PART THREE: DESCENT
The Nature Call Of The Wild

It couldn't have been more beautiful at the summit.  The temperature was registering at fifty-nine degrees, the wind was present but not offensive considering there wasn't a wind break anywhere on the continent, and the sky was filled with nothing but sun, sun, sun.  But all that did nothing for my sorry physical state.  Compared to the external, my internals were the ultimate study in contrast.

Laid low by Mount Whitney.  Not the majestic moment on the summit I was hoping for.

I sat upright and felt the world spin around me like a carousel from hell.  My head wasn't just pounding, it felt as if it was compressing.  My hands had feeling in them once again, but it was tingly and intermittent.  The nausea had increased fivefold, and my lower intestines were barking at regular intervals.  Not feeling strong enough to stand, I dug into my pack and searched for a remedy.  More extra strength Tylenol, some water, and – why I thought this would help was more a testament to my delusional state of mind than anything else – half of that roast beef and swiss sandwich I'd brought along for the supposedly celebratory moment on the peak.  Somehow I got it down. 

A few minutes later I summoned the strength to stand and take some pictures. 

The Whitney Shelter, with fellow summiteers in the foreground.

Standing on the roof of America, looking eastward towards the Midwest.

Making it official: The U.S. Park Service's story since 1930, and they're sticking to it.

Of the brave souls who were up there with me, none were bounding around the summit like they'd just had a nice stroll in the park.  None, that is, except the three crusty hikers who showed up just after I took the pictures you see above.  They were twenty-something, self-described "hiker trash" who'd been traversing the Pacific Crest Trail (a trail that runs continuously from Canada to Mexico) for several months, and were plenty acclimated to this kind of activity.  They loudly debated whether or not they should cook something (they decided against it, figuring it would take hours for their water to boil).  They were gregarious and rowdy and energetic, everything I wished I was but wasn't.  I was jealous enough to share my sad state with them.

"Dude," said one, "you got altitude sickness.  You gotta get outta here."

His buddy concurred.  "The only way to get better is to get down.  You shouldn't stay."  When I told him I'd already been on the peak for over forty minutes, hoping that some rest and food would do the trick, he shook his head.  "Did you day-hike up from the Portal?"

"Yeah."

"Shit, man, you should really leave.  You got, what, eleven miles?  And it's already three?"

I'd been making decent time all the way from the trailhead to Trail Crest, the peak of the 99 switchbacks at 13,600 feet, but those last two miles had totally trashed my schedule.  I hadn't thought about it until that moment.  If it took me ten hours to get up, how long would it take me to get down?  In this condition?  Would I be hiking back in the dark?  For how many hours?

I handed the camera back to one of the "hiker trash," and kindly asked him to take one last picture of me.  There was one left on the roll, and I had no plans to take pictures on the way back.  It was going to take every ounce of concentration I had just to get back on the ridge trail. 

What goes up must come down: Just seconds before setting off for the eleven-mile descent back to the Whitney Portal Campground.

Groaning and wheezing, I swung my pack back onto my shoulders, clutched the hiking sticks, and stared down at the challenge before me.  I needed to get down, they said.  That meant I needed to get down the 99 switchbacks.  Between where I was and the start of that descent sat two-and-a-half miles of a trail I barely remembered hiking on the way up.  For better or worse, I was about to get reacquainted with it.

Hiking back down from the summit to the ridge trail.  Look closely and you'll see a couple of hikers coming up over the horizon.

* * * * *

It was awful.  I couldn't look anywhere but straight down at my feet; it took that much concentration just to keep steady.  I tried to remember if I'd felt anything like this combination of horrible things before.  Even my worst sixteen-alarm junior high school tequila hangover paled in comparison to this.  Hands cracking, head banging, left knee throbbing, throat gagging, legs buckling, stomach churning….

Once again, I kept having to stop every five minutes for what seemed like eternities.  I was resting more than I was hiking.  But I couldn't go any faster, I just couldn't.  It was an incredible feeling of helplessness.  At least on the way towards the summit there was some intense mental motivation.  Now, with the climactic moment behind me, mustering the energy to move was proving more difficult than I'd ever imagined it could be.

