Mt.Whitney and Death Valley Trip
When I had first heard about Death Valley few years ago, I had no clue what kind of place that was. But it’s designation was attractive enough that it had silently slithered into my wish list. The original plan was to hike Mt.Whitney, the tallest mountain of United States which I didn’t plan to attend. Thankfully, Death Valley was added to the Whitney hike right on time that I could get off from work and off we were on another adventure trip of a lifetime.
Oct 17, 2018 – Mesquite sand dunes
I reached Las Vegas and drove over to Stove well pope lodge in Death Valley National Park with Vivek, Samir and Himanshu!
We took the scenic and longer route which consisted of large expansive areas barren land on either side of the road with scattered cacti and bounded by mountains layered in million shades of gray displaying a chilling beauty!
We rested at the lodge and chitchatting around a fireplace while Vivek, Samir, Himanshu and Paresh drove 1.5hr to Whitney portal to get the permits for the next day. After dinner we went to the Mesquite sand dunes for a night hike. Some of us were super tired and initially hesitated, but nevertheless went along as we didn’t want to miss it! We walked bare foot and without headlamp.
Below the sand was silky soft and soothingly cold while above the sky was lit up with a gazillion sparking stars and moonshine and with that our die hard expedition had kicked off!
Oct 18, 2018- Telescope peak
We checked out of the hotel by 6am and drove ~2 hrs. The drive was very beautiful.
There was barren flat land on either side of the road. The flat land then became contiguous with the first layer of dark gray mountain range which then merged with a lighter gray shade of 2nd mountain range that then merged on to a bluish shade of 3rd mountain range which further merged into pinkish very tall 4th layer of mountain range that finally became contiguous the with the orange sky..! Finally we reached the trailhead and began hiking up at ~8000ft. The initial part of the trail consisted of a gradual upward incline of fine gravel, mountain with cacti on the right and aerial panoramic views of the bad water basin on the left- the lowest point of North America at 280 ft below sea level! The trail then became flat and ran along the spine of the mountain for ~2 miles all throughout with aerial views of the entire bad water basin on the left, collateral views the never ending Sierra Nevada including Mt.Whitney – the tallest mountain of North America, on the right and the telescope peak straight above and in front of me. The telescope peak was in the shape of a perfect triangle, adorned with rows of pine tree – like appearing vegetation. It felt like it was the center of something inexplicable that can simultaneously see both sides of a coin. I was very attracted to its charisma and paced up really fast towards it…and reached the portion where the switchbacks and steep incline began. The trail here was not only steep but also pretty narrow with few portions filled will just loose stones and felt quite scary as the trail ran along the very edge of the cliff. With every step ahead my legs and head felt heavier and heavier and it became increasingly difficult to climb further. I kept telling myself to keep moving forward one step at a time for every deep breath, but myself kept telling me that I was running out of endurance and must be wary about the return downhill which was definitely very treacherous along the steep cliff with loose stones.. the debate continued for almost a mile, sometimes fierceful and and sometimes even as ridiculous as the presidential debate… Finally myself won over me to stop and turn around at less than a mile from the summit.
I was filled with mixed feelings of exhaustion, disappointment, sadness and rage. I spent sometime on the flat portion of the trail watching the basin and Whitney alternately and soaking the views until I saw the rest of the group return and then slowly walked back to the trailhead all the time nagging myself for not continuing forward to the peak summit. I finally reconciled after a hefty subway dinner and a good night sleep listening to the lullaby from a flowing stream next to my tent in the Whitney campground. Vivek showed me pictures of the summit views at the airport. They were a lot more beautiful than I had imagined and felt so happy to be able to see at least some of the views in pictures.
Oct 19, 2018- Mt.Whitney trail
The plan was to leave at 3am for the Mt.Whitney summit hike.
But I stayed with group 2 who decided to start late and instead do an easy hike to The lone pine lake. We decided to start the day by watch the sunrise views of Mt.Whitney as Vivek had posted a really pretty picture on Meetup.
