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High Times
April 06, 2006Cold. Craggy. Uncaring.
Mount Whitney stabbed into the California sky, towering above me.
Winded. Weak. Scared witless.
I cowered below, alone.
Thousands of feet of altitude, endless switchbacks and a skinny stripe of trail stood between me, a decent meal and a feeling of safety.
How had it come to this?
Ignorance was a definite factor and so was friendship.
Backpacking across mountain trails had long been a dream for me.
I had a friend, Christina, who'd already lived that dream, and she was planning to do it again over Labor Day 2005 in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.
She and a group of coworkers were going to thread around trails there and climb Mount Whitney -- the big draw for the hike.
Here's a description of the giant from www.desertusa.com:
"Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states, rises like the phoenix from the western rim of the Great Basin Desert of California. At an elevation of 14,495 feet, Whitney looms high above Death Valley, the lowest point in North America at 262 feet below sea level, less than 100 miles to the east."
Sounds tall, all right, but down here on the North Texas prairie, 14,495 feet doesn't have just a whole lot of meaning.
That would all change.
Posted by at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Comments
I love it when writers say stuff like "scared witless."
I often use the term "Hiss and moan."
Don't want to offend Pope Robert, do we?
P.S. Thanks for covering my back!
