As hikers and friends, we need to take care of each other.
While you sit here reading this, it is very easy to say you’d happily turn around with a fellow hiker, but time and time again we see something different. When you hike with others, what’s your plan if something goes wrong or someone decides that they want to turn around? Will the whole group turn around? Will you pair off so that no one is alone? What if you want to continue and everyone else in the group wants to turn around? While I can’t answer these questions for you, I can tell you that many of the deaths on Mt. Whitney involve someone hiking alone … whether it is because they are left behind by their group or because some decided to attempt the summit while the rest of the group heads back to the trailhead. While it seems logical that everyone will just stick together, in practice it is not so simple. Summit fever can take over … people may have spent hundreds of hours training or hundreds of dollars on their trip … they may have been looking forward to this trip for years, or maybe they think that nothing bad will happen to them or their hiking partners.
I need the outdoors to be at my best; I am a different person when I am on the trail.
But this wasn’t always apparent to me.
While on a backpacking trip with the goal of climbing Mt. Whitney in the Eastern Sierra, my group of seven hikers was sitting around camp, laughing and joking. The group was a mix of old and new friends – people I had known since childhood and others that I had met in recent years after becoming an avid hiker. When I returned from my tent with the remaining itinerary for our trip, Chad, a close friend of 30-plus years joked, “Who are you and what did you do with our friend Lyndon?”
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The comment was funny to those that had known me a few years, but the friends that had met me recently looked confused. One remarked, “I don’t get it, this is the Lyndon we’ve always known.”
But the person he knew on the trail is a far cry from the introvert I have been for much of my life. Looking back, I couldn’t remember a time when I did not shy away from leadership roles or situations that put me in the spotlight. Public speaking had always been my greatest fear. My senior year of high school, I was elected as the ‘Quietest’ student in my class. It took a couple of old friends to point it out, but standing there, itinerary in hand and all eyes on me, I knew they were right.
Something had changed.
Later on that same trip, after a nasty hailstorm convinced much of my group to return to the trailhead, I made a difficult decision. Since leaving camp, Chad and I had been privately discussing the condition of another friend who was showing possible symptoms of Acute Mountaineering Sickness, we thought that he should descend.
While the outcome of my hike seemed obvious, I was reluctant to accept it. I’d long imagined summiting Mt. Whitney together with my longtime friends Chad and Greg—long before I ever considered myself a hiker. After 20+ years of talk, “winning” permits through a tedious lottery process, and months of training and planning, we were only four miles from our goal and on pace to summit for sunrise, with a full moon setting to the west.
Chad proposed that we all descend together and save the peak for another time. I knew this wasn’t realistic. We lived in three different states, had careers and families. It might be years before this opportunity presented itself again.
I decided I would descend with our sick friend so that Chad and Greg could summit. After giving my friends some last minute tips, going over the trail map and explaining what was ahead, I turned around as my two friends continued to climb.
Surprisingly, I was not disappointed. I was overcome with a feeling of satisfaction that comes when you do the right thing.
For me, being “True to the Trail” is stepping-up. Being a leader and a good example for others. Watching out for my friends and making difficult decisions. Being the voice of reason when summit fever strikes, even when it’s MY summit fever. On the trail, I know that others look to me for direction and expect me to take charge.
Off the trail, I would still consider myself an introvert, but I see my trail personality coming through in other areas of my life. In the end, maybe being True to the Trail is really just being true to myself and letting that inner-leader come out; maybe it’s only a matter of time before my trail persona takes over.
Please note: This trip was a bonding experience for Gilbert and I and it was the first of two trips where we turned around at Trail Camp while attempting to reach the summit of Mt. Whitney together. We did eventually reach the summit together, in 2015, via the High Sierra Trail.
Claire Bear
Lyndon, this is an awesome story! Mt Whitney will still be there next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and so forth, much longer than we will be around. And as for the logistics, you just have to know that longtime friends will also be there–albeit in three different states–for another–different–once-in-a-lifetime experience down the riad. The trick is to provide lifetime enough for as many such experiences as possible!