Earlier this year, my brother Larry called and said, “October 3rd.”

“October 3rd what?” I replied.

“That’s when we’re going to Mt. Whitney. I got a permit and of course there’s a spot for you and Helene, Mt. Whitney alums, on it.”

I got nervous because I just had my third child and I was in horrible shape. But then I realized that this would be a great goal to help me restore my fitness. I called Helene and told her what I thought was the good news. She wasn’t as excited as I thought she would be…and her sentiment continued till about 30 minutes before we left Los Angeles on October 3rd. But she showed up to every one of our 9 to 13 mile conditioning hikes and by late September, she and I had also worked our way up to 15 sets of 4th Street Santa Monica stairs.

During the early training months, at one of the idealab! Tuesday Meetings at Il Fornaio, I told Brad Ramberg, the idealab! CFO, that Larry had a permit to go to Whitney and that I wanted him to come along. I knew of his marathon running history, so I was sure he could summit. But I did inform him that it is the unanimous opinion among marathon runners who have also climbed Mt. Whitney that climbing Mt. Whitney is harder than running a marathon.

I also invited Sara Strickland, an athlete that I knew from the Knowledge Adventure days. She was very excited. Then I told Larry I had invited Brad and Sara and he said that we didn’t have room for them because the three other spots on the permit were already reserved for David Cohen, Sandy Volpert and Andy Katz, the legendary climber who “bagged” Mt. Whitney in 7 hours. So I told Brad that he was the first alternate, and I told Sara that she was the second alternate.

At Larry’s roller-skating birthday party, I met Andy Katz. We were skating counter-clockwise around the rink and I asked him how he managed to ascend AND descend Mt. Whitney in 7 hours. It turns out he ascended in 7 hours and descended in 4 hours, for a round-trip total of 11 hours. But that is still way better than my round-trip total of 17 hours and 15 minutes. So I knew he would be a good addition to the team.

I saw David Cohen and Sandy Volpert at the roller-skating party that night as well. David was psyched up for the trip. Maybe he’d had enough of my bashing for not showing up for the 1997 climb. He said he was ready to join us for some conditioning hikes. Sandy was not quite as committed. He asked how long he thought it would take him to get in shape and I said a month. He said, “o.k., I have time.” But over Chinese food that night, his wife Gayle confided that she was in better shape and she should be the one to go. I agreed with her assessment, but nothing more ever came out of that discussion.

Over the next few weeks, I called both Larry and David a couple of times and invited them to join Helene and me on some conditioning hikes in Malibu. They never joined us. On September 6, Larry emailed me that “Today David Cohen and I officially dropped out of the Whitney climb.” Larry cited business responsibilities as his reason, and wrote that David dropped out because Larry did. I’m going to get about as many years of mileage out of Larry’s dropping out of the Whitney climb as he did from when I “racked-up” his 1969 fire-engine red Chevrolet Camaro.

Andy sent me an email to me to confirm the October 3rd date. I then confirmed that date with Brad in the hall at idealab!. Sara had made plans to go to Wyoming that weekend, so she was terribly disappointed that she could not join us. She warned me to be cautious of any potential bad weather.

Helene told me that she had to attend a wedding the weekend before the climb and had to speak at a conference in Chicago the subsequent weekend. I think she was trying to lay the foundation that she would be willing to cancel if I was. She kept hoping for rain. I also had a lot going on in my life, and I confess the thought of rain crossed my mind, but after attending an Ada’s Boot Camp support meeting, I was fully committed, and I was going with or without Helene. I wanted to reduce my embarrassingly slow 17 hour and 15 minute time to no more than 15 hours.

Andy made reservations for two suites at the Lone Pine Dow Villas Motel which cost $80 per room per night. I generated a list of suggested mountaineering gear and emailed it to everyone. I bought new insoles for my hiking boots. I clipped my toenails really short. Especially the second toe on my right foot because that was the one that hurt the most last time and turned black.

