Peaks and Valleys

Unlike a climber on a rope, I won’t leave you hanging. (RIMSHOT!) Our attempt to hike to the 14,505-foot summit of Mt. Whitney is over. And – drum roll, please – we did not reach our goal. We came close. Oh, so achingly, frustratingly close. But, no cigar. And as I’ve always said, closeness counts only in dancing, horseshoes and hand grenades.

Last Tuesday morning, at 3:30 a.m. with only our headlamps and a full moon overhead to light the path before us, my wife and I set out from the trailhead at Whitney Portal (elevation 8,300 ft.) and began the 13 mile trek to the summit of the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. By the time the morning sun lit the town of Lone Pine and the Owens Valley far below and behind us, we had already climbed to well over 10,000 feet in just over three miles and were – to be completely honest – burning up precious minutes of the cloudless morning by stopping to take in the breathtaking (quite literally) sights before us.

As I mentioned last week, I had last hiked these trails in my teens. It’s safe to say that, as much as I appreciated the pulse-pounding panoramas of the high elevation Sierra Nevada wilderness, as a young person I couldn’t possibly have fully grasped how rare and precious these mountains truly are. Today, having traveled extensively throughout North America, Europe and Australia and having been duly impressed by the many natural wonders unique to each continent, my wife and I were nevertheless repeatedly struck speechless last Tuesday as we looked at vista after vista that couldn’t possibly be real, and yet, there it was before us.

I’m not ashamed to admit that my times along the trail, I stood in silence (except for some rather pathetic heavy breathing, of course) to behold the wondrous beauty in front of me as tears of joy and appreciation blurred my vision. Frankly, I’m watering up just remembering some of these moments from our recent adventure. To think that this glorious display of God’s handiwork is a mere three hour drive from my Crescenta Valley home is mind boggling. In fact, it’s taking a fair amount of will power (and “responsible, adult thinking”, bleh!!) not to push away from my keyboard, grab the car keys and head north on Interstate 5 towards the Sierras right now.

Sigh.

But back to the hike itself. I honestly believe we had trained “enough” to reach the summit and return to the trailhead – a round trip of 22 miles. When we ultimately turned back, we still had plenty of energy left in our reserves, our breathing was labored, but not any more than you’d expect at such altitudes and our desire to reach the top was painfully strong. So what prevented us from reaching our goal? In a word; weather.

One of the first – and most important –  words of advice experienced Mt. Whitney hikers will give you is that you’d better be on the summit by noon, linger on top an hour at most and then begin your descent. The weather in the Sierras is notoriously fickle and had already dumped almost six inches of snow on the mountain the day before our hike. Picking up our permit last Monday, in fact, the ranger warned us that very few hikers had been able to summit that day due to lightening, rain and snow. Crud.  

Even so, hitting the trail at such an early hour in the morning, combined with cloudless blue skies overhead as the sun began its arc from east to west – the next day my wife and I were lulled into forgetting how quickly the weather can change in the Sierras. We could (and probably should) have hiked at a slightly faster pace. We could (and probably should) have taken less time standing in awe of the beauty around us. We could (and probably should) have stopped less often to snack, drink water and, well, breathe. Silly us.

I’ll wrap up my big Mt. Whitney adventure next week. In the meantime, if you pass someone taking deep breaths with a far away look on his face, that’ll be me. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my column first published yesterday, 9.22.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A True “Cliffhanger”

By the time you read this, my wife and I will either have fulfilled our goal, met the challenge, lived the dream, slayed the dragon – whatever bromide you wish to use – or flamed out, bit off more than we could chew, crashed and burned, ie: failed miserably.

By way of explanation, as of today’s publication date we will have either been successful in hiking to the top of Mt. Whitney, or not. One thing is certain, we will have given it our best shot. If you don’t know, Whitney is the highest peak in the continental United States, and lucky us, living in the Crescenta Valley means we’re just a three-hour drive away. Only one state, Alaska, boasts a higher mountain, Denali (formerly, Mt. McKinley).

