimated to be in his late twenties, who had never climbed over 12000 feet before. We took turns passing each other along the route, and I was the first to reach the summit. I enjoyed greeting him with "Welcome to 13000 feet!" as he reached the summit. The sign at my left is the summit marker, and my "Ahab the Arab" headgear protected me from the blistering sun at such elevations. We took summit photos for each other, and I started my descent after about five minutes. He lingered, apparently reveling in the view of the world from 13000 feet. It was no big deal to me; I had been to that elevation before, and I expected to be back that high in the future. Little did I know. . . . .

























Why would anyone in their right mind climb a mountain? Because you get views like this one from the top:



















When we moved to Texas, I told myself I would finally get the chance to climb in Colorado and New Mexico as well as pick up some interesting mountains in west Texas like El Capitan. And when I went into the hospital for my first operation on August 1, 2006, I told myself I would climb a mountain on August 1, 2007 to celebrate. But it wasn't to be, and I now accept that my mountain climbing days are forever behind me.

But at least I climbed them when I could and have a lot of great memories and photos of my climbs. I'll be posting more of my climbs in the weeks and months ahead.