A Long Day on the Eastside (aren't they all)
A creative linkup and some thoughts on ego in the mountains
The backstory
The first time
A few months ago, I found myself in an uncomfortable yet familiar position: rolling into the Alabama Hills late at night. It was my third time in the area, all of which being a staging ground for adventures up on Mt. Whitney. My first experience with Whitney was at the beginning of my sophomore year in college. I was driving to SLO from home and wanted to experience the beautiful Owens Valley for the first time. On my way out, I ventured up Boundary and Montgomery peaks on the northern tinge of the White mountains. This was my first experience near the Eastern Sierra, and I was excited to get my first glimpses of the famous mountain corridor.
The boundary peak wilderness is pretty remote, and, like the rest of the region, is more comfortable with a burly high clearance vehicle—not necessarily my Mom’s 2008 Toyota Highlander. Nonetheless, after a successful day out, I drove across the border into the Owens valley, deciding to stage myself for an attempt at Mt. Pinchot the following morning.
I ended up sleeping on the road headed up to Taboose Pass, but the road was rather gnarly, and I couldn’t drive to the trailhead. Moreover, a rain/snow mix the following morning dampered my ambitions, and I made a spontanteous decision to re-route my day towards the Whitney region. After driving the hour to Lone Pine, I rolled into the ranger station at around 10 in the morning. With most Whitney parties starting before the sun, I got some considerable warnings from the ranger as I went to purchase my day use permit! I don’t typically do well when it comes to listening to authority figures, so I continued up to the Whitney portal, beginning my hike up the standard route at around 2 pm. The route was developed in 1904 with the use of mules, which made for efficient travel, and I was even almost able to beat the dark! I was a bit worried about crowds, but some adverse weather meant I was mostly rolling solo. I ended up pushing for both Whitney and Mt. Muir, resulting in the summit of two 14ers and four 13(+)ers during the weekend…which is meaningless, but more on that later.
Heading back
After a fun adventure on my way out to school, I returned to Whitney with the Cal Poly Alpine Club in November of that year. I was quite excited to tag along, mainly because the group was attempting the Mountaineer’s Route, which branches off to the north fork of lone pine creek, rather than follow lone pine creek itself—which is what I had done previously on the “soft and succulent route.”
The route is a more direct and steep variation, and has a few somewhat technical components, although, the greatest hazard is probably rock fall, rather than technical demand. The route generally adheres straight up the drainage until Iceberg Lake, where it then ascends the main couloir.
The main couloir is not super tricky per-se, although it’s bascially a huge funnel for rocks to smash you. With helmets on, we trudged up it as quick as we could. From the top of the couloir, there is a steep and short chute up to the summit plateau. Some group members elected to traverse around to the west side of Whitney. However, with some care to avoid the ice in the chute, I decided to ascend the direct way with a few others, rendezvousing with the rest of the group at the summit shelter. With a happy crew, we exited via the standard route, the seemingly infinite number of switchbacks freshly burned in my memory 
A Romantic Line
With a few successful adventures on Whitney, a year later (as a Junior) I had ambitions for a different vision. I found myself driving back to Lone Pine with the Alpine Club, although, this time Whitney was not the focus.
The Whitney buttress is home to one of the best views in the Sierra. This is largely due to the extensive cliffs that lift the Whitney ridge from the eastern slopes. On the west side, the ancient Kern river valley carves the view out to the Kaweah and the greater King’s Canyon. This west side is quite challenging to access, and is rarely traveled with the exception of thru-hikers. One of the methods for accessing this zone is via the JMT, which is one of the more popular thru-hikes in the country, and is often regarded to be one of the best parts of the PCT. The JMT runs from Mt. Whitney and ends in Yosemite valley, traversing into the Whitney creek drainage (which then feeds into the Kern) directly south of Mt. Muir. As such, during my two days on Whitney, the JMT began to accumulate a serious pull.
What is out there in the deep(er) Sierra?
Turns out, there’s a heck of a whole lot!
With the gravity of the deep Sierra growing, I started to brainstorm potential lines that I could do to dip my toes in without having to spend the night. Backpacking is an incredibly wonderful experience and is worth pursuing in its own right. However, once you make the decision to spend the night in the mountains, your all-up weight basically doubles. I suppose I could have gone the emergency blanket/ multiple layer route, but that kinda sucks. If you’re gonna camp in the mountains, you might as well carry the weight to be comfortable.
