Day 64: Mile 760.5 - 767.0

Another short day today, but here's my justification. Tomorrow is Whitney summit day. And if I take it easy for the couple days leading up to that, well, to my mind that makes sense: I'm making sure I have the energy to climb to the highest point in the Lower 48. I don't want to push like crazy right before a pretty tough summit--tough for its elevation (it goes up to over 14,000 feet), its distance at elevation (8 miles there, 8 miles back), and its heights (I'm not thinking about the heights)--and then not have the wherewithal to summit. So, yeah, taking it easy.

(Only problem is that this justification comes a posteriori. So I didn't intend to do it this way, that's just how it turned out, and I'm just making myself feel better. But, hey, if I make it to the summit tomorrow, well, it worked!)

I spent most of the day hiking with Cookie Pie. It turns out she had passed me--probably when I went off trail to explore the ranger station near Rock Creek--and had spent the night a bit higher up. Well, last night there was evidently a big lightning storm overhead--I slept through it--but Tim talked about it in the morning (this is *not* *normal*, he said), and Cookie had been woken, then kept awake, by all the flashes of light. Then it had rained in the morning and, like me, she had gotten a later start (ah, the classic question: when it's raining in the morning, should you start and dry out later, or will this rain pass quickly and you can wait a little bit and dry out now?) (there is no good answer to this question, by the way). But I bumped into her a little bit up the trail, and we ended up hiking together into Crabtree. This was good. At the Rock Creek Ranger Station yesterday, I got some news about Ian's dad--not good--and it inspired a sudden thought. I had planned to push ahead to Crabtree yesterday and then summit Whitney today. But that was soley for myself, what *I* wanted. But I thought, y'know, let's try doing something different: let's try planning based on someone else. So instead of focusing on what conditions would be best for me, let's think about what someone else wants to do, and help them make *that* happen. And I remembered that Cookie wanted to summit Whitney, but every time she talked about it she talked about going up with a group--it's a tough, and potentially dangerous, climb, after all. So I figured, hey, I can go up Whitney with Cookie. That's a group, even if of only 2 people. And not only will she likely feel better, I'll feel better too: it'd be good to go with someone. Of course, that would involve *finding* her first, but I got lucky and caught up with her in the late morning at a creek. And so we were reunited, and we set out together, all the way to Crabtree Meadow.

And at Crabtree Meadow was where the real hard part began.

When you're doing the PCT, summiting Whitney isn't the question--pretty much everyone does. Besides the fact that it's a PCT tradition--which is why I think most people do it--I know that getting permits for Whitney is hard. I remember the story of Randy (Runner and Friend of Angela--not Randy "Arrow") who had tried for three years to get permits to summit Whitney from Whitney Portal, intending to do it with his son, and when he finally got the permit, his son started his new job with the forest service just two weeks prior and couldn't get away. Ack! So the chance to summit Whitney is a precious thing, not to be easily discarded. (In fact, the only PCT hiker I know who's skipping Whitney--Dennis--justifies it only by noting that he's done it before.) But anyway, summiting Whitney isn't the question. Rather the question is: *when* do you summit Whitney?

The tradition is to do a sunrise summit: to see the sun rise from the summit of Whitney. The alternative is to do a day summit: forget the sunrise, and just summit sometime during the day. For us, that sometime would be around noon: following the advice of folks summiting in, say, August, the idea is to get to about one mile from the top in the late morning, where you can look out over the desert valley below and see the storms building. You can then assess whether you think you can make it to the top and back before they hit. Given the weather of yesterday--afternoon rain, evening thunderstorms--invoking the August strategy for a day summit made sense.

So which to choose: sunrise summit or day summit? And here we ran into a problem: both Cookie and I are pretty indecisive about this sort of thing. So we hemmed and hawed a lot. We thought to maybe hedge our bets: get up around midnight and see how the weather was--remember that it had thunderstormed at midnight the night before--and go from there, but that seemed unviable: too much a game-time decision. And so we went back and forth. I tried to figure out how to even cast this thing. Well, if yesterday's weather was an indicator of today's weather, then a day summit would give us the best chance of seeing the view: it might rain in the morning, and in the afternoon, but we'd have a window between around, say, 10am to 2pm, when the skies would be clear. And there'd be a chance the sunrise summit would be occluded: if it rained in the morning, there wouldn't be anything to see at the top but clouds. But the sunrise summit is pretty unique, and when am I going to be in as good a position, and in as good shape, to try for a sunrise summit?

