A Short Walk in the High Sierras

15 minutes

In September 1968, hitch-hiking through the Central Valley of California, I got a ride in a vast Ford F350 Pickup and told the driver, a guy about the age of my dad, about hitch-hiking from New York. After a while he said. “I think my son would benefit from meeting you. He’s dropped out of college and just hangs around the house doing nothing. If you’d enjoy clean sheets and a hot shower for a couple of days. I can put you up, and make sure you are well fed. Maybe you can encourage Arnold to get out of the house and do something with his life.”

This seemed a tall order, but good food and a comfy bed appealed. He pulled into his driveway in front of a large and impressive suburban log cabin, in Visalia. Inside, he offered me a drink, and went upstairs to see his son. “He’ll join us for dinner,” he reported on his return. Arnold when he showed up, with a certain reluctance, was clearly depressed, and not much interested in his dad’s new friend. However, over great big steaks, and good California wine, his father persuaded Arnold that night at dinner to get a job at the tomato packing plant twenty miles away. With nothing else to do, I went with him the next day. My job was taking the full flats of tomatoes off the end of the conveyor belt and stacking them onto pallets. The pace was extreme, and I had to run, carrying two 25lb flats at a time, either at arms length, biting into my legs, or lifted to chest height. I got back after the first night very sore and completely exhausted. But, I was making a little money, and the excellent board and lodging were free. After the three hardest days of my working life, Arnold quit. Without a ride to the plant, I was unable to continue the job, but I was very happy to be free of the badly paid and excessively hard work. We went back the next day to collect our wages, and that night over dinner it was obvious that my time of steaks and feather beds was up.

In one of our dinner conversations, the father had told me about the Sequoia National Park, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains just fifty miles away, and I decided it was well worth a visit. In spite of his father’s encouragement, Arnold refused to join the trip, but he was volunteered by his dad to drive me to the park. I managed to leave some of my stuff in his room so that I could go for a hike in the Sequoias without any unnecessary extra weight.

The mountain Sequoias are the most massive trees on the planet, with a deeply furrowed scaly bark of a beautiful red. They tower over two hundred feet and an old postcards shows a carriage driving through a hole cut in a tree a hundred years earlier. Nowadays, cars drive less impressively through the same tree.

After a delightful few hours, getting off the road and wandering footpaths through groves, I went to the visitors centre. There I saw a map of a trail system that would take me to Mt Whitney, at 4421m/14,505ft the highest summit in the contiguous United States, in just over 60 miles.

It was getting cold in the mountains, but there was still no snow this far south and it was an opportunity not to be missed. I hadn’t been planning on going high, but I had a Black’s Icelandic Special sleeping bag and a reasonable pair of shoes. I went to the camp-ground shop and did my best to get appropriate supplies from their limited selection. I bought instant soups, bread, cheese, jam, tea, powdered milk, corned beef, a pound of carrots, an onion and some apples and chocolate. I remember they only had a 1lb box of sugar cubes, so I discarded half the cubes in the bin. I also bought a 1 lb tin of bacon and a tin of baked beans, which were to turn out to have been a good choice.

That afternoon I walked up a steep trail for half a dozen miles and stopped for dinner on a ledge of rock with a great view. After the sun went down, the temperature dropped quickly and significantly at 8,000 ft, and I crawled into my sleeping bag laid out on the flat rock shelf. My previous experience at altitude had been in the Himalayas sleeping on snow, but with an air mattress under me, not to mention a blazing fire to keep me warm till bed time and hot tea delivered in the morning to my tent! That night I was bitterly cold, and I learned from experience how the cold penetrates from below when you don’t have insulation under your sleeping bag.

I was too cold to sleep, and so at first light I got up but was unable to stuff my sleeping bag, as I was in an early state of hypothermia and had half frozen hands. So I wrapped the sleeping bag around me instead, and set off fast. After a couple of hours, finally warmed up by hard walking and the sun, I stopped and packed away my sleeping bag as my hands now worked again. Sometime after nine, I came across the first people I’d seen. A young couple were starting a fire by their tent and I asked if I could join them. After collecting a large armful of wood to add to their woodpile, and toasting by their fire, I broke out my stove and made tea. I had a heavy pack with only the car camping foods available at the store, so decided to eat my bacon and beans that morning as a treat. I offered my new companions a share but they refused several times.

“I know it’s only tinned bacon” I said, “but it’s all they had”.

“No, it’s not that” Jeremy replied. “We can’t eat your food, you’ll need it.”

Jeremy and Alice had worked all summer in the park, and at the end of the summer they’d got married. They were spending their honeymoon hiking in the high country, and had had nothing but the lightest freeze dried foods since they set out on their hike two weeks earlier. Though their mouths were watering at the thought of bacon and beans, they didn’t feel able to accept so wonderful a gift from a stranger.