I have hiked to the summit of Mt. Whitney once before – way, way back when I was a teenager. The hike up the west side of 14,505 foot peak and down east side was the final leg of a backpacking trip that was three weeks from start to finish and covered the length of the John Muir trail – all two hundred and twenty some miles of it – from the floor of Yosemite National Park to the parking lot at Whitney Portal above the town of Lone Pine. Back then, you didn’t need a permit (or pay any fee) to make the hike. But I suppose too many people were putting too much burden on the trail system or more likely, the forest service personnel were fed up with rescuing poorly prepared, exhausted or injured hikers with no training or ability to make the difficult climb to the top.

Sometime back in March, my wife and I decided to attempt to hike Mt. Whitney together as an “adventure” to celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m an incurable romantic. Right ladies?) The process of dealing with the professional bureaucrats at Inyo National Forest headquarters in order to obtain the required “Whitney Zone” permit was an arduous test of endurance in and of itself.

We prevailed, however, and almost immediately started our “training” hikes. We did the Mt. Baldy and Icehouse Canyon trails in the San Bernardino mountains for longer, higher elevation training, and locally the Echo Mountain, Cherry Canyon and Deukmejian Wilderness trails just to break a sweat and to get our boots dusty. We’ve also been hiking some of the higher elevation trails in and around the Mammoth Lakes area whenever time (and gas money) permit, and have been road biking our butts off and our brains out locally and in the San Gabriel Valley to burn calories and boost our aerobic capacity. Whew.

With every activity, however – even though I’m able to hike or bike further than ever before, and have tremendously enjoyed the experiences and each mini-adventure – I can’t help but notice (and feel!) the changes that time inevitably inflicts on a body. Namely, soreness that takes longer to go away, achingly stiff joints and enough pulls, pains and strains to keep our primary care doctor practicing for years to come. Oh well, it is what it is.

I’m writing this column/post from a hotel room in Lone Pine. In the ridiculously early pre-dawn darkness of tomorrow morning, we will drive to the trailhead and set off on our adventure. Ready or not. What once seemed like a frustratingly distant date in the future is now just a frighteningly few hours away.

Will we make it to the summit and back? Or will exhaustion, middle-aged knees, altitude, the predicted possibility of dangerous thunderstorms – or some combination of these immutable conditions – force us to turn around and try again (or not) next year? I for one am anxious to find out.

Stay tuned for next week’s column/post. Legs willing and my knees hold out, I’ll see you around town.

Note: This is a repost of my column "Feet (and Knees) Don't Fail Me Now!" first published yesterday, 9.15.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Birds On My Brain

One of my fondest childhood memories is of watching Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in the classic 1964 Disney film, Mary Poppins. In particular, I always loved the scene where Mary sings “Feed the Birds” as hundreds of pigeons coo and nibble at the bread crumbs covering the cobblestones at her feet.

Maybe I’m channeling my much younger self, but more and more I’m enjoying watching the flocks of feathered visitors who show up at the bird feeders in our backyard. I have a clear view of the feeders from our kitchen window and often find myself smiling at the antics of the goofy squirrels and their bird-brained brethren who can empty out a newly-filled feeder in under an hour. It’s an amazing thing to see.

In fact, my wife and I often laugh out loud watching the big, bushy squirrels comically stretch far beyond their ability to balance in order to reach the bird feeder hanging from the branches of a young sycamore in the middle of our lawn. They only make that extraordinary effort when they’ve decimated the supply of seeds in the larger feeder that sits atop a single pole closer to our house. The squirrels quickly shimmy up the pole, squeeze their chubby bodies in the cramped space between the wooden roof of the feeder and its base, and then get busy snarfing up the bounty of seeds, peanuts, corn kernels and sunflower seeds inside.

If I could put a soundtrack to their antics, it would be of a circular saw ripping through wood. The smaller seeds are sent flying through the air as the pigs disguised as squirrels fling out everything that isn’t a peanut or sunflower seed. It’s a hoot. When they’ve had their fill (or have been sent scurrying across the lawn and up the nearest tree by our dog bursting through his doggy door into the backyard), birds soon flock all over the feeder and nearby surroundings to see what slim pickings the squirrels have left.

