The Ascent

After 15 days of sleeping in a tent, on my foam sleeping pad, I made it into a real town. The town of Bishop offered a bed, a shower, a massive plate of Mexican food and a Grocery Outlet to resupply my food for the next stretch of trail. In this last seven day stretch, I joined a trail family of three. The four of us left Kennedy Meadows together last week and headed into higher elevation and colder climates as we entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

Slowly, sage brush and cactus made way for pine trees and alpine wildflowers. The miles of desert sand turned to walls of dramatic granite. And my aching body discovered a level of exhaustion and hunger that I’ve never before known. 

When I began hiking two weeks ago I was at an elevation of 4,900 feet. That first day I climbed to 6,800. That was hard. I was crawling up the final ascent at the end of the day, in my nineteenth mile; making the extra effort all for a beautiful sunset to end my first day. But compared to the Sierra’s, that may as well have been a bunny hill. 

We entered the Sierra’s at 6,300 feet and didn’t climb much the first day. We stopped that evening at a fork in the Kern River and enjoyed the abundance of water as we ate dinner and took bird baths. I hardly slept that night. I cowboy camped under the stars and watched as the nearly full moon traveled over the rocky peaks. My imagination wandered over the next hundred miles, dreaming up exciting and scary scenarios in my head. 

After sleeping roughly two and a half hours, I woke up, stretched, and geared up for the day ahead. That day we climbed to 10,000 feet. The next we hit 11,000. The following day we had Mt. Whitney looming. This was going to be our first major summit and the fear mongering (not necessarily without reason) was loud. We weren’t sure how the ice, snow, and sun would interact with each other. The conditions have been shifting rapidly with quickly melting snow causing slippery ice to form at night and post- holing to slow us down during mid day. 

We decided to begin our Whitney summit day at 3:00am from Crabtree Meadows. We walked in the dark, guided by our headlamps and the glow of the moon. We had icy river crossings and steep, slightly terrifying and very invigorating ice fields to cross as we climbed higher and higher. We were all grateful to have ice axes and microsppikes for the sheer drop offs of ice we navigated across. The sunrise cast a golden glow on the snowy peaks and painted the sky with fiery colors. We climbed up into the pastel-colored world above. Our pace was slow and our breathing strained as the air thinned significantly. And then, after six hours of hiking, we summited. We reached the highest point in the lower 48 states. You could turn slowly in every direction and see a spread of jagged peaks, glacial waters, and lots and lots of snow. We heated up some water and drank warm beverages as we celebrated the ascent before making our way back down. 

We returned to the base of the mountain by 2pm and I took a dip in the icy lake that only recently had been covered in ice. My feet and legs were grateful for the ice bath. I decided to hang back in the valley for a while as the rest of the group headed back to Crabtree where our tents were set up. In the meadow, I took in the view of the enormous mass of rock I had just climbed. I let the breeze dry my wet hair and watched Marmots busy themselves in the Boulder field. My heart swelled with love for this place where I rested after a strenuous morning. I felt high, as if the lack of oxygen had caused some kind of chemical reaction…maybe it did? Joy exploded in my chest as I began to slowly walk back to camp. And then, trotting right across the trail ahead of me: a magnificent coyote. We aknowledged each other briefly before the beautiful creature continued on with whatever she or he was up to (assumingly off to hunt some marmots). 

This is how it’s been so far. My days are incredibly difficult but also more simple and peaceful than anything I’ve ever experienced. My one job is to survive. To walk, eat, hydrate, sleep and dig cat holes (look it up if you don’t know). And I am doing it all in the most breathtaking landscape I’ve ever experienced. 

With love in my heart and fatigue in my feet, I send you this letter from the trail. This is my last spot of service before I continue back into the towering cathedrals constructed by mother nature herself.

Lots of love,

Shanga