With just two days left, we were beginning to sense that our extraordinary trip was almost over. Our fantasies about cold beer, Mexican food and showers became more vivid, as did those about warm sleeping conditions, clean clothes and different footwear. We were, though, very much looking forward to this day of hiking, as it would allow us to return to two of our most favorite spots on the trail, Bighorn Plateau and Guitar Lake.
Team Bean, true to their regime, was up and out of camp by 7:00. They too were camping that night at Guitar Lake - a popular staging ground for those climbing Whitney from the west - and they promised to save us a campsite, as the lake can get quite crowded. We headed out a short while later, because we wanted to reach Bighorn Plateau while there was still morning light.
After a short, gradual climb over the shoulder of Tawny Point, we reached the plateau. Bighorn Plateau is a spectacular, barren expanse of sand and gravel, punctuated with age-old foxtail pines and lupine. To the east, the dominating hulk of the Whitney massif towers into the skyline, and far off to the west, across the Kern Canyon, stretch the many peaks of the Great Western Divide. Near the top of the plateau is a small, reflective lake, which was totally still when we arrived.
The features of this plateau - the views, the lake, the solitude, the sand and the sky combine to form a picture of perfection unlike any other we had seen, and this was far and away our most favorite place on the trail. We sat for a time high up on the sandy plain, and then meandered slowly through the impressive grove of foxtail pines leading down the trail.
This grove is like a natural museum. Foxtails, and their remarkable cousins, the bristlecones, are beautiful by their nature, and each tree is quite different from any other. As the trees grow, their bark splits to reveal a beautiful, yellowed wood underneath, which twists and bends as the tree ages, giving a sense of a tortured life in the rugged mountain environment. The tree retains this beauty as it dies, as it finally falls over onto the forest floor, and literally until the moment it is reclaimed as dust by the earth below. There are hundreds of such trees in the grove below Bighorn Plateau, and because each tree is so remarkable in its own right, it takes a long time to hike through this place - particularly if you have a camera.
For the next five miles, the trail hugs the west flank of Mt. Young, as it travels up and down through mature forest cover. It was dusty and fairly warm, but the trees helped, and we had an easy time of it. Somewhere in the middle of all this, we stopped for a rest, and met a variety of people passing us on the trail. The first of these was a couple - he from Willets (California) and she, from L.A. - who were making the popular, week-long trek between Keersarge Pass and Whitney. As a happy ending to an earlier story on the trip, she told us that the day before, she had graciously given her space blanket to a fellow in need on the trail. Space Blanket Man had gotten his wish, and was on his way to Mammoth.
The Egg Lady Cometh. We were still chuckling over how dreams can really come true in the Sierras when along came a well-dressed young woman carrying a dozen eggs. She looked like she had just come from the corner store, but the closest corner store required a twenty-five mile hike via Whitney's 13,620' Trail Crest. She politely endured our male -oriented snide remarks about whether this particular store had any cold beer left, and declined our various offers of Smartwool socks, breakfast mix and the like in exchange for enough eggs to make a nice omelet. It turned out that she was the backcountry ranger at Crabtree (at the base of the western side of Whitney), and had just picked up her food supply - delivered by helicopter - for the next few months. This was now September 2, and those twelve eggs had to last her until mid-October. Since we would be drinking cold beer and devouring large combo plates of Mexican food within forty-eight hours, we backed off.
Crabtree was just a few miles further on, and we then turned east and headed up the long valley leading to Guitar Lake.
The last time we were at Guitar Lake, we had arrived approximately fifteen minutes before a major rainstorm broke, and had erected our tent and boiled soup water just in time to jump inside before the deluge. We were delirious at having cheated the weather, and later had a fabulous walk along the water's edge after the storm passed. That was a magical day, with low, wispy clouds obscuring the mountain tops and the anticipation of bagging Whitney the next day. We had great memories of this place.
The Crabtree ranger had told us that the week before, there had been seventy-five people crammed into the sparse campsites at the lake, and we approached that day wondering how bad the crowds would be on this visit. To our surprise, as we crossed the last saddle before the lake, it wasn't that bad. Team Bean had saved us a nice camp on the north shore of the lake, and, a short while later, Birthday Girl and her mate arrived. We were happy we would be around the following day for her celebration.
Because the valley we were in was oriented east-west, rather than north-south, the sun stayed around much longer that day, and we all stayed outside talking for a long time. We were all energized by the anticipation of the next days climb, and paid little heed to the other thirty or so people who trickled into the basin as the evening wore on. Birthday Girl, on the last day of her fifty-ninth year spent over an hour doing yoga in the waning sunlight on the far side of the lake. She was a great lady, and if I am half that fit when I'm fifty-nine, I'll be thrilled.
Photos: Bighorn Plateau and Mt. Whitney from Bighorn Plateau
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