Helene (an M.D….o.k., a Dermatologist) spent her preparation time speaking with some mountaineering experts about the pros and cons of medications to address the possibility of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema), and HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema). They persuaded her to take a course of both Diamox and Decadron. I asked my husband Ken (a REAL M.D….a nephrologist) about this and he scoffed at the idea. “What about possible side effects like COMA?!?!?!” Ken is very conservative, so I called Ken’s partner, George, who is an avid skier and scuba diver. George recommended the course of medication. Ken still said no.

Then it came time to decide what time on Saturday, the day before the climb, we would leave to drive up to Lone Pine. I wanted to leave at 3:00 p.m. so we would have plenty of time in case something unexpected happened like a freeway closing in Canyon Country with no marked detour (which actually DID happen!). Andy wanted to leave at 5:00 p.m. Brad said “anytime.” Not only was Helene’s Saturday fully booked per her usual “wanting to participate in everything style” -- she had a birthday party in the morning and tickets to a ballet in the early afternoon -- but she also wanted to go to Simchat Torah services which ended at 6:00 p.m. I started to panic that we would arrive in Lone Pine so late that I would not get any sleep Saturday night.

Saturday morning finally rolled around. The weather was perfect – sunny and clear. Darn! We really were going to have to go through with the hike. When Ken woke up he had a change of heart and said, “you should probably take the medications.” I rushed over to the pharmacy and popped the first Diamox. I was supposed to begin the course 24 hours before I went to high altitude, but I only had 16 hours left. I was worried that it wasn’t going to work.

Andy “let’s rally” Katz drove over to Helene’s house at 4:30 p.m. and picked her up to make sure she showed up at the rendezvous site. She was disappointed that she didn’t get to go to the Simchat Torah service. Brad and I were waiting at Andy’s parents’ house in Encino. Andy and Helene arrived in Andy’s SUV at 5:00 p.m. and Brad and I loaded our gear and we were off.

Night fell. Andy and Brad and Helene were comparing stories of the many marathons that they have run and how fast they ran them and how Brad is in the same L.A. Leggers pace group as Tyrone which apparently is very impressive. Andy was discussing the merits of running the N.Y. Marathon -- how you get to run through all the different boroughs of New York and how each has so much character. Helene preferred the Napa marathon because the volunteers serve you sorbet at the rest stops.

We drove on. To the west of highway 395, somewhere over Lake Isabella, we saw a UFO. Well, we think it was a UFO. O.K., what we saw was what was left of some unidentified object. And it may have had something to do with flying. Or maybe it was an explosion. What was most memorable about it was the haunting, illuminated trail of smoke that it left behind. We kept an eye on it for miles. We later learned that a missile launch earlier that evening caused the spectacle.

We arrived at Lone Pine at 8:00 p.m. Andy squeezed his SUV in between two gargantuan pick-up trucks that appeared to be on steroids. As we checked in, some teen-aged rodeo participants who were still wearing their cowboy hats and competition numbers hit on Helene and me. They asked us what time we were waking up in the morning because they wanted to have breakfast with us. I told them, “3:00 a.m.” Andy overheard someone else say that all the hotel rooms in town were sold out because of two big events -- the rodeo and the wedding. By the look of the trucks in the parking lot and the crowd in the lobby, I think the rodeo folks were staying at our hotel.

We unloaded our gear into suites 25 and 28 and though my understanding was that there were two queen-sized beds in each suite, there was actually only one queen-sized bed and one queen-sized pullout couch. Sleeping on a pullout couch was not going to work for me. And I wasn’t going to force Helene to sleep on the couch. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that the couch was a pullout couch till much later, otherwise, she said she would have volunteered to sleep on it. I went to see Brad and Andy’s room to see if it had the same configuration. It did. I explained my dilemma and they said that one of them would sleep on the couch in Helene’s room and I could sleep on the bed in their room. Chivalry lives.

We went across the street to the Lone Pine Pizza Factory for our “carb party.” I had lasagna and the others had vegetarian pasta. At the next table, someone was wearing a T-shirt promoting his participation in some serious athletic event. It was nothing that I recognized, but Andy and Brad were impressed. Helene and I took another dose of medication with the food. “Advil Andy” was talking about “loosening up” with some Ibuprofen, and Helene and I tried to discourage him because Ken said to us that you can go into kidney failure if you take Ibuprofen when you are dehydrated which we would be on the trail. Andy didn’t buy into that line of thinking and took the Advil.

