30 Aug - 1 Sept 2024

• I find comfort in the fact that, while most things in the world are going to hell, the mountains stay mostly the same. There are particular rocks and trees that I know and love. I feel like I have a relationship with them, and I want to maintain it.
• I'm 68 now. That sure sounds old. But if I can still climb mountains, I can fool myself into thinking that it's not really that old.

This particular summer has kind of slipped away. To salvage something I schedule a trip to Tuolumne and Mono Lake with Seth and Maryse, with the goal of climbing Hoffmann and Conness.

Friday 30 Aug

We're on the road around 9:15 AM. I've borrowed Erica's Subaru, which has the annoying trait of beeping all the time. It beeps when a car is passing you, or a car slows down in front of you, or when you get close to the lane boundary. Often it beeps for no apparent reason at all.

Seth and I look through the owner's manual, trying to figure out how to stop the beeping. There's a button to the left of the steering wheel, and a configuration menu accessed via an Info button on the wheel itself. In both cases the car claims that the beeping is turned off. But it's not. Eventually I give up.

We stop in Oakdale for gas, and at the park entrance for lunch.

The May Lake trailhead parking lot is crowded; we get the last space. We're on the trail at 2 PM. The altitude (~8000') is noticeable and I set a slow pace.

At May Lake, the tent cabins are up. There's a guy in the store / dining hall, but it's closed. Seth and I continue up the slabs to the right of the lake. We arrange to meet Maryse around 5 or 6.

Seth navigates and sets a quick pace. We reach the cliff and head up on the left (steep) side. Kinda hard scrambling. We reach the ridge. I get a slight second wind but Seth is sucking air. Some more scrambling, and we come out on the summit plateau, which is spectacular.

Summit block visible in distance

We cross the plateau to the summit block, and scramble up it.

Summit block and Thumb

Weather station at summit

Seth is fascinated by the Thumb, and wants to climb it.

Thumb and Half Dome

We head down the official path. I'm not feeling great. Some lower-back nerve pinching and left-foot numbness. My neck muscles ache from holding my slouching head up.

I stop for my yearly visit with Bertha the Pine. Seth tells me that Bertha is a Sugar Pine, not a Ponderosa as I thought. They're very similar. I'm not sure he's right, and I love Bertha no matter what species she is.

We reach the lake a bit after 6 - later than planned. We rest a bit and head down. Lots of squirrel activity. I'm beat.

We drive to Lee Vining, stopping briefly at Olmstead Point,

Great pic by Maryse

and check in at the Lake View Lodge. Our lodging is a camper. It's compact but pretty nice, with fridge and well-equipped kitchen. But there's a problem: it bounces. When someone takes a step, you feel it everywhere, amplified.

By now it's past 8. Nicely's is closed, so we go to Bodie Mike's next door.

Seth and I get burgers with bacon, onion rings, and BBQ sauce. I eat half and take the rest home. We get lemon meringue pie - very disappointing. I stare blankly at an old guy with a Trump cap.

Saturday 31 Aug

I have a zero-sleep night (bouncy camper, nose clogged with unreachable boogers, etc.) and wake up feeling horrible. I had a weird waking dream about reading the manual for an English-like but Turing complete Intelligent Home control language for the camper.

My brain is mush and I can barely think or talk. My whole body aches and has almost no energy. My back hurts. It's an effort to stand up straight or walk. I just want the day to be over.

We make coffee and have various things for breakfast. We drive down 395 to Mammoth Lakes, with the goal of walking around Lake George, at the base of Crystal Crag, which I've always wanted to see. Seth and Dan climbed it a while back.

There's a ski area near Mammoth Lakes, and a jet airport allowing the Hoi Polloi from Los Angeles to go there in huge numbers. Even in summer the place is overrun by thousands of tourists. People ride bikes (electric, of course) on a fancy bike path.

The Lake George parking lot is completely full of SUVs. We wait 10 min for a family that's packing up their infant, but wait! They're not leaving. We park at the bottom of the hill and walk up.

The walk around the lake would be nice if I wasn't feeling miserable.

Crystal Crag; mostly quartz

People are fishing everywhere. Seth and Maryse stop for a dip, avoiding the many fish hooks on the bottom. Fishing line is everywhere.

I'm nauseated by all this, and confused as to why people swarm to things that kinda suck (the extreme case being Las Vegas). But at least this human blight is concentrated around Mammoth and hasn't spread to the rest of the Eastern Sierra.

We drive back to the camper for a short rest. I've realized that I need to get my own (non-camper) motel room to have any chance of sleeping tonight. I walk down the street to the seedy Lee Vining Motel, which it turns out has been bought by the Yosemite Gateway Motel across the street. So I go there, and there's a very nice young woman, and indeed they have a room, and it's only $127. I tell her my story, and she very earnestly wishes me a good night's sleep.

We drive to the South Tufa

and then to the Panum Crater,

for nostalgic visits. They're both magnificent.

