In Pursuit of Wisdom

I, Shahriar and Tanjeem went upto a little over twelve thousand feet (trail camp) of Mount Whitney this 9 th July Friday. Despite failing in our attempt to summit, we learnt a lot about mountains and mountaineering in general during this day hike. I loved it! Shahriar processed all the paper works as team lead in early February this year to apply for 4 passes but finally we 3 friends went there. We picked up the passes one day before the hike from Lone Pine city and went for a practice hike that day. We hiked upto 9800 feet at Lone Pine lake in about 2 hours 20 minutes. This was the last point until which we could have gone without a hiking permit (remember that our hike permit was for next day). This practice helped us making an assessment on where we were physically and team-wise in terms of preparation for the summit. Unfortunately we found that we were under-prepared for this big hike and were not in best of our shape. For example, Tanjeem had a broken sleep cycle last few days...

Finally we are on our way to Mount Whitney. Yesterday I woke up a little earlier than 6 and finished some packing and grocery shopping for home. By the time Shahriar came to pick me in his Honda CRV it was around 8 AM. We picked Tanjeem from San Jose and drove towards Yosemite. We wanted to take the scenic Yosemite / Tioga Pass route to go the Lone Pine city instead of the boring I-5 route through Bakersfield. Tanjeem was under pressure in office works and couldn't sleep well last few days due to some practice hike disturbing his sleep cycle. So we started little late compared to what we were thinking initially (4/5 AM). We enjoyed the beautiful trees. roads, mountains and rock formations while passing through Yosemite / Tioga pass road. One thing that struck us much was seeing some people live in rock climbing. we couldn't anticipate how that was feasible for the people in the above video to take that trail (in fact no trail, it's solid rock) and make their foot steps on...

We had a quick Portland trip during the labor day weekend of May. I had lot of works pending in office and hence I didn't want to take extra day offs for the trip. Also Amin would have been able to join us only if he wouldn't have to take any leave. Considering all these I decided to fly to save time as well as not put much pressures on Shusmita at a time when she came just came out of first trimester. I purchased air tickets from priceline by a bid as tickets were sky priced at the very last moments for this long weekends. I took Holiday Inn through my citibank thank you points. Amin joined us shortly. Shahriar, sachi and safwan drove to Portland at the same time in Saturday so that we could join the train ride together Sunday. Wali Bhai dropped us to san francisco airport Saturday afternoon and n we reached Portland airport, we found Shahriar there outside the airport. I took a toyota camry from airport and then had dinner together with sharij restaurant. The next morning ...

Today I am writing to convince myself that I should find more time for practice before I finally attempt to hike Mount Whitney in first week of June. Reaching the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest peak of lower 48 states in USA is a dream come true to many. However, I have not been able to find enough time to prepare for this hike which I will attempt with a few other friends in less than a month later. What a  pity! If you know about my last year's half dome hike of Yosemite , you are aware that from that time I have been planning for this as next major target for my new hiking passion. Despite all the attractions to it, I got too busy in my job and then I am trying to take care of my wife who is expecting. I initially thought that I will have to skip this trip this year but fortunately found that Shusmita is okay with the trip to accompany me during the travel although she won't hike. I have asked my other hiker friends to make it a family travel to Death Valley as well ...