We went back to the hotel and compared gear and swapped whistles and trail mix and sunscreen and protein bars. Andy could not believe that Helene was only taking her CamelBak water pack up the mountain. Helene and I couldn’t believe that Andy’s pack was at least 15 pounds. Not only that, but he also slung a fully loaded 35 mm camera over his shoulder! Clearly, if Larry “Nazi backpack police” Gross was on the trip, Andy would not have been permitted to carry so much.

Andy told the front desk to give us wake-up calls at 3:15 a.m. We went to bed at 10:00 p.m.

That darned diuretic (the Diamox) was at work, so I woke up at 1:45 to pee and I couldn’t fall back asleep. I tossed and turned till Brad’s alarm went off at 3:10 a.m. The front desk called at 3:15 a.m. I got up, got dressed and packed up. Brad took a shower and slammed back at least 8 cups of water. Andy moved his truck closer to our rooms and opened the hatchback. It was chilly outside, but Andy was standing there wearing shorts. I threw in my gear and starting breakfasting on hard-boiled eggs and bananas. We hit the road for Whitney Portal at 3:35 a.m. and we hit the trail at 4:10 a.m.

Up the hill, on the western switchbacks, we could see the headlamps of other trekkers who started half an hour or so before us. It was sweet to be at the base of Whitney again.

We had a good pace going. We passed a trio of Swiss guys. But at our first rest stop, they passed us. Daybreak was coming. We removed our headlamps. We arrived at Outpost Camp at 6:00 a.m. Helene and I were ecstatic that we had already gained an hour on our previous time.

Helene and I visited the solar toilets at Outpost Camp. A mile later I pointed out where Larry, Helene and I got lost at the Lone Pine Lake fork last time. Another mile later, near Trailside Meadow, we met some people descending and asked them if they made it and they replied, “we tried.” We chose to ignore their negative vibes. We passed timberline, at roughly 10,000 feet, where trees stop growing for lack of oxygen.

We reached Trail Camp at 8:00 a.m. Now Helene and I were two hours ahead of our previous time. We tried to figure out how we used up so much time the first time. We attributed it to the water filtering and rest breaks every 15 minutes. We started talking about the trail ahead and I obviously was feeling the altitude, because I started rambling about the Continental Divide at the Trail Crest, only a mile or so away. Helene and Brad must have also been feeling the lack of oxygen, because they didn’t question me, but Andy “O2” Katz wouldn’t accept my ramblings. He was right. Trail Crest is simply the boundary between the Inyo National Forest and the Sequoia National Park. We got cold debating the Atlantic and Pacific water runoff. Andy said, “let’s rally,” so we snapped a few photos and left at 8:30 a.m. A few minutes later, Brad asked, “Are these the 99 switchbacks that you were talking about?” I said no, because they didn’t look like what I remembered. But after about 10 switchbacks, I said to Brad, “I take it back, I think these are the switchbacks.”

The Swiss trio passed us and we passed them and they passed us. We got to the cables and took pictures. We talked with another group of climbers who wanted to know what time they thought we would summit. Andy said 12:00 p.m. I said 1:00 p.m. Part of me didn’t want THEM to feel like they failed if they didn’t make it till 1:00 p.m. And part of me didn’t want ME to feel like I failed if I didn’t make it till 1:00 p.m. We never saw that group again, so we don’t know if they made it or not.

We made it to Trail Crest at 10:30 a.m. The air was very thin. Andy accidentally called Brad “Greg” and I accidentally called Helene “Elaine.” There was a climbing party from Arizona resting at the crest and they stayed at the Dow Villas the night before too. We compared notes on the rodeo folks. Andy and I talked about his sister-in-law Clara’s South American accent and how she pronounces Andy “Ahn-dee.”

We started down the last 1.9 miles of the trail. This time I knew just how much work was still left before we summited. But because of the medications, I didn’t have a headache, and I knew I could make it. We met a guy who had summited who said that the rest of the way is straight along the edge, then straight up. He was glowing from his accomplishment.