The only birds able to chase off the squirrels are either the pigeons or the massive, ink-black crows (ravens?) that swoop into the yard like organized crime bosses arriving in town to take care of business. They land like graceful stealth fighters, strut confidently towards the feeders and every creature in the yard beats feet to get out of their way. Even our poor yellow lab slinks back into the house when those big birds arrive and seize control of the yard.   

Obviously, I’m as far from being an ornithologist as the birds in my yard are from being newspaper columnists. (And yes, I hear you out there saying the birds could probably do a better job, thank you very much.) But definite patterns and personalities have emerged as I’ve watched these winged wonders over the years.

I’ve noticed a definite hierarchy (“pecking order” seemed too expected here) in the bird kingdom – from the rude and pushy jays that bully every other bird in sight or the lumbering, ‘we’re here, we’re hungry, get used to it’ presence of pudgy pigeons, to the timid gracefulness of the doves that prefer scavenging seeds from the grass below the feeders than bothering the birds above them on the feeder itself. Some of my favorites, however, are the smaller, blurringly fast finches and sparrows that flit in and out and around and over all the other birds, snatching individual seeds and flying off to consume them somewhere else. These smaller birds are the most colorful and entertaining of them all, often arriving immediately after I’ve refilled the feeders or just before the sun goes down and the other creatures have left.

To this day, I still wish Mary Poppins was a true story. But I’ll settle for singing “Feed the Birds” to myself as I watch the daily birdie ballet outside my kitchen window.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my column first published yesterday, 9.8.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Wondering All Over the Map

I often wonder if other people wonder about so many different things like I do on any given day. How bad is it? Well, here are just a few musings from my personal wonderland of late:

I wonder …  how much money AT&T and Charter waste on my mailing address alone each month? A week hasn’t gone by for as long as I can remember that I don’t receive two or three solicitations in the mail for this U-verse bundle or that Charter package. Here’s an idea; why not bundle up the cost of wasted paper and postage and have these relentless marketers subtract it from my monthly bill?

I wonder …  why the price of gas jumps up by three or four cents a gallon overnight, but when it goes down, it’s more like seven-tenths of one cent over a week or longer. The least the oil refiners could do is buy us dinner first.

I wonder … why left-leaning pundits and professors are quick to say that all cultures and faiths are equally important and have something to offer. And yet, these same counter-culture educators, protestors, peaceniks, alternative lifestylers and other aggressively anti-conservative activists would be the first ones on a long list of people and groups to be silenced and locked up (or worse) if those same supposedly egalitarian cultures and/or religions ever establish a majority foothold in America. As for me and my house, I fervently pray that we as a country wake up and not only appreciate, but promote and teach our Western values and traditional American liberties before they’re taken from us either by force, fiat, foreign zealots, activist judges or power-drunk fundamentally transforming socialist politicians. One and done, folks. One and done.

I wonder …  who, if anyone, bought the 6.20 carat diamond solitaire ring I saw available at Costco.com recently for $1 million? What do you think that conversation would go like? “Sweetcakes, I love you so much, I got you a little something. Now, don’t worry, it was only a million bucks at Costco. Oh, and I picked up some more toilet paper, dish soap and a big honkin’ bottle of fish oil capsules, too.” Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? Then again, I’m an incurable romantic.

I wonder …  if I’ll ever be at an economic place that I don’t start laughing hysterically when I get an unsolicited email blast about special jet discounts now available for all my private aviation needs. If these people knew that the only “flying” I’m likely to do these days is off the second story balcony of my home office when I can’t figure out how to pay the bills any given week. Sigh. It is fun to dream, though.

I wonder …  why I’ve never before heard the term “haboob” to describe the massive sand storms that roll across the summer landscape in Arizona. This seems to be the year of the haboob – and I’m not talking about our current Vice President. Rim shot!