In the end, after much going back and forth, with repeated assertions from Cookie that she'd be fine with whatever, and several consultations with third parties (i.e., other hikers), I finally got fed up and made a decision. Let's go for the day summit. Why? Because I want to *see* things, and I can't see things in the dark. It's that simple: I want to *see* *things*. And when I said that, Cookie breathed a sigh of relief and said, yeah, that she preferred that option too. If nothing else, gave her the ability to get a good, full night's sleep before summiting. And honestly, a day summit had been my original plan, before being lured in by the tradition and sheer coolness of a sunrise summit. But, forget all that, I want to *see* *things*, so day summit it will be! Will get up around 5am, and hope to start on our way up around 6am. Should give us plenty of time to get to the summit during the window-of-good-weather between 10am and 2pm, and will let me *see* *things*.

Oh, in the evening, at Crabtree Meadow, we bumped into Tim and Emily again, who were stopping for a break before continuing on to Guitar Lake. (Guitar Lake is even closer to Whitney Summit, but the PCTA permit doesn't allow us to camp there; Crabtree Meadows is the closest we can get.) And I got to talking with them again, had dinner with them again in fact (we all had ramen: Tim had asked me yesterday what my favorite meal was and I said ramen + seaweed + pork sung, and evidently this stuck in all are minds enough that we all had it today!). And this time I got to ask Emily about her thesis, which was on synchronized movement and whether it facilitates social bonding. Spoiler alert: it does. Every Sunday for 9 months, she got a group together and would have them physically act out adjectives, and use this to do various experiments. For example, in one she would give everyone the same word, they would move in a way that represented that word, then they would string them all together into a dance and then they would all perform the dance together. And she would use surveys--the standard psychology device--to test for social bonding. And the surveys showed that, after doing the dance--the synchronized movement--social bonding increased. (As did general happiness, it seemed.) And this is fascinating: you can ask what binds societies together, what builds social cohension. And you'll get the more cynical answers of power and control, and the more economic answers of specialization and dependance, and even the more "elevated" answers of culture and art. But what about movement, straightforward physical movement? As Emily points out, the synchronized movement of modern American life is sitting in traffic, but what sort of social bonding is *that* building? And she spent some time in Vietnam, and noticed that every morning, everybody would get up and do Tai Chi in these large groups--the same phenomenon I see at Guo Fu Ji Nian Guan every time I visit Taipei--what kind of social bonding is *that* building? I find it pretty interesting: it's a way of looking at things that I haven't thought of before. I must remember, if I see her again, to get her last name so I can look up the thesis. (They're going up Whitney tomorrow too, so hopefully I'll get my chance.)   

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Some notes:

-- Rock Creek Camp > Guyot Creek > Whitney Creek > Crabtree Meadow Ranger Station

-- On the way to Crabtree Meadow, there's a part where the trail descends down this rocky, near boulder-y, slope. There were some crews out here doing trail maintenance--dirt work it looked like, the hard stuff, digging up and then rebuilding the trail--but at the bottom the trail rises up along the bottom of the canyon, a narrow stripe of dirt and trees flanked on both sides by rock slopes, and for a moment I was suddenly back in Desolation Wilderness, exploring some isolated canyon by myself--except that Cookie was in front, setting the pace--but nonetheless just exploring some small local place. And for a moment that exploring spirit--eager and happy to have found some place out of the way (clearly this is not true--the place is on the PCT for goodness sake, and there are work crews behind us just over there--but feelings aren't rational), and it displaced that relentlessly driving spirit. And it took me completely by surprise, so I don't think I can depend on it, but is this a way to combat that relentlessness of the trail?

