Another pass, Silver Pass, I hiked over but never saw. My sunglasses disappeared during a creek ford, leaving me seriously worried about snow blindness. I hiked over the pass in Pete’s footsteps, peeking through squinted eyes. The day is full of emotion: our laughter echoes far below us during a thrilling glacade, we are both…

After the hellish snow on Muir Pass, we are dreading Seldon Pass. But it turns out to be fun, we don’t even change out of our running shoes. Next we start to dread the crossing of Bear Creek, which I’ve heard frightening tales about. But we avoid the ford by going cross-country higher up. We’re…

Pete is not in the mood for snow today. I love this terrain, and maintain some enthusiasm for us up Muir Pass. On the other side, though, my force runs out. The snow becomes a patient assailant bent on slowly, unstoppably driving us mad. There is nothing but whiteness around us, no sound but the…

After half an hour of bank-searching, we crawl across King’s River on an icy log. The snow on Mather Pass is already slushy when we arrive, but Pete finds a way up some exposed rocks. This world is amazing to both of us, but it seemed especially foreign at first to him. Essentially being his…

We don’t see a soul all day. If there is a way to move with grace and ease over the snow, we haven’t found it. In the morning we stumble over sun cups, in the afternoon we posthole up a slushy Pinchot Pass. My grace continues to diminish on the way down. At one point…

The Restaurant Breakfast has become a celebrated event. Filled with confidence and well-being we find a ride back to the trailhead with no effort. A wild looking group in an old pickup offers to take us while their laundry dries. They are travelling the country gathering herbs and spreading the Proclamation of Peace. Our bodies…

Our navigational mantra becomes “Trail Schmail”. The more we try to stick to our imaginings of where the trail might be under the snow, the harder the going gets. So we give up and just go where we’re going. Trail Schmail. Going up Kearsarge Pass Pete has a conversation with a nearby coyote. They both…

The events of today are far and away beyond the means to experience vicariously through words. Being, however, that it was one of the most exhilarating, full, and altogether surreal days of my life, I will attempt to make a record of it. I’ve never been a coffee drinker. Some people like it as a…

Mt. Whitney makes a grand day. Out come the hiking boots, the ice axes, and the gaiters, all for their first trial. The day is beautiful! It can’t be perfect though – we forget the sunscreen and I turn very red. At the top we talk to a few others who ascended from Whitney Portal.…

We are in real mountains! We encounter real snow, but not enough yet to get us real lost. The exitement is building for our planned summit of Whitney tomorrow. We have no permit to make the popular climb, but hope to sneak past the ranger station unnoticed in the morning. At Crabtree Meadows we camp…