Coming down from the top of the world
Today we stood on top of the world, or at least it felt that way.
Leaving Guitar Lake at 7 a.m., we hiked up the switchbacks toward Trail Crest, the gateway to Mount Whitney.
As soon as we got to the summit, the official terminus of the John Muir Trail, everything changed. The scruffy, dirty backpackers we'd seen along the trail the past few days were joined by dayhikers in clean clothes and scrubbed faces. One woman even wore makeup.
In the hour we stood upon the summit, gawking at the glorious view, several dozen people joined us, many more than we had seen all week combined. I detected a little culture shock from Jim and Emily, who had been on the trail 27 days. We're not in the wilderness anymore, Toto.
Things only got worse once we descended the switchbacks to Trail Camp, the main stopping point on the Mount Whitney Trail. There are at least 50 people camped here, their tents scattered among the boulders. It is definitely a different vibe. People walk right through your campsite without even saying hello.
Tomorrow we descend about 6.5 miles to Whitney Portal, where clean clothes, hot showers and the cafe's famous cheeseburgers and fries will be waiting.
All in all, this has been a glorious trip, even if summit day was sort of a letdown for me.
Comments
The Owens Valley Paiutes called Mount Whitney Too-man-go-yah, roughly translated in the Owens Valley Paiute dialect as the "very old man spirit" that watches over Paiute Indians of the Owens Valley area. The old man spirit lived high above on Mount Whitney and watches the Paiutes below. He watches their actions and their behavior and guides the Paiutes. Interestingly we Paiutes call the Western Shoshone "Too-vongo'yo". Which in certain Paiute dialects means "a person who constantly goes up and down the mountains or hills", constant travelers and hikers. Since our Numic Uto-Aztecan cousins, the Western Shoshone, were constantly traveling around. They lived below the Owens Valley Paiutes in vacancy of Death Valley and to the east in the desert. The Paiutes and Shoshone are related linguistically to the Aztecs of Mexico. So Yosemite, Hetch Hetchy, and the high Sierra Nevada were actually an Uto-Aztecan peoples' area.
http://thehive.modbee.com/?q=node/1565
Posted by: R. Dandridge | September 4, 2006 01:58 AM
its in your genes Marek, keep hiking to the very top ! I did the Middle East part, now you carry on for the rest of the world I hope !
Posted by: Nagib | September 4, 2006 12:04 PM