Drinking only provides more harebrained ideas.

Even though I thought the crowd noise would cancel out “the idea”, as I later came to call it, (even though it was more of a proposal and less of an idea) I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t worried because it was the Pizza Port crew. For some of the regulars, the most activity they engaged in was a pickup game of volleyball and a night of lifting pint glasses. (But to be fair, there were some people that made up the crowd that ran marathons, competed in triathlons, and leaped tall buildings in their spare time).

So, when someone enthusiastically followed my off-the-cuff suggestion with a hearty, “Let’s do it!!!”, which was then echoed by several other voices, I nearly slopped beer all over myself in surprise. After everyone had finished laughing, I looked at the table of people who now “wanted” to climb Whitney. Everyone had a glass in their hands, and aside from Lumonox, no one seemed worried. I figured it would be rude to laugh at the proposal as people appeared to be taking it seriously – or as seriously as one could take ideas or proposals after several drinks. Diplomatically, I tried to explain the climb in detail – twenty two miles of hiking; large amounts of altitude gain and roving, hungry bears.

But, despite my description, only two people decided that they were no longer going to attempt the climb. The matter, however, was put off by Lumonox, who, having turned around on the trail before, knew what I was talking about. Despite “the idea” being tabled, I found myself put upon to start an “exploratory e-mail list” and look into obtaining a permit. Much later, when I arrived at home, I laughed at “the idea” as I got ready for bed. I told myself that it would never happen, and rolled over and went to sleep.

The next day, in good faith, during my lunch hour, I sent out the “exploratory e-mail”. Within the next few hours, I realized just how wrong my opinion had been as I had received around twenty or so replies of “very interested” people to my e-mail. Since it wasn’t the first time I had been way off, I took it in stride – a disbelieving stride – and moved on. That Thursday, I was there to answer questions about Whitney, and the next Thursday after that as well. For a short while, it was all people wanted to talk about. I took that in stride too. I figured it was just the latest Thursday fad, and sooner or later, my list of twenty would drop to a list of one (myself), and then I could call the whole thing off, as I had already done it before and had no reason to go do it alone again.

For a while, I felt that this second theory was sound. I kept reminding people that I would eventually have to get a permit for the trip, and they would have to pay fifteen dollars for their share of the permit. This financial disincentive shaved the list in half. I was then left with a list of a “solid” twelve people, along with some peripheral players who lived out of state and who supposedly were also really interested in attending. As summer faded, people from the dozen (or the “Dirty Dozen”, as I liked to call them) started to give me cash. I realized that I would have to make the reservation for the permit. Since the deliberations to go had taken a whopping eight or so odd-weeks, our window for climbing the mountain had moved from late summer to early fall.

Finding a permit was complicated by two factors: we had a large group, and we were going to do the climb over a two day period. Despite my continued warnings, I had been unable to lower the group below twelve. Based on my previous experiences, I knew that the group as a whole could not do the climb in a single day. I also didn’t want this climb to turn into some sort of prolonged multi-day multi-summit attempt debacle, so I wanted to keep our timeframe short and simple. As a result, I had strongly suggested that we do the climb over two days, a motion that had been ratified by the rest of the Dirty Dozen. With these parameters, the best permit I could get before winter fell was for the weekend of October 19-20, 2007.

Since I had the money in hand, and the trek had been delayed by the group’s indecision for a long time, I decided to place both feet and hands in the fire, and made the reservation. The next week, when I brandished the reservation at the table, half the group was thrilled, while the other half looked decidedly nervous. As I answered questions from the half that appeared to care, or at least had a passing interest in surviving the climb with all their appendages intact, I realized that whether I thought it was a bad idea or not, and whether I wanted to or not, I had unofficially been selected to lead the first mountaineering expedition that left from Pizza Port.

