After dinner on Saturday, Misha and I drove around Lone Pine looking for a motel, but every place was booked. (And there are a lot of places, too). I was unsuccessful in persuading Misha to join us for McAdie, so he headed north for more comfortable accomodations while I sacked out in some hot county campground outside Lone Pine. A constant barrage of flies kept me company through the night. Lovely. I was impressed at the audacity of the county in trying to charge folks $10 a night for the privilege of spending time here. Fortunately, I arrived late enough and left early enough to evade detection. (A valuable lesson learned from this week is that it's well worth both the money and a little organizational effort ahead of time to pay for a motel room - I can't emphasize enough how much easier the days were after a good night's sleep in a bed).
Three of us were signed up for today's hike: David, Heyning (a new face), and myself. We again started a few minutes late after waiting to see if anyone else would turn up, and enjoyed a pleasant walk up the trail as the sun came up over the Inyo Mountains to the east. The others had been here several times before, but this was my first hike along this trail (as had been the case for the past several days, as well), and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a new area in the Sierra.
There seemed to be two possible plans of action for today. The first was to follow the original schedule and head up to McAdie (a very nice-looking peak) and Irvine (which looked like a pile of rubble). The other was to head up the trail to Muir/Whitney. After not much in the way of excitement over the past couple of days, the choice between a possibly spicy climb (TRs I'd read reported either the use of a rope or the desire for a rope, and included enticing phrases like 'ostensibly class 3') and a crowded trail up a walk-up peak seemed an obvious one to me. Despite this reasoning (or maybe because of it), the alternative appeared to be an equally obvious choice to the others. David wanted nothing to do with McAdie, and Heyning was interested in Mt. Muir as he'd passed it by on two previous climbs of Whitney and was working on the CA 14ers. I pondered this predicament. I've never had any particular interest in hiking up Whitney, as it's always sounded like a zoo, but Muir sounded fun. And I figured that I could tick both peaks off that damned list, with Bob likely still being up for a future climb of McAdie - perhaps a McAdie - Irvine - Mallory - LeConte - Corcoran undertaking (early start recommended) - it looks like a good idea on paper, anyway.
We continued up the trail, where I found all the Whitney tourist stories to be true. I saw one backpacker coming down, a truly enormous tarp strapped to his pack - it could have comfortably been the groundsheet for half a dozen tents, and was literally several feet wide even when folded over multiple times. He needed a 'Caution: Wide Load' sign as I had to swerve out of the way to avoid the thing. I saw another hiker wearing a pack with the price tag still attached! Perhaps so the pack could be returned to the store after the hike. And Trail Camp is a remarkable sight. It looks like some kind of shantytown, with tents everywhere, clothes lines hanging up, people lounging around in their underwear - I've never seen anything like it before. Truly a surreal setting amongst what would otherwise be a majestic place.
Passing several hikers sitting with their heads in their hands (they only glared at me when I said hello as I strolled by), we continued at a leisurely pace up to Trail Crest and found a couple of cairns marking the exit for Mt. Muir. This is a short scramble, and it seems almost a bit embarrassing to claim a peak that's 200 ft above a trail - but it's a quality scramble nonetheless, with some great rock and a bit of exposure to keep things interesting, and it ended up being some of the more enjoyable climbing I did all week. Some lingering patches of snow made for a little extra spice in places as my shoes became wet. A fair number of people headed up here today, and Heyning and I met a fellow named Mark on the summit. (David had dropped behind a bit on the trail, and decided to forgo this peak). He was familiar with the challenge as he knew Bob from climbing with him on Rainier, and so was a bit surprised that we weren't on McAdie. I explained my reasoning in coming up here, and he agreed that I was likely correct in my assumption that Bob would be unable to resist the temptation of a McAdie to Corcoran traverse. Apparently, Bob is an easy person to predict. :-)
Heyning decided to hang about on the summit (which besides the nice climbing has some nice views as well), so I descended to go and tag Whitney while I was here. I noticed a fellow on a nearby peaklet watching me downclimb the fun third class, and I wondered if it was David; I squinted, but couldn't tell for sure. I found out later that it was; curiously, while he could hear us on Mt. Muir perfectly, we couldn't hear him at all, even when he yelled over at us.
I passed the same group of head-holding hikers for a second time; after making it up to Trail Crest, they didn't even have the energy to glare at me now as I said hello again when I walked past. To my surprise, despite all the people down at Trail Camp and on the trail, there was only one other person on Whitney's summit when I got up there on that Sunday - a cute teacher from Portland named Moira. And she became even more attractive when I found out she'd come up the Mountaineer's Route. This must be one of the unanticipated fringe benefits of hiking Whitney, I decided. We chatted for a while before David walked up to join us.
Views were unexceptional, being very hazy to the west, likely the result of a fire somewhere in SeKi. I'm not a big fan of peaks with buildings on them; this was my second such summit this week, and Whitney was really rather anticlimatic after the more enjoyable climb of Muir. Still, I hadn't been expecting much, so I couldn't say that I was disappointed. I bade farewell to the others, and jogged down to see if I could reach McAdie without losing too much elevation. It looked possible to gain the ridge in the vicinity of Discovery Pinnacle and follow that along, but it would involve a whole lot of boulder hopping (and with no beta to assure me that the whole route would stay within my abilities). It was mildly tempting, but common sense prevailed as I decided I really didn't have the energy (or time) for that, and would be better served by heading back to my car for the drive home. And so I did just that. The 6.5 hour drive back was probably the sketchiest bit of the entire week, requiring a variety of techniques to keep me awake: an array of beverages, snacks, the windows open, the loudest CDs I could find in my car - but I made it back to the Bay Area by 1.30am alive nonetheless, and was asleep just a couple of minutes later.
Thanks, Bob, for organising this. It was a bit disappointing not to average two peaks a day as I'd hoped, but I had a lot of fun anyway. Maybe next year if I'm fitter and more comfortable on XC travel...