I wonder …  how I can ever thank the star-makers at NBC News enough for promoting Ann Curry, the former overly empathetic, drippingly sentimental and hyper-politically correct news-reader on their flagship TODAY Show, to her new position of co-couch-sitter alongside Matt Lauer. I now have one less weekday morning distraction and am able to work on pressing projects much sooner than I used to. Not that the über-liberal Ms. Curry is ideologically any different from her predecessors, Meredith Viera and that irrepressible cheerleader for all left-leaning causes, Katie Couric. Heavens, no. It’s just that Ms. Curry’s interviews and “reportage” drip so heavily with breathless sincerity, hand-wringing angst and feigned concern, she routinely gets in the way of her stories and subject matter. The power-off button on my remote is so much easier to push on now.

Whew. See what I mean? It’s a wonder I get anything done. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my edited column first published yesterday, 9.1.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Racking Up Needless Spending

I’m probably going to ruffle some home town feathers with my comments this week, because the subject of this column took considerable effort by some of my fellow Crescenta Valley residents to make happen.

As an avid cyclist, I’m thrilled that my home town now has bike lanes on our main drag, the appropriately named Foothill Blvd. I thank the CV Town Council from the bottom of my goofy and dangerously tight bike shorts for their hard work in making it happen. It probably won’t solve the motorist vs. cyclist wars that have gone on since Mr. Ford invented the Model A. But it does give us pedal-pushers at least a narrow ribbon of pavement that we can rightfully claim as our own. Again, beaucoup kudos on behalf of current and future cyclists in our community.

I just have one question. What’s with those new bike racks? It seems to me the majority of the new racks are as close as it comes to being useless due to their odd locations. Who’s actually going to use the things? I mean – a large, metal, bike-shaped rack cemented into the sidewalk outside a dry cleaners next door to a florist? Really? I guess that’s good news for all those cyclists who take their tailored suits and designer dresses to the cleaners on their Huffys. But I can hear the romantic conversation now. “Honey, I bought you this beautiful dozen red roses. I know they’re mostly stems and thorns after bringing them home stuffed into my bike jersey. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Another odd placement is the shiny new peg and hitch installation imbedded in the sidewalk in front of an old rock church at Rosemont Avenue – a sidewalk far away and way below grade of the church entrance. In other words, completely out-of-site from anyone on the church grounds, but ideally situated for someone to drive up next to it in a pickup, cut any cable lock with bolt cutters and toss a bike into the bed of the truck and drive away without anyone ever seeing the heist.

Seriously. If you rode your bike to St. Lukes, would you park it on the street, completely out of sight from the church? I know God is always watching over us, but I’m not so sure He cares all that much about our bikes.

When I first saw the new racks being installed I thought, okay, they’ll probably get around to putting the things outside the library, or in front of Vons or Ralphs, Walgreen’s, Office Depot – the sort of destination where you can reasonably expect at least some bikers to go, especially local students. That might be a worthy expenditure of municipal funds. Maybe.

But drive along Foothill and look where the new racks are. The locations look either ridiculously random or as if it’s been done to strict ‘governmental guidelines.’ As in: “a galvanized device for securing manually powered modes of transportation shall be installed at intervals of precisely 150 yards between the business establishments present for public egress and ingress and blah-di-blah, blah, blah.”

Actually, according to the recent article in the newspaper that prints my column each week ("Bicyclists No Longer "Rack" Their Brains for Place to Park" , CVWeekly.com, July 14, 2011), business owners we’re asked if they wanted a bike rack installed in front of their establishment. Merchants who were “hesitant” were bypassed.

I can only think there must be quite a few Foothill business owners who think cyclists are a sketchy bunch of hooligans who shouldn’t be encouraged to visit their establishments. That’s too bad.

It’s been several months since the new racks have been installed along Foothill. I drive this route several times every day and have yet to see a single bike parked at any of the new magic metal municipal money erasers.

So, here’s an idea. If there are any racks still laying around in a warehouse somewhere, maybe we can install a few of them at the wonderful new dog park that will soon be built at nearby Crescenta Valley park for use by all those dog owners sure to be arriving on their Schwinns. Makes as much sense as putting one outside a florist or dry cleaners, doesn’t it?

