A sharp buzzing noise in my ear jolted me to attention. I’d been content, hiking in a catatonic state with skis on my back for miles out of the Mount Whitney basin. But the mosquitos had risen before the sun, and at 4 A.M. on a late-June morning, I was breakfast.
I could have been anywhere that summer morning, but I had chosen to chase yet another day of skiing in the high peaks.
I live for winter, and every year my mood improves in November when the flakes begin to fall. Subsequently, my seasonal depression tends to set in right around mid-June, when the sun angle is high and its rays turn skiable snow into an uncomfortable three-dimensional pump track. A common refrain in the Eastern Sierra where I live is folks come for the winter and stay for the summer. But I’m four years in and that never quite clicked for me.
My summer weekends are filled with angst and indecision. Once a passionate climber, I now spend much less time on the granite peaks and domes above my home. Infrequency and atrophy have winnowed my desire to ascend steep rock and have replaced my old excitement with fear and doubt. Mountain biking in my town’s dusty and expensive bike park never quite scratches the itch of playing in the big mountains. Hiking without an objective or a technical element leaves me feeling aimless and empty. Instead, I choose to keep waxing my skis long after most of the snow has been vaporized by the summer sun. I’ll throw them in the back of my car and quest into the highest reaches of the Sierra well into July. I’m starting to think that skiing in the high peaks is all I know—that I’ve forgotten how to behave in a society that values summer. I know I’m crazy, but I just can’t stop.
What I crave is the slow plod skyward of a steep bootpack, feeling the secure crunch of crampons sinking into névé. I need to all but disappear in a massive alpine cirque, dwarfed by walls of granite and ice. Winter’s sky holds a different blue that ebbs away to a muddled June gray, and I find myself scratching around, desperately seeking a way to get it back.
So, there I found myself, kicking up dust, trying to beat back the summer blues by hauling my skis all the way up to 14,000 feet above sea level to squeeze the last drop out of winter. My fiancée Rita and I had poached camping in the Whitney Portal, usurping a spot that someone had reserved and abandoned like scrappy hermit crabs. Our alarm rang at 2 A.M. to a collective sigh of relief—neither of us had slept a wink. Our anticipation got the best of us and we frittered away much-needed shuteye in favor of visualizing the trail and the sunrise.
Fueled by Oreos and a resolute desire to hold onto spring, we packed up our tent, slurped a cup of cold coffee, and somnambulated toward the trailhead. Mount Irvine (13,786 feet) and its brother Mount Mallory (13,851 feet) tower over the town of Lone Pine. Skiing in the cirque between the pair of peaks was a fitting objective, our quixotic search for snow echoed the famous climber’s “Because it is there” aphorism. We chuckled nervously that the cirque that houses the two peaks rarely sees any traffic, and we were skiing there almost exactly 100 years after Irvine and Mallory disappeared on Mount Everest.
A beam of light broke through the oppressive cloud of mosquitoes, and through it I was able to see the sunrise gracing the summit of Lone Pine Peak with alpenglow. It was just enough motivation to shake off the bugs and continue upward.
The inexorable lengthening of days as spring turns to summer spirals my sense of loss. Each day, the fingers of snow climb higher from the basin floor. Their melt mirrors my waning ability to find inspiration, adventure, and fun. Admittedly, this is a character flaw. I can’t seem to find anything to latch onto in the summer besides skiing, though all my friends have new and different passions. The heat, the mosquitos, the endless oppressive sunshine, all dim my drive to lose myself among my home’s massive peaks. I’d benefit greatly from a support group for wayward ski mountaineers.
We arrived at Meysan Lake, which sits 3,000 feet beneath Mount Irvine, around 7:30 A.M., trying to arrive before couloir had time to soften. The lake still had lilypads of ice floating on its surface. Rita and I sat on a granite boulder, sunning ourselves like lizards in the morning sunlight. The morning was cool in the granite basin.
Setting a skin track toward Mount Irvine’s wide apron, I felt the swelter of the sun overstaying its welcome. Sweat began to stream sunscreen into my eyes. But when I took a moment to clear them, I was able to see the gift of my surroundings. Glorious golden granite soared over lush, grassy meadows. Turquoise lakes nestled among groves of old-growth whitebark pines. And yes, all of these features will be here in two months’ time when the last of the snow melts, but what will be gone is the arresting contrast—sparkling white streaks of snow are what make these drainages so special to me.
Maybe halfway up the couloir, it became clear that it was getting too hot, too fast. Fearing the consequences of a wet avalanche, Rita and I quickly transitioned and clicked into our skis. The sun cups were deep and the skiing was, frankly, bad, but we couldn’t help but laugh as we glided through the steep golden hallway, spraying slush in our wake.
It was clear then that our ski season was officially over. These errant chutes in the high country can only stay soft for so long. Soon they’ll transition to ice and then, in their evanescent way, be gone altogether. Each weekend I say with some certainty that I’m done skiing. Winter was good, spring was better, and now I’ll have to make something new out of my summer. But when Friday rolls around, I start peeking at coverage in the high country, looking for strips of snow in the alpine that could provide a little spark of inspiration.
I want to recommit to climbing, force myself back on the sharp end of a rope and figure out how not to be scared again. I’ll take out my bike and learn to corner in deep sand—I have so much to learn and so far to progress. Next weekend I’ll make it happen.
As we made the slow slog back to the Portal I began to accept that winter’s final breath may have come and gone a few months ago, and spring was already on life support. Next weekend I’ll figure out how to be a citizen of summer. But this weekend you can find me once more at 14,000 feet tucking my crampons into my pack and staring down a narrow band of rotten snow, preparing, yet again, to drop in.
