Type of travel: Running, hiking
Elevation (Max): 14505 feet
Trailhead: Whitney Portal to Crescent Meadow
Technical difficulty: Class 1
Watch time: 23:55
My friend FDK and I have been progressively tackling bigger and bigger runs in the mountains and in 2018, facing the start of medical school clerkships and significant restrictions to my free time, I proposed a single day run of the High Sierra trail (HST). We decided that with consistent training though the summer of 2018 that we could complete the trail in less than a day carrying only running vests. I experienced one of the most impactful days of my life on the HST both in terms of understanding the Sierra and understanding my own limits as an endurance athlete.
How do you understand something as big as the Sierra? As an endurance athlete I imagine
running across it in one continuous effort, following a line from east to west, climbing to barren and rocky altitudes, traversing alpine meadows, and dropping into river valleys as the sun rises and sets around me. Aesthetics are one thing and cold hard practicality is another. Only a few trails traverse the Sierra from east to west. The high sierra trail (HST) runs from the summit of Mount Whitney to Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park. A push from Whitney Portal to the parking lot in Sequoia National Park is 70+ miles with ~ 14000 feet of elevation gain. There are no good bailout points and a mistake on the HST will likely mean a cold bivouac deep in the Sierra. I need a safety net in the form of a partner for something this big, so in an email titled ‘stupid ideas’ I invite FDK, who is immediately and absurdly positive about the concept. We obtain a Whitney summit permit for the night of the harvest moon in late September.
On a training run in Park City Utah, came upon a couple of moose!
The HST in a day feels like it teeters on the verge of the possible all summer but our success (or even our willingness to attempt the traverse) never seems inevitable. I play out the possibilities in my mind. On some days I imagine us finishing and on others I suspect that the trip will end in a shivering bivouac far from the road. I want to be bold but I don’t want to be stupid and the line between the two is very thin sometimes. A week before the trip, FDK expresses doubts to me about our ability to complete the traverse. In a conscious and utterly dishonest moment I respond with extreme confidence. The trip is on.
The logistical support for the trip comes from my dad. It’s his first trip to Sequoia national park and he’s impressed by the big trees and the roughness of the terrain. He picks us up from the trail’s western end point at Crescent Meadow where we’ve left a car and drives us around the southern tip of the Sierra to the east side town of Lone Pine. Under a full moon we hike up the Whitney trail with 9 pound running vests.
Whitney has never been kind to me and I am overcome with nausea at the summit hut. FDK is doing something important with our satellite beacon but I threaten to ‘projectile vomit on you like in The Exorcist’ and rudely start back down without her. In her hurry to catch up with me she crashes head first into a rock on the technical summit trail and gashes her leg and hand and pops a water bottle in her chest pocket. At the junction with the trail down into Sequoia NP, we assess our condition. I’m recovering from my bout with AMS and FDK is bleeding and ice-encrusted from the re-freezing of her burst water bottle. In another bout of intellectual dishonesty we decide that ‘nothing has changed in our condition’ since the morning and we take the semi-irreversible step of descending down, down, down into the vast backcountry west of Whitney.
Incredibly, we have about 20 very easy miles of rolling and then downhill running through the Kern River valley. FDK trips once more and we have a brief moment where it seems she may have knocked loose a tooth, but it’s a false alarm. At both the mid-point and the low elevation point of the trip we’ve fully committed ourselves to completing the run. I feel
shockingly comfortable there, 35 miles deep in the Sierra, with minimal supplies and clothing, as if the mountains are insulating me from the outside world.
We can’t stay in the Kern River valley and we begin a distressing trudge up the dusty Chagoopa Plateau. In this heat it’s hard to believe that hours earlier we had frozen fingers and noses. We dunk hats and buffs into the river and let the water drip down our necks. FDK stops now and then to listen for rattlesnakes. I think it’s here that we lose the most time. If Mt Whitney, with its extreme altitude and cold, was the technical crux of the day then the Chagoopa Plateau, with its never ending gradual ascent through nondescript pine forest, is the psychological crux. My lungs slowly fill with dust, and a subtle rattle vibrates in my chest. Is this asthma, or am I just tired? Ultimately it doesn’t matter.
Finally we climb up into Kaweah Gap, and the whole of Valhalla and Hamilton lakes is laid out before us. This is the image that has stuck with me since the trip; FDK striding forward downhill, the sun setting fast into the haze of the central valley, and 20 miles to go over the most technical and exposed section of trail. As darkness falls we jog slowly downward. The trail is sliced into the cliff side and I’m nominally aware of a void on my left side. We pass through a tunnel blasted into bare granite. As the moon comes up it reflects off the sparkly white granite to illuminate the soaring buttress of Angels’ Wings and Cherubim Dome. I start to notice creatures in the forest. Tiny scorpions on the trail. Monstrous salamanders. My headlamp beam catches eyes in the trees- deer, most likely. We cross a gorge on a huge wooden bridge and we peer over the edge. We can’t see the bottom but we can hear water rushing a thousand feet below us. There’s a party in the forest at Bearpaw Meadow. FDK walks out the of woods right into it and asks for a coke. I hear a man shouting “What the hell! What the hell! Where did you come from?” She comes away with a ginger beer and some cookies. I almost want to join them and sleep by their fire.
I’m not in shape to run 75 miles and I learn this lesson hard near the 70 mile mark. My quads are wrecked and I’m running by using my hips to swing my legs around, using a hard effort to maintain about a 3 mph pace. FDK seems strong and she reminds me to eat and drink. I knew I had the guts to get us started on this journey, but she’s got the tenacity to see it through to the end. She could take hours off of our time with the right partner, now that she knows this is possible.
We actually do run in to the trailhead to come in just under the 24 hour mark. My dad has left back for the hotel as the night progressed, so we’re alone in the empty parking lot, the only thing left to drive ourselves down the hill to our hotel in Three Rivers. I feel like I’ve lived a whole lifetime in one day, my head full of alpine beauty and my body utterly wrecked.
In the course of this adventure, we established the East to West all female FKT for the complete HST including Mt Whitney. Our time was 23:55. I have no doubt that a reasonably trained ultrarunner could easily beat this time. They just have to attempt it.
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