And now that the entire CV Town Council will be driving around looking to run me over on my bike, I’ll see you ‘round town.

This is an edited version of my column first-published yesterday, 8.25.11 in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

On the Trail to New Discoveries

As I mentioned in my post last week "Boots, Bug Juice & the Beauty Before Us" , one of the blessings of living in the Crescenta Valley (in Southern California's unincorporated Los Angeles County) is our close proximity and easy access to a seemingly endless network of hiking and biking trails.

Since the beginning of this year, my wife and I have enjoyed a new-found focus on better health and wellness. (I hesitate to use the word, “fitness” because it conjures up images of either hyperactive old men in one-piece jumpsuits and bad hair pieces doing calisthenics on a black & white TV show, or frighteningly ripped and oiled women on Sunday morning infomercials who could break me in half over a spray-tanned knee and never miss a beat of their adrenaline-fueled sales pitch.)

Where was I? Oh, right. One result of my wife’s and my passionate pursuit of physical perfection (just go with me on this, okay?) has been our diligence in seeking out new hiking trails. Although our big goal hike next month is the 14,505-foot summit of Mt. Whitney, for the past several months we’ve primarily done hikes much closer to home.

Some of our recent favorites, in fact, are only minutes from our driveway. I’m embarrassed to admit that, even having lived in this area almost all of our lives, we’ve recently discovered many trails that we had no idea existed, let alone that we have ever hiked before.

For example, the trailhead to one of our favorite after-work escapes these days is as close as the San Rafael hills above a popular local tourist destination, the Descanso Gardens. Granted, the trails collectively called “Cherry Canyon” are relatively short. But what they lack in distance, they more than make up for in intensity. One route in particular, the Owl Trail, climbs straight up the mountain – sans switchbacks – until you reach the top and are rewarded with spectacular views (between bouts of the dry heaves, of course) of  downtown L.A, Glendale and Griffith Park looking South, Pasadena to the East and the entire sweep of the Crescenta Valley foothills looking to the North.

Whenever my wife and I hike these trails, whatever the weather, we always are entertained by the variety of wildlife we see as the ecology around us changes from shaded canopies of oak trees, to bone dry chaparral, to crumbled granite rock fall and dusty, rutted fire roads. We’ve been quite literally stopped in our tracks watching the silent drama of a hawk searching the ground below for field mice. We can’t hike more than a hundred yards without hearing the rustle of a wild rabbit in the undergrowth alongside the trail. If we pause long enough, the bunny is sure to show its furry self – along with some of the most unusual and colorful creepy crawly bugs and bird life I’ve ever seen. All in all, it makes for quite an entertaining way to exercise both your muscles and appreciation of the Crescenta Valley. 

Although we don’t hike them nearly as often, we also enjoy the trails through the Deukmejian Wilderness Park above Markridge Rd. Former turn-of-the-century owner, George LeMesnager would no doubt be amazed at what has been done to the land surrounding his old stone barn. We have trekked along these trails both before and after the terrain-changing Station Fire and are always amazed at the views they afford of our hometown.

Another particularly challenging favorite is the trail that begins at the top of Lake Avenue in Pasadena and switchbacks relentlessly up to the top of Echo Mountain. Once on top, we like to wander through the eerie (to me, at least) ruins of Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe’s “White City” and the long-abandoned Mount Lowe Railway. At 3207 feet elevation, the trail climbs dramatically high above Altadena and rewards sweaty visitors with views to the ocean and beyond, air quality permitting, of course. One of the unique features of this particular hike is the shear nature of the trail up the spine of the mountain. With no other hills or trees to obstruct your view from the top, hikers can see all the way down to where the trail begins on the floor of the San Gabriel Valley below. It’s a tiring but welcome visual reminder of just how far you’ve climbed. And justification for the aching in your thigh muscles and the sweat-soaked shirt on your back. 

