I flew down to LA to do an 'interview' climbing weekend with Kevin, a prospective partner for Alaska in May. I've had some difficulty finding a partner around where I live, and Kevin replied to a post I made on a popular climbing message board. He has a really good climbing resume, including a summit of Denali two years ago. Phone and email correspondence revealed that we had similar preferences for routes. Since weather in the Cascades is so iffy compared to the Sierra, it made more sense for me to head down that way.
We departed LA Thursday evening and headed up to Lone Pine, and on to the Whitney Portal. We had a crappy weather forecast for Friday, but with limited time decided that an attempt on Whitney in marginal weather would be a good fitness barometer. We slept in the back of the truck up there at 8,000', and woke up with the sun maybe 6:30ish. We cooked breakfast and had a leisurely start. About 5 minutes after departing the car, light snow started falling. It fell pretty much consistently the entire day.
Nevertheless, we made quick progress. I wanted to demonstrate to Kevin that I was motivated and fit, and volunteered for the lion's share of the trailbreaking. We followed steps to Lower Boy Scout lake, and then more or less made our own way from there. Kevin was definitely fit, and we made good time. Unfortunately, as we got higher, visibility got poorer and the snow got deeper.
Eventually we reached the basin of Iceberg Lake around 13,000', at the base of the Mountaineer's Route/Gully. It had taken us about 5 hours to get to this point. I jokingly asked Kevin which gully we should take. Jokingly because we were in about 100% white out conditions. Additionally, though there was only a few inches of fresh on the ground down lower, there was about a foot here. It would have been tough work making our way up the gully. We didn't have to discuss very long before we decided the day was done. That we were both ready to pull the plug was evidence that we have similar ideas about risk; this mattered a lot to me in terms of a prospective partner for the mountains.
As we turned around and headed down, I started to get a headache and a little nauseated. Kevin led the way most of the way down. I told him that I was not used to the altitude, and was having a little difficulty. He soldiered on the whole way down; being a Sierra local, he had no troubles at all.
We got back to the car late afternoon, got out of our wet clothes, and made a bee line down to Lone Pine for some pizza. We dropped by the Lone Pine Hostel, where we ran into some of his friends and hung out for awhile. I was pleased with day one of the trip, and optimistic about our ability to bite off a bigger trip in Alaska.
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