And that ridge trail I'd forgotten about?  It went up and down, meaning that I still had plenty of climbing to do in my sad state.  The smallest incline would force me to rest, I'd try to take in some water, and the act of swallowing would make my gag reflex kick in.  What else could go wrong?

My gas had reached epic proportions.  During rests I could barely move, but at least I could still do one thing well.  In a sure sign of delirium, I was taking a sadistic pleasure in seeing just how awful my own body could be to the air around me.  Yet somehow, even after hours of strenuous activity and enough energy bars and apples to choke an ultra-marathoner, my system wouldn't allow for real relief.  I'd grown accustomed to the conundrum by now.

Then, in an instant, it all changed.  Relief was not only on the way, it was imminent.  Now, this isn't the kind of thing I normally discuss, but there's no getting around it at this point in the story.  Nature wasn't just calling – it was e-mailing, faxing, sending a singing telegram, parking outside my house with a police bullhorn telling me to come out with my pants down. 

Yeah, but where?  I'd read the trail regulations very carefully.  At least one hundred feet from the trail.  Well, a hundred feet from the trail was in fucking mid-air!  There were steep ledges on both sides of this thing, I could barely keep my balance as it was, and there was no way in hell I was going to literally cliffhang and possibly go out like that.  No, I needed to get back to that solar toilet down at Trail Camp, at the bottom of the 99 switchbacks.  Now I had a little extra motivation to get going.  I'd take any kind I could get. 

Problem was, I was still parked on my ass and I couldn't muster the strength to get up.  I was sitting on a low rock and my knees were up to my chest.  The sticks were still in my hands, and the pack was still on my back.  I tried to use my arms to leverage myself up, but it didn't work.  Then I gave my legs a shot, but they failed me as well.

Maybe you should try using both, you moron.

After counting to three, I threw whatever strength I had into both my arms and legs, and lifted myself up off the rock…but not far enough.  My body gave way, and the sticks went flying out to my right while I fell sideways onto my left side.  I ended up on my back, twitching weakly like an overturned turtle.

For the first time, I contemplated the worst-case scenario.  What if I can't get down off of this thing?  I was scared enough to consider reaching for the emergency whistle.

But first I glanced around to see if anyone was within shouting distance.  In fact, two men were.  I saw them on the trail fifty feet ahead of me.  I was crawling to retrieve the sticks when I heard them call out to me.

"Are you OK?"

I looked up and thought about putting on a brave face, then dismissed the notion as lunacy.  "No.  I'm not."

They walked back towards me.  The two men were in their late forties, both dark-skinned with a Middle Eastern accent.  If I had to guess, I would have said they were Turkish.  The first thing I noticed was that, between them both, they had no more than a swallow of water left in a single hand-carried jug. 

"That's all you've got?" I asked.

"Yes.  We are in need of water.  Are you sick?"

"Yeah," I grimaced, "Altitude sickness.  I'm having trouble keeping moving.  Are you both day-hikers?"

They nodded.

"And that's all the water you have left?  For ten more miles?"

Again, they nodded.  I had extra water I could barely drink.  They had more energy than I did.  It came to me quickly.

"OK.  I'll share my water with you until we get down the switchbacks.  I've got plenty, and you can get more at the bottom.  But you have to hike with me, one in front, one in back.  I'm feeling really fucked up and I need people around me.  I don't want to get stuck up here."

It was agreed upon, and they helped me get to my feet.  Now we all had strong motivations for getting back down to Trail Camp.  I felt genuine sympathy for the guy who agreed to hike behind me, but if ever there was a caveat emptor moment, this was it.

* * * * *

The three of us staged our own little Bataan Death March, sadly and slowly hiking our way up and down the forbidding, rocky terrain.  More often than not I was the one begging for rest stops.  The dominant of the two men would let me rest for a bit, but never as long as I wanted.  "We must go," he would say.  With all systems still spinning, I hated hearing it, but I knew he was right.