A good conversation is a hard thing to find…

Once my nerves had settled down over a multi-week period, and I had finally established by my place as at least a quasi-regular, I began to enjoy the conversations of the Thursday night Pizza Port sessions almost more than the food. Don’t get me wrong – there was nothing bad about having a cold pint of stout in one hand and a slice of wheat crust pie in the other, but the downside was that those only provided brief – but filling comforts. The conversation, on the other hand, filled my soul for the later part of the week. It provided me with emotional sustenance after the daily grind where meaningless phrases were bantered around at work. Sometimes, the conversation even provided mental leftovers to ponder on the drive home or tidbits that I could relate to other parties later

The conversation was absolutely free-flowing and completely random. It was always peppered with questions from far sections of the table as people had to deftly maneuver their ears to hear exactly what was said over the general ruckus of the crowd. Inevitably, the conversation was punctuated with raucous laughter, derisive, sarcastic comments, and good natured banter. It was the ultimate stream-of-consciousness creature, morphing from the elephant of sports talk (always about the Padres or Chargers, of course) to the serpent of work related news, or to the white rabbit of philosophical questions. There was also plenty of time spent admiring the brightly colored birds that were the stories of recent trips people had taken, spiced up with entertaining personal reminiscences.

That week, whatever week it was, at some point in the mid-summer of 2007, when “the idea” arose, the topics had already been all across the board. If I remember correctly, and I might not, we had already discussed the merits of the fifth spot in the Padres rotation – Greg Maddux or David Wells; various types of cheese from California to Wisconsin; the philosophy of Ayn Rand as it applied to gaming, and several other items. I was seated next to Nutsmatic, who was relating one of his short long stories when something he said made the person – whoever it was – on my other side ask me some type of question about mountaineering.

Somehow, my answer attracted the attention of Lumonox, who was sitting across from us. I didn’t quite catch what he said at the beginning of his statement, but at the end he most definitely said, “…and I went to Whitney, but it was really difficult and my Dad I just didn’t make it to the summit”. Just as I was about to nod sympathetically and say, “Yeah, Whitney is a really hard climb; I’ve done it a lot”, E-Rock jumped into the fray, and casually mentioned how he had always wanted to climb Whitney. The person next to him wanted to know who was mountain climbing, and across from her, someone asked what we were climbing, which in turn caused Nutsmatic to pause his story momentarily and smack me on the shoulder and ask why he hadn’t been invited to climb the mountain with everyone.

All I could do was laugh. It was a bad telephone chain all over again. It had happened that evening for the tenth time, and for the sixty-seventh time that month. I then tried to explain that it was a difficult climb and that, as far as I knew, no one was planning to climb the mountain. But, for some strange reason, I felt compelled to leave the option to climb the mountain open with the group, so I said, “but we could do it, if we wanted to”. I wasn’t sure why I said it, but I was sure that no one would ever follow up on that floating concept, as it was probably lost among all of the other words that were destroyed in all of the general competing Thursday night conversations.

There are only so many ridiculous excuses one can make before an appearance is necessary.

It was easy to find the bar because I had been there before. Back in the day, it had been the only location on the coast that showed surfing videos or live surfing footage all day, every day, irregardless of what other people wanted to see, or what else might potentially be on the television. It didn’t matter if it was Game Seven of the World Series, final two minutes of the Superbowl, the State of the Union, or anything else. All one would ever see on the big screens there was one righteous curl after another. I had never had a bad time there, but nothing memorable had ever happened either. I expected to go in, have a quick beer, shoot the breeze, and head out, probably all within an hour – or less.

Fifteen minutes after arriving at the bar’s location, I hadn’t found a parking spot on the coast highway. My circling, however, was giving me a great opportunity to curse repetitively. Eventually I found a spot, and headed past the throngs of people seated outside, and stumbled through the wooden doors into the bar, into a teeming, chaotic mass of people. I must have looked completely dumfounded. For some stupid reason, I had thought that the place would be pretty much empty. Since I felt completely out of my element, I did what anyone would do in a similar situation: I sidled up to the bar and tried to act normal. By the time I found a place on the bar, I had managed to get in the way of three people in the beer line, and one waitress clearing tables. It was obvious that I was blending in with the crowd like a person wearing black socks with shorts.

Just when I was about to start crying into the unknown beer I had ordered and be branded as the creepy bar outcast for that Thursday night, I felt the familiar tap on my shoulder, along with the distinctive words, “Hey cool guy, glad you could make it!” I smiled, relieved that I was not going to be the bar pariah, and glad that Lumonox had found me. From there, it was all downhill. He led me back to the endless wooden picnic table benches that I remembered, and introduced me to ten or so people that I had never met before and whose names I forgot in about five minutes. But, over the din of several hundred concurrent conversations going on, I started talking, and before I knew it, it was four hours later, and our group was closing down the bar.