Samir drove us along the Whitney portal road while we kept looking for a spot where the views resembled as close to the Meetup pic as possible. We went back and forth on the road a couple times and finally found a spot that we thought looked close and watched eagerly at Mt.Whitney in front of us while waiting eagerly for the sun to rise behind us.. First the tip of few scattered regions of the mountain range changed from grey to light orange. From here the orange color spread horizontally in both directions to cover the tip of the entire mountain range except for the needles and Mt.Whitney that glowed in a bright golden yellow shade. The orange color then diffused all throughout the mountain range till it reached the valley below, while all along the Needles and Mt.Whitney continued displayed the golden glory!! As the sun fully rose above the horizon behind us, orange and yellow shades gradually blended until the entire mountain then became homogeneously cream in color. It was one of the best display of colors one can ever imagine! After breakfast, we started on the Mt.Whitney trail – the highlight of this trip. The trail began with beautiful views of pine trees and valley on one side and the tall granite mountains on the other. The mountain was so tall that the sun was still behind it and we could intermittently see the sun rays and glimpses of the sun itself behind the mountain. Samir was jokingly referring to those views as sunrises and we ended up watching at least a dozen or more sunrises that morning!! We crossed many narrow streams that were gushing with water along the trail by stepping on stones or walking on logs laid across the stream. Our first destination was the Lone pine lake. It is one of the most alluring lakes I’ve seen. It was this triangular shaped blue colored lake the shade of which fully coalesced with that of the sky. The lake was so clear and still and uniquely positioned between the mountains causing it to precisely reflect the color of the sky that one would not be able to differentiate where the lake ended and where the sky began but for the pine trees and the granite rocks. Interestingly the pine trees were also arranged symmetrically with one large tree situated at the tip of the lake and the others arranged equidistant from it as if they were landscaped! We took endless pictures of this splendor and did not have the heart to leave the place at all.. I could spend an entire day on the lake just watching it and not get bored at all!!!We next continued our climb upwards entering the permit zone. At around 10,000 ft elevation we saw few patches of ice and snow and at least half a dozen waterfalls that were partially frozen. One stream was completely frozen and we could walk over it! Samir found a piece of ice that resembled the shape of a crown and gave it to us. Parul and I shared the crown for the titles of Miss World and Miss Universe. There was also a small portion on the trail that had views of an expansive meadow colored in shades of green, yellow and brown. We finally reached our final destination for the day – the mirror lake. We took pictures of ourselves and our mirror images on the lake with the mountain and it’s mirror image. We spent some time by the lake, had lunch in desi style with puri and khakra and imagined the victory faces of the rest of the group that left early that day to summit Mt.whitney since by that time they should have summited and started their return. On our way back, we stopped by one more time at lone pine lake which looked more beautiful in the evening light and returned to trailhead to greet our proud Doeres Whitney Summiteers. It was such a joy to first spot the flashlights trail down in pitch dark followed by victoriously exhausted familiar faces. The joy of seeing Atul, Paresh, Hireni, Vrajesh, Vivek, Harry and Ganesh exceeded such limits that I do not have any words to describe it..! It was a perfectly beautiful day spent on an exquisitely beautiful trail with a bunch of ever beautiful companions!
Oct 20, 2018- Uhebehe crater and Racetrack road
After celebrating the Whitney victory with champagne that Parul got the previous night, we left Whitney to return to Death Valley. Our first stop was at Uhebehe crater, a 2000 year old crater. We spent some time exploring the crater along it edges and down into the hollow. It was a beautiful contrast to hike down into the crater as opposed to our regular hikes up the mountains. We next started to drive on the race track road. This is a 25 mile off road path that led to a dried up lake with sliding stones that left behind track-marks on the dried up lake that no one so far figured out. What we didn’t know was that few miles in, the path turned to be very stony and we could not drive more than 10ml/hr speed.. In fact one of the cars even had a flat tire half way in. By the time we reached the lake it was already sunsetting. We walked on the lake that was so dry that the bed was cracked into a myriad of shapes interspersed with the sliding stones and Himanshu solved the mystery of the sliding stones. One of the stones was Majnu, one was Laila and the rest of the stones were an army preventing Majnu from meeting up with Laila. He explained the tracks were formed as the army was chasing Majnu who was trying to escape from them and trying to reach Laila! And today the Doeres were here to create history to help out Majnu re-unite with Laila! Wow!! I don’t know if we ended up re-uniting the couple, but we definitely created a record.. The car with the flat tire did not have a full wheel and the only option was to drive with the spare. It was already pitch dark. We didn’t know how far the spare wheel would last on the stony path. But nevertheless, we decided for all cars to stick together and continue to move on. We all drove together at no more than 5 miles/hour for majority of the journey through the desolated park in pitch dark and an almost full moon that appeared and disappeared randomly behind thick clouds. We finally got out of racetrack road and reached the Mesquite spring campground just before midnight! What an adventure! We spent some time on a small hill on the campground after dinner watching shooting stars and cloud bombs and listening to Atul’s astronomy BS!
Oct 21, 2018- Death Valley sight seeing
We spent some time exploring the Mesquite campground in the campground and drove along a scenic route. We walked on the Salt filled bad water basin, marveled at the expansive salt and rock formations on the devils golf course, drove along the color rock formations of the artists pallete and walked along the shade of the golden canyon before returning to Las Vegas.
Many thanks to our event host, Vivek for planning and putting together such a wonderful trip, for all the planning and execution, campsite logistics, and for also leaving few portions of the trip unplanned which made the trip an all in all adventure! A special shout out to Samir, MBA, our masti group leader for driving relentlessly and always being enthusiastic to show us scenic spots and take the best group selfie pics!