Brace yourselves, this is a long one . . .
At a family dinner a couple of months ago, my brother (who I’ll call “S”) announced that he and my other brother (who I’ll call “Young J” since I have two brothers whose names begin with J) were planning to climb Mt. Whitney this summer for S’s 50th birthday. I immediately chimed in that I wanted to go too. Now, most people who know me well know that my desire to go with my brothers on this trip really has more to do with my love of being with them and spending time with them. I idolize my four brothers—I always have—and I would crawl through a sewer with them if it meant I could spend a little more time with them.
I can’t remember if I immediately said that I wanted to do the climb or if I just said that I wanted to be at base camp, but either way, I was planning to go. And over the next couple of weeks, I vacillated back and forth with S about whether I was going to make the climb. And to make this long story short, I finally told S about a month ago that yes, I do in fact want to summit Mt. Whitney. His response was a little disappointing in that he put out a number of warnings about how hard it was going to be and that I would need to be ready for a tough climb and that I would need to be ready to deal with elevation and yadda, yadda, yadda. He told me that if I could climb Mt. Diablo which is about 3,800 feet, then I would likely be able to climb Mt. Whitney. I said fine, I’ll take a stab at Mt. Diablo and see how it goes. And it wasn’t until about a week or so later that I realized that I was a little hurt by his warnings. But, rather than being defeated by his obvious, although clearly unintentional vote of semi-no confidence, I got a little angry. And in my strange way, I turned that anger into determination. I was going to make it up Mt. Diablo, and this summer I will summit Mt. Whitney.
So, a couple of weekends ago was the first challenge. I found a local hiking club (out of deference to my Mom and her concerns that I often hike alone) and it just so happened that they were going to be doing the trail up Mt. Diablo to the campground just below the summit. I showed up ready to go, and up we hiked . . . and up and up and up. It was the hottest weekend of the year so far, and the trail was brutal. It was 5.7 miles of uphill, in the sun, in 90 degree heat. We got to the Juniper Campground almost three hours later, and I was pretty tired. Of course, I knew that the scheduled hike ended at the campground rather than at the summit that was 1.8 miles further. But I couldn’t let it go that I was so close to the summit. The challenge laid down by S at the front of my thoughts, and so I continued. And I did it.
To be honest, it sucked. It was hot, I was already sweaty, and the little piggy on my left foot that I had managed to break the week before (I battled a cabinet and lost) was starting to throb. But I did it. And My Pony was thrilled to see the view of the surrounding areas from the summit.
I was proud, and ready to head down the hill. After four hours of hiking uphill, and only two hours to cover the same ground on the way down (minus the minute or two delay to survey my road burned shin from falling on the trail during the descent—typical), I got in my car and smiled because I had met the challenge that had been laid down. As many of you know, I don’t like it when I am posed a challenge that someone thinks I can’t do. In this case, I didn’t care if my heart exploded on the way up. I was going to make it. And I did. Hooray for me. I rock.
Oh, and as far as my hike rating, I give this an overall score of four dead salamanders out of five. Obviously, the views alone (and the field of thousands of beautiful orange poppies) would have ranked this five dead salamanders, but it was completely and entirely uphill so I took off half a dead salamander because sometimes a little bit of flat trail or even downhill would have been a nice break.
So, there’s no real moral to this story, and there’s no attempt by me to counter my usual complaining with seeing the upside of the adventure. No, this is just me saying that I met the challenge. And this weekend, I’m meeting the challenge again . . . and I’m worried that this time I won’t be able to make it. But I’m going to kill myself trying, because I won’t let a little thing like a mountain stop me.
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