Anyways, I typically enjoy fast and relatively unencumbered travel through the mountains, which restricted my plans to be around 20 hours at the maximum. Because I was responsible for driving a few Alpine Club members to the Whitney Portal trailhead, I knew I had to both start and finish there. That meant that if I wanted to go for a ridge linkup, I would have to either push north or south.
It was a hard decision, with the imposing Mt. Langley begging for a whitney linkup (maybe this will come in the future). Yet, heading south wouldn’t be the continuous linkup I was hoping for, and the aesthetics of Russell drew my imagination north…
The key was the Wallace Lakes trail, which runs from the PCT to Wallace lake basin. The trail is a unique East-West cut in the eastern Sierra, and opened the door for a cool trail linkup.
This basin is incredibly remote, largely because the trail approach is from Shepherd Pass, which is a lengthy backpacking trip. The other logical accessing point is from the Russell-Carillon pass, which requires some light scrambling. With the PCT-JMT connection on the back half, I decided that I wanted to get into this zone!
I think the holy grail of mountain linkups are loops. Man, they’re the coolest.
Loops have captivated mountain enthusiasts for years, largely because they offer continous exploration and adventure in one outing. To be fair, out-and-backs are the standard when it comes to mountaineering, but they offer less adventure, as the return route is already well-known from the ascent. Moreover, loops often have this interesting part in which you get so remote such that the path of least resistance home is to…finish the loop. To the certain kind of person, this remote demand and fear is a little addicting.
So, obviously, I was incredibly excited for this route!
The first step was fairly familiar: take the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek as if I was returning to the Mountaineer’s route on Whitney before branching North at Upper Boy Scout Lake to gain the Russell-Carillon pass. Attaining the pass was challenging, as the trail devolved into 1500’ of loose sand and rock.
The views from the pass were gorgeous in the first light, with Mt. Carillon, Mt. Tunnabora, and The Cleaver forming a glaring contrast with the emerging sun.
From the pass, there was some light ridge scrambling to the summit of Russell. This section had some exposure, but there were solid holds, and I would classify it as primarily class 3 with a dusting of class 4 hiking.
I reached the summit at around 7:00 AM, with absolutely stunning views of Mt. Whitney, the Kern Valley and the Wallace lakes region.
After a nice long snack at the summit of Russell and a wave to Alpine Club members on Whitney, I decided to traverse the ridge to Mt. Morgenson (shown in the bottom right in the images above). This ultimately proved to be a bit of a blunder, as the ridge proved immensely technical and exposed—hitting my efficiency hard early on in the route (it took me three hours to move less than a mile). In hindsight, It would have been better to just instantly drop down to Tulainyo Lake, which would have saved significant time and energy. Yet, I am a sucker for a cool looking ridge, so ended up pushing for Morgenson. Looking back, I suspect very few people have summitted Morgenson, which could mean that I am one of the first people to complete this specific loop—a useless but kinda cool thought.
The Morgenson ridge was pretty tricky with some ass-clenching exposure and ice dwelling in the rock cracks. I committed though and it became easier to finish the ridge and summit Morgenson than bailing down the cliff. I don’t know who the heck is going to read this blog post. But, if for whatever reason you are looking to do a similar route, I feel obligated to mention that the ridge was 4th class the entire time, with 5th class sections to navigate around gendarmes. Looking back, the ridge was only fun after I had completed it—a “one and done.”
Yet, the summit views from Morgenson did not disappoint.
Unfortunately, it was then 10:00 AM, and boy was I behind schedule. The descent off Morgenson was actually pretty gradual, but was an annoying mixture of autumn snow and rock scree. I ended up stumbling and glissading down to the Wallace basin. The adventure was strangely just beginning, despite being out for 6 hours.
The Wallace basin was crucial for refilling my water, refueling, and radioing to the rest of the club, which was probably starting their descent off Mt. Whitney.
This point was basically the “go/no go.” In other words, descending more into the embrace of the Kern valley would result in a mandatory completion of the full planned loop—retreating back to the Russell-Carillon pass would be more difficult than wrapping into Whitney creek. Excited and a little scared, I elected to continue, trudging deeper into the valley.
Remember the remoteness of the Sierra I was talking about before? Yeah, I felt it first hand.