It took me a couple of days for the whole experience to fully distill into my bones – maybe it was the wheat crust on the pizza or the good micro-brewed bear, but since it was such a good time, I came back the next week, and the week after that, and while not the week after that, I came back the week after that. Soon, I was blocking out the space on my calendar; and after that I was dragging along other friends of mine to come join the crowd. It was only after the summer volleyball season prior to bar time had ended that I really could fully grasp what was going on at the bar.

What was really going on was that Lumonox and B-rad had created was Cheers. It was Cheers, but with one exception. It was a thousand times better. The obvious reason that it was better was that it was real life, and neither I – or anyone else that was there on a weekly basis had to fantasize or critique about how we would act in a similar television show! What lay beyond the obvious is what made and makes it special. For starters, there was the constantly changing cast of characters. Sure, there were the regulars there every week – from Lumonox on down to Long Story-Short (“LSS”). But there were also the newcomers – people that other people brought, or other people that just were sucked into whatever heated discussion we were having that night. There was always someone new to meet, something new to discuss, or someone to catch up with.

The more I thought about it, it became clear to me that what they had created was an actual network. Not one of those ethereal, “I have hundreds of surreal friends” networks, and not one of those serious business networks. What it was a flesh and blood, from thin-air varied conglomeration of people passing through life and sharing the experience with others. It was something that could only exist at this moment and yet keep going forward indefinitely. It was something that would never succeed with any definite rules or regulations, but was full of inside jokes and laughter.

It made me think of two things I had read but never appreciated as a college student. It made me think of Alexis De Toqueville talking about how such interconnected groups was what made America unique over two hundred years ago. And it made me think of how Nietzsche described the act of creation and the created work as beautiful. But most of all, it made me feel incredibly lucky that I was a part of something alive and real. So despite my skepticism, and despite my hatred of Cheers, the reader knows where to find me every Thursday – pizza and beer. I’m the one at the end of the picnic table with the loud laugh and the outrageous stories. So, as Lumonox says, “Pizza Port – this Thursday!”. We’ll plan on seeing you there. And if not, I encourage you to find your own Pizza Port – because chances are, its already out there waiting for you.

A place where everyone knows your name…

I’ve never been a big fan of Cheers. I’ve never hated it – after all, it’s silly to waste the energy hating a television show. But I really have to be honest here: I’ve just never liked it. Maybe I don’t like it because I don’t find any of the characters funny. Or maybe it’s because I think that the plots are unbelievable. Unbelievable because every time I’ve watched – which is, unfortunately several times too often, no one other than the regulars ever ventured into the bar. At this point, I can already hear a bunch of premature objections from my audience saying, “But that was the whole point of the show! Everyone knew each other!” And, I understand that objection. But I’d like to look at this rationally, which may be somewhat silly for a TV show, but when you think about it this way, any bar needs a regular stream of patrons to keep it afloat. When I watch Cheers, I never see a stream of patrons.

If it was just the absurd economics of the show that annoyed me, I probably wouldn’t even be writing these sentences right now. What really annoyed me was the total disconnected-ness of the characters from reality. The whole concept just never felt real to me. Watching Cheers to me was like watching a completely disconnected caricature of real life. One time, when I was in Boston, some friends of mine dragged me to the Cheers bar. The whole ride there, I was peppered with phrases such as: “You can’t/won’t believe how awesome this place is!” Perhaps because I was a predisposed, cranky critic when I arrived there, I felt completely underwhelmed. But, I went in with my closed mind and looked around. Within five minutes I had to leave, because I felt like my hand was about to punch through the plasterboard walls of the set.

Again, however, in all honesty, maybe I’m so hard on Cheers because I’ve been to some amazing dives. As a student in Oxford, our college had a pub that we frequented nightly, where between overflowing warm pints, we’d alternate between uber-competitive darts competitions and yelling at football at the television in our loudest drunkest voices. When I was living in Portland, there was this bar that let you bring your dog into the bar while you quaffed a variety of microbrews. And that’s just the top of my list. My point is that there are two things that make a good bar: the people, and the hazy memories you form there with those people. I guess if it came down to it, that was why I really never liked Cheers, because I felt that it didn’t capture those qualities.

Because of my perennial Cheers frustration, and my long mental list of favorite bars, I was naturally skeptical when a friend of mine kept urging me to go to his bar on Thursday nights. I wasn’t just skeptical about his bar; I was unconvinced, because, after all, it was Thursday night. One didn’t do just anything on Thursday night. I was always busy on Thursdays. I’d definitely eat dinner because that was a classic Thursday standard. Sometimes I’d even cook the food I ate. Then, there was television, a crucial and important thing to watch, with such enthralling shows as Book TV and some variant of the nightly news. I could also walk the dog, wash my hair, watch paint dry, or actually head out to some other bar, unless after all, I had to go to bed early.