There was a lot more climbing on the ridge trail than I'd hoped.  I didn't remember so many declines on the way in.  Any incline longer than fifteen strides required a short rest period.  We made small talk.  I don't remember any of it.  Not their names, where they were from, why they were there – nothing.  I was totally focused on staying upright.  My balance was terrible, but thankfully I never fell.

We came across a trail junction.  The sign indicated that we'd hiked nearly two miles since leaving the summit, which left only a half-mile to go before Trail Crest and the top of the 99 switchbacks.  That was the good news.  The bad news was what the map was telling me.  That half-mile contained an elevation gain of over 300 feet.  This one I remembered.  I'd gone down a sharp decline right after my hands went numb.  Now we had to go back up it. 

It was the toughest half-mile I have ever hiked.  Every step was a struggle.  It was literally ten paces, stop for three minutes, repeat.  All of us were grunting our way through it.  More than once I was sure I was going to puke, only to gag twice and be left with that awful taste in my throat.  I entertained visions of crashing at one of the campsites for the night, breaking out my paper-thin, foil-composed emergency blanket and hitting the ground for hours.  But if the experienced hikers were correct, rest was no guaranteed cure for what was ailing me.  And so I soldiered on.

Finally, the three of us reached Trail Crest.  We checked the time.  That half-mile had taken us nearly an hour to complete.  It was 5:30 PM.  I was running miserably late.  All I could hope for was relief from the altitude sickness, because at my current pace, I'd still be hiking at midnight. 

* * * * *

I informed my "security team" of my intention to move faster down the switchbacks.  They were fine with it, so long as I once again replenished their water supply.  I was still nauseous, so I had no qualms about doing so.  My focus had already shifted onto a two-pronged, narrow definition of immediate victory: 1) get down to a safe elevation as quickly as possible; 2) become intimately familiar with that solar toilet at Trail Camp.  To ensure that my faculties were still with me – and also just out of plain morbid curiosity – I pledged to myself to count the switchbacks on the way down, just as I had on the way up.  Were there really ninety-nine of them?  It would be a welcome distraction, if nothing else.  The crashing headache was still there, ruling out musical accompaniment.

We set off down the top switchback.  The length of it was certainly no hallucination; it took several minutes before the trail turned even once.  But soon afterwards – 96, 93, 91, 88 – the numbers began piling up, and the steady decline began paying dividends.  Something felt different.  Something better, more like when the hike began some fourteen hours ago. 

It was my fingers.  I could feel them again, all of them.  My hands were back.

I clutched the sticks gleefully as I planted them firmly in the ground ahead of me, both increasing my speed and lessening the impact on my knees for the first time in hours.  One of the two guys with me had fallen behind.  I didn't care, so long as one of them was with me and he was keeping up and not complaining.

At switchback #75, we turned a corner on the mountain, exposing a straight-down view of Trail Camp.  I could see Consultation Lake, tents, and people walking around, all in silly miniature.  Then I saw it, gleaming in the final moments of the mountainside's sunlight: the solar toilet.  Like the reaction I sometimes got from approaching my apartment, my stomach's remaining aversion to a nature call away from home subsided.  Severely.  Immediately.  I had to stop hiking on a dime, catch my breath, and enforce a new kind of discipline onto myself post haste.  Would there be no end to the unforeseen challenges of this day?  What kind of Zen was this, anyway?

70…65…59…my nausea was fading.  My legs got the hint and picked up steam, pushing forward in tandem with my arms in a speed-walking motion.  54…48…43…the gag reflex returned to its normal resting position.  All the while, the goal was in plain sight, and the internal focus required became ever more severe.  There was something very, very cruel and absurd about it, having the most sublime scenery I'd ever witnessed reduced to a crude potty joke, but fate is fate, one could surmise.

Near switchback #39, a thick, bubbling stream of water appeared, gurgling its way past my feet.  My companion was two switchbacks behind me, and I waited for him.  Hikers are specifically warned not to drink stream or lake water without proper filtering, but the sight of an unlimited water supply was too great a temptation for him to resist.  He bent down to his knees, scooped up the water with his bare hands, and shoveled as much as he could into his dry, cracking mouth.  I took this to mean our deal was done, and gave him a salute as I backed down the trail away from him.  He nodded and, without saying a word, returned to his worship of the flowing water.