I started my mantra, “100, yes I can, focus, focus; 99, yes I can, focus, focus; 98, yes I can, focus, focus…” I went through nearly 3 cycles of 100. I took us to the top. We got to the registration book and high-fived and hugged. We started signing the book. The athlete we saw at the Pizza Factory interrupted us and asked us if we had dinner at the Pizza Factory the night before. We said yes and that we enjoyed our pasta. He complained that he ordered pizza with fresh garlic, but they gave him bottled garlic, so he wasn’t happy.

We went closer to the edge and dropped our packs near the Swiss guys. They were trying to read the patches on my backpack, and I detected some delight when they saw my St. Moritz patch. Some other guy started speaking to Andy in hushed tones and I strained to hear him say “…you should take him down a couple of thousand feet…” “Andy,” I said, “what was he talking about?” Andy said that the guy had observed Brad having difficulty placing his feet and that we should get him off the mountain right away. I didn’t notice anything and Brad wasn’t complaining, so I sat down and tried to call home on Andy’s cell phone. I couldn’t get a cell. I ate some food and snapped some pictures. Then Brad said, “I want to go down.” I understood immediately. We threw on our packs, took some last photos at the 14,496-foot marker and headed down. Somehow Andy got in the lead and took us down a very difficult stretch of mountain…not the marked trail. I thought it was kind of fun, but probably not the best for Brad “HACE” Ramberg. We found the trail again and Helene requested that I go up and lead. I set a fast pace with the hope that Brad would get better as we descended. But he still had trouble with his footing. He fell at least four times. He had abrasions on his legs. We got worried. We tried a new approach. Helene went in front and set a very slow pace. I went behind Brad and stuck to his right, keeping in step with him with my right arm outstretched on his right side, so if he teetered close to the edge, I could push him back toward the mountain. The picture finally crystallized in my mind of how people die on mountaintops.

We made it to Trail Crest, but Brad still claimed to be dizzy and lightheaded. So we didn’t stop to rest. We kept descending. Even on the 99 switchbacks, with the quick altitude loss, Brad was still weaving. But we made it down to Trail Camp safely. Helene went to the toilet. Brad took a short nap. My back hurt. Andy offered to carry some of my load. I gave him my headlamp and trail mix. It made a huge difference.

Andy “let’s rally” Katz got us motivated to move again. Brad was really looking forward to getting to timberline because he expected there would be a lot more oxygen there. At the sight of the first tree, Brad pointed out how cute it was and in a cheery voice said, “trees are our friends.” He didn’t speak much after that.

We pushed on past Trail Meadow and Mirror Lake. I stopped for a solar toilet break at Outpost Camp. We continued toward Whitney Portal, making sure to avoid the wrong fork in the road near Lone Pine Lake. It is much easier to take the correct path during daylight when you can read the trail signs (the previous time we reached that fork it was a moonless night). We spoke to a group of people who began their ascent at 1:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, three hours before we did. They were just coming off the mountain themselves. That made Helene and I realize that we had taken just as long to cover the trail our first time. We asked them how long they thought it would be till we reached the Whitney Portal. “50 minutes,” they said. Helene thought they said, “15 minutes.” She was bummed when she finally understood what they said. I was bumming too. My knees hurt a lot those last 50 minutes. I don’t know why they put the portal so far from the summit.

We reached Whitney Portal at 6:25 p.m., for a total round-trip time of 14 hours and 15 minutes. We high-fived and hugged again. We got in the car and we were so done with walking that Andy had to drive us about 15 feet to the bathroom. Helene and I had beaten our previous climbing time by three hours and we didn’t want to walk any more.

We hit the road. We counted our blessings that a bear didn’t break into Andy’s truck and make a mess of all the food we left there. We counted our blessings that we all completed the journey safely.

Brad finally spoke. He said, “that was way harder than a marathon.” But maybe in a day or two he’ll change his perspective and realize that his first Mt. Whitney summit was three hours better than my first summit.

[ Home ]

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.kleinman.tv