Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Whitney is a Gateway Drug!

Just booked a guided trip up Shasta for June (after having fun on snowshoes at lower elevations on Shasta over this last weekend). Looking forward to learning some basic mountaineering skills! As some folks here know, I climbed my first 14ers (Whitney, White) last summer.

Is this how addiction starts...?

You won't be able to stop now. You are are hooked and there is no avoiding the addiction. You are going to follow the typical pathway. First you start on the 14'ers then you try the 20Ks and then the E addiction. You are headed to straight to Everest.God help you.

I too am planning a Shasta hike this year.

Like you, I started hiking last year in July. Outside of local 1,000 footers, I didn't really do much until I did a day hike of Half Dome after a month of training. My life forever changed. The bug bit me, and I was up Whitney on the Labor Day weekend, and again last November.

Now I simply need to find the time, funds, and skills to do all of California and Colorado's big mountains, with aspirations to do some international stuff such as Elbrus, Aconcagua, and Ecuador's volcanoes to name a few.

You should try dealing with that addiction from way over here on the flatter east coast - you wind up planning most of your year around a couple of trips just to get in the general vicinity of big mountains. Managing decent training is the worst part of this, with the closest peak over 6700 feet being more than 1200 air miles away.

It's definitely worth it, though. In about 8 days John (catpappy) and I will be setting up camp in Death Valley for a week of desert rambling. Nothing much higher than 9000 feet this trip, but summer and the Sierra is only a few months away!

I keep telling Gary to move out west where you can play every day, but he would rather earn the big bucks and wait for the Falcons to win a Superbowl. As soon as I eat breakfast and feed the horses, I'm going ski mountaineering.

Rod, you are right.
Whitney was my first >14,000. Then the path lead higher and higher, all the way to the Himalayas.

That's it Bob, rub it in. On the upside, it's been near 70 and sunny in Atlanta for the past 8-9 days. The next cold front is due to come in just about the time I hop on that plane for Vegas and DV. By the time I get back on 3/9, spring should be well on it's way here. And then I'll have to start mowing the lawn, dammit.

Like I've told you before, my philosophy is that God invented the jetliner for the express purpose of getting me to the mountains to play. See ya in a few days!

PS - Falcs in SB next year!

Rubbing it in again, you can keep your high-humidity weather. I'll be here in about an hour!

Yeah Akichow, it's an addiction. Plain and simple.

For me, it appears that the gear is an addiction too. Just got back from REI -- you know, planning ahead to make sure I have the right stuff. Good deals on clearance items, at least. Picked up a Marmot Gore-Tex Paklite shell for 68 bucks.

Now we have done it. Opened up an invitation to me to list some "addiction" mountaineering quotes. Harvey

This one starts us off gently
"We succumbed to the occupational disease of all mountaineers. After initially absorbing the beauty of the scene, we automatically began to select routes up the surrounding peaks."
Nicholas Clinch, A Walk in the Sky, page 193

This one is stronger, hammered out in the cruel world of winter Himalayan climbing:
"Now I had come to know that I would not stop climbing; this mountain scene was exhilarating rather than oppressive, full of endless opportunity. Sometimes I feel as if the mountains have become an addiction, the pleasure gone, the compulsion to partake remaining."
Joe Tasker, Everest the Cruel Way, page 118

This dark and final one, no pun intended, is why some people prefer living their lives out there:
"But no journalist wrote about the banality of city life or how easy it is to become another automaton paying bills and working nine to five and being so removed from the primary necessities of life and so far from real fear and natural beauty and human instinct that when death finally approaches in some antiseptic white room, just as you have been waiting for it, you sense that you have already been dead for years."
Jonathan Waterman, In The Shadow of Denali, page 246

Those are great quotes Harvey. You have quite a reptoire of great mountainers quotes.

Yeah "the other addiction" is the equipment junkie.Made much easier with so many internet sites,credit left on your credit card limit and the irresistible "sales".