-- Today I met Andrea, a friend of Cookie's, and who I only talked to briefly. She was looking to get some sleep in anticipation of summiting tomorrow herself--like us, she was going to do a day summit, but was planning to leave earlier than us, more like 5am than 6am. But we talked a bit about summiting and mostly about a problem we both shared: we're both not good with heights. How do you deal with it, she asked. And I explained my two methods. First, I keep a trekking pole in my hand between me and the drop. For some reason, psychologically, this makes me feel safer. It's based on an observation I had in Cleveland National Forest, when I had wandered down an abandoned truck trail heading down the east side of the mountains from Main Divide. The truck trail wasn't maintained, had become overgrown, and at one point I was walking the edge of the room, up along an embankment of sorts, and to my right was--not a drop, but a long unbroken slope, steep in that if I fell I wouldn't be able to stop rolling down until I reached the bottom, and that bottom was quite a ways away. And for part of this stretch, I was exposed directly to this slope, and for part of this stretch, there were some bushes a few feet down. And for some reason, when the bushes were there, I felt safer. Which makes no sense: if I were to fall, the bushes wouldn't have stopped my fall, if anything they would have just made it so I was rolling down the mountain and now full of splinters as I went. But having something there assuaged the fear. I translated that to holding a trekking pole in my hand, just to have something between me and the drop. Which again makes no sense: that pole isn't stopping my fall in any way--it's attached to my hand so if I fall it just falls with me, and just complicates things as another thing that can hit me in the face on my way down. But having it there nonetheless, irrationally, helps. Second, I manage my concentration. My fear of heights is irrational--it doesn't just "go away" because I logically argue it away, irrational things not being subject to rational analysis--and it's going to be there. What I can do is prevent it from becoming overwhelming or debilitating. And the way I do that is I focus: I focus on the trail, on my next few steps. I don't look down because I focus on the trail, I don't let the fear build because my mind is preoccupied with this near-term route I'm charting up the trail. By focusing, keeping the mind engaged, I can keep the fear at bay, and keep it from becoming front and center. So those are my two strategies. I explained them to Andrea and she, a fellow heights-not-liker, agreed that they made sense, even the crazy trekking pole idea. So these crazy ideas may be applicable to someone other than just me--who knew!

-- Tim did ask if I had a trail name and I said no. He doesn't have one either and when I told him Patricia's story about whyshe doesn't have a trail name, he agreed with it. So Tim is Tim. As for Emily, she did have a trail name: Tri-tip. And it doesn't mean what you think: you think--as I did--that it has something to do with a particularly delicious cut of meat. But nope: it's because she was once opening a can and almost sliced off three fingertips. So Tri-tip. She seemed delighted to remember this potential trail name, but unless she starts introducing herself by that name, it's not going to stick. And I like Emily, so I'm sticking with that (I tend to stick with the name that a person introduced themselves with--even if later they get a trail name--unless they explicitly ask me to use the new name). 

-- Have I written up Patricia's story about trail names? Patricia--the old lady from back in the day who I hiked with up from Warner Springs to Lost Valley Spring, then camped with at Lost Valley Spring, then met up a final time at Mike's Place--Patricia the old lady who's slightly hunched over even without a pack, but then straps on a full backpacking rig and proceeds to climb up San-bloody-Jacinto--someone had asked Patricia about a trail name. And she had said, slightly irritated, two names, you want me to remember two names? No, I'm just going to remember one name. And that was that: no trail name for Patricia! I have my own theory about trail names--mostly justifying why *not* to get one--and maybe I'll write it up if I don't eventually get one. But it's been 700+ miles and I haven't gotten one yet, so to me (who admittedly doesn't truly know how these things work) odds are getting low. 

-- Deciding on a day summit based on a singular premise--I want to *see* *things*--is admittedly very indicative of how I make complicated decisions. There may be many factors in play--weather probabilities, tradition, opportunities and missing them--and some will weigh all these out and pick the heavier side of the balance. But not me: I always make decisions by rendering all these issues irrelevant, and basing it all on a single, often small, thing. Like: I want to *see* *things*. Because weather?, that's a wash, tradition?, that's a wash, opportunity?, that's a wash too, because all these things are complicated and I don't deal well with complicated. So if they're all washes, they don't factor into the decision. Instead I need to find another thing, a simple thing, a fulcrum, that tips one way and, bam!, there's my decision and my justification.

-- Oh, on the way to Crabtree, we passed by some folks who had gone up recently, during the storms. Mostly JMTers, to be honest. And man, but their stories? First there was the young couple who had gone up during the afternoon storms, in the midst of thunder, and who didn't see a thing, but had quite the experience. And then there was the group, laying out on the slopes at the turnoff to the Crabtree Ranger Station, looking beat. They had gone up for a sunrise summit, and just been greeted with a snowstorm at the top. As one of them put it, that was the kind of thing my ancestors wrote stories about, fighting the wind and snow and cold to get to the top, be greeted with no views but just more wind and snow and cold, and then coming back down. Granted these folks didn't see anything, but they did get tremendous stories out of it, so maybe that's a wash?