Tiptoeing Up a Mountain Part 2

Two years ago I climbed Mt. Warren in my sandals and wrote about it here. Last year, the day after my LA Aqueduct Tour that I lead every summer, I climbed Tioga Peak in my sandals... from the south side. That is, the steep trail-less side above Ellery Lake, and not via the Gardisky Lake Trail on the northwest side.

The wildflower rock gardens on Tioga Peak are spectacular, even in a dry year.

A few days before, upon driving into Mono County from Yosemite, I noticed a new sign: "Mono County: Where we honor veterans." The sign bothered me, and on the hike up Tioga Peak, I thought about why. It implies that veterans aren't honored in other places--presumably even the place you are coming from when you see the sign. Implying that veterans aren't honored in Tuolumne County (where I was driving from across the Mono County line) is just offensive to Tuolumne County residents. Whether Mono County honors them more than elsewhere is just unknowable and probably false.

Looking from Mono County, "Where we honor veterans," to Yosemite...
where... maybe... they aren't honored?

Mono County's former motto, as seen on a sign driving north of Bishop on Highway 395, was "Scenic Wonderland." Why didn't that one bother me in the same way? Well, it clearly is a scenic wonderland compared to many other places. And it didn't say "where we respect our scenic wonders," which would have been true but curious phrasing. That sort of phrasing would not just tell you that you are about to enter a scenic wonderland, but would imply that Mono County residents respect its scenic wonders and expect you to as well. That message would be along the lines of "we don't litter," using peer pressure to get visitors not to litter. The problem with these statements is that they aren't true--I'm sure at least one Mono County resident does not honor veterans, does not respect its scenic wonders, and does litter. It is probably the same person (I think I know who it is). The other and bigger problem I have about that type of phrasing on highway signs is that it is preachy... and implies Mono County residents are somehow better (or maybe just luckier) than you. This is probably true, but probably not an insult we want on a highway sign.

My favorite penstemon--Davidsons, I think. I love this color.

 As I climbed up the flowery hillside from Tioga Road, my thoughts turned toward the previous evening's lecture at Parson's lodge by Daniel Arnold. He talked about Early Mountaineers in the Range of Light, his book about his re-creation of several of the first ascents of some of the more difficult-to-climb peaks in the Sierra Nevada. This very inspirational talk stirred mixed feelings in me. I identified very much with his efforts, having duplicated John Muir's first ascent of the Mountaineer's Route on Mt. Whitney myself, but with modern gear (Arnold attempted to use similar gear as used by the first ascendents). However, I was a bit disappointed that I hadn't written this book myself--the historical research and mountaineering re-enactments would have been exactly the kind of thing I would love to do and write about, if I had the time. And I had the feeling that he had done a much better job than I would have done. Now that it is February and I've finished reading his book, I'm sure of this--it is well done, it is an enjoyable book, although throughout the book I was surprised to find that I disagree with many of his philosophical statements. And if I had written it, I wouldn't have done it the same way, or chosen the same peaks. But that is the challenge with anything that is worth doing in life--how to make it original enough to be yours, when billions of other people on the planet might be doing exactly the same thing, and possibly doing it even better than you can. If I am ever to write about my peak climbing in book form, now I'll have to think about how similar my writings are to this book, and if they are too similar. I don't think they will be... but I'm not sure what they will be like.

This must be why the butterflies like Tioga Peak.

And moths too?

The concept of risk is one I often return to in this blog, and think about while I'm mountaineering. The early mountaineers had one relationship with risk. As Arnold says in his book, Normal Clyde believed that if you can do a move, it doesn't matter how much exposure there is below you. Whether there is 1 foot or 1000 feet, you should just do the move. A pregnant woman has another relationship with risk--and she has to be much more brave, since there is no turning back. And a water agency diverting water has another relationship with risk. These are the kind of things I think about.

Sedum. Near a layer of rocks leaching white all over the rocks below. I first
met this plant next to the ocean the previous summer--where salty rocks live.

There is a difference between what is possible to do, and what you are capable of doing. Sometimes we confuse the two, and think that if we aren't capable of something, that it is impossible. I think this is rarely the case, and as we see over history, many things that were "impossible" many years ago are now possible. Arnold recounts in his very readable book the progress mountaineers and climbers have made in pushing that envelope of the impossible forward.

As I climbed higher, the bright morning sun shining into sparkling clear
Ellery Lake Reservoir allowed me to see the path of the flooded original
Tioga Road and Lee Vining Creek stream channel beneath the reservoir.

I climbed on, keeping up with my thoughts. SCE was replacing powerlines in Lee Vining Canyon. I had deep, insightful thoughts about this--something about economics--that I no longer recall--or maybe it was just the lack of oxygen that made the thoughts seem so great. This is why I used to hike with a tape recorder. So many good ideas have been lost on hikes like this.

A dead, rooted pine many tens of feet in elevation above any other living large pines.

 I passed sculpted dead trees that rooted under a past climate, and that under today's climate, are distant in elevation from any live trees on this slope. I passed a tree that had fallen down the slope the previous winter--roots broken off from its bedrock pulpit. My thoughts turned to climate as I ascended toward the slowly spreading krummholtz guarding the south side of the peak and as the Dana and Kuna glaciers came into view.

The Dana Glacier (left) and Kuna Glacier (right, distance) shrink under the
hot summer sun above the canyons their predecessors carved many
thousands of years ago.

I passed Common Juniper, snowberry, creambush. I gazed into the Lee Vining Creek watershed and thought about why it typically has three peak flows as the weather warms in the spring: one from snow melting below Ellery, one from snow melting between Ellery and Saddlebag reservoirs, and one from the higher areas above the Bennetville Bench and Glacier Creek areas. The hydrograph from Lee Vining Creek could be isolated from Glacier Creek to see the Tioga Lake subwatershed's influence. That would be fun to do.

At the top, I found the peak register. On 7/20/07 I last climbed this peak. I saw some familiar names. If the peak was named after the person that climbed it the most, it would be John Ellsworth Peak. If it were named after the beings that ascended it the most, it would be Butterfly Peak.

J. Ellsworth - living the dream. Tioga Peak
belongs to him in the same way that some have
said that Williams Butte is my peak--only more so.
The Tioga Peak register has many pages like
this; on the other hand, my Williams Butte ascents
could all be represented on a single page like this.

The mountain (and the side of that mountain) that I tiptoed up the previous year.
And wrote about here.