But, I eventually ran out of lame excuses, and realized that I should go because the person asking wasn’t just any friend, he was one of my best friends. I had known him for years, back from elementary school and all the way past college. And, according to him, it wasn’t just any bar, it was also a pizzeria that had micro-brews and wheat crust pizza with the beer baked into the crust, and, if I was lucky, I might see some other people that I knew from the past. The last part was something I could do without, but after being asked to come for the twenty-seventh time, I stopped being anti-social, and decided to go check it out.

Winter Climbing Mt. Whitney, 2005 Style, Part 4

At dawn, the sun rose from the east, cutting through the shreds of high clouds in the east, and illuminating the Sierras in all of their glory. The early morning light came down and reflected off every snow covered cornice and crevasse of the mountains, brilliantly casting the snow in pure white light and the sky in royal blue. I quickly placed my sunglasses on to forestall snow-blindness and reapplied sunscreen on my exposed areas, and inside my nose as well. All of the lakes I passed were hard frozen; Mirror Lake and Consultation Lake, both a glacial blue. At ten, I was at trail camp, just below where the switchbacks would normally be.

The switchbacks weren’t present, which wasn’t surprising – after all, the trail hadn’t been present for the ascent after the first half-hour. There was, however, a direct line to the Trail Crest that had been tramped in by mountaineers. Ahead of me were two parties of three people each, roped in and headed slowly up the face. After a brief rest, I fell in as a distant third party in the line to reach the summit. Uphill at this point was a laborious slog through hard ice and a slowly melting top layer of snow. Each step, I checked my balance and footing. The air was thin, and the wind coming over the mountain ripped at each breath I exhaled. It was miserably and hauntingly enjoyable.

Looking back down the valley from the face, I gazed at the white expanse I had trekked up, clear and empty in the morning air. I watched the two people in front of me struggling on the slope. I knew that I would not be joining them on the summit. It was already ten-thirty in the morning, and I was tired. I had been moving – slowly, for sure, but moving nonetheless over for seven hours. Noon was my drop-dead time; the time where I had to turn around and head back the distance to the car. I knew that although I had made good progress, there was no possible way for me to reach the summit in an hour and a half. I sat and let my breathing smooth, taking in the pristine surroundings.

The mountain had triumphed, and I felt very sanguine about it. I had been to the top before, and had nothing to prove to anyone. There was no one around to hassle me for miles, and the day was fantastic. I slowly eased one step back down, back to my life which I had left at the bottom. I also knew two things; that I would remember this climb better than my two prior climbs in which I had reached the summit; and I also knew that I would be back again, because it was there.

Winter Climbing Mt. Whitney, 2005 Style, Part 3

The Backpackers Camp at the Portal was mostly covered in large swaths of snow, and the parking lot was partially occluded. It was cold for May – very cold. We found the only snow free site in the campground, and made camp. I checked my gear for the next morning and we sat down to eat dinner. During dinner, my fiancé looked up at the mountain – and queried again how long the hike was. Upon re-learning that it was twenty-two miles, shook her head dismissively and asked why I would put my body through such torment. At the time, I was stymied for a correct answer.

At the early morning though, as I slipped into my clothes and boots, the answer hit me – it wasn’t particularly original – it was Hillary’s answer after all – “Because it’s there”; but it seemed very appropriate. Once I was dressed, I light my headlamp and started for the trail, passing two other groups of aspiring climbers also headed for the summit. The main trail receives the most complaints for the series of ninety-nine switchbacks that head to the ridgeline. Personally, I’ve always found the most difficult of portion of the trail to be the first four miles. It’s dark, I haven’t become used to the weight of my pack, thoughts of sleep are present, and the summit seems extraordinarily far away.

It was no different at the start this time, except this time I was hypersensitive to groups behind me. The bobbing motions of their headlamps did give the early ascent the look of a drive uphill. I had pole position, and after half an hour of hiking, had decided three things. First, the stars under the winter clearness were spectacularly brilliant. Second, despite the monotony of my footsteps, it had been a good decision to leave my iPod behind at the car; the crisp silence was eerily refreshing. Third, the snow obscured the trail a lot sooner than the two miles I had been lead to believe, because it was inconceivable that I had covered two miles – uphill – with a thirty pound backpack in thirty minutes. There was nothing left to do but get out the map and compass, strap on the crampons, and unhook my ice axe from my pack.

