Pam at Whitney Portal Falls.Today, I asked Pam's parents for their permission to marry their daughter. Permission granted and they welcomed me into their family. A date has not been set but the some locations have been selected.
One of them is the Whitney Portal Falls. On a whim, Pam and I drove up to Whitney Portal since she has never been there. She has driven by it many times, but never seemed to take that small 13-mile detour west of Lone Pine. She works with someone in her office that has a friend who owns one of the cabins at Whitney Portal. I took her on a grand tour of the Portal Area. I took her by the falls and she was speechless at the beauty and sounds. I then took her to the old stock trail that I use to take on my hikes. The old stock trail bypassess the Carillon Creek and North Fork water crossings and takes you up to the John Muir Wilderness sign. Then it was off to see the pond with the trout. There were a lot of anglers but no one was catching anything. We went into the store to browse around.
Jack and I.This is a picture of me and Jack N., the only man who has climbed Mt. Whitney twice in one day. He and his wife, Betsy, were up at the Portal Store helping out with the National Trails Day at Whitney Portal while clearing trail on the Whitney Portal National Recreation Trail. Yesterday was his 62nd birthday and he will be attempting summits number 53 and 54 this summer. His training regimen is riding a stationary bike for one hour each day to get his cardio up. On his summit bids he starts at 10:00 p.m. the night before his permit becomes active, summits in 4 hours, comes back down in 3 hours, rests 30 minutes, then goes up again. All he packs is a water bottle with Gookinade and some trail food and some clothing needed to keep warm. He does not carry a pack. He told me he has met people going up while he was coming down on his first summit, only to meet those hikers as they are coming down as he is going up on his second summit attempt, and then PASSING them on the way down on his second return.
I bought a book for Pam that Doug wrote and had Doug autograph it for her: "To Gary and Pam. Great to see you on the mountain. Doug."
Pam likes the book. It is chocked full of little tidbits of information.
Jack provided Pam with a lot of information on how to prepare and what to expect.
At the dinner table on the east side of the store. While at the Portal Store, Pam wanted to order the infamous Portal Fries I had been salivating over during our discussions in her Whitney planning. She was impressed with the quality and the quantity of the fries. We sat with Doug, Jack and Betsy, as well as two National Park Service rangers as we ate lunch. The rangers handed out free water bottles and postcards to everyone at the Portal Store to commemorate the 100th birthday of the Inyo National Forest.
Jack (foreground) and Doug (back).