I assured them that I was happy to share, and persuaded them I didn’t want to carry an opened bacon can around in bear country, and we set to, eating a feast of bacon, beans, their delicious home made bannock and coffee and my pot of strawberry jam. They were a delightful couple, and very well informed about the park and the history of the Sierras. We spent a great day together, walking a dozen miles along the trail, stopping to enjoy the views and look at the late flowering plants.

Hearing about my miserable night, Jeremy invited me into their tent that night, and astonishingly, into their double sleeping bag. This was more than I expected for sharing my bacon and beans, and the only time I’ve shared a sleeping bag with a honeymooning couple. Though, for some reason, Jeremy put me on one side, and slept in the middle.

The following day, I stopped off at Kern hot springs, planning to catch the others up later. The hot springs had been fixed up by the parks service, with an old cast-iron bathtub, its four legs cemented in to a small platform, in a meadow fifty yards from the trail. The very hot water, hot enough to burn, had been piped in to a tap with a two foot long handle. To get a comfortable temperature, there was a bucket to pour in cold water from the Kern river just twenty yards away. I spent a couple of hours, wallowing in a constantly hot bath, as the tap could be foot operated! Once or twice when I overdid the hot water, I jumped out, red as a crab, grabbed the bucket and ran naked to the Kern River just yards away for some icy water. It was a real treat, lazing neck deep in a comfortable tub at almost 7,000 feet, amidst such fine mountain scenery. I enjoyed myself so much, effortlessly warm, reading, soaking and gazing at the mountains, that I stayed for hours.

When I reluctantly set off, the afternoon was half over. I was anxious to find Jeremy and Alice again; they were such good company, and I did not look forward to another bitter night alone. However, as night drew in, I did not find their camp site, and continued into the dark, thinking I would soon see their campfire. Instead, I had to admit defeat, and make a camp in the dark. At least I was camped on grass and pine needles, and able to make a small fire in the fire pit to keep me warm as I cooked. I had a cold night, but not nearly as cold as my first night camped on bare rock. The next day, Jeremy and Alice passed my camp site as I was making a late start waiting for the sun to warm me up before setting off. I had missed their camp in the dark. They asked if I’d seen the two girls that they had passed soon after leaving me the day before. I hadn’t, and supposed they had seen me cavorting in the nude and passed discreetly by, much to my disappointment.

That day, I decided I’d better get a move on as I didn’t have that much food. So, soon after my friends passed me, I caught up and after a final chat I set off fast to get to Mt Whitney. That night, I had a cold camp above the tree line, but made sure that I used all my spare clothing underneath me in the sleeping bag.

The following day, I arrived at the summit of Mt Whitney, where I found about 20 people, day hikers who had come up the shortest and most popular route to climb Mt. Whitney, a 10.7 mile (17.1 km) trail from Whitney Portal, just west of the town of Lone Pine on the east side of the Sierras.

On the mountain’s large flat summit, I ate almost my last food and chatted to Lance, a pleasant guy from L.A. about my walk in from Sequoia, and he was impressed. Whilst I was happy to be on the top of the highest mountain in the contiguous US, I did not want to end my trip by descending a busy trail, followed by a 400 mile hitch-hike around the Sierras back to Visalia to collect my stuff. If I could, I wanted to continue up the John Muir trail, perhaps another 30 miles, and leave through Kings Canyon National Park, as it would be far more interesting, and would put me back on the same side of the mountain chain as my bags.

Lance said “I have too much food- I’m sure lots of people here have extra too.” He very generously offered to give me his surplus food, then he wandered around the mountaintop picnickers and asked a dozen other people if they had any extra to help me on my trip. He collected a carrier bag half-full of sandwiches, dried sausage, cheese, biscuits, chocolate, candy and sweets. So, thanking him and the others profusely, I returned down the western trail, and set off north towards Kings Canyon.

I spent the first night in a great rocky basin with no sign of a tree, but views of lovely blue lakes. After a cold dip in one of the lakes in the morning of my sixth day, I began the hard climb to the summit of Forrester pass the highest pass in the contiguous US at 13,160 ft/4011m. In the barren landscape, I saw someone coming down the switch back from the pass. When we met up, he set my adventure into context, as he’d spent the entire summer hiking the Pacific Crest trail, from up near the Canadian border. He climbed down to a post office every so often to collect supplies sent him by his brother. He shared an Italian dried cheese he carried and I shared some chocolate with him.

Next afternoon I met an very overweight fisherman, who was hiking slowly out to his car. He offered me a ride from the road head, so I walked along with him for an hour. Suddenly, he became quite ill. He stopped and sat down holding his chest. After a minute or two, he told me he was having a heart attack. It was painful just watching him, and knowing that there was nothing I could do. After few more minutes, he started to look better. He told me he’d had several heart attacks already, but this was the worst and in the most worrying situation, so far from the road. He managed to recover sufficiently in half an hour to continue, now very slowly, the last few miles to his car, me carrying his fishing tackle. He kindly took me all the way back to my stuff in Visalia.

Note: I travelled without a camera. All images from the internet

Next: A walk across Death Valley and a meeting with a contract killer.