I remember it being freaky and cool simultaneously. It turns out that the Wallace Lakes trail is shown on GPS maps without really being a trail. I contoured generally towards the PCT through the forest (fortunately the bush was sparse, and I could run without bushwhacking) and merged with some faint deer and hiker trails before stumbling onto the PCT. I felt extremely alone and adventurous. Also, in hindsight, I don’t think I had bear spray, which is pretty dumb for a solo runner 15 miles away from the nearest person in Autumn. But fortunately, I didn’t see any threatening wildlife.
After chugging down most of the food I had left, I started the long yet efficient push on the PCT trail to get myself back. The PCT trail is of course incredibly beautiful and well-made, but my tired legs and water-logged shoes resulted in a long slog to the Whitney Creek ranger station.
The trail was long and beautiful, making me consider a thru-hike in the future! The PCT held a wavy contour around Peak 12800, before offering the fork to the Crabtree meadows and Whitney Creek drainage. I stopped to refill water near the Ranger Station and continued up towards Guitar Lake. This was a nice gradual ascent, but I could feel the fatigue accumulating in the bones.
I was fearing the dark, so I forced a brisk pace up until the switchbacks up to the trail crest saddle. At this point, I was nearing 10,000 feet of vertical gain and 15 hours of travel, and I could sense the altitude stripping my resolve apart. With some long breaks and light cursing, I made it to the saddle. The descent down the normal Whitney trail was pretty smooth, there was some snow in the 99 switchbacks that made microspikes necessary, but remained strong enough to run.
The darkness was an expected greeting to trail camp, where I linked back up with some Alpine Club members. We slogged the rest of the way down Whitney to the car together.
For me, it was an 18 hour day with 30 miles and 10k vertical gain. It was pretty rough haha. Yet, to this day, it remains one of the best linkups I have ever done.
Some thoughts on Ego
Despite this being one of my more treasured times in the mountains, the experience did force me to grapple with some thoughts regarding the philosophy for why the outing was so fulfilling to me. What makes me want to pursue loops like these? For most mountain enthusiasts, they’ll assure you that the pursuit of adventures in the mountains is inherrently intrinsic—a self-actualizing venture in which they explore their own comfort, abilities, and the beautiful lanscape. But is this realistic in the modern alpinism/outdoor recreation atmosphere?
There was an interesting film I watched a few years ago called the Race to the Summit, which wrestled with the question of motivation for such extreme outings. There was an immense pressure to perform well, which, in the alpinism context, either means novel ideas (first ascents, ridge linkups, traverses, etc.) or speed (fastest known times aka FKTS). In the commercial sphere, athletes feel obligated to attain these milestones to gain or maintain sponsorships, recognition, and validation for their excursions. Ultimately, extrinsic motivation is non-negligible in commercial mountain sport. This urge to demonstrate our capabilities for validation forms the entirety of the business model of apps such as Strava, or is even the reason for blogs such as these 🤷.
I like to think that because I am an amateur, I don’t have the same proportion of extrinsic motivation for my adventures compared to others. However, on the PCT, I found myself comparing my adventure. I remember thinking: “My slow pace is ok because I’m doing more than what others may be doing.”
Yeesh.
Introspectively, I felt subconscious about my pace, or the fact that I had not summitted Mt. Whitney (which I believed I would be able to). I enforced contrived, human-conceived metrics about how to best approach or move through terrain that has existed for billions of years in such grandeur. Sure, deep down I know that I wanted to explore the regions on the loop for the sole sake of exploration and discovery, and the adventure indeed proved intrinsically satisfactory. However, I can’t help but think that part of the outing was inspired by the validation I imagined I would receive.
The reason my alpine motivations bother me is that they have a real influence on risk management.
Realistically, would I have attempted the ridge between Morgenson and Russell without Strava, other people, or validation? Maybe. But it can be hard to discern whether the reason you do something is because you are intrinsically drawn to it, or whether you feel extrinsically obligated.
Previously in the post, I referenced the number of 14ers I had done during another outing in the Owens Valley. The mainstream practice of recording the number of 14000+ ft mountains originated in Colorado, which functions as a checklist for most hikers seeking to experience the state. However, after having spent the last summer in Colorado—dealing with the crowds seeking to “tick a box,” I had to reconcile with my personal ambitions for climbing said mountains.
For me, I decided that the mountains were too meaningful to be relegated to the likes of a checklist. They had to mean more. I needed to be confident that I would be pursing risky endeavors because that is what I wanted to personally accomplish.
It has been some time between completing this linkup and writing this post. I like to think that I have mostly adhered to these personal boundaries, but alas, it remains a work in progress eh? Darn the modern world!
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