Eastern Sierras
By
the third morning of the trip everyone knew to avoid the camp area until Quackenbush
had finished eating. He and his father
referred to his condition as a “milk allergy” since the term “lactose
intolerant” wasn’t bandied about back in 1958.
The Quackenbush duo, along with my dad and I were with a group of 6
adults and 14 teenagers spending 3 weeks in the high Sierras. We had set up camp at timberline just below Wallace Lake
about a day's walk from Mt.
Whitney
Despite
the appetite one develops tromping around at high altitude, most everyone that
had the misfortune to observe this ritual had passed on breakfast the first two
days.
Ten months earlier I
had joined a Boy Scout Troop in Eagle Rock whose camping trips had
been limited to weekends in the San Gabriel Mountains . I had spent the previous five summers with my
dad in the Sierras that began with climbing Whitney when
I was 9 years old. We were just run-of-the-mill backpackers but the Scout Troop treated us as though we'd conquered Everest. Since my dad knew his way around the high country, it wasn't long before the adults involved with the Scout Troop got fired up
and began planning a trip to the eastern Sierras.
The Scout Leaders' idea of a trip was a radical departure from the trips I'd gone on with my dad. We never went with more than 2 or 3 others, never stayed in one place more than a day or two, and always carried our own supplies. My dad had real concerns about going with such a large group but the biggest issue was staying in one place for 18 days. However, the campsite was in the Wallace Lake Basin and was within a day's climb for nearly half of the "14ers" in California. Over the previous summers, my dad and I had been trying to climb as many as we could of the 100 highest mountains in the Sierras. There are 14 that are over 14,000 feet that are called 14ers and the rest are over 13,000. The location of the camp was a place we hadn't been to before and it gave us a chance to pick off another dozen peaks from the list of 100. Instead of carrying everything on our backs the size of the group also made it very affordable to have fresh food brought in by mules every five or six days. The aerial photo below shows the Mt. Whitney area of the eastern Sierras. In this part of the Sierras most of it is above 12,000 feet, too high for trees to survive and makes for a barren looking landscape. Wallace Lake is in the lower right-hand corner and the teardrop shape to the left is Lake Tulainyo.
The Scout Leaders' idea of a trip was a radical departure from the trips I'd gone on with my dad. We never went with more than 2 or 3 others, never stayed in one place more than a day or two, and always carried our own supplies. My dad had real concerns about going with such a large group but the biggest issue was staying in one place for 18 days. However, the campsite was in the Wallace Lake Basin and was within a day's climb for nearly half of the "14ers" in California. Over the previous summers, my dad and I had been trying to climb as many as we could of the 100 highest mountains in the Sierras. There are 14 that are over 14,000 feet that are called 14ers and the rest are over 13,000. The location of the camp was a place we hadn't been to before and it gave us a chance to pick off another dozen peaks from the list of 100. Instead of carrying everything on our backs the size of the group also made it very affordable to have fresh food brought in by mules every five or six days. The aerial photo below shows the Mt. Whitney area of the eastern Sierras. In this part of the Sierras most of it is above 12,000 feet, too high for trees to survive and makes for a barren looking landscape. Wallace Lake is in the lower right-hand corner and the teardrop shape to the left is Lake Tulainyo.
Photo from tripadviser.com
Photo from sierradescendents.com
Mt. Russel is about a mile north from Mt. Whitney as the crow flies, and sits on the edge of a huge bowl carved out by a glacier like a massive ice cream scoop. At the bottom of the bowl is Lake Tulainyo, the highest lake in the continental U.S. The lake is at 12,802 feet and its name is a combination of two counties Tulare and Inyo who share a border that bisects the lake.
Photo from nwhikers.com
No stream flows into or out of Tulainyo but it is replenished by snowfall every winter. Its location is not all that far from civilization but it is a bit tricky to get to. I was there over 55 years ago but still remember being very conscious of the fact that few people ever get to see it let alone walk along the lake's edge (see below).
Lake Tulainyo with Mt. Carillon on the left and Mt. Russel on the right.
Photo from pantilat.wordpress.com
The photo above reminds me of an unusual sensation that was always a part of climbing. I would be at the edge of a lake as shown above, looking at the summit of say Mt. Russel and thinking that it was impossibly far away. Many exhausting hours later I'd be standing on the top of Mt. Russel and looking back at the spot where I had first viewed the summit. It was a way of bench marking space and time in an environment with extreme obstacles, distances and heights. Particularly with a climb I'd never tried before, something in my DNA would switch on and I could watch as a part of my brain made mental notes on the time and effort required to traverse from point A to point B. I assumed it was some sort of survival mechanism that was trying to make peace with my surroundings.
Wallace lake was selected for the trip by the Scout Leaders because of the surrounding peaks and the fishing. The lake was well-known for good-sized trout due mostly to being difficult to get to. In fact we never saw another soul for the 18 days that we were there. From what I read today concerning permits and quotas I suspect the isolation we enjoyed is a thing of the past.
On our third day camped below Wallace Lake, Doug Scott came running back into camp all worked up over a 19-inch trout that he had caught. He refused to let anyone cook it up and did his best to preserve it as he had his heart set on taking it home to be stuffed and mounted. As the days wore on, the fish's original color transitioned through several different shades and began to look and smell pretty nasty. We of course had no means of refrigeration but the pack mules that showed up every 5 days had dry ice that kept the milk from spoiling. Scott would sneak off with some of the dry ice every once in a while but toward the end of the second week he tossed what was left of his trophy into the campfire.
Scott and the majority of the group fished almost everyday. My dad and I would go off with a few of the guys to climb one or two peaks every other day, taking the following day to recover. Except for Mt. Whitney and Mt. Muir, every climb was something we'd never tried before. At the top of each mountain was a registry book where you could add your name but the best part was reading brief descriptions of ascents written by others. Some of these entries on the more remote peaks went back decades. We never climbed with ropes, pitons and carabiners but we could read about others that had. We'd read a sentence and then lean out over the top, look down and trace the route they had taken which sometimes was so insane I would get queasy just looking at it.
Our camp was a half mile below Wallace Lake to take advantage of shelter at timberline where 500 year old stunted trees could provide some relief from the wind. Something else that I never failed to marvel at was a night sky that wasn't obliterated by smog and city lights. It was bewildering to see the stars crowding out the blackness to the point where it was hard to believe there could actually be that many. For as long as you stayed awake looking up from your sleeping bag there was always at least one visible meteor each minute streaking across the sky.