Midway through the first snowfield – or perhaps you could call it the only snowfield, as the rest of the ascent was covered in snow and ice, I looked back at the lights of my erstwhile companions on the mountain. It took me a second to realize what they were doing, because their lights were moving about in an erratic manner; but it quickly hit me when the lights began to recede from my view; they were heading back down. From that point on, I had no company but the crisp wind in my ears, and the solid crunching of ice beneath my crampons.

Despite what people may say about the trail, and my own opinions about it, at this point in the season, it was all moot – there was no trail, which is what had lead to my solitude; and what was going to be my challenge for the day. Over snow and ice I traveled, headed relentlessly uphill. As there was no trail, I made somewhat regular checks of my route with my map and compass. There was little risk of becoming lost, as I was familiar with the area, and after all – it was simple enough, as I was heading for the highest point. Nevertheless, it was still a good check on my skills, to keep me from inadvertently humiliating myself by getting lost. There were tracks throughout the snow heading in a variety of directions, and I definitely wasn’t going to follow blindly for any reason at all.

Winter Climbing Mt. Whitney, 2005 Style, Part 2

Regardless of the complaints, I had never had a problem with the permit system. Perhaps that was because I had always applied for a day hike permit; permits which were notoriously easier to obtain, or I had applied in the “slow season” for my permits. As for the trail, the other arguments seemed a little bit like the “Chicken and the Egg”. There were too many people because of the trail, but since there had been too many people before the trail, the trail was needed. I had no problem with the trail, nor saw any reason to find fault with climbing the mountain in that manner. It was an eleven mile hike one way, twenty two miles round trip. The trail climbs from eight thousand feet to fourteen thousand, four hundred and ninety six feet – an elevation gain of over six thousand feet.

The first time I had climbed the mountain, it had been in the dead of summer with a friend, and it had been hot, dusty, and there had been a lot of other people. We completed the hike in a day. The second time I climbed the mountain, it had been May, and the vestiges of snow still lingered on the mountain, requiring me to use my ice axe and crampons at points. When I had come down, I had stated empathetically that I would never climb the mountain again. Both times I had found the trail much easier than a technical ascent, without a doubt, but still extremely challenging to accomplish in a day.

That was three years ago. If one enjoys mountaineering, it is like having a sickness. At times, the very idea of any sort of high-altitude excursion sounds appalling. At other times, it’s like a form of dementia, a constant idea that is impossible to get out of your head. For me, the sickness had gripped me for weeks on end. I wanted to see what Whitney was like during the winter, during a year in which California had received prodigious amounts of rain. I also wanted to test the “highway” theory, and climb the mountain on my own – because the last times I had, I was accompanied by the duty of work, and the expectations of friends.

Before one climbs Whitney, one retrieves their permit from the Forest Service station in Lone Pine. The Forest Service employees will describe all sorts of prohibitions for the Whitney Zone – namely, proper food storage, so as not to invite a bear incident, and proper waste disposal. Previously, the Forest Service had attempted to deal with human waste in a variety of methods – the conventional burying, and the use of composting pit toilets. The new – and by far superior method for dealing with human waste was to have the owner pack it out in plastic bags. While this method may seem abhorrent and unreasonable at first blush, upon second glance it is entirely reasonable – and prudent for them to adopt this new protocol. With thousands of hikers and climbers entering the Whitney Portal region, proper disposal of waste is a large environmental issue. It would be impossible for that much waste to biodegrade on its own, and would only serve as a blight on the land should it remain there. Packing one’s waste out is a common feature to climbers as well, who on multi-day big wall climbs utilize what is called euphemistically, a “poop tube”.

I had no problem with the baggies – what I wanted was information. In the summer, trail conditions are simple – dry and direct. In the winter, with snowfields and snowmelt, the conditions of the route are imperative items, as they will determine what gear that a climber or hiker carries with them. The caliber of information provided to me about the trail was vastly improved from the years past. However, they forgot to tell me that the road to the Portal was closed near the top. This led to some confusion when I arrived at the sign several hours later. After much dithering on my part, we bypassed the sign – like the other twenty or so cars in the lot, and parked.