We dine at the Whoa Nellie Deli. Their parking lot is jammed, but there's no line inside, and my food (fish tacos with mango salsa) arrives in 2 minutes and is delicious. Seth gets the pork ribs, which are immense - even he can only eat half. He spots a slightly-famous rock climber named Tyler Karow, who has a YouTube channel.

As with the mountains, it makes me happy to return to the Mobil station year after year, and find that it hasn't changed - it's always great.

Back in the camper, Maryse and I do the NYT Sunday crossword. We all notice a splashing/dripping sound. To our horror, the toilet has overflowed, and there's about an inch of (unclean) water on the floor, soaking the adjacent bedroom carpet. The toilet has a sort of door at the bottom, and a pedal-operated flush mechanism. Somehow the former is blocked, and the letter is stuck so that water keeps running in. We mop up the water with several bath towels, wringing them out in the shower.

I take my leave and go to my room in the Lee Vining Motel. It's been renovated recently and is perfect. I take a bunch of pills - Trazodone, Melatonin, CBD gummy, 2 Unisoms - and it's quiet, and I'm comfortable. But I STILL don't get much real sleep. Mostly the dry-air nasal congestion thing. I have a waking dream about participating in an underground anti-Trump campaign.

Sunday 1 Sept

I return to the camper and we pack up. Maryse reports the toilet incident at the front desk.

Seth and I get Egg Sandwiches - great as always - at the Mobil station. Maryse notices a giant bearded man who barely fits in the door.

We drive to the Sawmill walk-in campground, where the Conness trail starts.

Oddly, I feel much better today. No residual soreness; my back feels OK. My energy is low but nonzero. We start at 9:45 AM. I set a slow but steady pace, monitoring my respiration and pulse. Seth caches two beers (Maui Wowie) in the stream.

The U.W. Carnegie research barn has completely collapsed.

We reach the Big Black Rock and head up the slope. It's steeper, so I go slower. Maryse is tired but makes it up to the saddle-point meadow. It's about 11:30 AM. As before, she remains there while Seth and I continue up the gully with the V0 bouldering move.

The saddle-point meadow; false summit at top

Seth considers shooting the moon

We reach the plateau above Alpine Lake. We hear distant voices, and eventually spot people on the ridge near the false summit. It seems to be a group of teenage boys, no hats or packs, and a dad with a pack. They eventually descend to the path traversing the slope (which Rob V and I took on our first time here in 2000).

Seth and go up the slope with mixed grass and rock, ending up at the semi-dry lake (which this year is pretty full).

Semi-dry lake. I think teenagers are on cliff leading to summit plateau, but you can't see them

We stop for a long rest / nap. We watch the teenagers - who are moving pretty fast - climb up the cliff to the summit plateau.

It's almost 2 PM, our nominal turn-around time, and it's clear that we're not going to summit, so we decide to turn around right here. Pretty clear-cut decision.

We descend to where Maryse is,

take another short break, and continue down.

There's an extremely scary incident. We're going down a 40' granite slab, and Maryse slips. She picks up speed, slides out of control, feet-first for about 20', and slows to a stop.

Miraculously, she's uninjured except for some bruises. Many bad things could have happened - head injury, broken foot/ankle if she had hit a rock, abrasions of hands or knees, etc. But somehow these didn't happen. Seth congratulates Maryse on her falling ability (which actually is a thing).

After that we avoid slabs.

We reach the main trail and walk back. Maryse is favoring her right knee. To make things go faster I recite a couple of Robert Service poems (note to self: review 'Sam McGee').

We reach the stream, and after a moment of panic Seth finds the cached beers. We stop along the road and enjoy these. The campground is looking great, and mostly unoccupied.

Usually at this stage of the hike I have all-over soreness, but today nothing is particularly sore, including my feet and back. Go figure.

We have a pleasant drive through the park. We stop at Crane Flat to wash the car windows, and at the Claim Jumper station in Big Oak Flat to get gas.

In Oakdale we look for the 'Tekuilas' Mexican restaurant. It no longer exists, so we go to a tiny place called 'El Jarro Viejo' which is way better; the waitress genuinely tries to make sure we have everything we want.

The drive back is pleasant, though I'm getting pretty tired and my eyes have a burning feeling.

Summary

A good trip - Seth/Maryse/I travel well together, and we packed a lot of fun into 3 days.

The mountain climbing part was odd. Hoffman seemed much harder than in the past. I'm good shape for e.g. biking, but maybe I'm not in good shape for mountain climbing, which involves generating fairly high energy output for 4-6 hours.

It was a bit frustrating to not summit Conness. Factors:

• We got a slightly late start and moved a little slow, so we ran out of time;
• I had 2 bad sleep nights;
• I had some energy, but not high or explosive energy.

And of course: I'm 68 now. Am I finally slowing down? Have I climbed Conness for the last time?? I hate to think this but maybe it's true.

I'm tempted to go back later this fall, perhaps by myself, find a motel where I can sleep soundly, and make another attempt. I'm pretty sure I'd succeed, but it's probably not worth it.

ADDENDUM: later in the week I set a PR on the Ocean Beach loop, my standard bike ride in SF. So I'm not slowing down yet.