An abortion on Mt. Whitney

Mark's greatest and most maniacal piece of mountaineering was his climb of Thunderbolt Peak in 1989 ... solo!! He only bothered with a short length of rope to protect himself on the summit slab, which he free-soloed. But even Mark didn't feel up to soloing the East Face of Whitney. Mark had a permit for August, but I insisted that at least a third person come along, preferably one who'd already done the route. John Lohr said he'd come and he has done it before. But at the last second, John decided he was too busy with work, so the August attempt collapsed before it began. I took the opportunity to get in a little better shape and to do a couple of routes at Tahquitz with Mark, Fingertip Traverse and The Trough, and one with John, Jensen's Jaunt.

Well, we scheduled the trip for last weekend, and our party was joined by Erich Hoffmann, a 61-year old hardman who is generally in far better shape than John (age 50) and certainly in much better shape than I am (age 33). Last Friday afternoon, on the way up to Escondido to pick up Hoffmann and Matthews, John suddenly mentioned that Jessica and her boyfriend Peter were probably going to show up, too. I was a little surprised, and I began to worry that the route might get a little congested but John assured me that we'd be unlikely to even see Jessica and Peter; they'd be so far ahead of us.

We reached Lone Pine around dinnertime and ate at the Mt. Whitney restaurant. We drove up to the Portal to find what had to be the largest number of people I've ever seen up there! I guess everyone assumed that it'd be so crowded on Labor day weekend that they put off their trips to that weekend. There were cars EVERYWHERE! By some incredible stroke of luck, we got a space in the hiker's overnight lot, where we spread out our bags on the ground in front of the cars and tried to sleep, feeling a little like we were camped on the median of I-5. We awoke at 5:30 am and went down the hill to the Lone Pine ranger station, where dozens were camped out on the concrete and standing around waiting for the 6:45 am distribution of the few permits that they had. John was handed number 6, mainly by being a little bit forward (no way we were the sixth party there). We realized that we were in when we discovered that the 5 in front of him wanted trail permits. Jessica suddenly appeared (she'd come in late the night before), so John took the 6 permits. It turned out that that's exactly how many there happened to be for the North Fork on Sat., much to the rangers' surprise -- they'd thought that there'd only be a couple, at best. So these all seemed to be good omens.

We ate breakfast at PJ's, just beating the rush, then drove back on up the hill to the Portal. We shouldered our packs -- John's was probably the heaviest, at what had to be well over 60 lb. I think mine was the lightest, at something like 45 lb. because I made Mark carry all the gear and the rope. Hell, I could probably jump onto his back and he'd still hike way faster than me.

We started out at about 9:30. After getting a bit separated in the canyon before the Ebersbacher ledges, we met at Lower Boy Scout Lake. I was already pretty exhausted, especially, from doing the Mountaineer's Route in '89, knowing how much farther we had still to go. Anyway, we eventually pulled into Iceberg Lake at about 5:30 pm. John and Hoffman shared a tent, Jessica and Peter shared a tent, I had my own, and Mark (characteristically) just had a bivvy sack. The night was pretty cold, and of course I didn't sleep too well -- never have, above about 12,000 ft. We had planned to rise at 5:30 am and try to be on our way to the climb by 6:30 am. I was up at 4:48 am, wandering around in the dark, waiting. Very surprisingly, Hoffmann was sorta slow to get up. I began to think that he must not be feeling well, as he usually is the sort to wake everybody else up earlier than planned. Jessica and Peter left camp at about 7 am and I thought that'd be the last we'd see of them until the summit. I don't think we left much before 7:30 am.

We slowly scrambled up towards the notch behind the First Tower, which is the rope-up point. It'd be hard to miss the rope-up point, as one suddenly reaches an edge with an 800 ft. drop-off on the left to the base of the face. I was surprised to find Peter still there, belaying Jessica as she led across the Tower Traverse, with its rounded, down-sloping, 25 ft long traverse with that 800 ft. exposure. Suddenly Hoffmann announced that he wasn't going to do the climb, as the weather was looking too severe. It was undeniably cold -- Mark's thermometer had registered a constant 34 F, since sunrise. There were clouds in all directions, and a gusty breeze brought the wind chill down to about 10 F. Finally, Jessica reached the belay and Peter started up. We immediately started to hear Jessica complaining about something.