I began bolting down the trail.  32…26…21…16…the numbers flew by.  There was a maneuver I quickly mastered: whenever an actual step down was required (as opposed to just the natural decline of the trail), I would launch myself off of my weak left leg, and use my upper body and the hiking sticks to swing my body airborne, thereby landing on my strong right leg and keeping the pace up to a near jog.  It was then I knew: My balance is back. 

Everything was coming back.  It was as if someone had hit the reset button inside my body.  There was only one system left to rectify.

10…7…5…3….

Wouldn't you know it, my count of the switchbacks was dead-on accurate. 

My mind is back. 

I plowed my way through a flat, thin, gravel trail, past scattered tents and people milling around.  My face was tightened up to one side, my legs and walking motion tensioned in that funny way you sometimes see in bad R-rated movies.  The strides had to be long, but not too long. 

I approached the beast with gusto.  Camping veterans know this as fact, but for those uninitiated, one does not approach a campsite latrine with gusto.  It requires a certain courage just to commit to such a thing.  The sense of smell is assaulted in a way those unfamiliar with the experience can never know.  The latrine carries with it a sick kind of bravado, instilling fear in the hearts and noses of all those who dare enter.  This is why those who come towards it tend to walk slowly.  In a way, the thing is a bully.

These fears and inhibitions, long a part of my psyche, were not a factor now.  I threw down my pack, ripped off the CD walkman waistpack and alternate fanny pack, cast aside the hiking sticks, and within ten seconds experienced a physical release so euphoric, the best sex of my life might never measure up.  As I left, I could practically feel the cocky attitude of The Big Bad Latrine disappear as it thanked whatever God it prayed to that I was done with it, and hopefully I was never, ever coming back.

* * * * *

My appetite was back.  I wolfed down two successive energy bars, a handful of dried beef cubes, and plenty of water for the first time in hours.  My body, so incredibly grateful for the fuel, sent bursts of energy to my extremities.  A check of my water supply found me lamenting having given so much away, but it was an investment in safety that had to be made. 

Speaking of safety, I checked the time.  6:30 PM.  If I wanted to make it back before nightfall, I had to hike six miles in two hours and forty-five minutes.  This was just the occasion for which I'd been saving the Starbucks Doubleshot.  I downed it in seconds, put myself back together, curled my fingers around the sticks, and took off.

It was amazing.  Aside from the remnants of a bad headache, it was like the whole, sordid physical affair up above 13,000 feet had never happened.  What's more, the fact that I'd been moving so slowly for the past several hours meant I had more real energy stowed up than I realized.  The dividends of my physical training kicked back in, and turning up the juice was absurdly effortless.  I went flying down the rocky trail, past places I'd stopped to rest on the way up, past vistas that had stopped me in my tracks, past tens of other hikers who surely commented on what a pace I was keeping.  Then…

Aaauuuuuuugghh! 

On one of my now-patented rock-step-launch maneuvers, after I planted my right foot down, my left foot slammed toe-first into a sharp piece of granite.  I felt the impact all the way to the back of my heel, nearly falling in the process.  The toe didn't go numb, so I figured it wasn't broken, but it throbbed continuously from that point on.  It felt bloody.

It didn't slow my pace any.  As my legs and arms-with-stick-extensions coalesced into a flowing motion, I began to understand what a true quadruped must feel like.  No wonder they could move so much faster than us two-legged humans.  Even though technically I was still "walking," I knew I was moving much faster than any jog I'd ever gone on. 

Soon I was looking down on Mirror Lake, the point where the trail initially became steep enough for me to take notice.  At this point it wasn’t so much a trail as a gigantic staircase, and the impact of descending it made my left knee hotter, somewhere between tingly and numb.  I leaned on my right leg even more and kept blistering through.