I’ll wrap up for this week due to a sudden urge to lace up my Vasques, top off the CamelBak and head for the hills. If I don’t see you on the trail, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an edited version of my column first published yesterday, 8.18.11, in the the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper .

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Boots, Bug Juice and the Beauty Before Us

Last Friday, my wife and our home-from-Montana-for-the-summer son made an early evening escape 300 miles up California's Hwy 395 to Mammoth Lakes, a small resort town in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. During the winter, Mammoth Mountain is a mecca for mogul-seekers and downhill danger junkies. In the summer, mountain bikers, fishermen, backpackers and outdoor lovers of all sorts find themselves drawn to this high altitude wonderland of recreational adventure. 

Due to the reality of too much work and not enough vacation time, our stay this past weekend was limited to, well, the weekend. Still, we managed to come back to our Southern California home on Sunday night filthy, sunburned, sore, bug-bit and thoroughly exhausted.

If a getaway to the mountains ever really needs an excuse, this past weekend ours was to get in a fast, high-altitude hike to help us prepare for our upcoming hike to the top of Mt. Whitney next month. If you don't have your north American mountain peak statistics at hand, Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous United States. And yes, my wife and I are certifiably nuts.

We have our permit for the mid-September attempt to reach the 14,505-foot summit and have been trying to take as many hikes (as  high up as geography allows without driving to Katmandu) as we can before the big day. I’ll write more about that crazy goal next month.

Our training hike this past weekend was to a stunningly beautiful, above-timberline glacial pond in the John Muir Wilderness with the less-than-dignified name of Barney Lake. The actual hike was only seven miles, but the training value was in the elevation of the destination – some 10,000-plus feet above sea level. It was a breathtaking hike, not only because of the scarcity of oxygen.

On the way to Barney (I can’t write that without thinking of Fred and Wilma) Lake, the trail winds its way past other dazzlingly blue, Jeffery pine-rimmed lakes, through verdant mossy meadows, below shear granite cliffs and over crystal clear streams flowing from under snowfields still impressively large after a record winter. I’m sure we added hours to our sunrise hike with all of the times that the three of us rounded a corner or crested a hill to see revealed a panorama of such exquisite beauty that we were simultaneously stopped, speechless, in our tracks.

I have no idea how many times I said to my wife something along the lines of, “Tomorrow, when we’re both sitting in front our computers with a week’s worth of office work ahead, remember this view and where we were only 24 hours before.” Of course, it sounded more like, “Tomorrow (pant! pant!), when we’re (wheeze! pant!) both sitting in front of (pant! gasp!) our computers with (cough!) a week’s worth of office (pant! gasp!) work ahead, remem-(gasp!)-ber this view and (gulp! gasp!) where we were (pant!) only 24 (gasp! cough!) hours before.” I’m pretty sure our shadows shifted slightly underfoot in the time it took me to utter that simple sentence. But it was worth it.

Fast forward to the next day when, in fact, my wife and I were both in our respective offices basking in the glow of our respective computer screens. I opened up an email from the too-tired Mrs. expecting to read that she desperately wished we were back on the trail dodging fresh road apples, swatting suicidal mosquitoes and sucking scarce oxygen into our lungs instead of the slogging through the mundane meanderings of our day-to-day jobs. I know that’s what I was thinking, at least.

So, imagine my surprise when I read in my wife’s email a heartfelt reminder from her that we are richly blessed to be able to enjoy the outdoors at anytime, anywhere. Even right here in our hometown Crescenta Valley. She was referring, I knew, to our recent discovery and frequent use of hiking trails not 300 miles from here, not a three, four or five hour drive from here – but more like five minutes from our driveway.

She’s right, of course. Over the past few months, many of our training hikes have been done (and thoroughly enjoyed) as close to home as the Cherry Canyon trails above Descanso Gardens, or the extreme vertical climb from Altadena up to Echo Mountain and the ruins of the old Mount Lowe Railway.

I’ll write more about our adventures in local hiking next week. Maybe I can catch my breath by then.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly revised version of my column titled “Happy Trails” first published yesterday, 8.11.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper. 

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.