Now, mind you, this woman has climbed all the biggies (El Capitan, Half Dome, etc.,etc.). Strangely enough, however, she appeared not to have brought adequate clothing -- she was up there trying to belay Peter in something only slightly more substantial than underwear. John quickly climbed up the 25 ft. vertical part to reach the start of the traverse with me belaying him, to see what was going on. He saw Jessica up there, shivering uncontrollably from the cold. Peter, I think, had gone across the traverse, but was standing at the base of the 15 ft. chimney below Jessica. Jessica had declared that she was bailing, that she had rather it turned into a beautiful day on which she didn't climb the face than that it continue to be a crappy one on which we did the ascent. John was sort of shocked, at Hoffmann's sudden quitting and Jessica's simultaneous bailing. There was, however, a pretty interesting logistical problem. Jessica, the 5.12 climber, was apparently too cold to feel confident leading back across the traverse. So John set about setting up a Tyrolean traverse, which involved him leading across that traverse twice to set up what was essentially a handrail across the thing, into which Jessica and Peter could clip.

Meanwhile I'm standing at the base of the pitch, lacking any comprehension of what's going on, as I can't see the traverse from my stance. Mark, at first apparently acquiescing to the cancellation of the climb, now started to feel the temperature go up, and shouted to John that we should change our minds and do the thing anyway. But it was probably too late, as setting up this quasi-rescue took at least an hour. I was the only one in the party who never said that I was willing to cancel, but I'd said nothing, as I thought that a minority opinion of one was not worth expressing.

Mark got more and more disgusted, as Peter and Jessica came back across the traverse, using John's handrail. When John climbed back down to me, he offered to belay me so that I could at least climb up to the start of the traverse to get a good look at it. So I did, wondering whether I'd suddenly lose my nerve with all that exposure six inches to my left as I climbed up the dihedral. Much to my satisfaction, however, I didn't, and I sincerely hope that the picture Hoffmann snapped of me standing at the start of the traverse comes out. Anyway, then I had to climb back down, followed by Peter and Jessica.

Mark went back down to the camp, saying that he'd climbed the damned peak about eight times, and he didn't feel the need to do it again. I climbed down a ways, then traversed into the Mountaineer's gully, and started up that pile of crap. Looking behind me, I was not surprised to see John and Hoffmann coming up, but a little surprised to see Jessica (wearing a parka lent to her by John) and Peter coming up behind them. It turned out that Peter had never been to the summit of Mt. Whitney. So the five of us summitted at about 1:30 pm. I got back down to Iceberg Lake quite quickly, and I was ready to go at about 3:00 pm. Peter and Jessica got going first, and we never caught up with them. Hoffmann really was dragging on the way down, and I really started to think that he must be ill, and that that would explain his reluctance to do the climb. Indeed, when we got to Lower Boy Scout Lake at about 5:15 pm, he suddenly said, "Perhaps if I throw up, I'll feel better". We thought he was joking until he suddenly leaned over and ralphed away for about a minute. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he said that he now felt 100 percent better.

Mark went into horse going back to the barn mode, and we never saw him until we reached the trailhead. At the base of the Ebersbacher Ledges, John insisted that he had come up a path on the N. side of the creek, while I preferred the much better known path on the S. But John insisted, and we proceeded to spend an hour thrashing through the brush trying to find his trail. Finally he admitted defeat; we went back upstream to the place where I'd wanted to cross, and we did. We got to the main trail at 7:30 pm, feeling totally thrashed. The walk back to the trailhead seemed incredibly long, as it always does in that situation. Mark had been waiting for us for 1 hr. 37 min. We went back to Lone Pine, ate in the Pizza Factory (made it one minute before closing, at 9 pm), and started down Highway 395. Mark drove all the way back to Escondido and my head hit the pillow at 4 am Monday morning.

What do I get from this? Well, even a 5.12 climber does some pretty silly things, like start up a mountain in below freezing weather in underwear. That even Hoffmann occasionally isn't Superman. That Mark Matthews is, however, actually indestructible. (I wonder how he'd be in the presence of a large quantity of Kryptonite.) That I won't necessarily freak out in the presence of what I'd consider to be truly horrendous exposure. That John Lohr is indeed a resourceful and clever mountain-engineer.

The Face is still there, I guess. I suppose we'll head back there sometime next year and try again, at least if Mark doesn't go up and free solo it sometime this winter.