The sun was gone now.  I didn't stop to check the time.  I knew it was getting late.  I kept the map in my front pocket as I rounded past Outpost Camp.  Three and one-half miles to go.  It was getting colder with each passing minute.  Pain aside, I had more than enough energy in reserve to step it up even more, and so I threw aside the notion of plain old hiking and broke out into a stick-assisted run.

The whole thing was a big déjà vu.  Things I'd seen earlier and absorbed into my senses were now flashing back before me at double-speed.  I raced down wooded switchbacks, my senses heightened, my eyes laser-focused on the trail three, four and five strides ahead of where I was.

Aaauuugghhh….

My left foot crashed into a root.  Same toe, same spot, same incredible pain.  I screamed and kept going.

Aaawww…aaaaaa-a-a---motherfucking son of a goddamned whore!!

I’d done it again, this time only seconds later.  Part of me wanted to stop and take a look at what I'd done to myself.  That part lost out.  If it worked for my left knee, it would work for this toe.  I didn't stop moving. 

The Lone Pine Lake turnoff was approaching.  Still over two miles to go.  Dusk was slipping into darkness.  It was getting harder to see details in the trail, and I had a vested interest in not crushing that toe on my left foot for the sixteenth fucking time.  I couldn't help but check the clock.  It was 8:30.  Sundown was scheduled for 8:55. 

I threw everything I had into the next mile, at some points tucking the sticks underneath my armpits and just plain running down the trail.  But it was no use.  When I planted my foot directly into a stream crossing the trail, I knew I'd lost this battle.  I reached into my pack and pulled out the headlight, strapped it back onto my head, and slowed my pace down to a brisk walk.  I was now hiking alone in the darkness of the Inyo National Forest, and I hadn't seen anyone else on the trail in over an hour.

That was the bad news.  The good news was that, well below my position, I could see pairs of tiny lights moving across the mountain.  Headlights, I reasoned.  That's the campground. 

Quickly, I refocused on the ground in front of my feet.  This was something I'd never done before.  Even the early morning, pre-dawn hike didn't look like this.  At least then there was the glow of the sun working its way over the eastern ridge of the Owens Valley.  This was real darkness, and when the trail switched back in a certain way, the moon would disappear completely behind the mountains. 

What I lost in sight I gained in sound.  The noise of the forest became crystal clear to me as I made my way down the trail's final mile.  I knew there was wildlife all around me, probably just as scared of me as I was of it.  Crickets, critters, lizards, squirrels…I was all fine with that.  I just didn't want to see any mountain lions or bears.  I kept a sharp ear out for heavy rustling noises.

The headlights were growing larger.  Suddenly I could hear the cars starting and stopping.  It couldn't be far now.  A wellspring of endorphins released into my system as I rounded a very familiar corner.  The dirt trail was giving way to a series of perfectly maintained rock steps.  Soon there would be a sign about trail permits…then about "leave no trace" camping…then a couple of large metal dumpsters…then a sign about wildlife…and then….

The parking lot.  I took the last five steps down in a slow, strong, steady rhythm.  Five, four, three two, one.  Zero.

I was back.

For all my despair about the peak experience not having been a marked improvement over my collapse on Half Dome, this point I could compare and stand proud.  That hike, five miles shorter, saw me literally staggering into my car at the day's end.  This one would end differently, with my fists pumping crazily as I launched the hiking sticks into the air like javelins towards my car.   I hopped up and down on legs that had no business engaging in such activity.  A bellowing growl came roaring up from the deepest part of my body and soul, so powerful that it caused me to sway back and forth where I stood. 

Something inside me knew this was pure peak bagger behavior, and may not have been appropriate for nighttime in a family campground.  I looked around to see if anyone was offended.  There wasn't anyone around to offend.  The Whitney Portal Store, just a few feet away, was closed for the night.  The place was perfectly still, disrupted only by my own wild, animalistic exhortations.

That moment, at twenty after nine that evening, nearly seventeen hours after I'd left that morning, belonged solely to myself and the trail.  Just as I'd envisioned it.

* * * * *