In essence, they find God on the world's highest peaks.īecause of my genetic predisposition, and I happen to live three hours from Mt. Many hikers are transformed by the experience and describe it in spiritual terms - of reaching into the heavens. The crystalline stillness of the summit somehow imparts an absolute clarity of purpose. While I find the climbers' combination of athletic prowess, physical endurance and pain tolerance astounding, what really intrigues me is that they reach a point, usually toward the top, of almost zen-like oneness with the mountain. Here are some photos of their equipment.It must be my Austrian heritage, but I have always been fascinated by stories of mountaineering expeditions. Several guys were doing direct viewing and a couple of folks were doing astro-photography with PC's and very specialized telescopes. This was a truly spectacular evening of viewing and we saw things we never thought we would see - new stars in the Orion Nebula, spiral galaxies, the belts of Jupiter and its four largest moons, several star clusters, and a really incredible phenomenon called an iridium flare, which is the sun's reflection off a satellites solar panels. Whitney area has little light pollution so is one of their regular spots. They get together several times a year, in very dark places, to do several nights of astronomy. Jim went to investigate and it turned out to be a group of friends from California who are VERY SERIOUS amateur astronomers. After setting up for the night, we noticed a group of guys two spots down from us setting up all this high tech equipment. This campground has good internet and cell which Alabama Hills didn't have and it was in the shadow of Mt. Since we couldn't stay there, Plan B was a place called Tuttle Creek Campground, also a BLM site, which cost a whopping $5 per night. For any of you truly hearty, or insane, souls out there you might be interested in the Badwater Ultramarathon, which goes from Badwater Basin at -282 feet to the Whitney Portal at 8,360 feet.in mid-July when temps are often around 120 degrees.
Whitney is only 115 miles from Death Valley so that little distance separates the highest and lowest points in the contiguous US. There are approximately 100 natural arches as well. Over 400 films have been made here over the years and it is a very popular bouldering spot with hundreds of routes.
This unique geological area was named by Southern sympathizers in Lone Pine who decided that the Confederate cruiser "The Alabama " (which had destroyed or captured 60 Union ships in 2 years) ought to be celebrated - so they named their mining claims after her. We originally planned on staying in a BLM area area called Alabama Hills, but when we got there the roads were very sandy and we were afraid of getting stuck, plus, the roads didn't match what was on our map so we were afraid of going down a road and not being able to turn around. It is a very pretty setting with the ridge of the Sierra Nevadas stretching as far as the eye can see from north to south and the Owens valley to the east. Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48, and we had planned on being there for at least several days.